[Autobiography by John Stuart Mill]@TWC D-Link book
Autobiography

CHAPTER I
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I also read, in 1813, the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theoctetus inclusive: which last dialogue, I venture to think, would have been better omitted, as it was totally impossible I should understand it.

But my father, in all his teaching, demanded of me not only the utmost that I could do, but much that I could by no possibility have done.

What he was himself willing to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged from the fact, that I went through the whole process of preparing my Greek lessons in the same room and at the same table at which he was writing: and as in those days Greek and English lexicons were not, and I could make no more use of a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be made without having yet begun to learn Latin, I was forced to have recourse to him for the meaning of every word which I did not know.

This incessant interruption, he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and wrote under that interruption several volumes of his History and all else that he had to write during those years.
The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this part of my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught me: it was the task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness.
But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received.
Much of it consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father's discourses to me, chiefly during our walks.

From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood.


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