This essay addresses what will be studied in regard to J. S. Mill within coming ten years, and the research methods employed. For the present, Mill students are strongly recommended to compare works on Mill by two historians, S. Hollander and S. Mawatari (The Economics of J. S. Mill, only in Japanese), and to draw suggestions regarding the topics and methods to be followed.
Hollander's position as a positivist historian is seriously damaged by his adherence to the continuity theorem, continuity from Ricardo to Mill, and continuity from classical to neo-classical economics. The inverse relation of wages and profit via price-mechanism, even if Ricardo had, was not what Mill succeeded from Ricardo. Mill insisted on the inverse relation in real terms. As a result, he paradoxically developed an almost complete theory of the partial equilibrium price-mechanism. Hollander's discussions regarding methodology, social philosophy and economic policies are somewhat too narrow.
It follows that there will be four fruitful research topics: First, J. S. Mill's philosophy of science; second, value and distribution in Ricardo and Mill; third, J. S. Mill's theory on the state and the market, and fourth, Mill's position in the history of Utilitarianism from Hume to Sidgwick. The last area is that which I am most interested in.
