http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
OK fine... he's my hero.
Biography
John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the
Pentonville area of
London, the eldest son of the
Scottish philosopher, historian and economist
James Mill, and Harriet Burrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of
Jeremy Bentham and
Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his
siblings. His father, a follower of
Bentham and an adherent of
associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a
genius intellect that would carry on the cause of
utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.
[citation needed]At the age of eight he began learning
Latin,
Euclid, and
algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught
Latin and
Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and
Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of Mill's earliest poetry compositions was a continuation of the
Iliad. In his spare time, he also enjoyed reading about
natural sciences and popular novels, such as
Don Quixote and
Robinson Crusoe.
At age fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir
Samuel Bentham, brother of
Jeremy Bentham. The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In
Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on
chemistry,
zoology,
logic of the
Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course of the higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist
Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the
Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including
Henri Saint-Simon.
This intensive study however had injurious effects on Mill's
mental health, and state of mind. At the age of twenty
[6] he suffered a
nervous breakdown. In chapter V of his
Autobiography, he claims that this was caused by the great physical and mental arduousness of his studies which had suppressed any feelings he might have developed normally in childhood. Nevertheless, this
depression eventually began to dissipate, as he began to find solace in the
Mémoires of
Jean-François Marmontel and the poetry of
William Wordsworth.
[7]Mill had been engaged in a pen-friendship with
Auguste Comte, the founder of
positivism and
sociology, since the two were both young men in the early 1820s. Comte's
sociologie was more an early
philosophy of science than we perhaps know it today, and the
positive philosophy aided in Mill's broad rejection of Benthianism.
[8]In 1851, Mill married
Harriet Taylor after 21 years of an intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died. Brilliant in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Harriet Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of
women's rights. He cites her influence in his final revision of
On Liberty, which was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, only seven years into their marriage.
He died in
Avignon, France, in 1873, where he is buried alongside his wife.
