The first use I made of the leisure which I gained by disconnecting
myself from the Review, was to finish the Logic. In July and August,
1838, I had found an interval in which to execute what was still undone
of the original draft of the Third Book. In working out the logical
theory of those laws of nature which are not laws of Causation, nor
corollaries from such laws, I was led to recognize kinds as realities in
nature, and not mere distinctions for convenience; a light which I had
not obtained when the First Book was written, and which made it
necessary for me to modify and enlarge several chapters of that Book.
The Book on Language and Classification, and the chapter on the
Classification of Fallacies, were drafted in the autumn of the same
year; the remainder of the work, in the summer and autumn of 1840. From
April following to the end of 1841, my spare time was devoted to a
complete re-writing of the book from its commencement. It is in this way
that all my books have been composed. They were always written at least
twice over; a first draft of the entire work was completed to the very
end of the subject, then the whole begun again de novo; but
incorporating, in the second writing, all sentences and parts of
sentences of the old draft, which appeared as suitable to my purpose as
anything which I could write in lieu of them. I have found great
advantages in this system of double redaction. It combines, better than
any other mode of composition, the freshness and vigour of the first
conception, with the superior precision and completeness resulting from
prolonged thought. In my own case, moreover, I have found that the
patience necessary for a careful elaboration of the details of
composition and expression, costs much less effort after the entire
subject has been once gone through, and the substance of all that I find
to say has in some manner, however imperfect, been got upon paper. The
only thing which I am careful, in the first draft, to make as perfect as
I am able, is the arrangement. If that is bad, the whole thread on
which the ideas string themselves becomes twisted; thoughts placed in a
wrong connexion are not expounded in a manner that suits the right, and a
first draft with this original vice is next to useless as a foundation
for the final treatment.
Note from KBJ: Philosophical writing was something Mill did in his spare time, for he was an employee of the East India Company from the age of 16 to the age of 52.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 