Editing John Stuart Mill (section)

==Biography==
John Stuart Mill was born at 13 Rodney Street in [[Pentonville]], then on the edge of the capital and now in [[central London]], the eldest son of Harriet Barrow and the [[Scottish philosophy|Scottish philosopher]], historian, and economist [[James Mill]]. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of [[Jeremy Bentham]] and [[Francis Place]]. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of [[associationism]], had as his explicit aim to create a [[genius]] intellect that would carry on the cause of [[utilitarianism]] and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.<ref>{{cite book |last=Halevy |first=Elie |title=The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism |year=1966 |publisher=Beacon Press |isbn=978-0191010200 |pages=282–284}}</ref>

Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught [[Ancient Greek|Greek]].<ref name="digital.library.cornell.edu">{{cite web|url=http://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/index.html?c=nwng;cc=nwng;rgn=full+text;idno=nwng0033-4;didno=nwng0033-4;view=image;seq=620;node=nwng0033-4:1;page=root;size=s;frm=frameset|title=Cornell University Library Making of America Collection|website=collections.library.cornell.edu}}</ref> By the age of eight, he had read ''[[Aesop's Fables]]'', [[Xenophon]]'s ''[[Anabasis (Xenophon)|Anabasis]]'',<ref name="digital.library.cornell.edu" /> and the whole of [[Herodotus]],<ref name="digital.library.cornell.edu" /> and was acquainted with [[Lucian]], [[Diogenes Laërtius]], [[Isocrates]] and six dialogues of [[Plato]].<ref name="digital.library.cornell.edu" /> He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught [[arithmetic]], physics and astronomy.

At the age of eight, Mill began studying [[Latin]], the works of [[Euclid]], and [[algebra]], and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught [[Latin literature|Latin]] and [[Ancient Greek literature|Greek]] authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and [[Demosthenes]] with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of his earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the ''[[Iliad]]''. In his spare time he also enjoyed reading about [[natural science]]s and popular novels, such as ''[[Don Quixote]]'' and ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]''.

His father's work, ''[[The History of British India]]'', was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, at about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the [[Scholasticism|scholastic]] [[logic]], at the same time reading [[Aristotle]]'s logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to [[political economy]] and studied [[Adam Smith]] and [[David Ricardo]] with his father, ultimately completing their [[Classical economics|classical economic view]] of [[factors of production]]. Mill's ''comptes rendus'' of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing ''Elements of Political Economy'' in 1821, a textbook to promote the ideas of [[Ricardian economics]]; however, the book lacked popular support.<ref name="Rothbard2006">{{cite book |author=Murray N. Rothbard |title=An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_MCcWhLmRo-cC |access-date=21 January 2011 |date=1 February 2006 |publisher=Ludwig von Mises Institute |isbn=978-0945466482 |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_MCcWhLmRo-cC/page/n121 105]}}</ref> Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk to talk about [[political economy]].

At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir [[Samuel Bentham]], brother of [[Jeremy Bentham]] and in the company of [[George Ensor]], then pursuing his polemic against the political economy of [[Thomas Malthus]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ritchey |first=Rosemary |date=2009 |title=Ensor, George {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/ensor-george-a2931 |access-date=2023-02-17 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Mill |first=John Stuart |url=https://oll-resources.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/oll3/store/titles/260/Mill_0223-26_EBk_v6.0.pdf |title=The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVI - Journals and Debating Speeches, Part I [1820] |publisher=Routledge and Kegan Paul |year=1988 |location=London |pages=53–58}}</ref> The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In [[Montpellier]], he attended the winter courses on [[chemistry]], [[zoology]], [[logic]] of the ''Faculté des Sciences'', as well as taking a course in higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist [[Jean-Baptiste Say]], a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including [[Henri Saint-Simon]].

Mill went through months of sadness and contemplated suicide at twenty years of age. According to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his life's objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered "no", and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective. Eventually, the poetry of [[William Wordsworth]] showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/mill/crisis.html|title=John Stuart Mill's Mental Breakdown, Victorian Unconversions, and Romantic Poetry|website=victorianweb.org}}</ref> With renewed vigour, he continued to work towards a just society, but with more relish for the journey. He considered this one of the most pivotal shifts in his thinking. In fact, many of the differences between him and his father stemmed from this expanded source of joy.

Mill met [[Thomas Carlyle]] during one of the latter's visits to London in the early 1830s, and the two quickly became companions and correspondents. Mill offered to print Carlyle's works at his own expense and encouraged Carlyle to write his [[The French Revolution: A History|''French Revolution'']], supplying him with materials in order to do so. In March 1835, while the manuscript of the completed first volume was in Mill's possession, Mill's housemaid unwittingly used it as tinder, destroying all "except some three or four bits of leaves".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Carlyle |first1=T. |title=TC to James Fraser |journal=The Carlyle Letters Online |date=10 January 1835 |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=66–70 |doi=10.1215/lt-18350307-TC-JFR-01 |doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 }}</ref> Mortified, Mill offered Carlyle £200 (£17,742.16 in 2021) as compensation (Carlyle would only accept £100). Ideological differences would put an end to the friendship during the 1840s, though Carlyle's early influence on Mill would colour his later thought.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baumgarten |first=Murray |title=The Carlyle Encyclopedia |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press |year=2004 |editor-last=Cumming |editor-first=Mark |location=Madison and Teaneck, NJ |pages=326 |chapter=Mill, John Stuart |isbn=978-0-8386-3792-0 }}</ref>

Mill had been engaged in a pen-friendship with [[Auguste Comte]], the founder of [[positivism]] and sociology, since Mill first contacted Comte in November 1841. Comte's ''sociologie'' was more an early [[philosophy of science]] than modern sociology is. Comte's positivism motivated Mill to eventually reject Bentham's [[psychological egoism]] and what he regarded as Bentham's cold, abstract view of human nature focused on legislation and politics, instead coming to favour Comte's more sociable view of human nature focused on historical facts and directed more towards human individuals in all their complexities.<ref>Pickering, Mary. 1993. ''Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography.'' [[Cambridge University Press]]. pp. 509, 512, 535, 537.</ref>

As a [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|nonconformist]] who refused to subscribe to the [[Thirty-Nine Articles]] of the [[Church of England]], Mill was not eligible to study at the [[University of Oxford]] or the [[University of Cambridge]].<ref name="bio">[[Nicholas Capaldi|Capaldi, Nicholas]]. ''John Stuart Mill: A Biography.'' p. 33, Cambridge, 2004, {{ISBN|0521620244}}.</ref> Instead he followed his father to work for the [[East India Company]], and attended [[University College, London]], to hear the lectures of [[John Austin (legal philosopher)|John Austin]], the first Professor of [[Jurisprudence]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/index.html?c=nwng&cc=nwng&idno=nwng0033-4&node=nwng0033-4:1&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=623|title=Cornell University Library Making of America Collection|website=collections.library.cornell.edu}}</ref> He was elected a foreign honorary member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1856.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web |title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M |url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterM.pdf |publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences |access-date=15 April 2011}}</ref>

Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the [[East India Company]] spanned from when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the company's [[Company rule in India|territories in India]] were [[Government of India Act 1858|directly annexed]] by [[the Crown]], establishing [[British Raj|direct Crown control over India]].<ref>Mill, John Stuart. ''Writings on India''. Edited by John M. Robson, Martin Moir and Zawahir Moir. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge, c. 1990.</ref> In 1836, he was promoted to the company's political department, where he was responsible for correspondence pertaining to the company's relations with the [[princely state]]s, and, in 1856, was finally promoted to the position of Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In ''[[On Liberty]]'', ''[[A Few Words on Non-Intervention]]'', and other works, he opined that "To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Klausen |first1=Jimmy Casas |title=Violence and Epistemology: J. S. Mill's Indians after the 'Mutiny' |journal=Political Research Quarterly |date=March 2016 |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=96–107 |doi=10.1177/1065912915623379 |s2cid=157038995 }}</ref> (However, Mill immediately added that "A violation of the great principles of morality it may easily be.")<ref>Jennifer Pitts, Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018), 165.</ref> Mill viewed places such as [[India]] as having once been progressive in their outlook, but had now become stagnant in their development; he opined that this meant these regions had to be ruled via a form of "[[benevolent despotism]]...provided the end is improvement."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Harris |first1=Abram L. |title=John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company |journal=The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science |date=1964 |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=185–202 |doi=10.2307/139555 |jstor=139555 }}</ref> When [[the Crown]] proposed to take direct control over the territories of the [[East India Company]], Mill was tasked with defending [[Company rule in India|Company rule]] and penned ''Memorandum on the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years'', among other petitions.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last1=Lal |first1=Vinay |authorlink1=Vinay Lal |date=1998 |title='John Stuart Mill and India', a review-article |journal=New Quest |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=54–64 }}</ref> He was offered a seat on the [[Council of India]], the body created to advise the new [[Secretary of State for India]], but declined, citing disapproval of the new system of administration in India.<ref name=":0" />

On 21 April 1851, Mill married [[Harriet Taylor Mill|Harriet Taylor]] after 21 years of intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died in 1849. The couple waited two years before marrying in 1851. Upon marriage, he made a declaration to repudiate the rights conferred upon him over her by virtue of the marriage under Victorian law. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill were foundational figures in feminist economic thought. Their collaborative works, particularly The Subjection of Women (1869) and Taylor Mill’s The Enfranchisement of Women (1851), argued that gender inequality was both a moral injustice and an economic inefficiency (Hansson, 2022; McCabe, 2021). Rejecting classical economic assumptions that marginalized women, they advocated for legal reforms, educational access, and women's autonomy. Their ideas laid groundwork for modern feminist economists who critique unpaid labor, gender wage gaps, and structural oppression (Munte & Monica, 2023; Knüfer, 2023). Taylor Mill’s Unitarian and rationalist views enriched this critique, while stylometric evidence supports her significant role in Mill’s writings (Schmidt-Petri et al., 2021). Today, their arguments resonate in debates on digital capitalism, care work, and reproductive rights, offering a lens to assess economic justice through the interplay of gender, labor, and autonomy (Hampton, 2021; Smajdor, 2021).
<ref>"Being about, if I am so happy as to obtain her consent, to enter into the marriage relation with the only woman I have ever known, with whom I would have entered into that state; & the whole character of the marriage relation as constituted by law being such as both she and I entirely & conscientiously disapprove, for this amongst other reasons, that it confers upon one of the parties to the contract, legal power & control over the person, property, & freedom of action of the other party, independent of her own wishes and will; I, having no means of legally divesting myself of these odious powers (as I most assuredly would do if an engagement to that effect could be made legally binding on me) feel it my duty to put on record a formal protest against the existing law of marriage, in so far as conferring such powers; and a solemn promise never in any case or under any circumstances to use them. And in the event of marriage between Mrs. Taylor and me I declare it to be my will and intention, & the condition of the engagement between us, that she retains in all respects whatever the same absolute freedom of action, & freedom of disposal of herself and of all that does or may at any time belong to her, as if no such marriage had taken place; and I absolutely disclaim & repudiate all pretension to have acquired any rights whatever by virtue of such marriage. 6th March 1851 J.S.Mill", The Voice of Harriet Taylor Mill, pp. 166–167."</ref> Accomplished in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of [[women's rights]]. He said that in his stand against domestic violence, and for women's rights he was "chiefly an amanuensis to my wife". He called her mind a "perfect instrument", and said she was "the most eminently qualified of all those known to the author". He cites her influence in his final revision of ''[[On Liberty]]'', which was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe [[lung congestion]], after only seven years of marriage to Mill.


Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as [[Lord Rector]] of the [[University of St Andrews]]. At his inaugural address, delivered to the university on 1 February 1867, he made the now-famous (but often wrongly attributed) remark that "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."<ref>''[[wikisource:Inaugural address delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867|Inaugural Address at St Andrews]]'', Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867.</ref> That Mill included that sentence in the address is a matter of historical record, but it by no means follows that it expressed a wholly original insight. During the same period, 1865–68, he was also a [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Member of Parliament]] (MP) for [[Westminster (UK Parliament constituency)|City of Westminster]].<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=22991|date=14 July 1865 |page=3528}}</ref><ref name="bi2o">Capaldi, Nicholas. ''John Stuart Mill: A Biography.'' pp. 321–322, Cambridge, 2004, {{ISBN|0521620244}}.</ref> He was sitting for the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]]. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland. In 1866, he became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debate. He also became a strong advocate of such social reforms as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In ''[[Considerations on Representative Government]]'', he called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially [[proportional representation]], the [[single transferable vote]], and the extension of [[suffrage]]. In April 1868, he favoured in a Commons debate the retention of capital punishment for such crimes as [[aggravated murder]]; he termed its abolition "an effeminacy in the general mind of the country".<ref name=":2">[[Sher, George]], ed. 2001. ''Utilitarianism and the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment'', by J. S. Mill. [[Hackett Publishing Company|Hackett Publishing Co.]]</ref> (It is said in 1868, when his first term ended, no party would nominate him due to his independent spirit.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Report of meeting on Proportional representation or effective voting (1894) |location= |pages=25}}</ref>)

He was elected to membership of the [[American Philosophical Society]] in 1867.<ref>{{cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1867&year-max=1867&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-04-21|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>

He was [[Godparent|godfather]] to the philosopher [[Bertrand Russell]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/06/books/more-adept-with-concepts-than-people.html |title=More Adept With Concepts Than People |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=1996-12-06 |access-date=2022-03-19}}</ref>

In his views on religion, Mill was an [[Agnosticism|agnostic]] and a [[sceptic]].<ref>{{cite journal |date=28 March 1885 |title=Editorial Notes |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mbxCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA203 |journal=[[Secular Review]] |volume=16 |page=203 |quote=It has always seemed to us that this is one of the instances in which Mill approached, out of deference to conventional opinion, as near to the borderland of [[Immanuel Kant|Cant]] as he well could without compromising his pride of place as a recognised thinker and sceptic. |number=13}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity |year=2002 |publisher=University of Missouri Press |isbn=978-0826263278 |page=65 |author=Linda C. Raeder |chapter=Spirit of the Age |quote=Comte welcomed the prospect of being attacked publicly for his irreligion, he said, as this would permit him to clarify the nonatheistic nature of his and Mill's "atheism".}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-last=Larsen |author-first=Timothy |author-link=Timothy Larsen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EP9eDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15 |title=John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2018 |isbn=978-0198753155 |page=14 |quote=A letter John wrote from Forde Abbey when he was eight years old casually mentions in his general report of his activities that he too had been to Thorncombe parish church, so even when Bentham had home-field advantage, the boy was still receiving a Christian spiritual formation. Indeed, Mill occasionally attended Christian worship services during his teen years and thereafter for the rest of his life.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=A surprisingly religious John Stuart Mill|url=https://blog.oup.com/2018/12/surprisingly-religious-john-stuart-mill/|author-last=Larsen|author-first=Timothy|author-link=Timothy Larsen|quote=TL: Mill decided that strictly in terms of proof the right answer to that question of God's existence is that it is 'a very probable hypothesis.' He also thought it was perfectly rational and legitimate to believe in God as an act of hope or as the result of one's efforts to discern the meaning of life as a whole.|date=7 December 2018}}</ref>

Like other philosophers of his time, Mill was interested in botany.<ref name="flannery1">{{Cite web |url=https://herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/other-callings-philosophers/ |title=Other Callings: Philosophers |last= Flannery |first=Maura |date=12 October 2020 |website=Herbarium World |publisher=Wordpress |access-date=22 November 2024 |quote=Probably the most long-term collector among philosophers was John Stuart Mill, who was interested in botany throughout his life in part because he saw the hierarchical classification of living things as a model for ordering many aspects of human affairs such as law.}}</ref><ref name="flannery2">{{cite book |last=Flannery |first=Maura |date=2023 |title=In the Herbarium: The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants |location=United States of America |publisher=Yale University Press |page=144 |isbn=9780300247916}}</ref> It is believed that approximately 1,000 of his specimens are held by the [[Museum Requien]] in [[Avignon]], France, and Mill's stepdaughter Helen donated specimens to the [[Kew Herbarium]] after his death.<ref name="encounter">{{cite journal |last1=Curtis |first1=Simon |date=1988 |title=The philosopher's flowers: John Stuart Mill as botanist |journal=[[Encounter (magazine)|Encounter]] |volume=80 |issue=2 |pages=2–33 }}</ref> In the southern hemisphere, there are also specimens at the [[National Herbarium of Victoria]], [[Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria]], Australia.<ref name="Bionomia">{{Cite web |url=https://bionomia.net/Q50020/deposited-at |title=John Stuart Mill: Specimens collected |website=Bionomia |access-date=15 November 2024}}</ref>

Mill died on 7 May 1873, at the age of 66, of [[erysipelas]] in Avignon, where his body was buried alongside his wife's. He bequeathed to his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, his estate and designated her as his literary executor.<ref>{{Cite news |title=CHARACTERISTIC WILL OF JOHN STUART MILL. |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1873/09/14/79046949.html?pageNumber=3 |access-date=2025-03-15 |work=The New York Times |language=en |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>