THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL.

S U P P L E M E N T TO “ T I L E L I T E R A R Y G U I D E ,” J A N U A R Y ,, /¿V/.

We commonly feel, when studying the career of an eminent and successful man, not so much interest in the ripe results of his labour as in the early steps which led up to them For- although we cannot place ourselves in the same position as the man, or altogether control our surroundings there is generally a something in his history which sets us thinking - I and, what is more important, we receive a stimulus which urges us to devise schemes of self-discipline o f our own and which not unfrequently developes that force of initiative which so few possess, but without which one can accom plish very little beyond the duties of a daily routine

The earl>’ education o f young Mill was almost unique in its character; and, as this education was conducted by hifather exclusively, some reference to the father is indis" pensable. The son writes : “ I was born in London on the 20th of May, 1806, and was the eldest son of lame« Mill, the author of The H isto ry o f B r i t is h I n d i a ' M v father—the son of a petty tradesman and ([ believe) small farmer, in the county of Angus—was, when a boy recom mended 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 Lane Stuart and some other ladies, for educating young men fn, 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....... but ended by taking up his residence in London, and devoting himself to authorship. Nor had he any other means of support until 18 19 , when he obtained an appointment in the India House. In this period of mv 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 senke and o f 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 thè 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....... but he, with these burdens upon him, planned, commenced, and completed The H istory o f I n d ia ....... 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— endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education.”

The boy’s education began early—when he was between three and four years of age. At that time his father and family were living at Stoke Newington Green, at the southwest corner, in a house since demolished to make way for modern improvements. The only subject of study at first was Greek, except a little arithmetic, by way of diversion, of an evening; and the method of teaching was one which, after being dropped for a time, is now again coming into favour. Shortly, it consisted in giving the learner a considerable acquaintance with the language itself, before perplexing him with tables of declensions, conjugations, and rules o f syntax—all of which are much more readily acquired when the pupil has a store of words and phrases to which he can apply them.

“ I have no remembrance,” says Mill, “ 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 inflexions of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation ; and I faintly remember going through ALsop'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.”

He might well have been spared doing more, assuredly ; for he had then got through a number of Greek prose authors, including the whole of Herodotus and of Xenophon’s Cyropcedia and Memorials of Socrates. The only thing besides Greek that he learnt as a lesson in that part of his childhood was arithmetic; that also was taught by his father of an evening. But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction he received. Much of it consisted in the books he read by himself, and his father’s discourses to him, chiefly during their walks. From 18 10 to 18 13 they were living at Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. His father’s health required much exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. It sounds strange to us in these kindergarten days to hear him saying: “ 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, in this manner, I read a great number— Robertson’s histories, Hume, Gibbon ; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson’s P h i l ip the Second an d Th ird . 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.”

He then goes on to enumerate several other works— Greek, Latin, and English— both in poetry and prose. But during this part of his childhood one of his greatest amusements was experimental science ; in the theoretical, however, not in the practical, sense of the word. Joyce’s Scientific D ia logues was a favourite work. He devoured treatises on chemistry, especially that of his father’s early friend and schoolfellow, Dr. Thomson, years before he attended a lecture or saw an experiment.

He was about the age of twelve when he entered on that more advanced stage of instruction which led to the distinction he enjoyed in later life. It commenced with logic, in which he began at once with The Organon, and, contemporaneously with it, his father made him read the whole or parts of several of the Latin treatises on the scholastic logic. He tells us: “ 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 i t ; for in mathematical processes none of the real difficulties of ratiocination occur. It is also a study i peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of