BENTHAM, JAMES MILL ET LES BENTHAMITES

1. Pour tous les détails de la biographie de Mill, voir James Mill: a biography ; by Alexander Bain, 1882.

2. Lettre à Thomas Thomson. Londres, 13 mars 1802 (Bain, p. 87).

3. La femme du chimiste Thomson, professeur de chimie à Glasgow, était une miss Colqhoun; et Bentham connaissait la famille Colqhoun : est-ce par les Colqhoun que Mill fit la connaissance de Bentham ? (V. Bain, p. 162; Bowring, vol. X, p. 329 et passim). — V. également une lettre de Bentham à David Collins, du & avril 1803 (Bowring, vol. X, p.401), où il pa rle de la Chimie de Thomson, alors lecturer à Edimbourg : il n’a pas encore vu le livre, mais tout le monde en dit du bien. — Thomson était, d'autre part, à Edimbourg, l’ami de George Wilson, lui-même ami de jeunesse de Bentham (Romilly, Diary, 1812, Mem. vol. III, pp. 51-52.).

4. Fragment on Mackintosh, cité par Bain, pp. 71-2 : It is also a matter of fact, that till within a very few years of the death of Mr. Bentham, the men, of any pretension to letters, who shared his intimacy, and saw enough of him to have the opportunity of learning much from his lips, were, in number, two. These men were familiar with the writings of Mr. Bentham; one of them, at least, before he was acquainted with his person. And they were neither of them men, who took anybody for a master, though they were drawn to Mr. Bentham by the sympathy of common opinions, and by the respect due to a man who had done more than anybody else to illustrate and recommend doctrines which they deemed of first rate importance to the happiness of mankind. — John Mill, Autobiography, pp. 54-55 : But my father was the earliest Englishman ofany great mark, who thoroughly understood, and in the main adopted, Bentham’s general views of ethics, government and law: and this was a natural foundation for sympathy between them, and made them familiar companions in a period of Bentham’s life during which he admitted much fewer visitors than was the case subsequently.