John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806, the son of the philosopher and economist James Mill, a friend of Bentham. He never went to school but was educated by his father with extraordinary rigour: Greek at three, Latin at eight, logic at twelve, political economy at thirteen. At twenty he fell into a severe mental crisis, feeling life to be without meaning, and found emotional nourishment again in the poetry of Wordsworth. He worked for thirty-five years at the East India Company. For twenty years he was the intimate friend of the brilliant Harriet Taylor, whom he married after her husband's death, and he said that his best work was their joint thought. He was elected to Parliament and was the first to propose votes for women there.