Celebrating the Anniversary of J.S. Mill’s Birthday!

To mark J.S. Mill’s birthday this year, I have spent my afternoon and evening today reading about his botanical work and giving the Mill Philosophy Circle website/blog a new look in keeping with his love of nature and trees. He “was a fierce and lifelong advocate of access to the woods and dales on the countryside”[i] so I have changed the background design from an indoor scene to a woodland themed background.

I imagine that on his birthday he might start the day by playing the piano then going for a walk in the woods, collecting samples of plants or even weeds which he thought were undervalued. J. S. Mill was a forerunner of environmental conservation and valued biodiversity so never overlooked flora and fauna because he thought everything in nature has environmental, scientific and medical value[ii]. J.S. Mill discovered many new and rare species which he collected, labelled and shared with the scientific community[iii].

His love of botany and trekking around for samples began when George Bentham took him on Botanical field trips in the Pyrenees when he was still very young[iv]. Over his lifetime, J.S. Mill discovered and preserved specimens locally, in the UK and abroad. He was an avid traveller all around Europe, including Spain, Austria, Italy and Greece[v]. The latter was of particular curiosity to him not only due to his interest in Classical history and Greek Classical literature (which he read in the original Ancient Greek) but also for the amazing new and exciting species he found there[vi].  He personally discovered seven new species but this finding was retrospectively reduced to three when it was claimed that some could be subsumed into the same category[vii]. I find this very surprising given that he was an expert botanist and natural classifications recognise miniscule variations. J.S. Mill also spoke French fluently and spent time periodically in France. Later he had a home in Avignon where he and Harriet are buried. So I’m sure he’d be horrified at recent political arguments and restrictions placed on the freedom of movement to travel, live and work in Europe. Otherwise, he would argue, there is a danger of being narrow-minded and prone to nationalistic arrogance which makes people inward-looking rather than drawing inspiration, ideas and solutions from wherever they can be found in the world.

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[i] Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (London: Atlantic Books, 2008), 234.

[ii] Reeves, 234.

[iii] Nicholas R. Pearce, ‘John Stuart Mill’s Botanical Collections from Greece (a Private Passion)’, Phytologia Balcanica 12, no. 2 (August 2006): 149–64.

[iv] Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 33.

[v] Pearce, ‘John Stuart Mill’s Botanical Collections from Greece (a Private Passion)’, 151.

[vi] Pearce, 152.

[vii] Pearce, 152.