Autobiography (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

~ John Stuart Mill (Author), John M. Robson (Contributor) "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..." (more)
Key Phrases: philosophic radicalism, mental progress, habitual exercise, Westminster Review, Reform Bill, Charles Austin (more...)

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Product Description

One of the greatest prodigies of his era, John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was studying arithmetic and Greek by the age of three, as part of an astonishingly intense education at his father's hand. Intellectually brilliant, fearless and profound, he became a leading Victorian liberal thinker, whose works - including "On Liberty", "Utilitarianism", "The Subjection of Women" and this "Autobiography" - are among the crowning achievements of the age. Here he describes the pressures placed on him by his childhood, the mental breakdown he suffered as a young man, his struggle to understand a world of feelings and emotions far removed from his father's strict didacticism, and the later development of his own radical beliefs. A moving account of an extraordinary life, this great autobiography reveals a man of deep integrity, constantly searching for truth.

About the Author

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (April 3, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140433163
• ISBN-13: 978-0140433166
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #253,024 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic worthy of being called a classic, November 15, 2006

By	Steven M SCHMITT (SAINT PAUL, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (Paperback)

This book is so wonderful on so many different levels that to give it a review at all would be a disservice. My recommendation is not on whether or not to read it but instead on how to read it. I suggest a quiet room, comfortable chair or couch, cup of coffee and a few hours of uninterrupted reading time. After completing the book, rest and repeat as desired.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The book explains him better than anyone else is likely to, October 21, 2004

By	Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This AUTOBIOGRAPHY makes more sense than trying to learn anything. John Stuart Mill was born on 29 May 1806 and died 8 May 1873, already old and famous in England and Ireland about when the young Nietzsche became a professor and started publishing his early works. James Mill must have learned Greek so he could read the original version of the Bible when he was studying to be a Scotch Presbyterian minister, but he didn't become a minister. He started to teach is eldest son, John Stuart Mill, Greek at the age of three. The AUTOBIOGRAPHY pictures the father and son working side by side until the father was appointed to a post as Assistant Examiner of India Correspondence in 1819, often attempting to follow suggestions of David Ricardo (1772-1823). John Stuart Mill learned to compare the ideas of Ricardo and Adam Smith at such a young age that his ideals easily rose above levels of thought that would be considered common. "Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian creed. And thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, with no consistent principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it." (Chapter II. 1813-21 Moral Influences in Early Years. My Father's Character and Opinions).

The most honest portion of the book is Chapter V. 1826-32 A Crisis in my Mental History. One Stage Onward. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) had provided Mill with the desire "to be a reformer of the world." "But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826." I consider this a modern intellectual reaction, and was most interested in his early attention to "The results of association." . . . "the strongest possible associations of the salutary class ; associations of pleasure . . . intense associations of pain and pleasure, . . . But there must always be something artificial and casual in associations thus produced." His activities continued, but "this is the only year of which I remember next to nothing." Modern mass communication has surrounded us with so much stimulus that it is difficult to picture many people getting through their lives without having every year end up like that. Nietzsche had an early friendship with Wagner and numerous books to keep reminding him who he was or what he thought that he ought to become, but the biographies of those who have lived since then lack the basic significance that we ought to expect of anyone capable of changing the minds in the world since Albert Einstein became the great thinker.

Chapter VII. 1840-70 General Review of the Remainder of my Life, provides many political points which are still worth pondering. Current politics in America strongly in favor of a rich aristocracy, mightily in favor of winning a war on terrorism in battles far from home, I consider possibly as short-sighted as the interest of England in supporting the Confederacy in Civil War in America. Here I should let John Stuart Mill explain:

"But the generation which had extorted Negro emancipation from the West India planters had passed away ; another had succeeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposure to feel strongly the enormities of slavery ; and the inattention habitual with Englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their own island, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the struggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, for the first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery. There were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it to the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a people struggling for independence."

" . . . when there occurred, towards the end of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board a British vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even English forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the explosion of feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation, which prevailed for some weeks, of war with the United States, and the warlike preparations actually commenced on this side."

John Stuart Mill did what he could to keep daily events from turning into a war which would have split the United States permanently. He was later lucky to be elected to Parliament even though "it was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate ought not to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public duty." "I said further, that if elected, I could not undertake to give any of my time and labour to their local interests. . . . I made known to them, among other things, my conviction (as I was bound to do, since I intended, if elected, to act on it), that women were entitled to representation in Parliament on the same terms with men." He often won by being right on the merits. "My position in the House was further improved by a speech in which I insisted on paying off the National Debt before our coal supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some Tory leaders who had quoted . . . my `Considerations on Representative Government,' which said that the Conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest party."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mill telling it like it is, December 12, 2007

By	Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Autobiography (Paperback)

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

I have to say that I found Mill's Autobiography left me wanting to read a good biography of him in order to learn more about his personal life and interaction with family and friends. He certainly did not reveal himself in the way Jean Jacques Rousseau did in his much-ballyhooed autobiography The Confessions. I do understand that his wife Harriett edited the autobiography to the extent that there is no mention of Mill's mother in it. Other than his education and his reference to taking walks with his father to talk about books he had read, he says little about their relationship. In addition, there is only a passing reference to having to serve as schoolmaster to his siblings while he was an adolescent and he does not mention them again. Mill spent most of his adulthood working for the East India Company; however, he says little about that experience in his autobiography. It seems he had few friends as an adult, if you go by his autobiography. There is a brief reference about his friendship with George Grote, the eminent historian of Greek history. Thus, the impression that I got of Mill the man was one of an emotionally cold person socially except to his wife Harriett, who I believe was the only person in his life he truly loved. Most of his autobiography is dedicated to his education; such as, books he had read or written and philosophers he was influenced by, and this is a part of his life that I found most interesting.

In Mill's autobiography, he tells readers how he benefited and suffered from having one of the most unique educational experiences known to humankind. His father was personally involved in both his education and that of his other siblings He was a brilliant student who read Greek by the age of three and Latin at eight years old. By the time he matured to adulthood, he was extremely well read. Thus, he received an academically rigorous education at home, and I find that his education really defined and shaped his character. Providing and improving education for all humans was a cornerstone of his philosophical belief in Utilitarianism. Education meant that people could develop their higher pleasures; a concept that Mill thought was of paramount importance to increase one's happiness. He invented this concept and differed with Jeremy Bentham, the progenitor of Utilitarianism, on this point. Bentham did not believe there was a qualitative property to happiness--Mill did. Thus, it is no mystery that in adulthood he developed very strong views on the advantages that universal education would have on improving people's characters. Mill believed universal education would lead to fostering social change for the betterment of all mankind. He stayed consistent on this belief throughout his life. He gave what I think was one of the great speeches on education and character formation in 1867 after accepting the position as Rector of the University of St. Andrews. In his Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, one of the points that he made in his speech was the responsibility that universities had in building their students' characters. He also wrote about the importance of character formation had on the ability for people to enjoy freedom in society in his book On Liberty. However, he personally found that his education had come at a great price to his emotional well-being.

During the winter of 1826 and into 1827 while in his early twenties, Mill recognized that he was suffering from a bout with depression. This is the only portion of his autobiography where Mill exposes his inner emotions to his readers. He believed his depression stemmed from an inadequacy in his education. He came to realize that although his father provided him a superior education on many intellectual levels, it was negligent in social contact with children of his own age, and did not prepare him emotionally for interaction with other members of society. His parents and visitors treated him as an adult from early childhood. Mill realized that his upbringing led up to his inability to feel a normal range of human emotions; thus, he felt detached from humanity. Mill found that reading poetry by Wordsworth in 1828 ultimately broke his depression. In poetry, Mill found that he could feel sorrow, and sympathize with others.

I found this part of his autobiography of importance for three reasons. First, it is the only painful human emotional event in his life that he divulges to his readers. Secondly, it is an indication of the importance that the concept of sympathy played in his life and formed his philosophical views as well. Mill understood the need for humans to be sympathetic to one another. Sympathy is required for social interaction and is a useful character trait that we use in order to keep us from harming each other. Thirdly, without his awakening of this emotion in his life, I seriously doubt that he would have found the capacity to love his wife Harriett in the manner that he did. One does get the sense from his description of her that she was his true soul mate and only real long lasting friend in his life.

Mill's friendship with Harriett while she was married to another man, caused them both to endure scandalous gossip, even though they both denied there relationship had any sexual component to it. When they eventually married each other about two years after she became a widow, Mill stayed true to his life long conviction in believing in equal rights for women. During Mill's time, married women's property automatically devolved to their husband and he correctly saw this as one more inequity against women placed on them by society. Therefore, on the day when he married Harriett Taylor in 1851, a financially secure widow, he wrote a formal renunciation to all of her property in protest against the current law. He was a life long feminist who wrote in his essay The Subjection of Women, about the scathing inequalities that women endured since the history of mankind had been chronicled. I have no doubt that his essay paved the way in changing marriage and divorce laws and fostered the improvement of relations between the sexes. He was also the first Member of Parliament to introduce a bill in the Commons to enfranchise women. He worked tirelessly at the end of his life, supporting women's rights with his pen and his purse. His stepdaughter Helen carried on his feminist work by becoming a leader in the suffragist movement in her own right.

In total, I would say that although the Autobiography provides scant information into Mill's daily life, when he does reveal himself, it appears he consistently lived up to his philosophical teachings and beliefs.