Laudator Temporis Acti

Dear Mike,

Thirteen year-old John Quincy Adams' remarkable education inevitably reminded me of another John's equally remarkable and dour upbringing, under a demanding father plagosus, whose dubious parenting seems to proclaim, "This is my beloved son in whom I'm grievously displeased."

Hugh S.R. Eliot, ed., Letters of John Stuart Mill, Vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1910), pp. xiv-xvi (footnotes omitted):

During his early years, John Mill was subjected to so vehement and strenuous an education, as perhaps had never been seen before, and never will be seen again. James Mill was a man of iron will, of energy almost miraculous; he was largely indifferent to pleasure or pain, and inaccessible to the softer sides of human existence. From the moment that John was born, he had decided what John should be. The details of the education are fully set forth in the "Autobiography," but may be recapitulated here. He started learning to read when he was two years old. He began the study of Greek when he was three; and when he was still only seven, he had read the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon's "Cyropaadia" and "Memorials of Socrates"; some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates ad Demonicum and Ad Nicoclem. When he was eight, he read the first six dialogues of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theaetetus inclusive. Mill observes: "My father demanded of me not only the utmost that I could do, but much that I could by no possibility have done." At this age Mill had undergone in addition an extended course of English reading, including Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon, Watson's "Philip the Second and Third," Hooke's "History of Rome," two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin's "Ancient History of Greece," Langhorne's translation of Plutarch, Burnet's “History of His Own Time," the historical part of the "Annual Register" from the beginning down to about 1788, Millar's "Historical View of the English Government," Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," M'Crie's "Life of John Knox," Sewell and Rutty's Histories of the Quakers, and a number of other books besides. Thoroughly characteristic of James Mill's stern philosophy was his fondness for putting into his son's hands "books which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming them."

That Mill continued to flourish under this severe treatment must be attributed partly to the vigour of his own constitution, and partly to the fact that his father was one of the most brilliant men, and the leading psychologist of the age. Under less able guidance, Mill's youthful mind would assuredly have been crushed and maimed; but in the hands of James Mill that fatality was avoided, and the precise result which he desired was achieved. When John was six years old, and his father's health seemed very precarious, Bentham wrote one of his characteristic letters, offering to undertake the guardianship of the child. It is addressed to James Mill from Queen's Square Place, dated Saturday, 25th July 1812, and runs as follows:—

"If in the meantime any such thing as dying should happen to you (for we are all mortal !!!!), you having however between the act of such dying as aforesaid and the act of receiving these presents, time to make your will (which to the purpose in question may be done by word of mouth, but if you cannot write it yourself better have it set down in writing and read to you), if you will appoint me guardian to Mr. John Stuart Mill, I will, in the event of his father's being disposed of elsewhere, take him to Q.S P. and there or elsewhere, by whipping or otherwise, do whatsoever may seem most necessary and proper, for teaching him to make all proper distinctions, such as between the Devil and the Holy Ghost, and how to make Codes and Encyclopaedias, and whatsoever else may be proper to be made, so long as I remain an inhabitant of this vale of tears, after which—but this must remain for God's providence to determine. . . ."

Clearly James Mill had been suffering from gout, for farther on in the same letter, Bentham offers to "come and sit with you, and help worship Mistink [Mill's cat] and during the armistice of your arm, help whip Mr. John Mill."

To this Mill replied: "I take your offer quite seriously, and then we may perhaps leave him a successor worthy of both of us."

From the eighth to the twelfth year Mill's education was carried forward on the same inexorable plan. The list of classical authors read during this period would be tedious to enumerate; geometry and algebra were included in the curriculum, as also the differential calculus and other branches of the higher mathematics. He was exceedingly fond of history; and while he was still eleven he had composed a Roman History, picked out of Hooke"; an "Abridgement of the Ancient Universal History"; a “History of Holland"; and a "proffered History of the Roman Government," compiled from Livy and Dionysius. At twelve, he began logic and read the "Organon," though he observes that he "profited little by the Posterior Analytics." He read several Latin treatises on the scholastic logic.

If Bentham's felicific calculus were applied to the proffered whippings, I wonder whether the giver's "hedons" would outweigh the receiver's "dolors”?

Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]

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