THE DEFECTS OF MILL’S EDUCATION_LECTURES ON THE HARVARD CLASSICS

THE DEFECTS OF MILL’S EDUCATION

That he was deprived of the ordinary activities and pleasures of childhood and youth does not seem to have been an occasion of regret to Mill. As a philosopher and psychologist he might have been expected to recognize that his exclusive absorption in study during his early years must have narrowed the range of his knowledge of life and his capacity to act with and to lead other men. Mill’s attitude toward life was always, and especially in the earlier years of his career, excessively intellectual. He exaggerated the force of reasoned conclusions as a factor in individual conduct and as a means of bringing about social improvement. One cannot but feel that the few years saved by Mill in the acquiring of knowledge from books involved some sacrifice of knowledge and understanding of the ordinary impulses and motives of men and women.

Still another defect in an education such as Mill received remains for consideration, though happily he escaped its threatened consequences. His father was one of the foremost of the utilitarian philosophers. He applied the principles of that school to the various problems of individual and of social improvement earnestly and with no lack of dogmatism. He impressed his views upon the mind of his son when he was far too young to subject them to critical analysis and to form an independent judgment regarding them through comparison with the opinions of other thinkers and from experience of life itself. Mill’s early writings are, therefore, and quite naturally, little more than the expression of the views of his father with such acute modifications as might be expected from one gifted with his powerful intellect.

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