This volume presents eighty-nine letters exchanged between John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte between 1841 and 1847. They address important issues of the mid-nineteenth century in philosophy, science, economics, and politics. Cumulatively, these letters provide a humanistic view of Western Europe and its social problems. They add valuable perspective to what we know about the work of Mill and Comte, in a critical period of English and French thought. The correspondence begins with an admiring letter from Mill who considers himself a positivist at the tune and writes to Comte as to an elder colleague. A close friendship developed, in the course of which they discussed matters of common concern. Their understanding extends to personal experiences, including their respective mental crises at an early age. The opinions expressed about their contemporaries are significant and include comments on Thomas Carlyle, John and Sarah Austin, and Alexander Bain, on philosophers and major authors in France, Germany, and Italy. Mill and Comte eventually encountered issues on which they could not come to consensus, especially the equality of women. While Mill was an ardent defender of women's rights, Comte supported the traditional hierarchy that endowed men with social and political superiority. According to Jerome H. Buckley, Gurner Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Harvard University, "The correspondence of Mill and Comte, now available for the first time in English translation, is a remarkable intellectual exchange, a dialogue of real significance in the history of ideas." This volume will be of great interest to philosophers, historians, economists, women's studies scholars, and political scientists.

In addition to "On Liberty" and "On Representative Government," this new selection of Mill's writings includes, among others, a number of less known of his writings, such as: "Civilization," "Perfectibility," "The Negro Question," "On Education," "On Aristocracy," "On Marriage," "On Free Press," "Socialism," Mill's review of Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," his letters to Tocqueville, and several other writings. If one can use a somewhat exaggerated language, Mill's writings are to liberal-democracy what Marx and Engels' writings were to Communism. Both systems gave expression to 19th century man's longing for equality and justice, both promised to liberate him from the shackles of oppression, authority and tradition. Instead of liberating man, Communism created the most brutal system in human history, and its spectacular fall in 1989 is one of history's greatest events. Western world today shows that liberal-democracy is no longer a benign doctrine, which advocates free market, minimum state and individual liberties, but, like Communism, is an all-encompassing ideology which forces an individual to abdicate his freedom and soul in favor of a Communist-like collective. As many critics of real Socialism could see the seeds of totalitarianism in the writings of Marx and Engels, so one can see the seeds of liberal totalitarianism in Mill's writings. This new edition is intended to help readers to understand why democratic-liberalism came so close to its 19th century ideological rival.

This is a new release of the original 1951 edition.

A young activist and highly-educated Cambridge Union debater, Mill would become in time the highest-ranked English thinker of the nineteenth century, the author of the landmark essay On Liberty and one of the most passionate reformers and advocates of his revolutionary, opinionated age. As a journalist he fired off a weekly article on Irish land reform as the people of that nation starved, as an MP he introduced the first vote on women's suffrage, fought to preserve free-speech and opposed slavery, and, in his private life, pursued for two decades a love affair with another man's wife. To understand Mill and his contribution, Richard Reeves explores his life and work in tandem. His book is a riveting and authoritative biography of a man raised to promote happiness, whose life was spent in the pursuit of truth and liberty for all.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.