James Mill

As a sample of economic defense of an opposite character may serve the following piece of reasoning which has been proclaimed exceedingly keen.

James Mill, the father of the well-known English economist John Stuart Mill, says, quote, Whatever be the amount of the annual produce, it never can exceed the amount of annual demand.

Of two men who perform an exchange, the one does not come with only a supply, the other with only a demand.

Each of them comes with both a demand and a supply.

In November 1807, William Spence published a pamphlet in England under the title Britain Independence of Commerce.

The principle set forth in this pamphlet was further elaborated by William Cobbett in his Political Register under the virulent title Parish Commerce.

To this James Mill replied in 1808 in his Defense of Commerce, which contains the passage quoted above from his Elements of Political Economy, page 190 to 193.

In his controversy with Sismondi and Malthus on commercial crises, J.B. Say appropriated this clever device, and as it would be difficult to point out with what new idea this comical prince de la science had enriched political economy, his continental admirers have trumpeted him as the man who had unearthed the treasure of the metaphysical balance of purchases and sales.

The technical use of the word introspection in this way is of recent introduction, see Oxford Dictionary, but the signification is very old.

We need not pursue it back farther than Reid, Hamilton, Bain, and James Mill to get a definite understanding of the extent to which self-consciousness is involved in British theories.

The discussion here runs into the consideration of the term consciousness, to which we must give a little space.

Bain, footnote, The Feelings and the Will, Fourth Edition, 538, et seq., end footnote, distinguishes and lists thirteen different senses in which the term was used.

End quote.

Lecture 11, page 135.

In strong contrast with the use of the term consciousness by Reid and Hamilton, we find James Mill declaring, quote, To say I feel a sensation is merely to say that I feel a feeling, which is an impropriety of speech.

And to say that I am conscious of a feeling is merely to say that I feel it.

John Stuart Mill, the great utilitarian, the man whose whole moral theory is built on happiness being the thing that matters, wrote about this in his autobiography.

He'd been raised by his father, James Mill, as basically a robot reasoning machine.

He was taught Greek at three and logic at four.

And at like six, he was given a very clear mission to reform the world for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Secondly, whatever may be the future developments of the arts of agriculture, a continued increase in the application of capital and labour to land must ultimately result in a diminution of the extra produce which can be obtained by a given extra amount of capital and labour.

Section 2 Making use of a term suggested by James Mill, we may regard the capital and labour applied to land as consisting of equal successive doses.

As we have seen, the return to the first few doses may be perhaps small, and a greater number of doses may get a larger proportionate return.

The return to successive doses may even in exceptional cases alternately rise and fall.

That regret was natural.

The grand and powerful mind of James Mill left very notable traces, however, in the philosophical literature of his country, and in the training of the son who was to carry on his work, and to be the most influential teacher in a new school of thought and action by which society is likely to be revolutionized far more than it has been by any other agency since the period of Erasmus and Martin Luther.

james mill was something more than the disciple of bentham and ricardo he was a profound and original philosopher whose depth and breadth of study were all the more remarkable because his thoughts were developed and his knowledge was acquired mainly by his own exertions he had been helped out of the humble life into which he had been born by sir john stewart who assisted him to attend the lectures of dugald stewart and others at edinburgh with a view to his becoming a minister in the church of scotland soon finding that calling distasteful to him he had in or near the year eighteen hundred settled in london as a journalist resolved by ephemeral work to earn enough money to maintain him and his family in humble ways while he spent his best energies in the more serious pursuits to which he was devoted his talents soon made him friends and the greatest of these was jeremy bentham as erroneous opinions have been current as to the relations between bentham and james mill and have lately been repeated in more than one newspaper it may be well here to call attention to the contradiction of them that was published by the son of the latter in the edinburgh review for eighteen forty four mr mill and his family we there read lived with mr bentham for half of four years at ford abbey that is between eighteen fourteen and eighteen seventeen and they passed small portions of previous summers with him at barrow green his last visit to barrow green was of not more than a month's duration and the previous ones altogether did not extend to more than six months or seven at most the pecuniary benefit which mr mill derived from his intimacy with bentham consisted in this that he and his family lived with him as his guests while he was in the country periods amounting in all to about two years and a half i have no reason to think that his hospitality was either given or accepted as pecuniary assistance and i will add that the obligation was not exclusively on one side bentham was not then as he was afterwards surrounded by persons who courted his society and were ever ready to volunteer their services and to a man of his secluded habits it was no little advantage to have near him such a man as mr mill to whose advice and aid he habitually had recourse in all business transactions with the outward world of a troublesome or irksome nature such as the connection was it was not of mr mill's seeking on the same unquestionable authority we learn that mr mill never in his life was in debt and his income whatever it might be always covered his expenses it is clear that from near the commencement of the present century james mill and bentham lived for many years on terms of great intimacy in which the poorer man was thoroughly independent although it suited the other to make a fair return for the services rendered to him a very characteristic letter is extant dated eighteen fourteen in which james mill proposes that the relations between him and his dear friend and master shall be to some extent altered but only in order that their common objects may be the more fully served.

In reflecting, he says, upon the duty which we owe to our principles, to that system of important truths of which you have the immortal honour to be the author, but of which I am a most faithful and fervent disciple, and hitherto I have fancied my Master's favourite disciple, I have considered that there was nobody at all so likely to be your real successor as myself." of talents it would be easy to find many superior but in the first place i hardly know of anybody who has so completely taken up the principles and is so thoroughly of the same way of thinking with yourself in the next place there are very few who have so much of the necessary previous discipline my antecedent years having been wholly occupied in acquiring it and in the last place i am pretty sure you cannot think of any other person whose whole life will be devoted to the propagation of the system There was during the last few years of Bentham's life, said James Mill's son, less frequency and cordiality of intercourse than in the former years, chiefly because Bentham had acquired newer and to him more agreeable intimacies.

But Mr. Mill's feeling never altered towards him, nor did he ever fail, publicly or privately, in giving due honor to Bentham's name and acknowledgment of the intellectual debt he owed to him.

Those extracts are made not only in justice to the memory of James Mill, but as a help towards understanding the influences by which his son was surrounded from his earliest years.

James Mill was living in a house at Pentonville when this son was born, and partly because of the peculiar abilities that the boy displayed from the first, partly because he could not afford to procure for him elsewhere such teaching as he was able himself to give him, he took his education entirely into his own hands with what interest even jealous interest it would seem bentham watched that education appears from a present little letter addressed to him by the elder mill in eighteen twelve i am not going to die he wrote notwithstanding your zeal to come in for a legacy however if i were to die any time before this poor boy is a man one of the things that would pinch me most sorely would be the being obliged to leave his mind unmade to the degree of excellence of which i hope to make it but another thing is that the only prospect which would lessen that pain would be the leaving him in your hands i therefore take your offer quite seriously and stipulate merely that it shall be made as soon as possible and then we may perhaps leave him a successor worthy of both of us it was a bold hope but one destined to be fully realized at the time of its utterance the poor boy was barely more than six years old the intellectual powers of which he gave such early proof were carefully but apparently not excessively cultivated mrs grote in her lately published personal life of george grote has described him as he appeared in eighteen seventeen the year in which her husband made the acquaintance of his father john stuart mill then a boy of about twelve years old he was really only eleven was studying with his father as sole preceptor under the paternal roof unquestionably forward for his years and already possessed of a competent knowledge of greek and latin as well as of some subordinate though solid attainments john was as a boy somewhat repressed by the elder mill and seldom took any share in the conversation carried on by the society frequenting the house it is perhaps not strange that a boy of eleven at any rate a boy who was to become so modest a man should not take much part in general conversation and Mr.

Mill himself never, in referring to his father, led his hearers to suppose that he had, as a child, been in any way unduly repressed by him.

I was just, um, reading this, it's a, can't remember the name of the book, but it's the work done by Dr. Kundan Singh.

Um, and it's about James Mill-

Mm-hmm

... who is, um, someone who lived in Britain.

He ended up working his way up to, um, head the East India Company.

He was second in command in the East India Company, and he wrote a three-volume book on the history of India, which is, is basically trickled down in different ways and is what is the basis of what we learn about India today.

And this person, James Mill, he, you know, he has eight chapters basically calling Hindus savages, uncouth, barbaric, and-

Uncivilized

The technical use of the word introspection in this way is of recent introduction, see Oxford Dictionary, but the signification is very old.

We need not pursue it back farther than Reid, Hamilton, Bain, and James Mill to get a definite understanding of the extent to which self-consciousness is involved in British theories.

The discussion here runs into the consideration of the term consciousness, to which we must give a little space.

Bain, footnote, The Feelings and the Will, fourth edition, five hundred thirty-eight, et sec, end footnote, distinguishes and lists thirteen different senses in which the term was used.

And in the latter case, although no new element be added to the act, the condition involved in it, I know that I know, becomes the primary and prominent matter of consideration." End quote.

Lecture eleven, page one thirty-five.

In strong contrast with the use of the term consciousness by Reid and Hamilton, we find James Mill declaring, quote, "To say I feel a sensation is merely to say that I feel a feeling, which is an impropriety of speech.

And to say that I am conscious of a feeling is merely to say that I feel it.

In the, his early 20s, he has a mental, uh...

John Stuart Mill is, is, is, is, is brought up by his father, James Mill, as the sort of perfect utilitarian.

The utilitarians believe that the individual, uh, the f- the, the meaning of life is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the greatest amounts of pleasure.

Happiness is pleasure, and it's the greatest number of individuals maximized.

And John Stuart Mill is brought up to believe this, and he goes through this extraordinary education.

He's learning Greek at the age of three, then he's doing Latin at the age of four, and he writes a, quite a good history of India at the age of eight and things like that.

Uh, he's sort of force-fed by his father.

And as a result of this upbringing, he has a sort of mental breakdown, and the result of that mental breakdown is that he has a richer form of liberalism.

But there are compelling comparisons between Marx's ideas on communal life, as I detailed in episode 26, and Marsilius's thinking.

First, with reference to Marx's commentary on James Mill, Marx argued that, and I quote, Alienated man is a caricature of his real communal life, his true species life.

And Marx continued thus, and I quote, Since human nature is the true communal nature of man, men create and produce their communal nature by their natural action.

They produce their social being, which is no abstract universal power, over against single individuals, but the nature of each individual, his own activity, his own life, his own enjoyment, his own wealth.