Autobiography, John Stuart Mill [best fiction books of all time txt] 📗

this same year, 1819, that he took me through a

complete course of political economy. His loved and intimate friend,

Ricardo, had shortly before published the book which formed so great an

epoch in political economy; a book which would never have been published

or written, but for the entreaty and strong encouragement of my father;

for Ricardo, the most modest of men, though firmly convinced of the

truth of his doctrines, deemed himself so little capable of doing them

justice in exposition and expression, that he shrank from the idea of

publicity. The same friendly encouragement induced Ricardo, a year or

two later, to become a member of the House of Commons; where, during the

remaining years of his life, unhappily cut short in the full vigour of

his intellect, he rendered so much service to his and my father's

opinions both on political economy and on other subjects.

 

Though Ricardo's great work was already in print, no didactic treatise

embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had yet appeared.

My father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the science by a sort

of lectures, which he delivered to me in our walks. He expounded each

day a portion of the subject, and I gave him next day a written account

of it, which he made me rewrite over and over again until it was clear,

precise, and tolerably complete. In this manner I went through the whole

extent of the science; and the written outline of it which resulted from

my daily _compte rendu_, served him afterwards as notes from which to

write his _Elements of Political Economy_. After this I read Ricardo,

giving an account daily of what I read, and discussing, in the best

manner I could, the collateral points which offered themselves in our

progress.

 

On Money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he made me read

in the same manner Ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written during what

was called the Bullion controversy; to these succeeded Adam Smith; and

in this reading it was one of my father's main objects to make me

apply to Smith's more superficial view of political economy, the

superior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith's

arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions. Such a mode of

instruction was excellently calculated to form a thinker; but it

required to be worked by a thinker, as close and vigorous as my

father. The path was a thorny one, even to him, and I am sure it was

so to me, notwithstanding the strong interest I took in the subject.

He was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in cases

where success could not have been expected; but in the main his method

was right, and it succeeded. I do not believe that any scientific

teaching ever was more thorough, or better fitted for training the

faculties, than the mode in which logic and political economy were

taught to me by my father. Striving, even in an exaggerated degree,

to call forth the activity of my faculties, by making me find out

everything for myself, he gave his explanations not before, but after,

I had felt the full force of the difficulties; and not only gave me an

accurate knowledge of these two great subjects, as far as they were

then understood, but made me a thinker on both. I thought for myself

almost from the first, and occasionally thought differently from him,

though for a long time only on minor points, and making his opinion

the ultimate standard. At a later period I even occasionally convinced

him, and altered his opinion on some points of detail: which I state

to his honour, not my own. It at once exemplifies his perfect candour,

and the real worth of his method of teaching.

 

At this point concluded what can properly be called my lessons: when I

was about fourteen I left England for more than a year; and after my

return, though my studies went on under my father's general direction,

he was no longer my schoolmaster. I shall therefore pause here, and

turn back to matters of a more general nature connected with the part

of my life and education included in the preceding reminiscences.

 

In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced, the

point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during

the years of childhood, an amount of knowledge in what are considered

the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if

acquired at all) until the age of manhood. The result of the experiment

shows the ease with which this may be done, and places in a strong

light the wretched waste of so many precious years as are spent in

acquiring the modicum of Latin and Greek commonly taught to schoolboys;

a waste which has led so many educational reformers to entertain the

ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from

general education. If I had been by nature extremely quick of

apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory,

or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial

would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather

below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any

boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and

if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate

circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on

me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a

quarter of a century over my contemporaries.

 

There was one cardinal point in this training, of which I have already

given some indication, and which, more than anything else, was the

cause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or youths who have had

much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not

strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts,

and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are

accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own;

and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in

their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have

learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced

for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never

permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise

of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with

every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything

which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had

exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. As far as I can trust

my remembrance, I acquitted myself very lamely in this department; my

recollection of such matters is almost wholly of failures, hardly ever

of success. It is true the failures were often in things in which

success, in so early a stage of my progress, was almost impossible.

I remember at some time in my thirteenth year, on my happening to

use the word idea, he asked me what an idea was; and expressed some

displeasure at my ineffectual efforts to define the word: I recollect

also his indignation at my using the common expression that something

was true in theory but required correction in practice; and how, after

making me vainly strive to define the word theory, he explained its

meaning, and showed the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech which I

had used; leaving me fully persuaded that in being unable to give a

correct definition of Theory, and in speaking of it as something which

might be at variance with practice, I had shown unparalleled ignorance.

In this he seems, and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but I think, only

in being angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded

which he cannot do, never does all he can.

 

One of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency,

and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously

guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme

vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led

to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. From

his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble

opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to

me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to

He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences

he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments were

anything unusual at my age. If I accidentally had my attention drawn to

the fact that some other boy knew less than myself--which happened less

often than might be imagined--I concluded, not that I knew much, but that

he, for some reason or other, knew little, or that his knowledge was of

a different kind from mine. My state of mind was not humility, but neither

was it arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do,

so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly: I did not estimate

myself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I was

rather backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, in

comparison with what my father expected from me. I assert this with

confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw

me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and

disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did

not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said.

I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an

unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons,

while I never had inculcated on me the usual respect for them. My father

did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not

being aware of it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise

than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence. Yet with all this I had

no notion of any superiority in myself; and well was it for me that I had

not. I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year,

on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me

that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been

taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that

many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment

me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very

imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than

others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual

advantage which had fallen to my lot, of having a father who was able to

teach me, and willing to give the necessary trouble and time; that it was

no matter of praise to me, if I knew more than those who had not had a

similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me if I did not. I have a

distinct remembrance, that the suggestion thus for the first time made to

me, that I knew more than other youths who were considered well educated,

was to me a piece of information, to which, as to all other things which

my father told me, I gave implicit credence, but which did not at all

impress me as a personal matter. I felt no disposition to glorify myself

upon the circumstance that there were other persons who did not know what

I knew; nor had I ever flattered myself that my acquirements, whatever

they might be, were any merit of mine: but, now when my attention was

called to the subject, I felt that what my father had said respecting my

peculiar advantages was exactly the truth and common sense of the matter,

and it fixed my opinion and feeling from that time forward. 

CHAPTER II (MORAL INFLUENCES IN EARLY YOUTH. MY FATHER'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS)