Dissertations and Discussions Political, Philosophical, and Historical. Volume 2

A prodigy, who was already fluent in Greek and beginning studies in Latin by age 8, and who was reading Plato and Aristotle's works in their original languages by age 12, Mill was a trained rigorous intellectual and highly influential thinker. His father, an uncompromising disciplinarian, was his sole educator during these early developmental years. Critically analyzing the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham, the father of unitarianism, he soon became a prominent spokesman of utilitarianism, a term which he coined and which was inspired by John Galt's novel, Annals of the Parish. He would even create the first Utilitarian Society. However, Mill, indebted to Bentham, sought to humanize his doctrines in his On Liberty, a text partly inspired by his wife, Harriet Taylor. Some of his last works would be on defending women's suffrage: The Enfranchisement of Women and The Subjection of Women.