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| John Stuart Mill, c. 1870 London Stereoscopic Company Public domain |
This is only a brief account of Mill's life up to the publication of On Liberty. As a philosopher, colonial administrator, and politician, he was one of the dominating figures of the Victorian age and other aspects of his life and thought are discussed in further blogs. The best modern biography is Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007)
John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806, the son of James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and economist. He was named after his father’s friend, Sir John Stuart. His mother, Harriet Burrow, seems to have had remarkably little influence on him – she does not merit a single mention in his autobiography. His father a follower of Utilitarianism and the prevailing economic doctrine of political economy.
The young John Stuart Mill had a precocious education, beginning with Greek at the age of three. At about the age of twenty he suffered a sort of mental breakdown and was only rescued by his discovery of poetry. This opened up a wider world of the emotions and moved him on from his father’s severe rationalism.
Because he would not subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, he was unable to matriculate at Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, he became an administrator in the East India Company.
In 1830 he met at a dinner party Harriet Taylor, the wife of a pharmacist, John Taylor. She became the great love of his life and a profound intellectual influence, and he controversially dedicated his Principles of Political Economy (1848) to her. (It was considered very improper to dedicate a book to another man's wife!) He lived in an uneasy threesome with her and her husband. Two years after Taylor’s death in 1849 she married Mill. After seven years of marriage, she died in Avignon in 1858. In the following year, Mill published On Liberty, still regarded as the key text on liberalism.
Here are some quotations to convey some idea of his argument:
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will is to prevent harm to others. [Chapter 1]
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. … Truth gains even more by the errors of one, who with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. [Ch.2]
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty or that of progress or improvement. [Ch 3]
Conclusion
- Mill was the supreme exemplar of mid-Victorian liberalism and he is still frequently quoted during debates on freedom.
- He believed humans should be left free to make their own mistakes as long as these did not harm others.
- He believed in an open market of ideas. Humans would never progress towards the truth if they were denied the freedom to express their opinions or allowed to hear only one side of an argument.
