Autobiography
John Stuart Mill
[Part 1 of 2]
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 recognized 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 burthens 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 inflexions 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 Theaetetus
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, exited 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 first 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, when 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 others,
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 Sewel's
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 Voyage, 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 or acquaintance: among those I had, Robinson Crusoe was
preeminent, and continued to delight me through all my boyhood. It was
no part however of my father's system to exclude books of amusement,
though he allowed them very sparingly. Of such books he possessed at
that time next to none, but he borrowed several for me; those which I
remember are the Arabian Nights, Cazotte's Arabian Tales, Don Quixote,
Miss Edgeworth's "Popular Tales," and a book of some
reputation in its day, Brooke's Fool of Quality.
In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in conjunction with a
younger sister, to whom I taught it as I went on, and who afterwards
repeated the lessons to my father: and from this time, other sisters
and brothers being successively added as pupils, a considerable part
of my day's work consisted of this preparatory teaching. It was a part
which I greatly disliked; the more so, as I was held responsible for
the lessons of my pupils, in almost as full a sense as for my own: I
however derived from this discipline the great advantage of learning
more thoroughly and retaining more lastingly the things which I was
set to teach: perhaps, too, the practice it afforded in explaining
difficulties to others, may even at that age have been useful. In
other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the
plan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, I am
sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well knew that the
relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to
either. I went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and a
considerable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's Commentaries, but
afterwards added to the superintendence of these lessons, much longer
ones of my own.
In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my first commencement
in the Greek poet with the Iliad. After I had made some progress in
this, my father put Pope's translation into my hands. It was the first
English verse I had cared to read, and it became one of the books in
which for many years I most delighted: I think I must have read it
from twenty to thirty times through. I should not have thought it
worth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to boyhood, if I
had not, as I think, observed that the keen enjoyment of this
brilliant specimen of narrative and versification is not so universal
with boys, as I should have expected both a priori and from my
individual experience. Soon after this time I commenced Euclid, and
somewhat later, algebra, still under my father's tuition.
From my eighth to my twelfth year the Latin books which I remember
reading were, the Bucolics of Virgil, and the first six books of the
AEneid; all Horace except the Epodes; the Fables of Phaedrus; the
first five books of Livy (to which from my love of the subject I
voluntarily added, in my hours of leisure, the remainder of the first
decade); all Sallust; a considerable part of Ovid's Metamorphoses;
some plays of Terence; two or three books of Lucretius; several of the
Orations of Cicero, and of his writings on oratory; also his letters
to Atticus, my father taking the trouble to translate to me from the
French the historical explanations in Mongault's notes. In Greek I
read the Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two plays of Sophocles,
Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; all
Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes,
AEschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a
little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's
Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly scientific treatise on any
moral or psychological subject which I had read, and containing many
of the best observations of the ancients on human nature and life, my
father made me study with peculiar care, and throw the matter of it
into synoptic tables. During the same years I learnt elementary
geometry and algebra thoroughly, the differential calculus and other
portions of the higher mathematics far from thoroughly: for my father,
not having kept up this part of his early acquired knowledge, could
not spare time to qualify himself for removing my difficulties, and
left me to deal with them, with little other aid than that of books;
while I was continually incurring his displeasure by my inability to
solve difficult problems for which he did not see that I had not the
necessary previous knowledge.
As to my private reading, I can only speak of what I remember.
History continued to be my strongest predilection, and most of all
ancient history. Mitford's Greece I read continually; my father had
put me on my guard against the Tory prejudices of this writer, and his
perversions of facts for the white-washing of despot, and blackening
of popular institutions. These points he discoursed on, exemplifying
them from the Greek orators and historians, with such effect that in
reading Mitford my sympathies were always on the contrary side to
those of the author, and I could, to some extent, have argued the
point against him: yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasure
with which I read the book. Roman history, both in my old favourite,
Hooke, and in Ferguson, continued to delight me. A book which, in
spite of what is called the dryness of its style, I took great
pleasure in, was the Ancient Universal History, through the incessant
reading of which I had my head full of historical details concerning
the obscurest ancient people, while about modern history, except
detached passages, such as the Dutch war of independence, I knew and
cared comparatively little. A voluntary exercise, to which throughout
my boyhood I was much addicted, was what I called writing histories. I
successively imposed a Roman history, picked out of Hooke; an
abridgment of the Ancient Universal History; a History of Holland,
from my favourite Watson and from an anonymous compilation; and in my
eleventh and twelfth year I occupied myself with writing what I
flattered myself was something serious. This was no less than a
history of the Roman Government, compiled (with the assistance of
Hooke) from Livy and Dionysius: of which I wrote as much as would have
made an octavo volume, extending to the epoch of the Licinian Laws. It
was, in fact, an account of the struggles between the patricians and
plebeians, which now engrossed all the interest in my mind which I had
previously felt in the mere wars and conquest of the Romans. I
discussed all the institutional point as they arose: though quite
ignorant of Niebuhr's researches, I, by such lights as my father had
given me, vindicated the Agrarian Laws on the evidence of Livy, and
upheld to the best of my ability the Roman democratic party. A few
years later, in my contempt of my childish efforts, I destroyed all
these papers, not then anticipating that I could ever feel any
curiosity about my first attempt at writing and reasoning. My father
encouraged me in this useful amusement, though, as I think
judiciously, he never asked to see what I wrote; so that I did not
feel that in writing it I was accountable to any one, nor had the
chilling sensation of being under a critical eye.
But though these exercises in history were never a compulsory lesson,
there was another kind of composition which was so, namely, writing
verses, and it was one of the most disagreeable of my tasks. Greek and
Latin verses I did not write, nor learnt the prosody of those
languages. My father, thinking this not worth the time it required,
contented himself with making me read aloud to him, and correcting
false quantities. I never composed at all in Greek, even in prose, and
but little in Latin. Not that my father could be indifferent to the
value of this practice, in giving a thorough knowledge of those
languages, but because there really was not time for it. The verses I
was required to write were English. When I first read Pope's Homer, I
ambitiously attempted to compose something of the same kind, and
achieved as much as one book of a continuation of the Iliad. There,
probably, the spontaneous promptings of my poetical ambition would
have stopped; but the exercise, begun from choice, was continued by
command. Conformably to my father's usual practice of explaining to
me, as far as possible, the reasons for what he required me to do, he
gave me, for this, as I well remember, two reasons highly
characteristic of him: one was, that some things could be expressed
better and more forcibly in verse than in prose: this, he said, was a
real advantage. The other was, that people in general attached more
value to verse than it deserved, and the power of writing it, was, on
this account, worth acquiring. He generally left me to choose my own
subject, which, as far as I remember, were mostly addresses to some
mythological personage or allegorical abstractions; but he made me
translate into English verse many of Horace's shorter poems: I also
remember his giving me Thomson's "Winter" to read, and
afterwards making me attempt (without book) to write something myself
on the same subject. The verses I wrote were, of course, the merest
rubbish, nor did I ever attain any facility of versification, but the
practice may have been useful in making it easier for me, at a later
period, to acquire readiness of expression.(1*) I had read, up to this
time, very little English poetry, Shakespeare my father had put into
my hands, chiefly for the sake of the historical plays, from which,
however, I went on to the others. My father never was a great admirer
of Shakespeare, the English idolatry of whom he used to attack with
some severity. He cared little for any English poetry except Milton
(for whom he had the highest admiration), Goldsmith, Burns, and Gray's
Bard, which he preferred to his Elegy: perhaps I may add Cowper and
Beattie. He had some value for Spenser, and I remember his reading to
me (unlike his usual practice of making me read to him), the first
book of the Fairie Queene; but I took little pleasure in it. The
poetry of the present century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I
hardly became acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to
manhood, except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I read at
his recommendation and was intensely delighted with; as I always was
with animated narrative. Dryden's Poems were among my father's books,
and many of these he made me read, but I never cared for any of them
except Alexander's Feast, which, as well as many of the songs in
Walter Scott, I used to sing internally, to a music of my own: to some
of the latter, indeed, I went so far as to compose airs, which I still
remember. Cowper's short poems I read with some pleasure, but never
got far into the longer ones; and nothing in the two volumes
interested me like the prose account of his three hares. In my
thirteenth year I met with Campbell's Poems, among which Lochiel,
Hohenlinden, the Exile of Erin, and some others, gave me sensations I
had never before experienced from poetry. Here, too, I made nothing of
the longer poems, except the striking opening of Gertrude of Wyoming,
which long kept it place in my feelings as the perfection of pathos.
During this part of my childhood, one of my greatest amusements was
experimental science; in the theoretical, however, not the practical
sense of the word; not trying experiments -- a kind of discipline
which I have often regretted not having had -- nor even seeing, but
merely reading about them. I never remember being so wrapt up in any
book, as I was in Joyce's Scientific Dialogues; and I was rather
recalcitrant to my father's criticisms of the bad reasoning respecting
the first principles of physics, which abounds in the early part of
that work. I devoured treatises on Chemistry, especially that of my
father's early friend and schoolfellow, Dr. Thomson, for years before
I attended a lecture or saw an experiment.
From about the age of twelve, I entered into another and more
advanced stage in my course of instruction; in which the main object
was no longer the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts
themselves. This commenced with Logic, in which I began at once with
the Organon, and read it to the Analytics inclusive, but profited
little by the Posterior Analytics, which belongs to a branch of
speculation I was not yet ripe for. Contemporaneously with the
Organon, my father made me read the whole or parts of several of the
Latin treatises on the scholastic logic; giving each day to him, in
our walks, a minute account of what I had read, and answering his
numerous and searching 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 it 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 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 opponent, only
endeavour, by such argument 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 aroused their opposition. Most of these reflections were
beyond my capacity of full comprehension at the time; but they left
seed behind, which geminated 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 student. 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 from 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
criticisms 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 this same year, 1819, that he took me
through a complete course of political economy. His loved and intimate
friend, Ricardo, had shortly before published the book which formed so
great an epoch in political economy; a book which never would have
been published or written, but for the entreaty and strong
encouragement of my father; for Ricardo, the most modest of men,
though firmly convinced of the truth of his doctrines, deemed himself
so little capable of doing them justice in exposition and expression,
that he shrank from the idea of publicity. The same friendly
encouragement induced Ricardo, a year or two later, to become a member
of the House of Commons; where, during the few remaining years of his
life, happily cut short in the full vigour of his intellect, he
tendered so much service to his and my father's opinions both on
political economy and on other subjects.
Though Ricardo's great work was already in print, no didactic
treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had
yet appeared. My father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the
science by a sort of lectures, which he delivered to me in our walks.
He expounded each day a portion of the subject, and I gave him next
day a written account of it, which he made me rewrite over and over
again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably complete. In this
manner I went through the whole extent of the science; and the written
outline of it which resulted from my daily compte rendu, served him
afterwards as notes from which to write his Elements of Political
Economy. After this I read Ricardo, giving an account daily of what I
read, and discussing, in the best manner I could, the collateral
points which offered themselves in our progress. On Money, as the most
intricate part of the subject, he made me read in the same manner
Ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written during what was called the
Bullion controversy. to these succeeded Adam Smith; and in this
reading it was one of my father's main objects to make me apply to
Smith's more superficial view of political economy, the superior
lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith's
arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions. Such a mode of
instruction was excellently calculated to form a thinker; but it
required to be worked by a thinker, as close and vigorous as my
father. The path was a thorny one, even to him, and I am sure it was
so to me, notwithstanding the strong interest I took in the subject.
He was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in cases
where success could not have been expected; but in the main his method
was right, and it succeeded. I do not believe that any scientific
teaching ever was more thorough, or better fitted for training the
faculties, than the mode in which logic and political economy were
taught to me by my father. Striving, even in an exaggerated degree, to
call forth the activity of my faculties, by making me find out
everything for myself, he gave his explanations not before, but after,
I had felt the full force of the difficulties; and not only gave me an
accurate knowledge of these two great subjects, as far as they were
then understood, but made me a thinker on both. I thought for myself
almost from the first, and occasionally thought differently from him,
though for a long time only on minor points, and making his opinion
the ultimate standard. At a later period I even occasionally convinced
him, and altered his opinion on some points of detail: which I state
to his honour, not my own. It at once exemplifies his perfect candour,
and the real worth of his method of teaching.
At this point concluded what can properly be called my lessons: when
I was about fourteen I left England for more than a year; and after my
return, though my studies went on under my father's general direction,
he was no longer my schoolmaster. I shall therefore pause here, and
turn back to matters of a more general nature connected with the part
of my life and education included in the preceding reminiscences.
In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced, the
point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during
the years of childhood an amount of knowledge in what are considered
the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if
acquired at all) until the age of manhood. The result of the
experiment shows the ease with which this may be done, and places in a
strong light the wretched waste of so many precious years as are spent
in acquiring the modicum of Latin and Greek commonly taught to
schoolboys; a waste, which has led so many educational reformers to
entertain the ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages
altogether from general education. If I had been by nature extremely
quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive
memory or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the
trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am
rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done
by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical
constitution: and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among
other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early
training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say,
with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.
There was one cardinal point in this training, of which I have
already given some indication, and which, more than anything else, was
the cause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or youths who have
had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not
strengthened, but over-laid by it. They are crammed with mere facts,
and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are
accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own:
and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in
their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have
learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced
for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never
permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise
of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with
every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything
which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had
exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. As far as I can trust
my remembrance, I acquitted myself very lamely in this department; my
recollection of such matters is almost wholly of failures, hardly ever
of success. It is true the failures were often in things in which
success in so early a stage of my progress, was almost impossible. I
remember at some time in my thirteenth year, on my happening to use
the word idea, he asked me what an idea was; and expressed some
displeasure at my ineffectual efforts to define the word: I recollect
also his indignation at my using the common expression that something
was true in theory but required correction in practice; and how, after
making me vainly strive to define the word theory, he explained its
meaning, and showed the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech which I
had used; leaving me fully persuaded that in being unable to give a
correct definition of Theory, and in speaking of it as something which
might be at variance with practice, I had shown unparalleled
ignorance. In this he seems, and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but I
think, only in being angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is
ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.
One of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early
proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father
most anxiously guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me,
with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or
of being led to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and
others. From his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a
very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he
always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man
could and ought to do. He completely succeeded in preserving me from
the sort of influences he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that
my attainments were anything unusual at my age. If I accidentally had
my attention drawn to the fact that some other boy knew less than
myself -- which happened less often than might be imagined-i
concluded, not that I knew much, but that he, for some reason or
other, knew little, or that his knowledge was of a different kind from
mine. My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance.
I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do, so and so. I
neither estimated myself highly nor lowly. I did not estimate myself
at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I was rather
backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, in comparison
with what my father expected from me. I assert this with confidence,
though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my
childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and
disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and
did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard
said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged
in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown
persons, while I never had inculcated in me the usual respect for
them. My father did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence,
probably from not being aware of it, for I was always too much in awe
of him to be otherwise than extremely subdued and quiet in his
presence. Yet with all this I had no notion of any superiority in
myself; and well was it for me that I had not. I remember the very
place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving
my father's house for a long absence, he told me that I should find,
as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many
things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many
persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me
upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very
imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than
others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very
unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot, of having a father who
was able to teach me, and willing to give the necessary trouble and
time; that it was no matter of praise to me, if I knew more than those
who had not had a similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me if
I did not. I have a distinct remembrance, that the suggestion thus for
the first time made to me, that I knew more than other youths who were
considered well educated, was to me a piece of information, to which,
as to all other things which my father told me, I gave implicit
credence, but which did not at all impress me as a personal matter. I
felt no disposition to glorify myself upon the circumstance that there
were other persons who did not know what I knew; nor had I ever
flattered myself that my acquirements, whatever they might be, were
any merit of mine: but, now when my attention was called to the
subject, I felt that what my father had said, respecting my peculiar
advantages was exactly the truth and common sense of the matter, and
it fixed my opinion and feeling from that time forward.
It is evident that this, among many other of the purposes of my
father's scheme of education, could not have been accomplished if he
had not carefully kept me from having any great amount of intercourse
with other boys. He was earnestly bent upon my escaping not only the
ordinary corrupting influence which boys exercise over boys, but the
contagion of vulgar modes of thought and feeling; and for this he was
willing that I should pay the price of inferiority in the
accomplishments which schoolboys in all countries chiefly cultivate.
The deficiencies in my education were principally in the things which
boys learn from being turned out to shift for themselves, and from
being brought together in large numbers. From temperance and much
walking, I grew up healthy and hardy though not muscular; but I could
do no feats of skill or Physical strength, and knew none of the
ordinary bodily exercises. It was not that play, or time for it, was
refused me. Though no holidays were allowed, lest the habit of work
should be broken, and a taste for idleness acquired, I had ample
leisure in every day to amuse myself; but as I had no boy companions,
and the animal need of physical activity was satisfied by walking, my
amusements, which were mostly solitary, were in general of a quiet, if
not a bookish turn, and gave little stimulus to any other kind even of
mental activity than that which was already called forth by my
studies: I consequently remained long, and in a less degree have
always remained, inexpert in anything requiring manual dexterity; my
mind as well as my hands, did its work very lamely when it was
applied, or ought to have been applied, to the practical details
which, as they are the chief interest of life to the majority of men,
are also the things in which whatever mental capacity they have,
chiefly shows itself: I was constantly meriting reproof by
inattention, inobservance, and general slackness of mind in matters of
daily life. My father was the extreme opposite in these particulars:
his senses and mental faculties were always on the alert; he carried
decision and energy of character in his whole manner and into every
action of life: and this, as much as his talents, contributed to the
strong impression which he always made upon those with whom he came
into personal contact. But the children of energetic parents,
frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean on their parents,
and the parents are energetic for them. The education which my father
gave me, was in itself much more fitted for training me to know than
to do. Not that he was unaware of my deficiencies; both as a boy and
as a youth I was incessantly smarting under his severe admonitions on
the subject. There was anything but insensibility or tolerance on his
part towards such shortcomings: but, while he saved me from the
demoralizing effects of school life, he made no effort to provide me
with any sufficient substitute for its practicalizing influences.
Whatever qualities he himself, probably, had acquired without
difficulty or special training, he seems to have supposed that I ought
to acquire as easily. He had not, I think, bestowed the same amount of
thought and attention on this, as on most other branches of education;
and here, as well as in some other points of my tuition, he seems to
have expected effects without causes.
Part 2
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