Born, at Northwater Bridge, Forfarshire, 6 April 1773. Educated at Parish School; and at Montrose Academy. Friendship with Hume begun at latter. Tutor for some time to the daughter of Sir James Stuart. To Edinburgh Univ., 1790. Licensed to preach, 4 Oct. 1798. To London, 1802. Contrib. to “Anti-Jacobin Review,” 1802; and other periodicals. Edited “The Literary Journal,” 1802–06; edited “St. James’s Chronicle,” 1805–08[?]. Married Harriet Burrow, 5 June 1805. Contrib. to “British Rev.,” “Monthly Rev.,” “Eclectic Rev.” to “Edinburgh Rev.,” 1808–13; to “The Philanthropist,” 1811–17. Friendship with Bentham begun, 1808; with Ricardo, 1811. Assistant to Examiner of India Correspondence, India House, May 1819; Second Assistant, April 1821; Assistant Examiner, April 1823; Examiner, Dec. 1830. Contrib. to “Encycl. Brit.,” 1816–23. Political Economy Club founded, 1820. Helped to found “Westminster Rev.,” 1824; frequent contributor, 1824–29. One of founders of London University; member of original Council, 1825. Contrib. to “London Rev.,” 1835–36. Died, in London, 23 June 1836. Buried at Kensington Church. Works: “Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain” (anon.), 1804; “Commerce Defended,” 1808; “History of British India” (3 vols.), 1817; “Elements of Political Economy,” 1821; “Essays” (priv. ptd.), [1825?]; “Analyses of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,” 1829; “On the Ballot” (anon.), [1830]; “Fragment on Mackintosh” (anon.), 1835. Posthumous: “The Principles of Toleration,” 1837. He translated: C. F. D. de Villers’ “Essay on the Spirit and influence of the Reformation,” 1805. Life: by Prof. Bain, 1882.

Personal

  With profound grief we have to record the death of one of the first men of our time; the loss of one of our master-minds, of one that has given the most powerful impulse, and the most correct direction to thought. Wherever talent and good purpose were found conjoined—the power and the will to serve the cause of truth—the ability and the disposition to be useful to society, to weed out error, and advance improvement—wherever these qualities were united, the possessor found a friend, a supporter to fortify, cheer, and encourage him in his course, in James Mill. He fanned every flame of public virtue, he strengthened every good purpose that came within the range of his influence. His conversation was full of instruction, and his mind was rich in suggestion, to a degree that we have never found equalled. His writings, with all their solid value, would convey but an imperfect notion of the character and powers of his mind. His conversation was so energetic and complete in thought, so succinct, and exact ad unguem in expression, that, if reported as uttered, his colloquial observations or arguments would have been perfect compositions. His thoughts, conveyed to paper, lost some of the excellences we have mentioned. Yet his works will be stores of valuable doctrine…. It was hardly possible for an intelligent man to know James Mill without feeling an obligation for the profit derived from his mind.

  In all the relations of private life he was irreproachable; and he afforded a rare example of one born in humble circumstances, and struggling, during the greater part of his laborious life, with the inconveniences of restricted means, nobly maintaining an independence as absolute in all respects as that of the first subject in the land—an independence, indeed, which but few of the pampered children of rank and wealth are ever seen to enjoy. For he could at all times restrain his wishes within the limits of his resources; was firmly resolved that his own hands alone should ever minister to his wants; and would, at every period of his useful and virtuous life, have treated with indignation any project that should trammel his opinions or his conduct with the restraints which external influence, of whatever kind, could impose.

  His unpremeditated oral exposition was hardly less effective than his prepared work with the pen; his colloquial fertility on philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and of stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through all the shifts and windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue—all these accomplishments were, to those who knew him, even more impressive than what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was not merely instructive, but provocative to the dormant intelligence. Of all persons whom we have known Mr. James Mill was the one who stood least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic—Τοῦ διδόυαι καί δέχεσθαὶ λόγου—(the giving and receiving of reasons)—competent alike to examine others, or to be examined by them on philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere paradox, it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful intellectual ascendancy over younger minds.

  He was sought for the vigour and instructiveness of his conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion of his opinions. I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect command over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conveners: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing companion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, and the encouragement he afforded to the faint-hearted or desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals could do by judicious effort.

  She [Mrs. Mill] was an exceedingly pretty woman; had a small fine figure, an aquiline type of face (seen in her eldest son), and a pink and dun complexion. One letter of Mill’s to her she preserved, as perhaps the fullest and strongest of all his affectionate outpourings. The depth and tenderness of the feeling could not well be exceeded; but, in the light of after years, we can see that he too readily took for granted that she would be an intellectual companion to himself…. Mrs. Mill was not wanting in any of the domestic virtues of an English mother. She toiled hard for her house and her children, and became thoroughly obedient to her lord. As an admired beauty, she seems to have been chagrined at the discovery at her position after marriage. There was disappointment on both sides: the union was never happy.

  James Mill’s greatest achievement was, it has been said, to have produced John Mill. This dictum has a certain amount of epigrammatic force, but it contains at least as much falsehood as truth. For no error would be greater than to suppose that James Mill was nothing but the father of his better-known son. If the word “noteworthy” could be used in a strictly neutral sense, as meaning, without any implication either of praise or of blame, “worthy to be noticed,” a fair critic would, without much hesitation, pronounce James Mill a more noteworthy person than the writer who, to the generation who have grown up within the last thirty or forty years, will always be emphatically known as “Mill.” The truth is, that James Mill was a man who, for bad or good, possessed a strength, energy, and individuality of character far exceeding that of the author whose somewhat morbid passion for liberty, or even eccentricity, is, we take it, an unconscious reaction against the overpowering sway exercised over his mind and will by the unconquerable volition of his father. The one word which James Mill’s whole character and career suggests is “force.” He was not a lovable man; he was not a man of genius; he was not, with all his talent and capacity, a man of original conceptions, but he was a man of strength.

  James Mill was of the same country as Mackintosh—a Northern Scot, though not of Celtic race. This latter circumstance may partly account for the difference between them, which was as great as if half a world had lain between their places of birth. To come suddenly out of the genial presence of the one into the gloomy companionship of the other involves a greater shock of difference than could we pass in a moment from Italy to Iceland. Mill was one of the sternest and most rigid representatives of that northern race which, notwithstanding the very different qualities of the names which make it illustrious, has so continued to retain its conventional character for harshness and coldness that we are almost forced to believe there must be some truth in the imputation. There would be so, if the Devil’s advocate could produce many such men as James Mill to counterbalance Scott and Mackintosh as specimens of the character of their countrymen.

History of British India, 1817

  In the evening looked through the first volume of Mill’s “India:” a rich display of learning; combats all the flattering theories and notices that have been held with respect to the Hindoos; exposes many instances of weakness in Sir W. Jones on this subject.

  A great many of the details about the squabbles and wars with the petty Indian princes are invincibly dull, but the work is, on the whole, both interesting and instructive.

  We may and must have others, written by men who have seen India, and who can contribute much that did not lie in Mr. Mill’s way; but nothing can now prevent his being the history which first presented the great subject of India to the best part of the mind of England, and largely influenced the administration of that great dependency.

  At this time of day, I am not called upon to criticize the “History of India.” It has exercised its influence, and found its place. Any observations that are needful are such as will aid us in appreciating the character of the author. Coming to the subject with his peculiar powers and his acquired knowledge, and expending upon it such an amount of labour, he could not but produce a work of originality and grasp. If the whole of his time for twelve years was not literally devoted to the task, it was, we may say, substantially devoted; for his diversions consisted mostly in discussing topics allied to the problems that the History had to deal with.

  Surely it is not merely that various mistakes and shortcomings have been discovered, but that the whole point of view is wrong. Mill was violently knocking his head against a stone wall, instead of patiently seeking for a door and a key. Along with the “best ideas of the sociological writers of the eighteenth century,” he had their worst. He views Hindoo religion, manners, and institutions from an absolute instead of a relative and historic standpoint. This is exactly the same fatal error as was made by the school of the eighteenth century about Christianity itself, and in the light of modern philosophy Mill’s Second Book is as profoundly unsatisfactory as Gibbon’s Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters. He speaks of the Hindoos, their superstition and their degradation, with the bitterness of the most ferocious evangelical missionary. There was some provocation, no doubt, in the exaggerated pictures which had been painted of the sublimity of the Hindoo religion; for this again was a mark of the eighteenth century, to extol the virtues and the philosophy of Chinamen, Persians, and all other sorts and conditions of unknown peoples…. It is odd that he should not have felt the necessity, as a positive thinker, of seeking some explanation of these superstitious beliefs, grovelling customs, and backward institutions, in the facts of human nature, history, and surrounding circumstances. The time was not then ripe for adequate theories on these matters, but Mill rushed further away from the track than he ought in reason and consistency to have done.

  A book of great ability, of strong prejudices, and of very extensive learning. The author plunged deep into the most obscure sources of knowledge, and, for such information as he desired, followed out every clew to its end. He culled from old despatches everything that could throw light on the subject in hand. The point of view from which he wrote was that of an opponent of the purposes and methods of the East India Company. The volumes might be called an elaborate and sustained arraignment of the entire policy of the Company…. Though the work, as a whole, is a monument of learning, if not of historical skill, it ought to be said, perhaps, that in point of style it lacks animation and picturesqueness. This characteristic will always prevent it from attracting and holding a very large number of general readers. On this account its popularity can never equal its intrinsic merits. For the special student of the English policy in the East it is invaluable.

  The “History” succeeded at once, and has become a standard work. Mill unfortunately left his share of the profits in the hands of the publisher, Baldwin, and though he received the interest during his life, the capital was afterwards lost to his family by Baldwin’s bankruptcy. The book, though dry and severe in tone, supplied a want, and contained many interesting reflections upon social questions. He has been accused of unfairness, and his prejudices were undoubtedly strong. His merits, however, met with an unexpected recognition.

  Has interest and even piquancy, for the literary historian…. His disabilities were considerable. He had never been in India; he knew no Indian language. He shows his entire divergence from the Romantic school of history by making light of both facts. To enter into the genius of a strange civilization and judge it in the light of its own aims and aspirations was no business of his; he desired to bring it to the bar of his own trained and peremptory judgment, and try it by “the grand test of civilization”—utility. The historian has with him not only to judge, but to give his reasons at length, which he does with an amplitude reproduced by Grote, rudely ignoring in this and other respects the artistic presentment of history made current by Voltaire and Montesquieu. Yet his account of Hindoo civilization, though bitterly contemptuous, is in many points a wholesome corrective to the uncritical rhapsodies of the early Sanscritists—of Sir W. Jones and F. Schlegel; and the entire exemption from vulgar patriotism which prompts his incisive criticisms of the Company, was a most salutary application of Bentham’s mechanical formula: everyone to count as one, and no one for more than one.

Philosophy

  It would be difficult to overrate the importance of the service which James Mill did to philosophy by his analysis of the elementary laws of the association of ideas; for an ignorance of those laws has led to more false philosophy than probably anything else.

  The work with which we have to do, is his “Analysis of the Human Mind.” The title indicates the aim of the treatise. It is not an inductive observation of facts; it is not a classification of facts in a cautious and careful manner; it is a determined attempt to resolve the complex phenomena of the mind into as few elements as possible…. He closes the work with a discussion as to will and intention. Will is the peculiar state of mind or consciousness by which action is preceded. He treats of its influence over the actions of the body, and over the actions of the mind. He shows that sensations and ideas are the true antecedents of the bodily actions, and so he does not need to call in a separate capacity called the will. He then turns to the power which the mind seems to possess over its associations. He proves, as Brown and others had done, that we cannot will an absent idea before us,—for to will it is already to have it; and the recalling is always a process of association. He does not see that, by a stern act of will, we can detain a present thought, and thus gather around it a whole host of associations. He speaks of ends, but has no idea of the way in which ends spring up and influence the mind. He takes no notice of the essential freedom belonging to the will, and thus leaves no ground on which to rear the doctrine of human responsibility.

  The date of this book [“Analysis”] makes it curious. It is too new, and yet not new enough to obtain a great success. It is a transitional work which is not well understood until after. Clear, lucid, methodical, well put together, the book errs from want of width and insufficiency of development. Now, opinion does not understand, and above all does not accept a doctrine except by dint of hearing it repeated. Contemporary labours, directed in the same sense, but less concise, and more familiar with the sciences, seem to have lent to his a retrospective value…. What is his method? He does not tell us that; but he almost always proceeds subjectively. In this respect he belongs to the eighteenth century. We do not find in his works any trace of a comparative psychology. He also belongs to this century by his tendency to consider phenomena only in adult minds, and among a civilized people. Carrying the practical spirit of his nation into psychological studies, he thinks, with reason, that education would be more enlightened and more systematic if psychology were more advanced; and that a good analysis of the phenomena of mind ought to serve as the basis of three practical treatises,—one Logical, to lead us to the true, one Moral, to regulate our actions, one Emotional, to develop the individual and the species.

  The differences in point of matter between the two philosophers were not great. Such as they were, they arose partly from the peculiarities of the men, partly from the characteristics of the times in which they severally lived. Mill was more bent on the practical application of his views than Hartley, and wrote more with the fervour of a man who expected his creeds to be turned into deeds, and who attached an educational or social value to every opinion which he expressed. Mill composed with the rigour and simplicity of a schoolmaster of the world; Hartley with the ingenuous babbling of a pupil of the world. Consequently the former at once discarded vibrations; for, provided that people can be brought to perceive the uses of association in education, it does not matter what physical theory is put behind it as the cause of the cause. Nor on the other hand will he follow his theory out into the nebulous region of theopathy and theology; for if men can be induced to construct a morality on better associations, they will not be long in constructing a better religion.

  By his “Analysis of the Mind” and his “Fragment on Mackintosh” Mill acquired a position in the history of psychology and ethics. Attached to the a posterori school, he vindicated its claims with conspicuous ability. He took up the problems of mind very much after the fashion of the Scotch school, as then represented by Reid, Stewart, and Brown, but made a new start, due in part to Hartley, and still more to his own independent thinking. He carried out the principle of association into the analysis of the complex emotional states, as the affections, the æsthetic emotions, and the moral sentiment, all which he endeavored to resolve into pleasurable and painful sensations. But the salient merit of the “Analysis” is the constant endeavor after precise definition of terms and clear statement of doctrines. The “Fragment on Mackintosh” is a severe exposure of the flimsiness and misrepresentations of Mackintosh’s famous dissertation on ethical philosophy. It discusses, in a very thorough way, the foundations of ethics from the author’s point of view of utility.

  James Mill’s dogmatism was at all times narrow and one-sided…. A man so non-religious as James Mill could hardly be expected to understand Christianity any more than a man without any soul or faculty for music could understand harmony. There are men, and James Mill was one of them, so utterly lacking in spiritual instinct that their judgments as to religion really merit no more attention than other men’s judgments about music.

  Mill’s “Analysis,” though not widely read, made a deep impression upon Mill’s own disciples. It is terse, trenchant, and uncompromising. It reminds us in point of style of the French writers, with whom he sympathised, rather than of the English predecessors, to whom much of the substance was owing. The discursive rhetoric of Brown or Stewart is replaced by good, hard, sinewy logic. The writer is plainly in earnest. If over confident, he has no petty vanity, and at least believes every word that he says. Certain limitations are at once obvious. Mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, had not had much time to spare for purely philosophic reading. He was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business, wishing to strike at the root of the superstitions to which his political opponents appealed for support. He had heard of Kant, and seen what “the poor man would beat.” Later German systems, had he heard of them, would have been summarily rejected by him as so much transcendental moonshine. The problem of philosophy was, he held, a very simple one, if attacked in a straightforward, scientific method.

General

  We know of no writer who takes so much pleasure in the truly useful, noble, and philosophical employment of tracing the progress of sound opinions from their embryo state to their full maturity. He eagerly culls from old despatches and minutes every expression in which he can discern the imperfect germ of any great truth which has since been fully developed. He never fails to bestow praise on those who, though far from coming up to his standard of perfection, yet rose in a small degree above the common level of their contemporaries. It is thus that the annals of past times ought to be written. It is thus, especially, that the annals of our own country ought to be written.

  When the system of legal polity was to be taught, and the cause of Law Reform to be supported in this country, no one could be found more fitted for the service than Mr. Mill; and to him more than to any other person has been owing the diffusion of those important principles and their rapid progress in England. He was a man of extensive and profound learning, thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of metaphysical and ethical science; conversant above most men with the writings of the ancient philosophers, whose language he familiarly knew; and gifted with an extraordinary power of application, which had made entirely natural to him a life of severe and unremitting study…. His admirable works on the Principles of Political Economy, and of Moral Philosophy, entitle him, perhaps, to a higher place among the writers of his age; but neither these nor his “History of British India,” the greatest monument of his learning and industry, can vie with his discourses on Jurisprudence in usefulness to the cause of general improvement, which first awakened the ardour of his vigorous mind, and on which its latest efforts reposed. His style was better adapted to didactic works, and works of abstract science, than to history; for he had no powers of narrative, and was not successful in any kind of ornamental composition. He was slenderly furnished with fancy, and far more capable of following a train of reasoning, expounding the theories of others, and pursuing them to their legitimate consequences, than of striking out new paths, and creating new objects, or even adorning the creations of other men’s genius.

  This work [“Elements of Political Economy”], is a résume of the doctrines of Smith and of Ricardo with respect to the production and distribution of wealth, and of those of Malthus with respect to population. But it is of too abstract a character to be either popular or of much utility…. The science is very far from having arrived at the perfection Mr. Mill supposed.

  John Mill tells us also that James Mill considered the friendship of Ricardo to have been the most valuable of his whole life. To a genius like Ricardo, with Ricardo’s time and circumstances, the doctrines of James Mill must have come like fire to fuel; they must have stimulated the innate desire to deduce in systematic connection, from the fewest possible principles, the truths which he had long been considering disconnectedly. If Ricardo had never seen James Mill, he would probably have written many special pamphlets of great value on passing economical problems, but he would probably not have written “On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” and thus founded an abstract science; it takes a great effort to breathe for long together the “thin air” of abstract reasoning.

  As a writer, his style has been found fault with, especially by Bentham; who spoke of the History in particular, as abounding in bad English. The fact I believe to be that, although he took great pains to get rid of Scotticisms, he did not attain a mastery of good English idiom…. It is needless to remark that his composition was essentially cast for scientific subjects. He had practised narrative style in his long historical work, and attained a certain success; but it was not carried to the pitch of art. The truth is, although a man of great general accomplishment, language was not his forte.