EDITOR'S TABLE. 



371 



he says that his strongest predilection 

 was ancient history. " A book which, 

 in spite of what is called the dryness 

 of its style, I took great pleasure in, 

 was the 'Ancient Universal History,' 

 through the incessant reading of which, 

 I had ray head full of historical details 

 concerning the obscurest ancient peo- 

 ple; while, about modern history, ex- 

 cept detached passages, such as the 

 'Dutch War of Independence,' I knew 

 and cared comparatively little." 



And so young Mill became a prodigy 

 of Greek, Latin, and antiquated learn- 

 ing. The dead languages and their 

 contents were fairly burned into his 

 organization. On his classical acqui- 

 sitions were superinduced history, 

 mathematics, metaphysics, and politi- 

 cal ideas — studies which he might have 

 pursued if he had been the son of 

 Plato instead of James Mill. But of 

 the sciences of Nature there was noth- 

 ing gained worth the name. At the 

 mental stage in which all the foregoing 

 acquirements had been made he had 

 received not the slightest scientific in- 

 struction, and had only read a little in 

 experimental books by way of amuse- 

 ment. He says : "During this part of 

 my childhood, one of my greatest 

 amusements was experimental science, 

 in the theoretical, however, not the 

 practical sense of the word ; not try- 

 ing experiments — a kind of discipline 

 which I have often regretted — nor even 

 seeing but merely reading about them." 

 Mr. Mill subsequently paid more atten- 

 tion to science by reading ; he heard 

 lectures on zoology and chemistry, and 

 did something with botany as an ob- 

 server and collector. But of science in 

 the educational sense of the classics, as 

 an agency to mould the mind by its spe- 

 cial discipline, he was utterly destitute. 

 He neither pursued it in its objects, nor 

 mastered it in its principles, nor cul- 

 tivated the habit of original and inde- 

 pendent research. The whole spirit of 

 his education, indeed, was different; it 

 was for polemics rather than for discov- 



ery. The intellectual exercise in which 

 he says he was most perseveringly exer- 

 cised by his father was the old scho- 

 lastic logic, which he thinks is " pecu- 

 liarly adapted to an early stage in the 

 education of philosophical students, 

 since it does not presuppose the slow 

 process of acquiring by experience and 

 reflection valuable thoughts of their 

 own." His training was fitted to make 

 him shine in debating societies, of 

 which he was a frequenter, and he or- 

 ganized one at the age of sixteen. 

 And such was his proficiency that, it 

 was said, " a university man, loaded 

 with honors and preceded by a blazing 

 reputation, having been induced, in an 

 evil hour, to cake the chair at a discus- 

 sion, crumbled to dust in the presence 

 of our Titan, and passed out of count 

 utterly." 



The effect of neglect t of science in 

 Mr. Mill's education is seen in his re- 

 markable judgment of himself. In his 

 Autobiography he makes the astound- 

 ing statement that in "natural gifts I 

 am rather below than above par ; what 

 I could do could assuredly be done by 

 any boy or girl of average capacity," 

 and he assumes to have had the start 

 of his contemporaries for a quarter of 

 a century, simply from the mode in 

 which he was instructed. Mind is 

 thus dealt with as if it were a disem- 

 bodied agency capable of being manip- 

 ulated into any state; while organic 

 conditions and limitations, and the in- 

 fluence of heredity, are discredited at a 

 stroke. No allowance is made for the 

 fact that he derived his fine organiza- 

 tion from a father of great intellectual 

 capacity ; yet, nothing is better estab- 

 lished by science than that traits of 

 character are transmissible, and that 

 this circumstance bears powerfully up- 

 on the problem of human educability. 

 Physiologists well know that the chil- 

 dren of cultivated parents not only 

 inherit superior mental aptitudes and 

 capacities, but that they have greater 

 power of psychical endurance, and can 



