Antis Loizides has produced an enlightening study of ancient Greek intellectual influences on James Mill and his son John Stuart. He makes a convincing case that Plato's ideas in particular, especially his Socratic method of dialectic, as much as Bentham's ideas, helped to shape not only James's classical utilitarian philosophy but also John's enlarged utilitarian 'art of life', though both Mills agreed with George Grote in rejecting Plato's metaphysical idealism, mysticism and distaste for democracy. The study is full of important insights and sheds light on many aspects of John's unusual utilitarianism. For instance, Loizides calls attention to James's suggestive remarks about higher pleasures, including the remark that mental pleasures include bodily sensations of pleasure or at least their traces in memory or imagination as ingredients. To take another example, he also demonstrates through numerous quotations that John rejects the internalist doctrine, shared by idealists such as Plato and Kant, that knowledge of virtue is sufficient to motivate us to act virtuously, a doctrine incorrectly attributed to Mill by modern utilitarians such as R.M. Hare. Loizides concludes his study with an interesting discussion in which he compares Mill's hedonistic conception of happiness with the Greek idea of eudaimonia.

He speculates that, for Mill, a noble and virtuous life is also the most pleasant life. But he also suggests at times that rational deliberation is what ultimately directs an individual to develop a noble and virtuous character, and that feelings of pleasure merely accompany rather than motivate noble and virtuous activities. In my view, that suggestion is incompatible with Mill's hedonism and his rather Humean claim that feeling, not reason, is the ultimate spring of human action.