The Emotional Honesty of John Stuart Mill
TL;DR: Our first of four posts on John Stuart Mill, the emotionally-complex, genius philosopher of Victorian England. He advocated tirelessly for human well-being, education, individual liberty and gender equality. But also seeded the idea that in economics, we humans are no more than “beings who desires to possess more wealth.”
Cover art by Diana Mariño
A Prolific Genius
John Stuart Mill, the genius philosopher of Victorian England and author of the most widely used economics textbook of his time, was a famously passionate man. Unlike Adam Smith, who as he neared death ordered his lecture notes destroyed and seemed to have wished that no materials should remain for his biographers, Mill left behind a vast expanse of writing and letters as well as his Autobiography; his collected works extend to thirty volumes. Through them, Mills offered historians rich insight into both his ideas, as well as his inner being.
The latter is unusual; Mill, contrary to the emotionally unforthcoming norms of those taciturn British times, did not shy away from emotional revelation. If he were alive today, he would have no trouble being a self-revelatory blogger or YouTuber.
The portrait that emerges, on drawing near to Mill’s opus, is of a deeply-loving man with a nuanced view of the human experience, who cared sincerely about the summum bonum, the greatest good, and the well-being of other people and society.
This subtlety of view, and the emotional honesty he displayed in his Autobiography, put into even more stark relief the shocking contrast between some of his more famous philosophical writings, and the view of humanity that underpinned his highly influential writing on economics.
As a philosopher, the causes he held dear included the primacy of education, the sanctity of individual liberty, and gender equality. But as a theoretical economist, Mill took a dramatically narrower view of human possibility.
So much so, that Mill is credited by economic historians (though he never actually used the term in his writing) as having given birth to the idea of Homo Economicus, or Economic Man, a being who “solely … desires to possess wealth; who is “occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth”; and who “prefers a greater portion of wealth to a smaller in all cases….”
Homeschooling with a Stern Father-Teacher
It is easy to see an intricate intertwinement between the themes and causes that Mill held most dear as an intellectual (again, these included political economy, and a championing of education, individual liberty, and gender equality), and the two most important emotional relationships of his life, which were with his father, the writer James Mill, and the love of his life and soul-mate Harriet Taylor.
James Mill put his son John Stuart through a rigorous program of home-schooling; so rigorous, in fact, that by today’s standards, one can’t help but wonder whether John Stuart Mill might not have been a victim of emotional abuse as a child.
His father had him reading Greek when he was three years old and Latin at seven along with Herodotus, Xenophon, Socrates and the first six dialogues of Plato. On turning eight, his father had him take on Virgil, Horace, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Orations of Cicero, both the Iliad and the Odyssey, to name just a smattering, as well as geometry, algebra, differential calculus, and other portions of the higher mathematics.
While his father was his omnipresent teacher, John Stuart Mill also received tutelage from an all-star cast of the most famous philosopher-economists of his time; some of whom were so influential, that their theories are still taught to economic students today.
These included David Ricardo, who is known to this day for his theory of “comparative advantage” in international trade; Mills later recalled being charmed by Ricardo’s “benevolent countenance, and kindliness of manner.”
Another was Jean-Baptiste Say, whose 1803 Treatise on Political-Economy was as influential in France as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations had been in England. “Say’s Law,” which states that “supply creates its own demand,” is still taught to economic students today.
Finally, Mill received instruction from Jeremy Bentham himself. Bentham’s influence was particularly fundamental; it eventually converted young John into a strident utilitarian, and the latter’s 1861 classic Utilitarianism, is considered by many to be the definitive articulation of this philosophy.
Bentham, in fact, was so close to the Mill family that when John was barely six, James assigned Bentham the legal guardianship of his son in the event of his own death; only Bentham, thought James Mill, was capable of carrying out the ambitious program of education he imagined for young John, should James himself pass early.
Mill’s adult feelings toward his father were a complex mixture of reverence and disdain. Certainly, his recollections of the man were marbled with admiration. His Autobiography includes a heartfelt eulogy for his father. He called him “one of the most original thinkers of his time,” and praised his “power of influencing by mere force of mind and character, the convictions and purposes of others, and in the strenuous exertion of that power to promote freedom and progress.”
His boyhood experience, however, was also emotionally isolating. Mill described himself as being “an habitual inmate of my father's study;” that the element most missing in his father’s relation to him as a boy was “tenderness;” and that his father had nothing but contempt for “passionate emotions of all sorts,” and “regarded them as a form of madness.”
Certainly, in reflecting on his childhood, Mill did his best to give his father the benefit of the doubt. He sympathetically noted that his father resembled most Englishmen of that time in being ashamed of showing any signs of feeling, and that being his sole teacher must surely have been trying.
But he also admitted that his father’s temperament was constitutionally irritable, and as a result, his children feared him. Though he always remained loyal to the stern man who educated him, and while later in his life, his younger siblings came to love their father, the same could not be said for John.
Depression and a Mental Health Crisis
In part due to this emotional starvation, as well as the strains placed upon his obvious intellectual gifts, Mill suffered a mental health crisis in 1826. Just twenty years old, he fell into the first of several episodes of deep depression.
Desolately, Mill described himself as being in a “dull state of nerves,” incapable of feeling enjoyment or pleasure; a sense of having “nothing left to live for.” His mood was “insipid,” “indifferent,” and he recognized himself in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s bleak ode to “Dejection”
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.
Next week, we will look at how Mill emerged from his depression with a deepened humility and a much-broadened perspective on his own humanity. In our reading, this outcome makes it even more remarkable that when he later turned his attention to economics, he chose to ignore the full and complex spectrum of human emotion he’d experienced in himself.
Instead, he chose to build a theory of economics at whose core stands a one-dimensional creature who cares solely about gaining more wealth.
Additional Reading
The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill is widely available in free edition.
For a more modern biography, I recommend Richard Reeves,’ John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand