V. JOHN STUART MILL
BY PROFESSOR O. M. W. SPRAGUE
THE FIRST three chapters of the “Autobiography of John Stuart Mill,”〖Harvard Classics, xxv.〗 by far the most interesting part of the work, are concerned with the methods and results of his extraordinary education. Under the direct supervision of his father he began serious study with Greek at the tender age of three; at twelve he had covered the equivalent of the classical and mathematical requirements for graduation at the English universities, while in history and philosophy he had gone far beyond the requirements of those institutions of learning. Thereafter he continued his studies with unflagging industry, though along more special lines and in large measure independently, very much after the manner of scholarly graduates of the universities ten years his senior. Before he was twenty he had edited a ponderous legal treatise in a fashion which would have been highly creditable to any scholar in the full maturity of his powers. He was then, at twenty, clearly five, and perhaps ten, years in advance of that stage of intellectual acquirement which he would presumably have reached if he had received the education then, or, indeed, now, customary.