<P> In the English language , the word `` individualism '' was first introduced , as a pejorative , by the Owenites in the late 1830s , although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint - Simonianism or came up with it independently . A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith , who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite . Although an early Owenite socialist , he eventually rejected its collective idea of property , and found in individualism a `` universalism '' that allowed for the development of the `` original genius . '' Without individualism , Smith argued , individuals can not amass property to increase one 's happiness . William Maccall , another Unitarian preacher , and probably an acquaintance of Smith , came somewhat later , although influenced by John Stuart Mill , Thomas Carlyle , and German Romanticism , to the same positive conclusions , in his 1847 work `` Elements of Individualism '' . </P>
<P> In the English language , the word `` individualism '' was first introduced , as a pejorative , by the Owenites in the late 1830s , although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint - Simonianism or came up with it independently . A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith , who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite . Although an early Owenite socialist , he eventually rejected its collective idea of property , and found in individualism a `` universalism '' that allowed for the development of the `` original genius . '' Without individualism , Smith argued , individuals can not amass property to increase one 's happiness . William Maccall , another Unitarian preacher , and probably an acquaintance of Smith , came somewhat later , although influenced by John Stuart Mill , Thomas Carlyle , and German Romanticism , to the same positive conclusions , in his 1847 work `` Elements of Individualism '' . </P>
where did the idea of individualism come from
where did the idea of individualism come from
by the Owenites in the late 1830s
by the Owenites in the late 1830s