ture is both possible and worth while, if by self-culture individuality is to be fostered and developed. Three other conceptions have an important connection in Mill's mind with the idea of individuality. These are spontaneity, diversity, and competition. The influence of the philosophy of romanticism upon Mill, through Coleridge, Maurice, Sterling, and others, has been alluded to above. An integral part of this philosophy was the idea of the development of the individual as something that took place spontaneously, from within-a doctrine very different from anything in the philosophy of the early utilitarians. Mill was acquainted with the writings of Pestalozzi, whose experiments in education expressed and substantiated this view of the nature of the individual. Pestalozzi, under the influence of Rousseau, had come to the conclusion that education was not something that could be gotten only out of books, not primarily learning Greek and Latin,-the current doctrine since the Renaissance-but came somehow from within the individual. His desire was to educate the whole man. He took a number of poor children into his home at Neuhof, and trained them on the farm and in the work shop. Education had to do with things, he thought, not with words. We should go from "things to words." For him the center of interest was the child himself, not the things he was going to be taught, and the most important thing about the child was his own spontaneous activity. In Pestalozzi (as later in Carlyle) we find the figure of the individual growing from within, like a plant or a tree. He says: "Teach me, summer day, that man, formed from the dust of the earth, grows and ripens like a plant, rooted in the soil." Mill mentions Pestalozzi as a particularly important figure in the history of the development of the conception of the value of individual freedom. Pestalozzi's conception of the self-activity of the individual, of the growth and development of the self from within, is almost the direct antithesis of Locke, Helvetius, and James Mill, and the conception of the mind as a tabula rasa. John Stuart Mill tells us that his father, when he was teaching, counted on the intelligibility of the abstract, presented by itself without the help of any concrete form. And it must be admitted that in the case of his son, his pedagogical theory was pretty well justified by its results. But the new viewpoint characteristic of Rousseau and Pestalozzi made a profound impression upon John Stuart Mill. In the essay on liberty in later years, Mill writes: "Human nature is not a machine,-but a tree, which requires to grow and develops itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing."" Writing of Mrs. Mill in the Autobiography he speaks of th. "spontaneous tendency" of her faculties, "which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom.' He says, "Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius."" The idea of spontaneity, as a more definitely formulated scientific concept, was coming into importance in psychology about the time that Mill was working on these problems. Bain, in a chapter on "Spontaneous Activity and Feelings of Movement" in The Senses and the Intellect (published in 1855), states that "movement precedes sensation, and is at the outset independent of any stimulus from without. Action is a more intimate and inseparable property of our constitution than any of our sensations, and in fact enters as a component part into every one of the senses, giving them the character of compounds while itself is a simple and elementary property."" "Liberty, p. 117. " Autobiography, p. 130. Among the arguments for this position he mentions the "exuberant activity of the young," and says: "The activity of young animals in general, and of animals remarkable for their active endowments (as the insect tribe), may be cited as strongly favouring the hypothesis of spontaneity. When the kitten plays with a worsted ball, we always attribute the overflowing fullness of moving energy to the creature's own inward stimulus, to which the ball merely serves for a pretext. So an active young hound, refreshed by sleep or kept in confinement, pants for being let loose, not because of anything that attracts his view or kindles up his ear, but because a rush of activity courses through his members, rendering him uneasy till the confined energy has found vent in a chase or a run.' A considerable part of Mill's review of The Senses and the Intellect, which appeared in the Edinburgh for October, 1859, is an exposition of the place of spontaneity. This contribution on Bain's part Mill characterizes as "the first capital improvement which Mr. Bain has made in the Association Psychology as left by his predecessors." Bain, says Mill: "holds that the brain does not act solely in obedience to impulses, but is also a self-acting instrument; that the nervous influence which, being conveyed through the motory nerves, excites the muscles into action, is generated automatically in the brain itself, not, of course, lawlessly and without a cause, but under the organic stimulus of nutrition; and manifests itself in the general rush of bodily activity, which all healthy animals exhibit after food and repose, and in the random motions which we see constantly made without apparent end or purpose by infants. This doctrine, of which the accumulated proofs will be found in Mr. Bain's first volume (pages 73 to 80), supplies him with a simple explanation of the origin of voluntary power." And it supplies Mill with further evidence for the truth of the view of human nature on which his doctrine of individuality was based. The second principle is that of diversity. Self-culture "Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, p. 68. is valuable precisely because people are different from each other, and as a result of self-culture many new and interesting things will come to pass. Diversity is something to be fostered and encouraged. As a sort of text for the essay on liberty Mill quotes the following from Wilhelm von Humboldt's The Sphere and Duties of Government; "The grand leading principle toward which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity."" Later we find another quotation from Von Humboldt to the effect that for the development of personality there is required "freedom and variety in situations." Thus diversity comes in in two ways. Mill recognized that as a matter of fact people are different from each other and that for the development of individuality there must be diversity also in their surroundings. But the two things go together. If individuality is recognized and fostered it will produce a social situation where there will be increasingly more scope for individuality. The admission that people differ among themselves is the important point. It is a radical departure from the doctrine of the early Utilitarians. However they may have acted in the every day relations of life, their philosophy was based on the hypothesis that the individuals who made up society could be regarded for all intents and purposes as being identical. But John Stuart Mill saw that this was by no means the whole truth. He says: "There is no reason that all human existence should be constructed on some one or some small number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet?" " People are different. It is only by recognizing and cultivating their peculiar gifts on the part of individuals, that the most worthwhile social order may be achieved: "It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it, and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to." * Mill saw too the importance of variety in man's environment. His account of the oppression he felt during the mental crisis at the thought of the exhaustibility of the combinations of musical tones shows the kind of thing he was reacting against. His love of natural scenery, and his fear lest with the growth of mechanical civilization the beauties of primitive nature would be crowded out, is another indication of this same feeling." If to James Mill uniformity was a cherished hypothesis, to John Stuart Mill it was a practical danger. The other important concept is that of competition. It is what Mill calls in one connection, the "principle of antagonism." It is essential for individual development that there should be opposition to be overcome, conflicting opinions to be considered, competition with others and emulation Liberty, p. 125. Liberty, p. 120. *Political Economy, Vol. II. p. 339; Letters, Vol. II, pp. 55, 56. |