MILL 



3806 



MILLENNIUM 



views on the equality of men. The result of 

 this effort was the Reform Bill of 1832. 



Mill was born in a little village not far from 

 Montrose, Scotland. His father was a pious, 

 industrious shoemaker who was not known for 

 remarkable intelligence, but his mother seems 

 to have been keen and ambitious, and it was 

 through her influence that James, her eldest 

 son, was given a superior education. At seven- 

 teen he entered Edinburgh University, and in 

 1798 was licensed as a Presbyterian minister. 

 A gradual change in his religious views led him 

 to abandon the ministry, and in 1802 he settled 

 in London, where he became a frequent con- 

 tributor to periodicals and at times was also an 

 editor. In 1818, after ten years of work, he 

 completed the History of India above referred 

 to, which won him a high position in the de- 

 partment which governed that great country. 

 In 1830 he became chief of the Indian Office, 

 where he remained until his death. 



Of Mill's many books the most important 

 are Elements of Political Economy, intended 

 originally as a textbook for his son; Analysis 

 of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, re- 

 markable for its clearness and precision; and 

 the Fragment on Mackintosh, in which he 

 stated his views of utility as the basis of ethics. 



MILL, JOHN STUART (1806-1873), one of the 

 most advanced thinkers of his time, a student 

 and writer in the fields of philosophy, political 

 economy and logic. His name is especially as- 

 sociated with the ethical doctrine known as 

 utilitarianism, that the greatest happiness of 

 the greatest number should be the sole purpose 

 of all public action (see UTILITARIANISM). In 

 the field of logic, especially in the subject of 

 inductive reasoning, he did work that ranks with 

 that of Aristotle and Hegel. 



He was born in London and educated en- 

 tirely by his father, James Mill, the philoso- 

 pher. He began the study of Greek when three 

 years old, and when twelve had read more Latin 

 than the average college graduate. When four- 

 teen, he spent a year in France, and after his 

 return to England studied law, history and 

 philosophy until he became a clerk in the India 

 House, in 1823. Here he remained for a period 

 of thirty-three years, being gradually promoted 

 to the head of his department. After his re- 

 tirement he was a member of Parliament for 

 about four years. He belonged to the Radi- 

 cals, and was a warm advocate of suffrage for 

 women. During the last years of his life he 

 tried to help the masses of the English people 

 by advocating 'measures which would secure a 



more equal division of the profits of property, 

 and he also favored cooperative agriculture. 

 Mill began his literary labors early in life. 

 Among his principal works are A System of 

 Logic, Principles of Political Economy, Utili- 

 tarianism and England and Ireland. 



MILLAIS, mi la', SIR JOHN EVERETT (1829- 

 1896), an English painter who was endowed 

 with a wonderful power of story-telling on can- 

 vas and the ability to interest mankind. He 

 was born at Southampton. In his earlier days 

 he became a leader of the Pre-Raphaelite 

 school, together with Rossetti and Holman 

 Hunt (see PAINTING) . From them his art took a 

 strong leaning toward the imaginative and 

 symbolical, and the richest and most poetic of 

 the productions of this period are his Autumn 

 Leaves and The Vale of Rest. In 1859 he 

 abandoned the creed of the Pre-Raphaelites 

 and thereafter drew his subjects from many 

 sources, painting portraits of some of the most 

 distinguished men of his day, landscapes, of 

 which Chill October is one of his most re- 

 nowned, and an occasional figure piece, as The 

 Northwest Passage. The value of his later 

 paintings lies in their splendid technical quali- 

 ties. Many illustrations, appearing in the lead- 

 ing periodicals of his time, place him in the first 

 rank among woodcut designers. He was created 

 a baronet in 1885, and in 1896 was elected to 

 the presidency of the Royal Academy. Among 

 his other notable works are The Minuet, The 

 Boy Princes in the Tower, Spring and Ophelia. 

 His Bride of Lammermoor and Portia may be 

 viewed in the Metropolitan Museum, New 

 York. 



Consult Reid's Si?* John E. Millais; Bayliss' 

 Masters in Art. 



MILLENNIUM, milen'ium, a word derived 

 from the Latin mille, meaning a thousand, and 

 annus, meaning year, designates a period of 

 1,000 years, during which, according to the be- 

 lief of various sects, Christ will return to earth 

 to rule before the end of the world. Revela-, 

 tion XX, 1-7 is quoted as authority for this 

 belief. In the ancient Church it was generally 

 believed that 1,000 years before the Lord were 

 as one day of the creation as given by Moses ; 

 therefore the six days of creation would signify 

 6,000 years of toil and the Sabbath would rep- 

 resent 1,000 years of rest and happiness. Vari- 

 ous teachers have gone so far as to appoint 

 specific dates for the millennium, but there is 

 wide disagreement on the subject. According 

 to the general interpretation of the term the 

 millennium is a period in the dim distant fu- 



