James Mill

James Mill (1773-1836), British philosopher-economist, the father of John Stuart Mill; he expounded and developed the utilitarian doctrine of the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Mill was born in Northwater Bridge, Angus County, Scotland, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. In 1803, he became the editor of the London Literary Journal, and in 1805 he became editor of St. James' Chronicle. From 1806 to 1818 he was engaged in writing his History of India. Although he sharply criticized the East India Company and the British administration in India, in 1819 he was appointed to a position in the examiner's office of the India House in London. During this period Mill became a close associate of Bentham. As one of the leading exponents of chrestomathic, or useful, learning on a nonsectarian basis, Mill played a prominent role in the establishment of the University of London in 1825. Mill was also the founder of philosophic radicalism, a system of thought based on the teachings of the British economist David Ricardo and presented by Mill in Elements of Political Economy (1821) (see Radicals). In his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Mind (1829), Mill applied utilitarian doctrines to psychology, basing his theory of the human mind on the principles of associationism.