James Mill Biography

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World of Sociology on James Mill

James Mill was born in Scotland in 1773 to a shoemaker. It was his mother's goal that Mill rise above his social status. Through her social connections, he met Sir John Stuart, who became a mentor and benefactor to young Mill, housing him and helping finance Mill's education at the University of Edinburgh. Mill first studied philosophy at the university and was especially interested in Greek philosophy. In 1798, he graduated as a licensed preacher but had little success in this career. He took up tutoring instead soon after.

In 1802, Mill traveled to London with John Stuart and began working as a journalist for the Anti-Jacobin Review. The following year he began working for the Literary Journal. In 1805, he married Harriet Burrow and began writing for the St. James Chronicle. A year later, his son John Stuart Mill was born, followed by eight other children.

Throughout the next few years, Mill slowly moved from a devoted, conservative Christian to an agnostic liberal reformer. One key influence during this period and indeed throughout his life was meeting Jeremy Bentham in 1808. Mill and Bentham, a leading Utilitarian of the times, soon became close friends and spent every evening together. Utilitarians thought that happiness should be sought after and that pain and suffering should be minimized not just for individuals but for the whole of society. Mill adopted Utilitarian principles and became a disciple of Bentham. Also in 1808, Mill wrote his first article for the Edinburgh Review, addressing social issues such as economics, law and religion, freedom of the press, and education. These issues were pressing to many English thinkers of the time, as corruption infiltrated the government, the Church, and the press. Education was inadequate, and the government was seen as undemocratic. Mill, Bentham, and other Utilitarians saw their social ideas as a program of reform and were interested in changing what they considered to be the sorry state of government and society. Mill assisted Bentham with his works Table of the Springs of Action and Chrestomathia.

Mill began writing a series of articles for Encyclopedia Britannica in 1814 and would continue writing them for the next nine years. These articles were a chance to lay out his theories on subjects such as education, government, and liberty of the press. At this time Mill turned to his original interest in philosophy. In fact, these articles were key in making Utilitarianism a philosophy rather than a method of reform. Mill sought to influence thinking men of England and the general public with his theories. He succeeded: the articles were so popular among young philosophers that they were reprinted as a series and adopted as a bible for radicals of the time.

In 1819, Mill published History of British India, to which he had devoted 12 years of work. The success of this publication earned him a job at India House as an assistant in the area of India correspondence. Despite his work as a journalist, this is the first salaried position Mill held. It was a substantial enough salary that he could fully devote his free time to develop his philosophy.

The result of his dedication was his first philosophical treatise Analysis of the Phenomenon of the Human Mind published in 1829. This treatise laid out the psychological basis for Utilitarianism and the concept that sensation and stimuli control the thinking and actions that we classify as the concepts of belief, imagination, judgement, will, etc. Although the theory of associationism was first laid out by Aristotle, Mill's work is still regarded as an important description of associationism and human behavior. Other publications include Elements of a Political Economy (1820), articles for the radical quarterly the Westminster Review (1823-1826), which he and Bentham formed, and articles for the London Review (1825-1836). These articles, published anonymously due to his position at India House, include subjects that continued to be important to Mill: education, the Church, and the government. "On the Ballot," "Aristocracy," "Formation of Opinions," and "Law Reform" are especially significant and point to Mill's goal of practical reform and his concern with the immediate problems of England. In 1835, Mill published Fragment of Mackintosh, in which he explained that morality is based on utility. Just as Mill's own philosophical beliefs developed from conservatism to radical Utilitarianism, he helped move Utilitarian thought from a practical idea of legal reform to political creed and finally to a philosophy. This was his contribution to British philosophy.