HIS EDUCA TION. 



able [as it doubtless was], and which, 

 whatever else it may have done, has 

 proved how much more than is com- 

 monly supposed may be taught, and 

 well taught, in those early years which, 

 in the common modes of what is called 

 instruction, are little better than wast- 

 ed " (p. I). 



His education was given him by 

 his father, who, " with no resource 

 but the precarious one of writing in 

 periodicals, married and had a large 

 family " (p. 3) : " partly because of 

 the peculiar abilities that the boy dis- 

 played from the first, partly because 

 he could not afford to procure for him 

 elsewhere such teaching as he was 

 able himself to give him " {Bourne]. 

 We have here an illustration of the 

 great want of judgment that stares 

 out in almost every part of the Au- 

 tobiography, when he tells us that 

 this education given him at home, 

 could be useful to the world as an 

 example how children should be 

 instructed. What he says rather 

 reveals an intense self-worship in 

 the narration of his so-called won- 

 derfully precocious acquirements. 

 Most of people will think that the 

 kind of instruction given Mill, and 

 his absolute seclusion from associa- 

 tions with his kind, would turn out 

 the vast majority of children of even 

 good parts so many imbeciles, if not 

 idiots. It would, indeed, be difficult 

 to find another such instance of ed- 

 ucation, as regards instruction and 

 treatment, more suited to guard 

 against such in the future, or that 

 would prove more offensive to the 

 ordinary instincts of human nature. 

 It sounds odd to hear it said that 

 the means followed by the world at 

 large, in having their children taught 

 in the " common modes," are "little 

 better than wasted." That was a 

 subject of which Mill had no per- 

 sonal knowledge ; and the absurdity 

 of the remark shows that he never 

 took the trouble to inform himself 

 jn regard to it, otherwise he would 

 not have advanced an opinion in 

 the absolute and dogmatical way he 

 lias done. 



We are told that he began Greek 

 at three years old, and before he 

 remembered it, but did not com- 

 mence Latin until his eighth year. 

 At that time, he says, he had read 

 Herodotus, Xenophon, Diogenes 

 Laertius, Lucian, Isocrates, and the 

 first six dialogues of Plato; and 

 Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, Wat- 

 son's Philip the Second and Third, 

 Hooke's History of Rome, Rollin, 

 Langhorne's Plutarch, Burnet's His- 

 tory of his Own Times, etc. 



" In these frequent talks about the 

 books I read, he [his father] used, as 

 opportunity offered, to give me explana- 

 tions and ideas respecting civilization, 

 government, morality, mental cultiva- 

 tion, which he required me afterwards 

 to restate to him in my own words " 

 (p. 8). 



From his eighth to his twelfth year 

 he read, in whole or in part, Virgil, 

 Horace, Phsedrus, Livy, Sallust, 

 Ovid, Terence, Lucretius, Cicero, 

 Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aris- 

 tophanes, etc., etc. 



" Aristotle's Rhetoric . ... my 

 father made me study with particular 

 care, and throw the matter of it into 

 synoptic tables. During the same years 

 I learnt elementary geometry and alge- 

 bra thoroughly" (p. 12). 



He successively composed a Ro- 

 man History, an Abridgment of the 

 Ancient Universal History, a His- 

 tory of Holland, and, in his eleventh 

 and twelfth years, a History of the 

 Roman Government, large enough 

 to make an octavo volume, in which 

 he " discussed all the constitutional 

 points as they arose " (p. 13), and 

 " vindicated the Agrarian Laws on 

 the evidence of Livy, and upheld, to 

 the best of my ability, the Roman 

 Democratic party " (p. 14). From 

 about his twelfth year, he began on 

 " thoughts themselves," starting in 

 logic with the Organon, and several 

 of the Latin treatises on the scholas- 

 tic logic ; and he gives a list of his 

 high studies. Some of the principal 

 orations of Demosthenes he " read 



