HIS EDUCATION. 



some public schools, in large classes, 

 perhaps a third of the scholars do 

 well, a third fairly, and the other 

 third very indifferently, if not nomi- 

 nally. But all that does not in any 

 way concern Mill's father's style of 

 tuition and discipline, which was 

 private, for it is of the capacity of 

 children he writes, when he says : 



"If I had been by nature extremely 

 quick of apprehension, or had possessed 

 a very accurate and retentive memory, 

 or were of a remarkably active and en- 

 ergetic character, the trial would not be 

 conclusive ; but in all these natural gifts 

 I am rather below than above par " (p. 

 30) ; and illustrating his profound igno- 

 rance of human nature in its undevel- 

 oped state, he adds : " What I could 

 do, could assuredly be done by any boy 

 or girl of average capacity and healthy 

 physical constitution " (p. 30). 



The common instinct of humanity 

 proclaims such an idea an absurdity. 

 Still, he considered himself fortu- 

 nate by his early training, in " start- 

 ing with an advantage of a quarter 

 of a century over my contempora- 

 ries " (p. 31), when, at the age of 

 thirteen, with all his " advantages," 

 he could make nothing of the mean- 

 ing of the words idea and theory.* 

 And yet he mentions that in his 

 eleventh year he read the manuscript 

 of his father's History of India, while 

 the author corrected the proofs, and 

 adds : 



" The number of new ideas which I 

 received from this remarkable book [ap- 

 parently at that time], and the impulse 

 and stimulus as well as guidance given 

 to my thoughts by its criticisms and dis- 

 quisitions on society and civilization in 

 the Hindoo part, on institutions and the 

 acts of governments in the English part, 

 made my early familiarity with it emi- 

 nently useful to my subsequent progress" 

 (p. 24). 



It is difficult to reconcile such 



* Mill could have said of himself, in 

 the child's doggerel slightly modified, 



" Through the big books and through 



the big books I ran, 

 And little as I was, I beat a large man." 



glaring inconsistencies, unless we 

 allow for Mill being a long way 

 " below par " in the matter of mem- 

 ory, as he admitted, or for his un- 

 sound, erratic and unreliable judg- 

 ment, when he depended entirely on 

 himself. We could also find a solu- 

 tion of the mystery in bragging, in 

 consequence of his never having 

 any religious belief, or of his 

 never having admitted of the ex- 

 istence of God, and refusing, in 

 common with his wife, to be bound 

 by " the ordinances of society, on 

 a subject so entirely personal " 

 (p. 229), and that hurt no one 

 " violations which, whether in them- 

 selves right or wrong, are capable 

 of being committed by persons in 

 every other respect loveable or ad- 

 mirable " (p. 1 88); since none of 

 these infringed upon the Benthamic 

 " dogma or creed, law or gospel " 

 " the greatest happiness of the great- 

 est number" (which was sound 

 enough, to a certain extent, as to 

 the laws that should be made for a 

 country), and his own, " in his con- 

 viction of which he never wavered," 

 that "happiness is the test of all 

 rules of conduct, and the end of 

 life "(p. 142). 



Mill's own words were extremely 

 applicable to himself to the last, in 

 spite of his disclaimer, when he 

 wrote : 



" Most boys or youths who have had 

 much knowledge drilled into them 

 [what boys were these?] have their 

 mental capacities not strengthened, but 

 overlaid by it. They are crammed with 

 mere facts, and with the opinions or 

 phrases of other people, and these are 

 accepted as a substitute for the power to 

 form opinions of their own : and thus 

 the sons of eminent fathers, who have 

 spared no pains in their education, so 

 often grow up mere parroters of what 

 they have learnt, incapable of using 

 their minds except in the furrows traced 

 for them" (p. 31). 



We will by and by see that, to the 

 last, Mill was constantly drawing, 

 not his facts and generalizing him- 



