JAMES AND JOHN STUART MILL JAMES AND JOHN STUART MILL Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century Bruce Mazlish Routledge Taylor & Francis Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1988 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an in forma business New material this edition copyright © 1988 by Taylor & Francis. Copyright © 1975 by Basic Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number 88-4801 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mazlish, Bruce, 1923- James and John Stuart Mill: father and son in the nineteenth century. Reprint. Originally published: New York: Basic Books, 1975. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873. 2. Mill, James, 1773-1836. 3. PhUosophers- England-Biography. I. Tide. B1606.M39 1988 192 [B] 88-4801 ISBN 0-88738-727-6 ISBN 13: 978-0-88738-727-2 (pbk) T O M Y PARENTS AND MY CHILDREN “[T]he women, of all I have known, who possessed the highest measure of what are considered feminine qualities, have combined with them more of the highest masculine qualities than I have ever seen in any but one or two men, & those one or two men were also in many respects almost women. I suspect it is the second- rate people of the two sexes that are unlike—the first-rate are alike in both—except —no, I do not think I can except anything—but then, in this respect, my position has been and is, what you say every human being’s is in many respects ‘a peculiar one.’ ” J. S. Mill to Thomas Carlyle, 5 October 1833 “It would be a mistake to suppose that a science consists entirely of strictly proved theses, and it would be unjust to require this. Only a disposition with a passion for authority will raise such a demand, someone with a craving to replace his religious catechism by another, though it is a scientific one. Science has only a few apo- deictic propositions in its catechism: the rest are assertions promoted by it to some particular degree of probability. It is actually a sign of a scientific mode of thought to find satisfaction in these approximations to certainty and to be able to pursue constructive work further in spite of the absence of final confirmation.” Sigmund Freud, Third Lecture, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x i INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION XÜ i IL LUSTRATIONS FOLLOWING I 52 I FATHER AND SON 1 Introduction 3 2 Fathers and Sons: The Nineteenth Century and the Oedipus Complex 15 II JAMES MILL 3 The Person 47 4 Government and Leadership 77 5 The Economic World 97 6 India and Colonial Attitudes 116 III JOHN STUART MILL 1 The Family 149 8 Childhood 166 Co ntents 9 Adolescence 176 10 The “Mental Crisis” 2°5 11 Intellectual Development 23r 12 Harriet: Love Unto Death 280 13 Sex and Sensibility 328 14 Economics 35 1 15 On Government 377 16 Social Science 403 17 Conclusion: The Mills in History 428 NOTES 435 PERMISSIONS 465 PICTURE CREDITS 467 NAM E INDEX 469 SUBJECT INDEX 477 x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I L IK E T O T H IN K that with this book I have made a contribution to psychohistory, a new field where history and psychology meet. I have tried to broaden its concerns and means of approach, to re-examine some classical psychoanalytic concepts per se, and to revitalize the figures of James and John Stuart Mill, breathing fresh life especially into the latter and his works. Whatever the actual success of this effort, it has rested on the assistance of innumerable persons and institutions, and I would like to make here a general acknowledgment of my thanks and appreciation. The initial research work, done mainly in Great Britain in 1967- 1968, was made possible by a faculty fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. A year as a Visiting Member at the Institute for Ad­ vanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (1972-1973) then gave me the essential time and setting for the actual writing of this book. I am deeply grateful to Carl Kaysen, Director, and to Clifford Geertz, head of the Social Science Program, not only for their invitation to me but for pro­ viding an ideal combination of catered isolation and intellectual stimula­ tion. Part of my support at the Institute was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant GS-31730X1, and I would like grate­ fully to acknowledge it. Anna Marie Holt, who headed the secretarial staff of the Social Science Program, was somehow always able to produce chapters or assistance when neeeded, and I tend her and her staff my admiration. The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute was kind enough to invite me to deliver a version of what is now Chapter 2 of this book at one of its scientific meetings, and I gained a good deal from that ses- xi Acknowledgments sion, especially from the commentaries of Professors Abraham Zaleznik and John Demos. To my friend, Abe Zaleznik, I owe additional debts with which he will be familiar. T o my colleagues at the Group for Ap­ plied Psychoanalysis (Boston) I also extend thanks for their general in­ spiration and criticisms. Others who have helped by readings, specific suggestions, or assis­ tance are Professors J. H. Burns, Joseph Frank, Albert Hirschman, Norman Holland, Dr. O. Mannoni, Arnaldo Momigliano, Robert C. Tucker, Fred Weinstein, Perez Zagorin, and, of course, my wife Anne. In my efforts to make some of the translations from the French correct and literate I have called upon Professors Richard M. Douglas and George Kelly. Professors Michael Laine, and John Robson have kindly re­ sponded to factual inquiries, but, more than that, everyone working on Mill is indebted to Professors Priestley and Robson for their magnifi­ cent editing of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Unfortunately, much of my writing was done before key volumes were published and my references, therefore, are often to earlier editions or to the original collections in the British Museum and the London School of Economics. M y publisher, Basic Books, Inc., has been a source of great support throughout. I should like to express my appreciation to Erwin Glikes, President, and Julie DeWitt, Project Editor. As for Martin Kessler, Vice President and Editorial Director, and my personal editorial mentor, he has once again put me under obligation to him by his patient assistance and wise counseling. xii Introduction to the Transaction Edition The reissue of James and John Stuart Mill is a kind of rebirth, which offers me a splendid opportunity to reread and to review my book, now that more than a decade has passed by. It is an occasion for reflections and perhaps even reorientations. The immediate temptation is great, of course, to set the record straight and to reply to one’s misguided critics. In spite of Benjamin Franklin’s advice always to give way to temptations, this is one to be resisted. Instead, I shall recall fondly the favorable reviews, and, if I may be forgiven a flowery, un-Mill-like, phrase, consign to the depths of Lethe all the benighted reviewers. What I should like to do in this regard, however, is to indulge in a kind of fanciful imitation of Marx and Engels, who wrote reviews (and quite good, objectives ones) of Capital , which they felt had been unduly overlooked. In their case, they hid their authorship of the reviews; in mine, I confess it, as I suggest the ways in which I would have liked, and obviously would like now, this book to be regarded. There are two other tasks I want to undertake in this new introduction. The first is to say something more about psychohistory and what has happened to it in the course of the last decade or so, as well as where my own thoughts on the discipline now stand. The second is to reflect further on some of Mill’s intellectual concerns, and especially on liberalism, a subject that occupied so central a place in his speculations and whose parlous conditions is so important to our own time. 1 In suggesting that I would write a review of my own book, I was not entirely serious. What I would like to do, however, is to highlight some features of the book of which sight might be lost. The fact is that my attention to the Mills was not only for their own sake, interesting and important as their story is, but also in the service of several larger themes. Yet to be faithful to the materials of my case study meant an immersion in the materials of Mill scholarship that, as I now realize, could cause the themes that interested me to be largely overlooked. Here I wish to rectify that possible holding of the telescope by the wrong end. xiii Transaction Int roduction One of my intentions, clearly, was to contribute to, or, in fact, to start, a debate on the problems of integrating psychology with intellectual history.