260 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
lectures in Moral Philosophy. I do not know by what Presbytery 
he was licensed to preach, but I have heard Sir David Brewster say 
that he had listened to one of his sermons. When a student at 
the University it seems that he was given to reading books of a 
sceptical tendency in religion. He soon found the ministry uncon- 
genial to him, having satisfied himself that he could not believe the 
doctrines of any Christian Church. 
About the year 1800 James Mill removed to London, where for 
nearly twenty years he made his living by his pen. He was a man 
of singular force of character and subtlety of intellect — a stern 
Scotch Stoic or Cynic, with an Epicurean creed. He married soon, 
after he 'settled in the metropolis, with only the precarious income 
of a literary adventurer. The eldest son of his large family was 
John Stuart Mill. He was born about the time the “History of 
India” was begun. In the twelve following years the extraordi- 
nary energy of the father was chiefly given to this great work, and 
to the instruction of his eldest son. 
That eldest son has himself described in his “Autobiography” 
some of the original influences by which his own mind and character 
were formed. The stern paternal schoolmaster was one of the most 
important. The story of young Mill’s early instruction is as extra- 
ordinary as any in the records of English training. Books in G-reek, 
Latin, and English ; in history, logic, and analytical psychology, 
were among the means — the end being the production of as per- 
fect a reasoning machine as could be produced out of the hoy. 
What is commonly included in the higher education began with 
him in childhood. He was introduced to G-reek when he was three 
years of age. Before he was eight he had read many Greek books, 
including the Theaetetus of Plato. He had also read a great deal 
of history, including Hume and Gibbon, and had discussed what 
he had read with his father, in their rural walks about Newington 
Green, where the Mills were living from 1810 to the end of 1813. 
In the winter of 1813 they moved into a house, rented from their 
friend Jeremy Bentham, in Queen Square, Westminster. About 
the time this change was made young Mill began to learn Latin. 
Before he was twelve he had read most of the Latin and Greek 
poets, historians, and orators, much of the Rhetoric of Aristotle, 
and a great deal of ancient history. At twelve his philosophical 
