Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1899-01-14

Of "A SEhlEO Of OLA IL BE- DE-
LIVERED IN THE COMING TWO
MONTHS.
President Raymond, of the State
University, delivered an excellent lee
ture last evening at the High School to
a large audience The auditorium was
packed, large percentage of those
present being teachers of the public
schools. There were a number of peo-
pie present from nearby towns. The
subject of Prof Raymond lecture was
John Stewart Mill and Unitarian
ISM" The lecture is one of course
of six which DR.. Raymond will de-
liver here. Following is an extracts
which covers about the whole lecture:
THE hero" said Carlyle, "can be
Poet, Prophet, King, Priest, or what
you will. according to the kind of
world he finds himself born into" So
it was with John Stuart Mill He could
have been poet, prophet, king, priest
himself born into a think world, or a
world that needed thinking, and he
thought. He was pre-eminently a
thinker. His was a calm, serene,
peaceful life of thought. What Milton
said of Bacon, we might say of Mill:
His even thread the Fates spun round
and full
Out of their smoothest and their whitest
wool"
Externally there is nothing exciting
about the life of John Stuart, Mill. 1t
is only as thinker, and as a writer
of thought in books, that he Influenced
the world-but no man of action ever
influenced it more.
The period during which John Stuart
Mill lived was essentially period of
transition in thought-a period when
men were beginning to see things in
a new light Mill himself is the best
illustration that could be found of
this transitional period during which
he lived. In his own intellectual his
tory he furnishes us with the very es-
sence of the movement which resulted
in the social philosophy of to-day-a
philosophy as different from that of
Mills childhood as light is different
from darkness. | think | may truth
fully say that there is no other man
in history who eXemplifies SO well in
his own life and mind so great a
change in the Intellectual life of the
world. But to appreciate Mill himself,
and especially to understand his rela-
ton to the old and to the new in
humanity's way of thinking on social
subjects, we must review his life and
education.
The education of Mill is the most re-
markable ON record, beginning as it did
in his infancy. 1t was planned and
carried out personally by his father,
James Mill. himself a leading philos-
opher of his century. In his autobiog-
raphy-which, by the way, is an in
tensely interesting book and not very
long-not very formidable in any way
and just the right sort of an intro
duction to Mills wrftings-Mill says he
has no remembrance whatever of be-
ginning to learn Greek. In reality, he
was but three years of age when he
committed to memory lists of Greek
words, with their meaning in English.
Greek authors over whom many a col
lege student sighs-Herodotus, Plato,
Diogenes, Laertius, and KenophOn-
were read by Mill in the original Greek
before he had reached his eighth year.
When he was eight we find him reading
Latin. Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Terence,
Lucretius, followed one another in
quick succession. Before Mill had
reached shis twelfth year he had been
given course in the higher mathe-
MATES, and had also read all the best
historians, under his fathers tuition
for throughout his entire education
James Mill was his sons sole teacher.
What some may regard as a pitiless
and most unnatural system of cram
ming, far beyond the powers of the
average child, was not so regarded by
Mill himself in years of maturity, when
surveying his youth. He strongly de-
precated the lamentable waste of pre-
cious time.
Although Mill had doubtless imbibed
many of his fathers opinions, ethical
and political, he seems first to have en-
braced for himself the principles of
uIllll lel1loll ySil vi CWO tllSI LID
return from France. This was the re-
suit of reading Dumonts translation
into French of Bentham's work on leg
islation. Mill avows in his autobiog-
raphy that the reading of this work
made of him different being. - gave
him clearer and broader conception
of what human opinions and institu-
tons ought to be, how far removes
from an ideal condition they are, and
how existing conditions might be vast
ly improved. Mill now felt that he had
philosophy, a religion, In Bentham' S
doctrine of utilitarianism, that condu-
civeness to human welfare should be
the standard by which human acts
should be judged. In later years Mill
modified his belief somewhat but he
never relinquished the main theory
According to the greatest happiness
principle, the ultimate end is an ex-
istence exempt as far as possible from
pain, and as rich as possible in enjoy
ment, both in point of quantity and
quality. This being, according to the
unitarian opinion, the end of human
action, is necessarily also the stand
ard of morality, which may accordingly