Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, in Two Volumes

xxiv, 453; vi, 403 pp. 8vo. This work was first published in 1829 and was inspired greatly by the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. It was immediately valuable for its scope (comprising such complex subjects as emotional states and morality), and for its insistence on precise definitions of terms. This edition includes notes illustrative and critical by Alexander Bain, Andrew Findlater, and George Grote, and is edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher who became a major proponent of the Utilitarian philosophy championed by Jeremy Bentham. J.S. Mill was James Mill's son, and followed in his father's footsteps as an academic and social thinker. J.S. was just 23 when this work was first published, but the notes he provides here were printed just four years before his death. Thus, they provide very interesting perspective on how his father's work inspired his own philosophical theories, and also how his own progression of thought during his life affected his view of the work. The addition of J.S. Mill's editorial notes expanded the work to nearly 900 pages, where the original was about 650, so there is a great deal of the son's thought here in addition to the father's, making this by far the superior edition of the work from a philosophical standpoint.