"mental crisis" of John Stuart Mill: The destruction of a mechanical consciousness

In Chapter Five of his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill discusses a "mental crisis" which struck in 1826 and lingered for some time. Mill addresses one causative element of this crisis, a perception of himself at twenty as a "mechanical man." Yet these much-quoted words understate a greater point. I shall argue that Mill's crisis was the destruction of an almost purely mechanical consciousness, or at least a strike at his foundations of a breadth and severity that has not been fully addressed by Mill scholarship. I shall consider various aspects of Mill's life and thought before and after the crisis as a means of identifying the nature of this fundamental change in Mill. These aspects of Mill's thought include philosophy, economics, epistemology, poetry, and politics, and these aspects of Mill's life include education, his relationship with his father and Bentham, his early activism, his influences, and his perceptions of man and society.