art Mill,[1] was born in
London 1806, and was from 1823 to 1858 a secretary in the India House;
after the death of his wife he lived (with the exception of two years of
service as a Member of Parliament) at Avignon; his death occurred in
1873. Mill's _System of Logic_ appeared in 1843, 9th ed., 1875; his
_Utilitarianism_, 1863, new ed., 1871; _An Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy_, 1865, 5th ed., 1878; his notes to the new edition
of his father's work, _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, 2d
ed., 1878, also deserve notice. With the phenomenalism of Hume and the
(somewhat corrected) associational psychology of his father as a basis,
Mill makes experience the sole source of knowledge, rejecting _a priori_
and intuitive elements of every sort. Matter he defines as a "permanent
possibility of sensation"; mind is resolved into "a series of feelings with
a background of possibilities of feeling," even though the author is not
unaware of the difficulty involved in the question how a series of feelings
can be aware of itself as a series. Mathematical principles, like all
others, have an experiential origin--the peculiar certitude ascribed to
them by the Kantians is a fiction--and induction is the only fruitful
method of scientific inquiry (even in mental science). The syllogism is
itself a concealed induction.

[Footnote 1: Cf. on Mill. Taine, _Le Positivisme Anglais_, 1864 [English,
by Haye]; the objections of Jevons _(Contemporary Review_, December, 1877
_seq_., reprinted in _Pure Logic and other Minor Works_, 1890; cf. _Mind_,
vol. xvi. pp. 106-110) to Mill's doctrine of the inductive character of
geometry, his treatment of the relation of resemblance, and his exposition
of the four methods of experimental inquiry in their relation to the law of
causation; and the finely conceived essay on utilitarianism, by C.
Hebler, _Philosophische Aufsatze_, 1869, pp. 35-66. [Also Mill's own
_Autobiography_, 1873: Bain's _John Stuart Mill, a Criticism_, 1882; and
T.H. Green, Lectures on the _Logic, Works_, vol. ii.--TR.]]

When I assert the major premise the inference proper is already made, and
in the conclusion the comprehensive formula for a number of particular
truths which was given in the premise is merely explicated, interpreted.
Because universal judgments are for him merely brief expressions for
aggregates of particular truths, Mill is able to say that all knowledge is
generalization, and at the same tim