Taking Their Cue from Plato: James and John Stuart Mill

Summary

John Stuart Mill's classic tale of disillusionment from a ‘narrow creed’, an overt as much as a covert theme of his Autobiography (London, 1873), has for many years served as a guide to the search for the causes and sources of his ‘enlargement-of-the-utilitarian-creed’ project. As a result, in analyses of Mill's mature views, Samuel Taylor Coleridge—and friends—commonly take centre stage in terms of influence, whereas John's father—James Mill—is reduced either to a supernumerary or a villain in the last act of John's intellectual development. However, students of Mill's works should not take at face value the story presented in Autobiography. Mill's own emphasis on the role of his ‘new influences’ has led scholars to disregard the role of his ‘old influences’ in his attempt to create a broader theory of living—one which takes into account both the intellectual and the emotional capacities of individuals. A close look at key aspects of John Stuart Mill's ‘enlargement project’ suggests that James Mill may have played a more positive role than is usually acknowledged. A way into the intellectual affinity of the two Mills is the person they both kept returning to for guidance and inspiration throughout their lives: Plato.

Keywords:

• James Mill
• John Stuart Mill
• Plato
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Coleridgean foundations

Acknowledgements

I would to thank Georgios Varouxakis for reading and making insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and the anonymous reviewers for their kind advice. I am also in great debt to Kris Grint for supplying me with R. A. Fenn's edition of James Mill's Commonplace Books and marginalia from Somerville College Library (where part of John Stuart Mill's library is currently located), before adding them to the online resources of the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History. This article falls under the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation's Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Innovation 2009–2010 (DESMI 2009–2010), co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Regional Development Fund (specifically under Grant ΠENEK/0609/27).

Notes

¹Frederick Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, Tέλoς Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios Utilitaristas, 12 (2003), 19–21.

²Christopher Turk, Coleridge and Mill: A Study of Influence (Aldershot, 1988), 143.

³Robert Devigne, Reforming Liberalism, J. S. Mill's Use of Ancient, Religious, Liberal, and Romantic Moralities (New Haven, 2006), 146–47, 151; Turk, Coleridge and Mill, 160, 175.

⁴It may be useful to clarify, right at the outset, which view of Plato—the Socratic or the Dogmatic—the two Mills were working with. However, the answer is not quite as simple as one might expect. Though the distinction between inquisitive and expository dialogues goes quite far back in time (e.g. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. Robert D. Hicks, 2 vols (London, 1925), III, sections 49–50), James Mill rejected that there was a ‘transcendental’ Plato; drawing from Cicero, he considered it a later imposition on Plato's dialogues. He believed that Plato, even in the expository dialogues, was simply trying to prove that he could win the Sophists, the rhetoricians or the politicians, in any argument by using their own methods and manners, not merely by using the dialectic method (see for example James Mill, ‘Taylor's Translation of Plato’, Literary Journal, 3 (1804), 451–54; James Mill, ‘Taylor's Plato’, Edinburgh Review, 14 (1809), 191, 199–200. I explore James Mill's reading of Plato in ‘Plato's Influence on British Utilitarianism: The Case of John Stuart Mill’, (University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 2011), chapter 3. However, both Mills valued most the Socratic aspect of the Platonic dialogues—they considered Plato's dialectic method to be his gift to philosophy—even if it required George Grote's Plato, and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3 vols (London, 1865) to convince John Stuart Mill of the existence of two Platos (I explore John Stuart Mill's reading of Plato in ‘Plato's Influence on British Utilitarianism’, chapter 5. See also Kyriacos Demetriou, ‘The Development of Platonic Studies in Britain and the Role of the Utilitarians’, Utilitas, 8 (1996), 15–37).

⁵The edition under discussion is Immanuel Bekker, Platonis et quae vel Platonis esse feruntur vel Platonica solent comitari scripta Graece omnia, 11 vols (Londini, 1826).

⁶Myles F. Burnyeat, ‘What was “The Common Arrangement”? An Inquiry into John Stuart Mill's Boyhood Reading of Plato’, Utilitas, 13 (2001), 26–27.

⁷Moreover, James Mill hoped that if he took ‘care till good weather comes, [he] shall be well again’, James Mill to Lord Brougham, 17 January 1836, in Alexander Bain, James Mill: A Biography (London, 1882), 405; see further William Foster, ‘James Mill in Leadenhall Street, 1819–1836’, Scottish Historical Review, 10 (1912–13), 172, which is an indication that he did not plan to retire from the East India Company. On another note, James Bentham Mill died on 8 June 1862 not on 15 August (‘Deaths’, Gentleman's Magazine, 113 (1862, July), 116).

⁸Reginald A. Rye, The Libraries of London: A Guide for Students, second edition (London, 1910), 122. Harriet Isabella Mill was appointed the executor and beneficiary of J. B. Mill's estate.

⁹James Mill to James Bentham Mill, 18 October 1835, in Bain, James Mill, 397. The dedicatory inscription translates roughly: ‘The cause of this honour to James B. Mill is for all the studies at the college completed in the most successful manner, and for searching into the customs and institutions of India with singular sharpness and diligence’ (for the Latin inscription see Burnyeat, ‘Common Arrangement’, 26).

¹⁰John Stuart Mill to Harriet Isabella Mill, 2 July 1865, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (hereafter CW), edited by John M. Robson and others, 33 vols (Toronto, 1963–1991), XVI, 1074, note 1.

¹¹John Stuart Mill, ‘Preface to Dissertations and Discussions’, in CW, X, 494; John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 227. See also H. Stuart Jones, ‘John Stuart Mill as Moralist’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1992), 289.

¹²Bernard Semmel, John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (New Haven, 1984); Bernard Semmel, ‘John Stuart Mill's Coleridgean Neoradicalism’, in Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism, edited by Eldon J. Eisenach (University Park, 1998), 49–76; Nicholas Capaldi, John Stuart Mill: A Biography (Cambridge, 2004); Devigne, Reforming Liberalism; John M. Robson, The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill (London, 1968); John M. Robson, ‘Textual Introduction’, in CW, X, cxv–cxxxix; Frederick Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (London, 2003); Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 7–21; Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (New York, 1974); Giovanni Giorgini, ‘Radical Plato: John Stuart Mill, George Grote and the Revival of Plato in Nineteenth-Century England’, History of Political Thought, 30 (2009), 617–46.

¹³J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 175.

¹⁴J. S. Mill, Autobiography (early draft), in CW, I, 174, 174k–k. This comment brings to one's mind James Mill's words to young John before embarking for France, that ‘whatever [he] knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in [him], but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to [his] lot, of having a father who was able to teach [him], and willing to give the necessary trouble and time’ (Autobiography, in CW, I, 38).

¹⁵J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 168–71. See further William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817–1841 (Oxford, 1979), 151, 168–70; William Thomas, Mill (Oxford, 1985), 33–34.

¹⁶Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 19. Cf. Frederick Rosen, ‘The Philosophy of Error and Liberty of Thought: J. S. Mill on Logical Fallacies’, Informal Logic, 26 (2006), 121–47.

¹⁷Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On the Constitution of Church and State, in The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 7 vols, edited by William G. T. Shedd (New York, 1854), VI, 38 (note †); John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, in CW, IX, 411–16 (see also John Stuart Mill, ‘Coleridge’, in CW, X, 120). See further Capaldi, Mill, 89.

¹⁸John Stuart Mill (signed ‘A’), ‘Bentham’, The London and Westminster Review, 7 & 29 (1838), 467–506; John Stuart Mill (signed ‘A’), ‘Coleridge’, The London and Westminster Review, 33 (1840), 257–302.

¹⁹Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 17–19.

²⁰Mary Anne Perkins, ‘Religious Thinker’, in The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge, edited by Lucy Newlyn (Cambridge, 2002), 93. However, one needs to add that, according to Coleridge, as Perkins (‘Religious Thinker’, 92) points out, God was both the ‘Creator (source of the dynamic of polarity through which life evolved), and Reconciler (medium of reconciliation between opposites)’.

²¹John Stuart Mill, ‘Coleridge’, in CW, X, 146, 122, 125; J. S. Mill, ‘Guizot's Essays and Lectures on History’, in CW, XX, 69–70 (see further Georgios Varouxakis, ‘Guizot's Historical Works and J. S. Mill's Reception of Tocqueville’, History of Political Thought, 20 (1999), 292–312).

²²As Mill himself later noted, he was getting ‘the ear of England’ and already had ‘that of America’. See John Stuart Mill to Max Kyllmann, 30 May 1865, in CW, XVI, 1063, note 4.

²³Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 18.

²⁴Coleridge, Church and State, 38n, 39, 95. Cf. Peter J. Kitson, ‘Political Thinker’, in Cambridge Companion to Coleridge, edited by Newlyn, 156–69.

²⁵John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in CW, XIX, 384–89 (two useful recent discussions of Mill's Considerations are Dale E. Miller, J. S. Mill (Cambridge, 2010), chapter 10; and Jonathan Riley, ‘Mill's Neo-Athenian Model of Liberal Democracy’, in J. S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, edited by Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (Cambridge, 2007), 221–49). Mill's definition of the ideas of Permanence and Progression seem to draw more on William Godwin's discussion concerning national education than on Coleridge (William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, 2 vols (London, 1793), II, 667–68). Edwin G. West (‘Liberty and Education: John Stuart Mill's Dilemma’, Philosophy, 40 (1965), 130) notes that William Godwin was a frequent visitor to the household of the Mills; however, Bain (James Mill, 80) noted that ‘[James] Mill and he did not fraternize’ (see further The Diary of William Godwin, edited by Victoria Myers, David O'Shaughnessy and Mark Philp (Oxford, 2010): http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk (last accessed 6 June 2011), where James Mill's name only appears three times). Moreover, it is very telling that many fail to note that James Mill also employed the strategy of arguing that things may differ either in degree or in kind (e.g. James Mill, ‘Toleration’, The Philanthropist, 2 (1812), 124).

²⁶John Stuart Mill, ‘Nature’, in CW, X, 373.

²⁷J. S. Mill, ‘Nature’, in CW, X, 373. As Mill would note, the cost of such ‘scrupulosity of speech’ was too great for mankind (Principles of Political Economy, in CW, II, 368).

²⁸John Stuart Mill, ‘Phaedrus’, in CW, XI, 93.

²⁹George Grote, The Minor Works of George Grote, edited by Alexander Bain (London, 1873), 283; Bain, James Mill, 459; John Stuart Mill, ‘Editorial Notes to James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind’, in CW, XXXI, 100. See also Harriet Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote, second edition (London, 1873), 23; Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, 97.

³⁰James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, third edition (London, 1826), 13–14; J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 31; Devigne, Reforming Liberalism, 80, 87.

³¹J. S. Mill, Autobiography (early draft), in CW, I, 24. See further Demetriou, ‘The Development of Platonic Studies’.

³²John Stuart Mill, ‘Grote's Aristotle’, in CW, XI, 509–10; George Grote, Aristotle, edited by Alexander Bain and G. Croom Robertson (London, 1872).

³³J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 25.

³⁴John Stuart Mill, ‘Romilly's Public Responsibility and the Ballot Reader’, in CW, XXV, 1212.

³⁵John Stuart Mill, ‘Inaugural Address’, in CW, XXI, 229–30, 247; J. Stanley Yake, ‘Mill's Mental Crisis Revisited’, The Mill Newsletter, 9 (1973), 10.

³⁶Devigne, Reforming Liberalism, 18–21. But Mill did not argue that only poets are capable of inspiring and animating; he also mentioned philosophers, orators and historians (‘Inaugural Address’, in CW, XXI, 254).

³⁷Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 20; K. C. O'Rourke, John Stuart Mill and Freedom of Expression: The Genesis of a Theory (London, 2001), 42–58.

³⁸Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 14 (See further Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism, 15–28, 166–72; Frederick Rosen, ‘J. S. Mill on Socrates, Pericles and the Fragility of Truth’, Journal of Legal History, 25 (2004), 181–94).

³⁹Kevin O'Rourke, John Stuart Mill, 42, 58.

⁴⁰Rosen, ‘Mill on Coleridge’, 14; John Stuart Mill to John Sterling, 20–22 October 1831, in CW, XII, 81.

⁴¹J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 110–11, 115–17. As Bruce Kinzer (J. S. Mill Revisited: Biographical and Political Explorations (Basingstoke, 2007), 63) notes, James Mill ‘had nothing to say’ to men such as Wordsworth and Coleridge (see also Capaldi, Mill, XV). But James Mill, as his marginalia demonstrate, read Coleridge's periodical, Friend (1818), and found interesting passages. There are also references to Coleridge in his manuscripts (London, London Library, James Mill, James Mill's Common Place Books, edited by Robert A. Fenn (hereafter CPB), III, 14v). J. Mill's CPB (vols 1–4) can be found online at http://www.intellectualhistory.net/mill (last accessed 5 January 2012); vol. 5 is located at London, LSE Archives, Mill-Taylor Collection.

⁴²J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 73, 75; John Stuart Mill to James Mill, Autumn 1822, in CW, XII, 13. The argumentative essay which J. S. Mill mentions in his Autobiography (and which shows signs of Platonic influence) can be found in CPB, II, 79v–80r.

⁴³John Stuart Mill, ‘Traité de Logique’, in CW, XXVI, 147; John Stuart Mill, ‘Lecture Notes on Logic’, in CW, XXVI, 239; J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 21–25.

⁴⁴John Stuart Mill, System of Logic, in CW, VIII, 44. Both Mills argued that logical analysis is a valuable exercise for a young mind (J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 21–25; J. Mill, ‘Taylor's Plato’, 199).

⁴⁵J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 25, 69; John Stuart Mill, ‘Grote's Greece [5]’, in CW, XXV, 1163–64; J. S. Mill, ‘Phaedrus’, in CW, XI, 95. See further Peter R. Burnham, ‘Plato in Victorian Britain: The Response of Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and John Ruskin’ (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ph.D. thesis, 1977), 200.

⁴⁶John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in CW, XVIII, 251. Kyriakos Demetriou (‘Socratic Dialectic and the Exaltation of Individuality: J. S. Mill's Influence on G. Grote's Platonic Interpretation’, Quaderni di storia, 69 (2009), 35–61) has shown how J. S. Mill's On Liberty influenced George Grote's Plato.

⁴⁷ CPB, III, 105r–v.

⁴⁸J. Mill, ‘Toleration’, 114.

⁴⁹James Mill, ‘Persecution of Infidelity’, The Philanthropist, 2 (1812), 217.

⁵⁰J. Mill, ‘Toleration’, 117–18; James Mill, ‘Infidelity’, 221. For example, he argues that children of different religious beliefs ought to be educated together to cultivate their social feelings and learn ‘to agree to differ’, so that their differences will not lead to violence (‘Marsh and Others against Lancaster’, Philanthropist, 2 (1812), 106).

⁵¹ CPB, I, 8r (quoting Plato, Apology, 39d). See also CPB, I, 14r, 40v, 97v; CPB, III, 142v, 144v, 210v.

⁵²J. Mill, ‘Infidelity’, 218, 213 (italics added).

⁵³J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in CW, XVIII, 251.

⁵⁴See for example John Stuart Mill, ‘Grant's Arithmetic for Young Children’, in CW, XXIV, 785–87.

⁵⁵Plato, Gorgias, 463b (CPB, I, 112v); John Stuart Mill, ‘Definition of Political Economy’, in CW, IV, 312; ‘Gorgias’, in CW, XI, 109. See further J. Mill, ‘Theory and Practice’, The London Review, 3 (1836), 223–34; CPB, I, 106v, 108v. James Mill did take notes on Plato's Gorgias and Republic (CPB, I, 112v; 113r–v). See also James Mill's translation of the passage on the relation between virtue, knowledge and order of Plato's Gorgias 506c–8b at CPB, I, 162v–63r). John Mill argued that his use of the word ‘Art’ in his Logic (CW, VIII, 943–48) was commonplace ‘at bottom’ and noted that he had simply restated it in ‘new language’ (John Stuart Mill to Edward Lytton-Bulwer, 27 March 1843, in CW, XIII, 578–79). Only after being praised by Bulwer for novelty did Mill cite Plato's Gorgias in the 1844 edition of his essays on political economy (CW, IV, 312).

⁵⁶ CPB, I, 109r; James Mill, ‘Education’, in Essays Reprinted from the Supplement of Encyclopaedia Britannica, edited by James Mill (London, 1825), 34. Drawing on Plato's Gorgias, James Mill argued that good science combines all those true and important propositions which ‘embrace’ the whole subject (in a ‘comprehensive and commanding view’), in the most suitable way for the end pursued (James Mill, ‘Whether Political Economy is Useful’, The London Review, 2 (1836), 556, 561–62; Plato, Gorgias, 463b, 502d at CPB, I, 112v).

⁵⁷Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, 118.

⁵⁸J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in CW, XVIII, 252; John Stuart Mill, ‘Grote's Plato’, in CW, XI, 411. In more detail, Mill also pointed out the relation of dialectics to the examination of both sides of a question, even false ones, to ascertain truth in Plato's Parmenides (‘Grote's Aristotle’, in CW, XI, 508). This was a dialogue which J. S. Mill translated. J. Mill referred to it in reference to Plato's method of classification (Fragment on Mackintosh (London, 1835), 25)

⁵⁹J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in CW, XVIII, chapter 2. See further Burnham, Plato in Victorian Britain, 224–28.

⁶⁰James Mill, History of British India, third edition, 6 vols (London, 1826), I, XIII. In 1837, a period usually referred to as J. S. Mill's complete departure from his father's ideas, John Mill noted: ‘But the far greater number of people […] do not think it necessary to let their mind's eye rest upon the thing itself at all; but deliberate and act, not upon knowledge of the thing, but upon a hearsay of it’ (‘Carlyle's French Revolution’, in CW, XX, 161).

⁶¹Plato, Gorgias, 472d; J. S. Mill, ‘Grote's Plato’, in CW, XI, 395, 400; James Mill, ‘Liberty of the Press’, in Essays Reprinted from Britannica, 28–29; James Mill, ‘Education’, in Essays Reprinted from Britannica, 43–46. James Mill (‘Toleration’, 117) also argued that the number of people holding an opinion is no warrant to its truth.

⁶²J. Mill, ‘Toleration’, 115–17. Here, James Mill seems to anticipate themes from On Liberty (e.g. the limits of state interference; that some acts are hurtful to individual interests; that liberty of conscience is not a threat). This is a work that should lead us to qualify J. S. Mill's report that his father, though not as extreme as John A. Roebuck, did not search for truth in other people's opinions (Autobiography, in CW, I, 156). See also Jack Stillinger, ‘John Mill's Education: Fact, Fiction and Myth’, in A Cultivated Mind: Essays on J. S. Mill presented to John M. Robson, edited by Michael Laine (Toronto, 1991), 31; cf. Jack Stillinger, ‘Who Wrote J. S. Mill's Autobiography’, Victorian Studies, 27 (1983), 7–23.

⁶³James Mill, ‘Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind’, British Review, 6 (1815), 175.

⁶⁴J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 24–25, 48–49.

⁶⁵John Stuart Mill, ‘James Mill's Analysis’, in CW, XXXI, 240; J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 143.

⁶⁶J. S. Mill, ‘Gorgias’, in CW, XI, 150; J. S. Mill, ‘Inaugural Address’, in CW, XXI, 251–54.

⁶⁷James Mill, ‘Bentham's Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses’, Eclectic Review, 8 (1812), 87. James Mill's comments on Bentham's obsession with detail may also explain J. S. Mill's comments about his father's frequent inattention to detail (‘James Mill's Analysis’, in CW, XXXI, 102).

⁶⁸The following discussion draws from James Mill, ‘Fox's History of the Reign of James II’, Annual Review and History, 7 (1809), 101–03.

⁶⁹Similarly, Rosen noted that J. S. Mill (‘Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy’, in CW, X, 15–16) criticised Bentham as providing ‘no moral message and uplifting theme’ (Frederick Rosen, ‘The Method of Reform; J. S. Mill's Encounter with Bentham and Coleridge’, in J. S. Mill's Political Thought, 128. See further Yake, ‘Mill's Mental Crisis’, 8; Wendy Donner, ‘John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy’, in J. S. Mill's Political Thought, edited by Urbinati and Zakaras, 258. As we have seen, J. S. Mill included historians among the writers that have inspired the reader with their work (‘Inaugural Address’, in CW, XXI, 254).

⁷⁰Such language disappeared in James Mill's later writings, which led Thomas B. Macaulay (‘Mill's Essay on Government: Utilitarian Logic and Politics’, Edinburgh Review, 49 (1829), 161) to note that the elder Mill's ‘style […] [is] generally as dry as that of Euclid's Elements’.

⁷¹Legends and myths shared the functions that James Mill mentioned (J. Mill, India, I, book 2, chapter 1).

⁷²The younger Mill made the same observation about Plato's Gorgias (‘Gorgias’, in CW, XI, 150). On the distinction between the morality of the act and that of the agent, see further J. Mill, Fragment, 5–9. It seems important to note here that John Mill referred to this distinction in his ‘Bentham’ (CW, X, 112–13) and Utilitarianism (CW, X, 220n, 220–21).

⁷³J. S. Mill, ‘Inaugural Address’, in CW, XXI, 254. See also ‘Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy’, in CW, X, 15–16.

⁷⁴Though James Mill's role in inculcating virtue in John has not gone unnoticed, commentators (e.g. Capaldi, Mill, 258) miss this early connection between virtue and emotional cultivation.

⁷⁵J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 48–51; Ruth Borchardt, ‘Introduction’, in John Stuart Mill: Four Dialogues of Plato, edited by Ruth Borchardt (London, 1946), 8–10.

⁷⁶John Stuart Mill, ‘Protagoras’, in CW, XI, 53; John Stuart Mill, ‘Charmides’, in CW, XI, 175n; J. S. Mill, ‘Grote's Plato’, in CW, XI, 408; John Stuart Mill, Principles, in CW, III, 763; J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in CW, XVIII, 266; J. S. Mill, Logic, in CW, VIII, 841. Robert Devigne (Reforming Liberalism, 38) omits this reference to the non-coercive function of emotions in his discussion concerning the role of feelings in J. S. Mill's thought. More importantly, Devigne has not taken into account the special role of inspiration in character formation in both Mills (e.g. J. Mill, ‘Fox's History’, 101–03; J. S. Mill, Logic, in CW, 840–41).

⁷⁷J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 18–19.

⁷⁸Though in 1835, James Mill did make a note of the ‘matchless effect’ of Milton's poetry (Fragment, 127).

⁸⁰Plato, Republic, 462a–b (translated by George M. A. Grube and C. D. C. (David) Reeve, in Plato, Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and Douglas S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis, 1997), 1089 (italics added).

⁷⁹J. S. Mill, ‘Inaugural Address’, in CW, XXI, 254 (italics added).

⁸¹ CPB, I, 166r (James Mill considered this an ‘admirable passage—for quotation on any occasion, when the necessity of this community of interests is to be displayed’. He did quote it in his response to the charges directed by James Mackintosh and Thomas B. Macaulay to his article ‘Government’ in his excessively polemical Fragment on Mackintosh, 287–88); ‘Education’, in Essays Reprinted from Britannica, 43–46. Cf. CPB, V, 24r–25v.

⁸²One should also keep in mind that John Mill donated his father's manuscripts to the London Library as late as February 1872.

⁸³John Stuart Mill to John Sterling, 4 October 1839, in CW, XIII, 411; J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 168–71.

⁸⁴ CPB, III, 105r–v; J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 48–49.

⁸⁵John Stuart Mill (signed ‘A’), ‘Professor Sedgwick's Discourse-State of Philosophy in England’, The London Review, 1 (1835), 94–135.

⁸⁶J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 208–11. See also John Stuart Mill to John Pringle Nichol, 14 October 1834, in CW, XII, 238; John Stuart Mill to Edward Lytton-Bulwer, 23 November 1836, in CW, XII, 312–13; John Stuart Mill to John Sterling, 22 April 1840, in CW, XIII, 428.

⁸⁷John Stuart Mill (signed ‘A’), ‘Bentham’, 467–506.

⁸⁸J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 227.

⁸⁹J. S. Mill, 12 January 1854 diary entry, in CW, XXVII, 642.

⁹⁰John Stuart Mill to Harriet Taylor-Mill, 7 December 1854, in CW, XIV, 152; J. S. Mill, 7 February 1854 diary entry, in CW, XXVII, 642. In contrast, according to Mill, ‘the whole of German metaphysics, the whole of Christian theology, and the whole of the Roman and English systems of technical jurisprudence’ were the three most useless mental pursuits of his time. The comment on ‘German metaphysics’ casts doubts over claims that Mill read Plato through Coleridge (see for example Yake, ‘Mill's Mental Crisis’; Devigne, Reforming Liberalism; Giorgini, ‘Radical Plato’).

⁹¹J. S. Mill, ‘Grote's Plato’, in CW, XI, 379; J. Mill, Fragment, 274; James Mill to Francis Place, 6 December 1817 (quoted in Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, translated by Mary Morris (London, 1929), 491).

⁹²J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 175.

⁹³Still, Mill ‘wavered’ and resisted many ‘essential parts’ of Romanticism (e.g. metaphysics; theology). See J. S. Mill, 7 February 1854 diary entry, in CW, XXVII, 642 (cf. J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 175).

⁹⁴J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in CW, XIX, 384–88; J. S. Mill, ‘Coleridge’, in CW, X, 154. See also Paul Shorey, Platonism; Ancient and Modern (Berkeley, 1938), 224; Martin Lowther Clarke, George Grote: A Biography (London, 1962), 184; Terrence H. Irwin, ‘Mill and the Classical World’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, edited by John Skorupski (Cambridge, 1998), 433–39; Dana Richard Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, 2001), 61; Alan Ryan, ‘Introduction’, in Mill: Texts; Commentaries, edited by Alan Ryan (New York, 1997), xiv.

⁹⁵In Autobiography, Mill pursued this through a self-effacing manner, as he often substituted references to himself with generalities (Robson, ‘Textual Introduction’, in CW, XI, xxvi). See also his exchange with Macvey Napier with regard to James Mill (‘Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review on James Mill’, in CW, I, 535–38; John Stuart Mill to Macvey Napier, 10 January 1844, in CW, XIII, 618).

⁹⁶J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 48–49.

⁹⁷John Stuart Mill to Harriet Taylor-Mill, 7 February 1854, in CW, XIV, 152; J. S. Mill, Autobiography, in CW, I, 11, 23–25.

⁹⁸J. Mill, India, xxvi; John Stuart Mill to Thomas Carlyle, 12 January 1834, in CW, XII, 207; John Stuart Mill to Thomas Carlyle, 5 October 1833, in CW, XII, 18.