Chapter IV Politics and Ethics I. Mill's Problem In the Political Economy Mill had touched upon certain ethical and political questions. These are explicitly treated in a later group of works. The first and most important was the essay upon Liberty (1859). I have already spoken of the elaborate composition of this, his most carefully written treatise.(1*) The book, welcomed by many even of his opponents, contains also the clearest statement of his most characteristic doctrine. The treatises on Representative Government (1861), upon the Subjection of Women (written at the same time, but not published till 1869), and upon Utilitarianism (in Fraser's Magazine, 1861, and as a book in 1863), are closely connected with the Liberty, and together give what may be called his theory of conduct.(2*) I shall try to bring out their leading principles. The Liberty, says Mill, could have no claim to originality except in so far as thoughts which are already common property receive a special impress when uttered by a thoughtful mind. Hymns to liberty, indeed, have been sung so long and so persistently that the subject ought to have been exhausted. The admission that liberty can be in any case an evil is generally evaded by a device of touching simplicity. Liberty, when bad, is not called liberty. 'Licence, they mean,' as Milton puts it, 'when they cry liberty.' Bentham exposes the sophistry very neatly as a case of 'sham-distinctions' in the book of 'Fallacies.'(3*) The general sentiment is perfectly intelligible from the jacobin point of view. At a time when legislators were supposed to have created constitutions, and priests to have invented religions, history was taken as a record of the struggle of mankind against fraud and force. War is simply murder on a large scale, and government force organised to support tyrants. All political evils can be attributed to kings, and superstition to priests, without blaming subjects for slavishness and stupidity. Such language took the tone of a new gospel during the great revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century. Men who were sweeping away the effete institutions upheld by privileged classes assumed 'Liberty' to be an absolute and ultimate principle. The Utilitarians, though political allies, were opposed in theory to this method of argument. Liberty, like everything else, must be judged by its effects upon happiness. Society, according to them, is held together by the sovereign. His existence, therefore, is essentially necessary, and his power almost unlimited. The greater was the importance of deciding when and where it should be used. Bentham and James Mill assumed that all ends would be secured by making the sovereign the servant of the people, and therefore certain to aim at the greatest happiness. They reached the same conclusions, therefore, as those who reached them by a rather shorter cut, and their doctrine differed little in its absolute and a priori tendency. Thorough democracy would give the panacea. J. S. Mill had become heretical. I have noticed in his life how he had been alarmed by the brutality and ignorance of the lowest classes, and had come to doubt whether 'liberty,' as understood by his masters, would not mean the despotic rule of the ignorant. The doubts which he felt were shared by many who had set out with the same political creed. Here we come once more to the essentially false position in which the philosophical radicals found themselves. The means which they heartily approved led to ends which they entirely repudiated. They not only approved, but were most active in advocating, the adoption of democratic measures. They demanded, in the name of liberty, that men should have a share in making the laws by which they were bound. The responsibility of rulers was, according to James Mill, the one real principle of politics; and it followed that, to use the sacred phrase, the 'sinister interests, which distract them should be destroyed. The legislation which followed the Reform Bill gave an approximate sanction to their doctrine. The abolition of rotten-boroughs destroyed the sinister interest of the land owners; the reform of municipalities, the sinister interest of the self-elected corporations; the new poor-law, the sinister interest of the parish vestries; and the ecclesiastical reforms showed that great prelates and ancient cathedrals were not too sacred to be remodelled and made responsible. The process inevitably smoothed the way for centralisation. The state, one may say, was beginning to come to life. The powers which, in a centralised government, are exercised by an administrative hierarchy, had been treated under the category of private property. To introduce responsibility was to remove the obstacles to uniform machinery. Vigorous action by a central authority had been impossible so long as power had been parcelled out among a number of different centres, each regarding its privileges as invested with all the sanctity of private property. The duke, who claimed that he 'might do as he would with his own' -- including his boroughs -- had surrendered that part of his property to the new voters. They enjoyed their rights not as a personal attribute, but ill virtue of satisfying some uniform condition. For the time, indeed, the condition included, not simply a ripe age and masculine sex, but 'ten-pound householdership.' Power held by men as members of a class is, at any rate, no longer private property, but something belonging to the class in general, and naturally used in the interests of the class collectively. The legislature could make general rules where it used rather to confirm a set of distinct bargains made with each proprietor of ultimate authority. So far, the generalising and centralising process was both inevitable and approved by the Utilitarians. Nor could they, as prominent advocates of codification and law-reform generally, object to the increased vigour of legislation no longer trammelled by the multitude of little semi-independent centres. But a further implication often escaped their notice. 'Liberty' is increased by destroying privilege in the sense that the individual acquires more influence upon the laws that bind him. But it does not follow that he will be 'freer' in the sense of having fewer laws to bind him. The contrary was the case. The objection to the privileges was precisely that the possessors retained them without discharging the correlative functions. The nobles and the corporations had not been too active, but too indolent. They had left things undone, or left them to be done after a haphazard fashion by individual energy. The much-lauded 'self-government' implied an absence of government, or precisely the state of things which was no longer possible when the old privileges were upset. The newly organised municipalities had to undertake duties which had been neglected by the close corporations, and others which had been clumsily discharged by individuals. The result was that the philosophical radicals found that they were creating a Frankenstein. They were not limiting the sphere of government in general, only giving power to a new class which would in many ways use it more energetically. The difference came out in the economic matters where the doctrine of non-interference had been most actively preached. The Chartists and their allies claimed their 'rights' as indisputable possessions, whatever might be the consequences. To the Utilitarians this meant that the Chartists were prepared in the name of a priori principles to attack the most necessary institutions, and fly in the face of 'laws of nature.' The old system had tended to keep the poor man down. The Chartist system would help him to plunder the rich. The right principle was to leave everything to 'supply and demand.' As the contrast became clearer, some of the philosophical radicals subsided into Whiggism, and others sank into actual Tories. Mill remained faithful, but with modified views. He had seen in the hostility of the lower classes to sound economy an illustration of the ignorance, selfishness, and brutality of the still uneducated mass.(4*) But he drew a moral of his own. The impression made upon him by Tocqueville's Democracy in America is characteristic. That remarkable book led him to aim at a philosophical view of the whole question. It was an impartial study of the whole question of the social and political tendencies summed up in the phrase, 'democracy.' The general result was to open Mill's eyes to both the good and evil sides of democracy, to regard democracy in some shape as inevitable instead of making it a religion or denouncing it as diabolical; and to consider how the evils might be corrected while free play might be allowed to the beneficial tendencies. It enlightened him, he says, more especially on the great question of centralisation, and freed him from the 'unreasoning prejudices' which led some of the radicals to oppose even such measures as the new Poor Law.(5*) So much may indicate Mill's general attitude; and, if his conclusions were questionable, the main purpose was so far eminently philosophical. Mill begins his Liberty by insisting upon the danger to which his attention had been roused by the course of events. The conflict between liberty and authority led to the demand that rulers should become.responsible to their subjects; and when this result was secured, a new evil appeared. The tyranny of the majority might supplant the tyranny of rulers; and, if less formidable politically, might be even worse spiritually. 'Social tyranny' may be more penetrative than political, and enslave the soul itself.(6*) In England the 'yoke of law' may be lighter, but the 'yoke of opinion' is perhaps heavier than elsewhere in Europe. When the masses have learned their power, they will probably be as tyrannical in legislation as in public opinion.(7*) The purpose of his essay is to assert 'one very simple principle' by which this tendency may be restrained. That principle is (briefly) that the sole end which warrants interference with individual action is 'self-protection.' He will argue not from 'abstract rights,' but from 'utility' understood in its largest sense, and corresponding 'to the interests of a man as a progressive being.' II. INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY The principle thus formulated is applicable both in the sphere of speculation and in the sphere of conduct. Mill first considers 'liberty of thought and discussion.' He has here the advantage of starting from a generally admitted principle. Every one now admits, in words at least, the doctrine of toleration. Mill might have adduced a catena of authorities beginning with the seventeenth century writers who, having themselves suffered persecution, were slowly perceiving that persecution even of error was objectionable. It is a proof of his ability that he could give fresh interest to so old a topic. In the previous generation indeed it had still been a practical question. The early Utilitarians had to attack the disqualifications imposed upon dissenters, and had remonstrated against the persecution of Carlisle. That incident had started Mill's literary career. Moreover, as he points out, the prosecutions of Pooley, Truelove, and Mr Holyoake showed that the old spirit was not extinct in 1857.(8*) Still, these were but 'rags and remnants of persecution.' In denouncing them Mill was going with the tide. The ground upon which he plants his argument is more significant. The older writers had chiefly insisted upon the question of right. It cannot be just to punish a man for acting rightly, and it must surely be right for me to speak what I conscientiously believe to be true. One of James Mill's articles in the Westminster took this ground. Samuel Bailey had argued that a man cannot be responsible to men for his beliefs, inasmuch as they are beyond his own control. He may be foolish, but he cannot be immoral -- a thesis which James Mill defended against certain theological opponents.(9*) J. S. Mill, taking the ground of 'utility,' is led to wider considerations. He argues in substance that the suppression of opinions or of their free utterance is always opposed to the most vital interests of society. Hence the question as to liberty of thought connects itself with the whole question as to liberty of conduct. It comes under his general principle as to the rightful provinces of collective and individual action. His general conclusion upon freedom of dismission is summed up in four propositions.(10*) The opinions suppressed may, in the first place, be true. To deny that possibility is to assume infallibility. Secondly, if not wholly, they may be partly, true; and to suppress them is to prevent necessary corrections of the accepted beliefs. Thirdly, even a true opinion which refuses to be tested by controversy will be imperfectly understood. And fourthly, an opinion so held will become a dead formula, and only 'cumber the ground,' preventing the growth of real and heartfelt convictions. The general validity of the arguments is unimpeachable, and the vigour of statement deserves all commendation. Mill puts victoriously the case for the entire freedom of thought and discussion. The real generosity of sentiment, and the obvious sincerity which comes from preaching what he had practised, gives new force to well-worn topics. The interest of the race not only requires the fullest possible liberty to form and to communicate our own opinions, but rather makes the practice a duty. Though Mill gives the essential reasons, his presentation of the case has significant peculiarities. Even if an opinion be true, he says, it ought to be open to discussion. He proceeds to urge the more doubtful point, that contradiction, even when the truth is contradicted, is desirable in itself. Free discussion not only destroys error, but invigorates truth. It preserves a wholesome intellectual atmosphere, which kills the weeds and stimulates the healthy growths. In mathematical reasoning, indeed, the evidence is all on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But as soon as we reach any question of the truths even of physical, and still more of the moral, sciences, truth must be attained by balancing 'two sets of conflicting reasons.'(11*) The doctrine, true or false, which is not contradicted, comes to be held as a 'dead belief.' An objector is supposed to observe that on this showing, the existence of error is necessary to the vitality of truth, and that a belief must perish just because it is unanimously accepted. Mill 'affirms no such thing.' He admits 'that the stock of accepted truths must increase.' But the growth of unanimity, though 'inevitable and indispensable,' has its drawbacks. It would be desirable to encourage contradiction even by artificial contrivances. The Socratic dialectics and the school disputations more or less supplied a want which we have now no means of satisfying.(12*) By systematic discussion of first principles, men are forced to understand the full bearing and the true grounds of their professed beliefs. This doctrine is illustrated, and no doubt was derived in part from the early discussions in which Mill had trained his logical powers. It suggests a valuable mode of mental discipline; but as a statement of the conditions of belief, it seems to confuse the accident with the essence. The bare fact of sincere contradiction surely tends to weaken belief; and resistance to contradiction, though it measures the strength of belief, is not the cause of its strength. No doubt a truth may be strengthened in passing through the ordeal of contradiction, so far as we are thus forced to realise its meaning. The same result may be produced by other means, and, above all, by applying belief to practice. We believe in arithmetical truths, partly because the oftener we have to count the more we realise the truth that two and two make four. Whatever the original source of our beliefs, the way to make them vivid is to act upon them. Mill himself incidentally observes that men have a living belief in religious doctrines, 'just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them.'(13*) That, I take it, hits the point. The doctrine, for example, that we should turn the second cheek is practically superseded, not because it is never contradicted, but because it does not correspond to our genuine passions or actions. Beliefs, true or erroneous, preserve their vitality so long as they are put into practice, and not the less because they are held unanimously. What is true is that they are then rather instincts than opinions. Beliefs do not die when unchallenged, but are the more likely to be 'dormant' or held implicitly without conscious formulation. This leads to a further result. As Mill insists in the Logic, 'verification' is an essential part of proof. To act upon a belief is one way of verifying. The fact that we apply a theory successfully is also a valid proof that it is true in the great mass of everyday knowledge. But a religious belief is not verified in the same sense. The fact that I act upon it, and am satisfied with my action, proves that it is in harmony with my emotions, not that it is a true statement about facts. The persuasive force often remains, though the logic has become unsatisfactory. This suggests the question as to the nature of a satisfactory 'verification.' We clearly hold innumerable beliefs which we have not fully tested for ourselves. Mill supposes his opponent to urge that simple people must take many things on trust.(14*) We might rather say that even the wisest has to take nine-tenths of his beliefs on trust. We may rightly believe many truths which we are incompetent either to discover or to prove directly because we can verify them indirectly. We can accept whole systems of truth, though we are unable to follow the direct proofs. A belief in astronomical theories, for example, is justified for the vast majority, not because they can understand the arguments of Laplace or Newton, but because they may know how elaborately and minutely the conclusions of astronomers are daily verified. The question is not whether we should take things on trust; we cannot help it; but upon what conditions our trust becomes rational. Authority cannot simply justify itself; but it is reasonable to trust an authority which challenges constant examination of its credentials and thorough verification of its conclusions. Mill's tendency is not, of course, to deny, but to treat this too slightly. He is inclined to regard ' authority' as something logically opposed to reason, or, in other words, to accept the old Protestant version of the 'right of private judgment'; or to speak as if every man had to build up his whole structure of belief from the very foundations. There is, he would admit, a structure of knowledge erected by the convergence of competent inquirers, and tested by free discussion and careful verification at every point of its growth. New theories give and receive strength from their 'solidarity' with established theories; and 'authority' is derived from the reciprocal considerations of various results of investigation. Mill is apt to speak as if each thinker and each opinion were isolated. The 'real advantage which truth has, consists,' he says, 'in this, that though a true opinion may be often suppressed, it will be generally rediscovered, and may be rediscovered at a favourable moment, when it will escape persecution and grow strong enough to defend itself.'(15*) Persecution may succeed and often has succeeded. The doctrine that it cannot succeed is a 'pleasant falsehood' which has become commonplace by repetition. The statement is surely incomplete. Errors, like truths, may be 'rediscovered' or revived. There are 'idols of the tribe' -- fallacies dependent upon permanent weaknesses of the intellect itself, which appear at all ages and may gain strength under favourable circumstances. Truth becomes definitively established when it is capable of fitting in with a nucleus of verified and undeniable truth. Mill seems to have in mind such a truth as the discovery of a particular fact. If the existence of America had been forgotten, it would be rediscovered by the next Columbus. If the dream of an Atlantis had once vanished, we need never dream it again. But the statement is inadequate when the truth discovered is some new law which not merely adds to our knowledge, but helps to systematise and to affect our whole method of reasoning. This position affects Mill's view of the efficacy of persecution. He argues, rather oddly, from the suppression of Lollards, Hussites, and Protestants. Mill certainly did not hold that the suppressed opinions were true; and he does not attempt to prove that they would not have died out of themselves. If Protestantism was suppressed in Spain, the reason may have been that it was so little congenial to the Spanish people, that the persecutions were on the side of the really dominant tendencies of the majority. That a tree without roots may fall the quicker when the wind blows needs no proof; but is not conclusive as to the effect upon a living tree. The true view, I venture to think, is different.(16*) Opinions are not a set of separate dogmas which can be caught and stamped out by themselves. So long as thought is active it works by methods too subtle to be met by such coarse weapons. It allows the dogma to persist, but evacuates it of meaning. The whole structure becomes honeycombed and rotten, as when in France sceptics had learned to say everything without overtly saying anything. Persecution directed against this or that separate theory only embitters and poisons a process which is inevitable if people are to think at all; and persecution can only succeed, either where it is superfluous, or where it is so systematic and vigorous as to suppress all intellectual activity. In either case the result is most lamentable, and the admission only strengthens the case against persecuting. Persecution can only succeed by paralysing the whole intellectual movement. I think, then, that Mill, though essentially in the right, has an inadequate perception of one aspect of the question. Elsewhere(17*) he complains that we have substituted an apotheosis of instinct for an apotheosis of reason, and so fallen into an infinitely more 'degrading idolatry.' Here, he seems inclined to attack all beliefs not due to the individual reason acting independently. He accentuates too decidedly the absolute value, not of freedom, but of its incidental result, contradiction. He seems to hold that opposition to an established opinion is good in itself. He would approve of circle-squarers and perpetual-motion makers because they oppose established scientific doctrines. He admires originality even when it implies stupidity. Intelligence shows itself as much in recognising a valid proof as in rejecting a fallacy; and the progress of thought is as dependent upon co-operation and the acceptance of rational authority as upon rejecting errors and declining to submit to arbitrary authority. A man after all ought to realise the improbability of his being right against a consensus of great thinkers. Mill himself remarks, when criticising Bentham, that even originality is not 'a more necessary part of the philosophical character than a thoughtful regard for previous thinkers and for the collective mind of the human race.'(18*) That, I take it, is perfectly true, but is apt to pass out of sight in his argument. The ideal state is not one of perpetual contradiction of first principles, but one in which contradiction has led to the establishment of a rational authority. III. THE DECAY OF INDIVIDUALITY I have insisted upon this chiefly because a similar error seems to intrude into the more difficult problems which follow. The real difficulty of toleration arises when we have to draw the line between speculation and action. Is it possible to discriminate absolutely? to give absolute freedom to thought and yet to maintain institutions which presuppose agreement upon at least some general principles? If men, as Mill asks, should be free to form and to utter opinions, should they not be free to act upon their opinions -- to carry them out, so long at least as it is 'at their own risk and peril' -- in their lives?(19*) How does the principle present itself in this case? Mill has declined(20*) to take advantage of any assumption of absolute right. He wishes to give a positive ground; to show that the liberty which he demands corresponds in point of fact to a necessary factor of human progress. His own doctrine is that the 'development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being'; and he adopts as identical the doctrine of Wilhelm von Humboldt,(21*) that the right end of man is 'the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.' Humboldt considers this end to be 'prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason.' Mill would prefer, we may suppose, to have regarded it as the uniform teaching of experience. In either case, it is a broad and elevated doctrine which few thinkers would deny in general terms. It is, moreover, eminently characteristic of Mill in his best mood. He never wrote more forcibly than in his exposition of this doctrine. He is now stimulated by the belief that he is preaching in painfully deaf ears: In advocating freedom of thought or denouncing despotism he was enforcing the doctrines most certain of popular applause. But nobody cared much for 'individuality' or objected to the subtler forms of moral tyranny. The masses are satisfied with their own ways; and even 'moral and social reformers' want as a rule to suppress all morality but their own. Mill is uttering forebodings common to the most cultivated class. The fear lest the growth of democracy should imply a crushing out of all the higher culture has been uttered in innumerable forms by some of our most eloquent writers and keenest thinkers. The course of events since Mill's death has certainly not weakened such fears. The problem is still with us, and certainly not solved. Mill's view is eminently characteristic of his whole doctrine. How, starting as a democrat, he had been led to a strong sense or the possible evils of democracy, I have already tried to show. I have now to inquire into the relation of this view to his general theory. 'Custom' in conduct corresponds to tradition in opinion. So far as you make it your guide, you need no faculty but that of 'ape-like imitation.'(22*) You cultivate neither your reason nor your will when you let the world choose your plan of life. You become at best a useful automaton -- not a valuable human being; and of all the works of man, which should be perfected and beautified, the first in importance is surely man himself. Obedience to custom implies condemnation of 'strong impulses' as a snare and a peril. And yet strong impulses are but a name for energy, and may be the source of the 'most passionate love of virtue and the sternest self-control.' Individual energy was once perhaps too strong for the 'social principle.' Now 'society' has fairly got the better of individuality. We live in dread of the omnipresent censorship of our neighbours, desire only to do what others do, bow even our minds to the yoke, shun 'eccentricity' as a crime, and allow our human capacities to be starved and withered. Calvinism, he says, preaches explicitly that self-will is the 'one great offence of men.' Such a creed generates 'a pinched and hidebound type of human nature.' Men are cramped and dwarfed, as trees are clipped into pollards. It has lost sight of qualities belonging to a different type of excellence. 'It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades; but it is better to be a Pericles than either.' Clipping and cramping means loss of 'individuality', and 'individuality' may be identified with 'development.' This, he says, might close the argument; but he desires to give further reasons to prove to those who do not desire liberty for themselves that it should be conceded to others. His main point is the vast importance of genius, which can only exist in an atmosphere of freedom. The 'initiation of all wise and noble things comes, and must come, from individuals.' He is not such a 'hero-worshipper' as to desire a heroic tyrant, but he ardently desires a heroic leader; and where eccentricity is a reproach, genius will never be able to expand. Press all people into the same mould, condemn tastes which are not the tastes of the majority, and every deviation from the beaten path becomes impossible. Yet public opinion tends to become more stifling. 'Its ideal of character is to be without character.' 'Already energetic characters on any large scale are becoming merely traditional.' The greatness of England is now all collective. We are individually small, and capable of great things only by our 'habit of combining.' 'Men of another stamp made England what it has been, and men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline.' The evil is summed up in the 'despotism of custom.' China is a standing warning. It had the 'rare good fortune ' of possessing a particularly good set of customs. But the customs have become stereotyped, the people all cast into the same mould, and China therefore is what England is tending to become. Hitherto European progress has been due to the diversity of character and culture of the various nations. It is losing that advantage. Nations are assimilated; ranks and professions are losing their distinctive characters; we all read the same books, listen (not quite all of us?) to the same sermons, and have the same ends. The process is accelerated by all the past changes. The extension of education, the extension of means of communication, the extension of manufactures, and, above all, the supremacy of public opinion, are all in its favour. With 'so great a mass of influences hostile to individuality' it is 'not easy to see how it can stand its ground.' When Mill, as a young man, suddenly reflected that, if all his principles were adopted, he should still be unhappy, he did not doubt their truth. But now he seems to be emphatically asserting that the victory of all the principles for which he and his friends had contended would be itself disastrous. 'Progress' meant precisely the set of changes which he now pronounces to lead to stagnation. Democracy in full activity will extinguish the very principle of social vitality. And yet, when at a later period Mill became a politician, he gave his vote as heartily as the blindest enthusiast for measures which inaugurated a great step towards democracy. His sincerity in both cases is beyond a doubt, and gives emphasis to the problem, how his practical political doctrine can be reconciled with his doctrine of development. The first question provoked by such assertions is the question whether this is a correct, still more, whether it is an exhaustive, diagnosis of the social disease? May not Mill be emphasising one aspect of a complex problem, and seeing the extinction of that 'individuality' which is really an element of welfare, in the extinction of such an 'individualism' as is incompatible with social improvement? His general aim is unimpeachable. The harmonious development of all our faculties represents a worthy ideal. The first or most essential of all human virtues, as Humboldt had said, is energy; for the greater the vitality, the more rich and various the type which can be evolved by cultivation. Yet it may be doubted whether the two aims suggested will always coincide. Energy certainly may go with narrowness, with implicit faith and limited purpose. The stream flows more forcibly in a defined channel. If Knox was inferior to Pericles or, say, the Jew to the Greek, the inferiority was not in energy or endurance. The efflorescence of Greek culture was short lived, it has been said, because there was too much Alcibiades and too little of Moses.(23*) Culture tends to effeminacy unless guarded by 'renunciation' and regulated by concentration upon distinct purpose. As in the question of toleration, Mill overestimates the value of mere contradiction, so in questions of conduct he seems to overestimate mere eccentricity. Yet eccentricity is surely bad so far as it is energy wasted; expended upon trifles or devoted to purposes which a wider knowledge shows to be chimerical. To balance and correlate the various activities, to direct energy to the best purposes, and to minimise a needless antagonism is as essential to development as to give free play to the greatest variety of healthy activities. Mill's doctrine may thus be taken as implying a historical generalisation. Historical generalisations are wrong as a rule; and one defect in this seems to be evident. Are energetic characters really rarer than of old? We may dismiss the illusion which personified whole processes of slow evolution in the name of some great prophet or legislator. It may still be true that the importance of the individual has really been greater in former epochs. The personal qualities of William the Conqueror or of Hildebrand may have affected history more than the personal qualities of Bismarck or of Pius IX. The action of great men, indeed, at all periods whatever, is essentially dependent upon their social environment; but personal idiosyncrasies may count for more in the total result at one period than another. The fortunes of a rude tribe may be, not only more obviously but more really, dependent upon the character of its chief than the fortunes of a civilised nation upon the character of its prime minister. And, therefore, it may be, the individual as a more important factor in the result, seems to represent greater individual energy. Yet the energy of the old feudal baron, who could ride roughshod over his weaker neighbours or coerce them with fire and sword, is not necessarily greater than the energy of the modern statesman, who has by gentler means slowly to weld together alliances of nations, to combine and inspirit parties, to direct public opinion, and to act therefore with constant reference to the national or cosmopolitan order. Mill's(24*) lamentation over the pettiness of modern English statesmen is familiar. What is really implied? England, as Mill the democrat would have said, was once a country of castes: the priest, the noble, the merchant, the peasant, represented distinct types. Each class was bound by an unalterable custom and conforms to inherited traditions; each, again, discharged some simple or general function now distributed among many minor classes. In later phrase, modern England has been made by processes of 'differentiation' and 'integration.' The old class lines have disappeared, the barriers of custom have been broken down, the old functions have been specialised, and instead of independent individual action, the whole system of life depends upon the elaborate and indefinitely ramified systems of co-operation, deliberate or unconscious. The obvious result is a growth of organic unity, accompanied by an equal development of diversity. Each unit can be assigned to a more special function, because other functions are assigned to co-operating units, and greater mutual dependence is implied in the greater variety of careers and activities. In his democratic phase, Mill blesses this process altogether; he approves the destruction of privilege and caste distinctions; he approves the 'division of labour,' the increased diversity of occupation, and the consequent growth of co-operation; he desires the fuller responsibility of the ruling class or the closer dependence of government upon the people. But in the later phase, when he emphasises the evils of democracy, does he not condemn what is a necessary implication in the very process which he approves? The division of labour, he now observes, narrows a man's life and interests; the necessity of co-operation narrows the sphere of 'individuality'; and the process which gives diversity to society as a whole implies certain uniformities in the social atoms. The less the variety in the units, the greater is the facility of arranging them in different configurations. The eccentric man is a cross-grained piece of timber which cannot be worked into the state. 'Individuality' is so far a hindrance to the power of entering into an indefinite number of combinations. And yet so far as 'individuality' diminishes, the responsibility of government means the subordination of rulers to the average commonplace stupidity. What, then, is the 'individuality' which may be called unconditionally good? How are we to define the danger so as to avoid condemning the conformity which is a necessary implication of progress? How are we to manage 'differentiation' at the expense of 'integration'; to exalt such 'individuality' as is incompatible with 'sociality'; and to regard 'eccentricity' and 'antagonism' and contradiction as valuable in themselves instead of accidental results in particular cases of originality which in some sense is priceless? Here, I think, is the real difficulty. Have we to deal with forces necessarily 'counteracting' each other, in Mill's phrase, or with forces which can be combined in a healthy organism? Mill undoubtedly supposes that some conciliation is possible. The historical view has shown the evil. We have now to consider the remedy to be applied to the various forms in which it affects economic, political, and ethical conditions. The general principle has been given. 'Self-protection' is the only justification for the interference of society with the individual. Although absolute liberty would mean anarchy, we may still demand a maximum of liberty, and suppress such a use of liberty by one man as would in fact restrain the liberty of another. Mill, like Bentham, holds to the purely empirical view. Interference is bad when the harm caused by the coercion is not counterbalanced by the good. Bentham's doctrine is not only plausible but, within a certain sphere, points to one of the most obvious and essential conditions of useful legislation. The Utilitarians were always affected by the legal principles from which they started. In the case of criminal law, Mill's principle marks the obvious minimum of interference. A state must suppress violence. If I claim liberty to break your head, the policeman is bound to interfere. If you and I claim the same loaf, the state, even if it be a communistic state, must either settle which is to eat it, or leave us to fight for it. And, again, if the principle does not fix the maximum of legislation, it points to the most obvious limiting considerations. The state means the judge and the policeman, who cannot look into the heart, and must classify criminal action by its definable external characteristics. It can reach the murderer but not the malevolent man, who would murder if he could. It is therefore incompetent to punish wickedness except so far as wickedness is manifested by overt acts. If it went further it would be unjust, because acting blindly, as well as intolerably inquisitorial. Nor can it generally punish actions which produce no assignable injury to individuals. To punish a man for neglecting definite duties is necessary; but to try to punish the idleness which may have caused the neglect would be monstrous. The state would have to be omniscient and omnipresent, and at most would favour hypocrisy instead of virtue. Briefly, the law is far too coarse an instrument for the function of enforcing morality in general. It must generally confine itself to cases where injury is inflicted upon an assignable person and by conduct defined by definite outward manifestations. This had been clearly stated by Bentham. Mill, in his chapter on the 'limits of the authority of society upon the individual,' insists upon objections obvious in the legal case. Can we deduce from these legal limits a general principle defining the relation between society and its units? I notice first the difficulty already suggested by the Political Economy. IV. ECONOMIC APPLICATION How, as Mill had asked, in speaking of the economic aspects of government interference, are we to mark out the space which is to be sacred from 'authoritative intrusion'? So long as the social state is simple, the application is easy. When one savage catches the deer, and another the salmon, each may be forbidden to take the other's game by force. Each man has a right to the fruits of his own labour. In the actual state of things there is not this charming simplicity. A man's wealth is not a definable material object, but a bundle of rights of the most complex kind; and rights to various parts of the whole national income, which are the product of whole systems of previous compacts, The possessor has not even in the vaguest sense 'created' his wealth; he has more or less contributed the labour of brains and hands to the adaptation of things to use, or enjoys his rights in virtue of an indefinite number of transactions, bargains made by himself, or bequests transferring the rights to new generations. To protect his property is to protect a multifarious system of rights accruing in all manner of ways, and to sanction the voluntary contracts in virtue of which the whole elaborate network of rights corresponds to the complex social order. The tacit assumption of the economists was that this order was in some sense 'natural' and law an artificial or extra-natural compulsion. Can the line be drawn? The legal regulation has been an essential though a subordinate part of the whole process. Law, at an early stage, is an undistinguishable part of customs, which has become differentiated from mere custom as settled governments have been evolved and certain definite functions assigned to the sovereign power. We cannot say that one set of institutions is due to law and another to customs or to voluntary contracts. The laws which regulate property in land or inheritance or any form of association have affected every stage of the process and have not affected it as conditions imposed from without, but as a part of the whole elaboration. The principle that 'self-protection' is the only justification of interference then becomes hard of application. I am to do what I like with my own. That may be granted, for 'my own' is that with which I may do what I like. But if I am allowed in virtue of this doctrine to make any contracts or to dispose of my property in any way that please, it follows that the same sanctity is transferred to the whole system which has grown up by voluntary action at every point, and which is therefore regarded as the 'natural' or spontaneous order. Now the actual course of events, as Mill maintains, produced a society with vast inequalities of wealth a society which, as he declares, does not even show an approximation to justice, or in which a man's fortunes are determined not by his merits but by accident. On this interpretation of the principle of non-interference, it follows that in the name of legal 'liberty' you approve a process destructive of 'liberty' in fact. Every man is allowed no doubt by the laws to act as circumstances admit; but the circumstances may permit some people to enjoy every conceivable pleasure and to develop every faculty, while they condemn others to find their only pleasure in gin, and to have such development as can be acquired in 'London slums.' A famous judge pointed out ironically that the laws of England were the same for the rich and the poor; that is, the same price was charged for justice whether the applicants could afford it or not. Is it not a mockery to tell a man that he is free to do as he pleases, if it only means that he may choose between starvation and the poorhouse? Mill had himself been inclined to remedy the evils by invoking an omnipotent legislature to undertake very drastic measures of reform. Equal laws will produce equal results when, in point of fact, they apply to men under equal conditions. If a society consists of mutually independent and self-supporting individuals, the principle of non-interference may work smoothly. Each man has actually his own secret sphere, and the law only affects the exchange of superfluous advantages among independent units. But that is to say that to make your rule work, you must prevent all that process of development which is implied in civilisation. Society must be forced to be 'individualistic' in order that the formula may be applicable. Self-protection means the protection of existing rights. If they are satisfactory, the result of protecting them will be satisfactory. But if the actual order, however produced, is essentially unjust, the test becomes illusory. Yet, if the laws are to interfere to prevent the growth of inequality, what becomes of the sacred sphere of individuality? Here we have the often-noted conflict between equality and liberty. Leave men free, and inequalities must arise. Enforce equality and individuality is cramped or suppressed. And yet inequality certainly means a pressure upon the weaker which may lead to virtual slavery. We must admit that neither liberty nor equality can be laid down as absolute principles. The attempt to treat any formula in this fashion leads to the perplexities exemplified in Mill's treatment of the 'liberty' problem. His doctrines cannot be made to fit accurately the complexities of the social order. 'Equality' and 'liberty' define essential 'moments' in the argument, though neither can be made to support an absolute conclusion. The difficulty was indicated in Bentham's treatment of 'security' and 'equality.' Both, he said, were desirable, but when there was a conflict 'equality' must give way to 'security.' Here we come to another closely allied doctrine. 'Security' implies 'responsibility.' A man must be secure that he may be industrious. He will not labour unless he is sure to enjoy the fruit of his labour. This gives the Malthusian vis medicatrix. But, stated absolutely, it implies pure self-interest. Robinson Crusoe was responsible in the sense that if he did not work he would starve. And, if we could, in fact, mark off each man's separate sphere, or regard society as a collection of Robinson Crusoes, the principle might be applied. Each man should have a right to what he has himself 'created.' But when a man 'creates' nothing; when his 'environment' is not a desert island but an organised society, the principle must be differently stated. 'Responsibility,' indeed, always implies liberty -- the existence of a sphere within which a man's fortunes depend upon his personal character, and his character should determine his fortune. But, as Mill can most clearly recognise, social responsibility means something more. One most 'certain incident' of social progress is the growth of co-operation, and that involves, as he says, the 'subordination of individual caprice' to a 'preconceived determination' and the performance of parts allotted in a 'combined undertaking.'(25*) The individual, then, is part of an organisation, in which every individual should play his part. The over-centralisation which would crush him into an automaton is not more fatal than the individual independence which would be incompatible with organisation. The desirable 'responsibility' is not that of a Robinson Crusoe but that of the soldier in an army. It should be enforced by other motives than mere self-interest, for it affects the interests of the whole body corporate. Now Mill, believing even to excess in the power of education, included in education the whole discipline of life due to the relations of the individual to his social environment; and it is his essential principle that this force should be directed to enforcing a sense of 'responsibility' in the widest acceptation of the word. V. POLITICAL APPLICATION A similar doctrine is implied in his political writings, of which the Representative Government is the most explicit. The book is hardly on a level with his best work. Treatises of 'political philosophy' are generally disappointing. The difficulty lies, I suppose, in combining the practical with the general point of view. In some treatises, the 'philosophy' is made up of such scraps about the social contract or mixture of the three forms of government as excited Bentham's contempt in Blackstone's treatise. They are a mere juggle of abstractions fit only for schoolboys. Others, like James Mill's, are really party pamphlets, masquerading as philosophy, and importing obvious principles into the likeness of geometrical axioms. A good deal of wisdom no doubt lurks in the speeches of statesmen; but it is not often easy to extricate it from the mass of personal and practical remarks. Mill's treatise might suggest some such criticism; and yet it is interesting as an indication of his leading principles. Some passages show how long experience in a public office affects a philosophic thinker. Mill's exposition, for example, of the defects of the House of Commons in administrative legislation,(26*) his discussion of the fact (as he takes it to be) that governments remarkable for sustained vigour and ability have generally been aristocratic,(27*) and his panegyric upon the East India Company,(28*) record the genuine impressions of his long administrative career, and are refreshing in the midst of more abstract discussions. I have, however, only to notice a general principle which runs through the book. Mill starts by emphasising the distinction applied in the Political Economy between the natural and the artificial. Political institutions are the work of men and created by the will. The doctrine that governments 'are not made, but grow,' would lead to 'political fatalism' if it were regarded as true exclusively of the other. In fact, we might reply, there is no real opposition at all. 'Making' is but one kind of 'growing.' Growing by conscious forethought is still growing, and the antithesis put absolutely is deceptive. Mill is striving to enlarge the sphere of voluntary action. He wishes to prove that he can take the ground generally supposed to imply the doctrine of 'freewill.' Institutions, he fully admits, presuppose certain qualities in the people; but, given those qualities, they are 'a matter of choice.'(29*) In politics, as in machinery, we are turning existing powers to account; but we do not say that, because rivers will not run uphill, 'water-mills are not made but grow.' The political theorist can invent constitutions as the engineer can invent machinery, which will materially alter the results; and to inquire which is the best form of government 'in the abstract' is 'not a chimerical but a highly practical employment of the scientific intellect.' The illustration is difficult to apply if the 'river' means the whole society, and the 'water-mill' is itself, therefore, one part of the 'river.' The legislator is not an external force but an integral part of internal forces. In the next place, Mill rejects a distinction made by Comte(30*) between order and progress. Comte had made a distinction between 'statics' and 'dynamics' in sociology, which are to each other like anatomy and physiology. The conditions of existence, and the conditions of continuous movement of a society correspond to 'order and progress.'(31*) Mill replies that 'progress' includes 'order,' and that the two conditions cannot give independent criteria of the merits of the institutions. Comte, in any case, regarding sociology as a science, considers the dependence of political institutions upon social structure to be much closer than Mill would admit. The power of the legislator to alter society is strictly subordinate and dependent throughout upon its relation to the existing organism. In his study of Comte,(32*) Mill declares emphatically that Comte's work has made it necessary for all later thinkers to start from a 'connected view of the great facts of history.' He speaks with enthusiasm of Comte's great survey of history, and fully accepts the principle. Yet, in fact, he scarcely applies the method in his political system, and accepts a doctrine really inconsistent with it. His anxiety to give a far wider sphere to the possibilities of modifying, leads him to regard institutions as the ultimate causes of change, instead of factors themselves strictly dependent upon deeper causes. Hence he substitutes a different distinction. We are to judge of institutions by their efficiency as educating agencies, on the one hand, and as the means of carrying on 'public business' on the other. Institutions should do their work well, and turn the workers into good citizens.(33*) The educative influence of government is thus his characteristic point. The 'ideally best form of government,' as Mill of course admits, is not one applicable 'at all stages of civilisation.'(34*) We have to suppose certain conditions, and he takes pain to show in what cases his ideal would be inapplicable.(35*) But, given the stage reached in modern times (as he practically assumes), there is 'no difficulty in showing' the ideal form to be the representative system; that in which 'sovereignty is vested in the entire aggregate of the community,' every citizen having a voice and taking at least an occasional part in discharging the functions of government.(36*) This applies the doctrine already expounded in the Liberty. Citizens should be 'self-protecting and self-protective';(37*) the 'active,' not the 'passive' type of character should be encouraged. The striving, go-ahead character of Anglo-Saxons is only objectionable so far as it is directed to petty ends; the Englishman says naturally, 'What a shame!' when the Frenchman says, 'Il faut de la patience!' and the institutions which encourage this energetic character by giving a vote to all, by permitting freedom of speech, and by permitting all men to discharge small duties (to act on juries for example) are the best. I will only note that this tends to beg the important question, Are the institutions really the cause or the effect? Has the energy of the English race made their institutions free? or have the free institutions made them energetic? or are the institutions and the character collateral effects of a great variety of causes? When so much stress is laid upon the educational effect -- of serving upon a jury, for instance -- we are impelled to ask what is the ultimate cause. Are people so much morally improved by serving on juries? If the institution like the 'water-mill' only directs certain instincts already existing, we must not speak as if the mill made the water.power; and Mill's arguments suggest a liability to this fallacy. It becomes important at the next stage. The ideal form of government has its infirmities, as Mill insists. Two are conspicuous: the difficulty of inducing a democracy to intrust work which requires skill to those who possess skill;(38*) and the old difficulty -- the 'tyranny of the majority.' Mill's contention that the 'Demos' may be stupid, mistake its own interests, and impress its mistaken views upon the legislation, needs no exposition. We are thus brought to the question how the ideal government is to be so constituted that the interests of a section -- even if it be the majority -- may not be so powerful as to overwhelm the other sections even when backed by 'truth and justice.'(39*) Danger of popular stupidity and danger of class legislation indicate two great evils to be abated as far as possible by 'human contrivance.' (40*) A sufficient 'contrivance' was in fact revealed at the right moment. A discovery of surpassing value had been announced by one of his friends. Hare's scheme of representation, says Mill with characteristic enthusiasm, has the 'almost unparalleled merit' of securing its special aim in almost 'ideal perfection,' while incidentally attaining others of almost equal importance. He places it among the very greatest 'improvements yet made in the theory and practice of government.'(41*) It would, for example, be almost a 'specific' against the tendency of republics to ostracise their ablest men.(42*) And it would be the appropriate organ of the great function of 'antagonism'(43*) which now takes the place of contradiction in intellectual development. There will always be some body to oppose the supreme power, and thus to prevent the stagnation, followed by decay, which has always resulted from a complete victory. Is not the 'water-mill' here expected to work the river? The faith in a bit of mechanism of 'human contrivance' becomes sublime. Hare's scheme may have great conveniences under many circumstances. But that Hare's scheme or any scheme should regenerate politics seems to be a visionary belief, unworthy of Mill's higher moods. He seems to fall into the error too common among legislative theorists, of assuming that an institution will be worked for the ends of the contriver, instead of asking to what ends it may be distorted by the ingenuity of all who can turn it to account for their own purposes. There is a more vital difficulty. If Hare's scheme worked as Mill expected it to work, one result would be necessarily implied. The House of Commons would reflect accurately all the opinions of the country. Whatever opinion had a majority in the country would have a majority in the House. Labourers, as he suggests when showing the dangers of democracy, may be in favour of protection, or of fixing the rate of wages. Now in this scheme the majority in the country may enforce whatever laws approve themselves to the ignorant. I do not say that this would actually be the result; for I think that, in point of fact, the change of mere machinery would be of comparatively little importance. The power of the rich and the educated does not really depend upon the system of voting, or the ostensible theory of the constitution, but upon the countless ways in which wealth, education, and the whole social system affect the working of institutions. Mill can fully admit the fact at times. But here he is taking for granted that the effect of the scheme will be to secure a perfectly correct miniature of the opinions of all separate persons. The wise minority will therefore be a minority in the land. It will be able to make speeches. But the speeches, however able, are but an insignificant trickle in the great current of talk which forms what is called 'public opinion.' The necessary result upon his showing would be, that legislation would follow the opinions of the majority, or, in other words, facilitate the 'tyranny of the majority.' This suggests one vital point. Mill, as I have said, has endeavoured to enlarge as much as possible the sphere of operation of the freewill -- of the power of individuals or of deliberate conscious legislation. The result is to exaggerate the influence of institutions and to neglect the forces, intellectual and moral, which must always lie behind institutions. We can admit to the full the importance of the educational influence of political institutions, and the surpassing value of energy, self-reliance, and individual responsibility. The sentiment is altogether noble, and Mill expresses it with admirable vigour. But the more decidedly we hold his view of the disease, the more utterly inadequate and inappropriate appears his remedy. The tendency to levelling and vulgarising, so far as it exists, can certainly not be cured by ingenious arrangements of one part of the political machinery. I take this to mark Mill's weakest side. The truth was divined by the instinct of his democratic allies. So long as he voted for extending the suffrage, they could leave him to save his conscience by amusing himself with these harmless fancies. VI. WOMEN'S RIGHTS Mill's Subjection of Women brings out more clearly some of the fundamental Utilitarian tenets. None of his writings is more emphatically marked by generosity and love of justice. A certain shrillness of tone marks the recluse too little able to appreciate the animal nature of mankind. Yet in any case, he made a most effective protest against the prejudices which stunted the development and limited the careers of women. Mill declares at starting, that till recently the 'law of force' has been 'the avowed rule of general conduct.' Only of late has there been even a pretence of regulating 'the affairs of society in general according to any moral law.' (44*) That moral considerations have been too little regarded as between different societies or different classes is painfully obvious. But 'force' in any intelligible sense is itself only made applicable by the social instincts, which bind men together. No society could ever be welded into a whole by 'force' alone. This is the Utilitarian fallacy of explaining law by 'sanctions,' and leaving the 'sanctions' to explain themselves. But the argument encourages Mill to treat of all inequality as unjust because imposed by force. The 'only school of genuine moral sentiment,' he says, 'is society between equals.' Let us rather say that inequalities are unjust which rest upon force alone. Every school of morality or of thought implies subordination, but a subordination desirable only when based upon real superiority. The question then becomes whether the existing relations of the sexes correspond to some essential difference or are created by sheer force. Here we have assumptions characteristic of Mill's whole logical method; and, especially, the curious oscillation between absolute laws and indefinite modifiability. His doctrine of 'natural kinds' supposed that two races were either divided by an impassable gulf, or were divided only by accidental or superficial differences. He protests against the explanation of national differences by race characteristics. To say that the Irish are naturally lazy, or the Negroes naturally stupid, is to make a short apology for oppression and for slavery. Undoubtedly it is wrong, as it is contrary to all empirical reasoning, to assume a fundamental difference; and morally wrong to found upon the assumption an apology for maintaining caste and privilege. But neither is it legitimate to assume that the differences are negligible. The 'accident of colour' has been made a pretext for an abominable institution. But we have no right to the a priori assumption that colour is a mere accident. It may upon Mill's own method be an indication of radical and far-reaching differences. How far the Negro differs from the white man, whether he is intellectually equal or on a wholly lower plane, is a question of fact to be decided by experience. Mill's refusal to accept one doctrine passes imperceptibly into an equally unfounded acceptance of its contradictory. The process is shown by the doctrine to which, as we have seen, he attached so much importance, that political science must be deductive, because the effect of the conjoined causes is the sum of the effects of the separate causes. When two men act together, the effect may be inferred from putting together the motives of each. 'All phenomena of society,' he infers, 'are phenomena of human nature generated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of human beings.' (45*) We can therefore deduce scientific laws in sociology as in astronomy. This tacitly assumes that man, like molecule, represents a constant unit, and thus introduces the de facto equality of human beings, from which it is an inevitable step to the equality of rights. The sound doctrine that we can only learn by experience what are the differences between men becomes the doctrine that all differences are superficial, and therefore the man always the same. The doctrine becomes audacious when 'man' is taken to include 'woman.' He speaks of the 'accident of sex' and the 'accident of colour' as equally unjust grounds for political distinctions.(46*) The difference between men and women, Whites and Negroes, is 'accidental,' that is, apparently removable by some change of 'outward circumstances.' Mill, indeed, does not admit that he is begging the question. He guards himself carefully against begging the question either way,(47*) though he thinks apparently that the burthen of proof is upon those who assert a natural difference. Accordingly he urges that the so-called 'nature of women' is 'an eminently artificial thing'; a result of 'hothouse cultivation' carried on for the benefit of their masters.(48*) He afterwards(49*) endeavours to show that even the 'least contestable differences' between the sexes are such as may 'very well have been produced merely by circumstances without any differences of natural capacity.' What, one asks, can the 'circumstances mean? Psychology, as he truly says, can tell us little; but physiology certainly seems to suggest a difference implied in the whole organisation and affecting every mental and,physical characteristic. It is not, apparently, a case of two otherwise equal beings upon which different qualities have been superimposed, but of a radical distinction, totally inconsistent with any presumption of equality.(50*) When we are told that the legal inequality is an 'isolated fact' -- a 'solitary breach of what has become a fundamental law of human institutions'(51*) -- the reply is obvious. The distinction of the sexes is surely an 'isolated fact,' so radical or 'natural' that it is no wonder that it should have unique recognition in all human institutions. Mill has, indeed, a further answer. If nature disqualifies women for certain functions, why disqualify them by law? Leave everything to free competition, and each man or woman will go where he or she is most fitted. Abolish, briefly, all political and social distinctions, and things will right themselves. If 'inequality' is due to 'force,' and the difference between men and women be 'artificial,' the argument is plausible. But if the difference be, as surely it is, 'natural,' and 'force' in the sense of mere muscular strength, only one factor in the growth of institutions, the removal of inequalities may imply neglect of essential facts. He is attacking the most fundamental condition of the existing social order. The really vital point is the bearing of Mill's argument upon marriage and the family. He thinks (52*) that the full question of divorce is 'foreign to his purpose'; and, in fact, seems to be a little shy of what is really the critical point. He holds, indeed, that the family is a 'school of despotism,'(53*) or would be so, if men were not generally better than their laws. Admitting that the law retains traces of the barbarism which regarded wives as slaves, the question remains whether the institution itself is to be condemned as dependent upon 'force.' Would not the 'equality' between persons naturally unequal lead to greater instead of less despotism? If, as a matter of fact, women are weaker than men, might not liberty mean more power to the strongest? Permission to the husband to desert the wife at will might be to make her more dependent in fact though freer in law. Whatever the origin of the institution of marriage, it may now involve, not the bondage but an essential protection of the weakest party. This is the side of the argument to which Mill turns a deaf ear. We are to neglect the most conspicuous of facts because it may be 'artificial' or due to 'circumstances,' and assume that free competition will be an infallible substitute for a system which affects the most vital part of the whole social organism. To assume existing differences to be incapable of modification is doubtless wrong; but to treat them at once as non-existent is at least audacious. Finally, the old difficulty recurs in a startling shape. If differences are to disappear and the characteristics of men and women to become indistinguishable, should we not be encouraging a 'levelling' more thoroughgoing than any which can result from political democracy? VII. THE SELF-PROTECTION PRINCIPLE These special applications raise the question: What is the interpretation of his general principle? 'Self-protection' is the only justification for social interference. Where a man's conduct affects himself alone society should not 'interfere'(54*) by legislation. Does this imply that we must not interfere by the pressure of public opinion? We may, as Mill replies, approve or disapprove, but so long as a man does not infringe our rights, we must leave him to the 'natural and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of his faults.' We may dislike and even abhor anti-social 'dispositions' -- cruelty and treachery -- but self-regarding faults and the corresponding dispositions are not subjects of 'moral reprobation.' A man is not accountable to his fellow creatures for prudence or 'self-respect.'(55*) Mill anticipates the obvious objection. No conduct is simply 'self-regarding.' 'No one is an entirely isolated being'; and injuries to myself disqualify me for service to others. 'Self-regarding' vices, as his opponent is supposed to urge, are also socially mischievous; and we must surely be entitled to assume that the experience of the race has established some moral rules sufficiently to act upon them, however desirous we may be to allow of 'new and original experiments in living.'(56*) Mill's reply is that we should punish not the fault itself but the injuries to others which result. We hang George Barnwell for murdering his uncle, whether he did it to get money for his mistress or to set up in business. We should not punish him, it is implied, for keeping a mistress; but we should punish the murder, whatever the motive. The criminal lawyer, no doubt, treats Barnwell upon this principle. But can it be morally applicable? Mill admits fully that self-regarding qualities may be rightfully praised and blamed We may think a man a fool, a lazy, useless, sensual wretch: we may, and are even bound to, tell him so frankly, avoid his society, and warn others to avoid him. My judgment of a man is not a judgment of his separate qualities but of the whole human being. I disapprove of George Barnwell himself, not simply his greediness or his vicious propensities. I think a man bad in different degrees if he is ready to murder his uncle, whether from lust or greed or even with a view to a charitable use of the plunder. The hateful thing is the character itself which, under certain conditions, leads to murder. As including prudence, it may be simply neutral or respectable; as implying vice, disgusting; and as implying cruelty, hateful. Still, I do not condemn the abstract qualities -- interest in oneself, or sexual passion or even antipathy -- each of which may be desirable in the right place -- but the way in which they are combined in the concrete Barnwell. No quality, therefore, can be taken as simply self-regarding, for it is precisely the whole character which is the object of my moral judgment of the individual. I have spoken of the inadequate recognition of this truth by Bentham and James Mill. It makes J. S. Mill's criterion inapplicable to the question of moral interference. lf, as he argues, we are to impress our moral standard upon others, we cannot make the distinction; for our standard implies essentially an estimate of the balance of all the man's qualities, those which primarily affect himself as much as those which primarily affect others. Here is the vital distinction between the legal and the moral question, and the characteristic defect of the external view of morality. Keeping, however, to the purely legal question, where the criterion is comparatively plain, we have other difficulties. We are only to punish Barnwell as an actual, not as a potential, murderer. We should let a man try any 'experiment in living' so long as its failure will affect himself only, or, rather, himself primarily, for no action is really 'isolated.' We are, says Mill, to put up with 'contingent' or 'constructive' injury for the sake of 'the greater good of human freedom.'(57*) 'Society,' he urges, cannot complain of errors for which it is responsible. It has 'absolute power' over all its members in their infancy, and could always make the next generation a little better than the last. Why, then, interfere by the coarse methods of punishment to suppress what is not directly injurious to itself? The strongest, however, of all reasons against interference, according to him, is that it generally interferes wrongly and in the wrong place. In proof of this he refers to various cases of religious persecution: to Puritanical laws against harmless recreation: to Socialist laws against the freedom to labour: to laws against intemperance and on behalf of Sunday observance: and, generally, to laws embodying the 'tyranny of the majority.' We may admit the badness of such legislation; but what is the criterion by which we are to decide its badness or goodness? Is it that in such cases the legislator is usurping the province of the moralist? that he is trying to suppress symptoms when the causes are beyond his power, and enforcing not virtue but hypocrisy? Or is it that he really ought to be indifferent in regard to the moral rules which are primarily self-regarding -- to leave prudence, for example, to take care of itself or to be impressed by purely natural penalties; and to be indifferent to vice, drunkenness, or sexual irregularities, except by suppressing the crimes which incidentally result? Mill endeavours to adhere to his criterion, but has some difficulty in reconciling it to his practical conclusions. Mill holds 'society' to be omnipotent over the young. It has no right to complain of the characters which it has itself concurred in producing. lf this be so, can it be indifferent to morality? Indeed, Mill distinguishes himself from others of his school precisely by emphasising the educational efficiency of the state. Institutions, according to him, are the tools by which the human will -- the will of the sovereign -- moulds the character of the race. Mill's whole aim in economic questions is to encourage prudence, self-reliance, and energy. He wishes the state to interfere to strengthen and enlighten; and to promote an equality of property which will raise the standard of life and discourage wasteful luxury. What is this but to stimulate certain moral creeds and to discourage certain 'experiments in living'? How can so powerful an agency affect character without affecting morals -- self-regarding or extra-regarding? The difficulty comes out curiously in his last chapter. He has recourse to a dexterous casuistry to justify measures which have an obvious moral significance. Are we to legislate with a view to diminishing drunkenness? No: but we may put drunkards under special restrictions when they have once been led to violence. We should not tax stimulants simply in order to suppress drunkenness; but, as we have to tax in any case, we may so arrange taxation as to discourage the consumption of injurious commodities. May we suppress gambling or fornication? No: but we may perhaps see our way to suppressing public gambling-houses or brothels, because we may forbid solicitations to that which we think evil, though we are not so clear of the evil as to suppress the conduct itself. We may enforce universal education, though he makes the condition that the state is only to pay for the children of the poor, not to provide the schools. And, once more, we are not forbidden by his principle to legislate against imprudent marriages; for the marriage clearly affects the offspring, and, moreover, affects all labourers in an over-populated country. Yet, what interference with private conduct could be more stringent or more directly affect morality? A principle requiring such delicate handling is not well suited to guide practical legislation. This timid admission of moral considerations by a back-door is the more curious because Mill not only wishes to have a moral influence, but has the special merit, in economical and in purely political questions, of steadily and constantly insisting upon their moral aspect. He holds, and is justified in holding, that the ultimate end of the state should be to encourage energy, culture, and a strong sense of responsibility. It is true that, though he exaggerates the influence of institutions, he insists chiefly upon the negative side, upon that kind of 'education' which consists in leaving a man to teach himself. Yet his political theory implies a wider educational influence. Every citizen is to have a share both in the legislative and administrative functions of the government. Such an education must have a strong influence upon the moral characteristics. It may promote or discourage one morality or another, but it cannot be indifferent. And this impresses itself upon Mill himself. The principles of 'contradiction' in speculation and of 'antagonism' in politics; the doctrines that each man is to form his own opinions and regulate his own life, imply a society of approximately equal and, as far as possible, independent units. This, if it means 'liberty,' also means a most effective 'educational' process. One lesson taught may be that 'any one man is as good as any other.' Mill sees this clearly, and declares that this 'false creed' is held in America and 'nearly connected' with some American defects.(58*) He persuades himself that it may be remedied by Hare's scheme, and by devices for giving more votes to educated' persons. One can only reply, sancta simplicitas! In fact, the 'educational' influence which implies levelling and equalising is not less effective than that which maintains ranks or a traditional order. It only acts in a different direction. Here, once more, Mill's argument seems to recoil upon his own position. When, in the Liberty, he sums up the influences hostile to individuality, including all the social and intellectual movements of the day, he is describing the forces which will drive his political machinery. The political changes which are to break up the old structure, to make society an aggregate of units approximately equal in wealth and power, will inevitably facilitate the deeper and wider influences of the social changes. If, in fact, 'individuality' in a good sense is being crushed by the whole democratic movement -- where democracy means the whole social change -- it will certainly not be protected by the political changes to be made in the name of liberty. Each man is to have his own little sphere; but each man will be so infinitesimal a power that he will be more than ever moulded by the average opinions. In the Liberty (59*) Mill puts his whole hope in the possibility that the 'intelligent part of the public' may be led to feel the force of his argument. To believe that a tendency fostered by every social change can be checked by the judicious reasoning of Utilitarian theorists, implies a touching faith in the power of philosophy. Mill's doctrines, I believe, aim at most important truths. 'Energy' is, let us agree, a cardinal virtue and essential condition of progress. It requires, undoubtedly, a sphere of individual freedom. Without freedom, a man is a tool -- transmitting force mechanically, not himself co-operating intelligently or originating spontaneously. Every citizen should be encouraged to be an active as well as a passive instrument. Freedom of opinion is absolutely essential to progress, social as well as intellectual, and therefore thought should be able to play freely upon the sway of irrational custom. The tyranny of the commonplace, of a mental atmosphere which stifles genius and originality, is a danger to social welfare. That Mill held such convictions strongly was the source of his power. That he held to them, even when they condemned some party dogma, was honourable to his sincerity. That he filed to make them into a satisfactory or consistent whole was due to preconceptions imbibed from his teachers. Perhaps it is truer to say that he could not accurately formulate his beliefs in the old dialect than that his beliefs were intrinsically erroneous. Upon his terms a clear demarcation of the sphere of free action is impossible. Mill, as an 'individualist,' took society to be an 'aggregate' instead of an, organism.' To Mill such phrases as 'organic' savoured of 'mysticism'; they treated a class name as meaning something more than the individuals, and therefore meant mere abstractions parading as realities,(60*) and encouraged the fallacies current among Intuitionists and Transcendentalists. And yet they point at truths which are anything but mystical. It is a plain fact that society is a complex structure upon which every man is dependent in his whole life; and that he is a product, moulded through and through by instincts inherited or derived from his social position. Conversely, it is true that the society is throughout dependent upon the character or the convictions and instincts of its constituent members. To overlook the reciprocal action and reaction, and the structure which corresponds to them, is necessarily to make arbitrary and inaccurate assumptions and to regard factors in a single process as independent entities. The tendency of the Utilitarian was to regard society as a number of independent beings, simply bound together by the legal or quasi-legal sanctions. Morality itself was treated as a case of external 'law.' The individual, again, was a bundle of ideas, bound together by 'associations which could be indefinitely modified.' In both cases, the unity was imposed by a force in some sense 'external,' and therefore the whole social structure of individual character became in some sense 'artificial.' It is the acceptance of such assumptions which hinders Mill in his attempt to mark out the individual sphere. We have seen the difficulties. In morality, it is impossible to divide the 'extra-regarding' from the 'self-regarding' qualities, because morality is a function of the whole character considered as a unit. Mill, therefore, has to concede a considerable sphere to moral pressure. The fact that in positive law it is not only possible but necessary to distinguish 'self-regarding' actions from 'extra-regarding' actions marks the sphere within which legislation can work efficiently. But the same fact proves also that the direct legal coercion is only a subordinate element in the whole social process. Though it is only called into play to suppress certain overt actions, it indirectly affects the whole character: it may help to stimulate all the qualities, 'self-regarding' or otherwise, which form a good citizen; and to argue that it should be indifferent to these broader results is to omit a reference to the wider 'utility' which is identical with morality. Mill is thus driven to awkward casuistry by trying to exclude the moral considerations where they are obviously essential, or to admit them under some ingenious pretext. In economic problems the difficulty is more conspicuous; for we have there to do with the whole industrial structure, which is affected throughout by institutions created or confirmed by law. It is, again, impossible to distinguish the spheres of the 'natural' and the 'artificial' -- or of individual and state action. The industrial structure is a product of both. Consider all state action to be bad because 'artificial,' and you are led to such an isolation of the 'individual' as reduces all responsibility to a name for selfishness. You are to teach men to be prudent simply by leaving the imprudent to starvation. Mill, revolted by this consequence, admits that the state must have regard to the injustice for which it is, at least indirectly, responsible. He then inclines to exaggerate the power of the 'artificial' factor because it embodies human 'volition' and leans towards the crude Socialism which assumes that all institutions can be arbitrarily reconstructed by legislative interference. Hence when we come to the political problem, to the organ by which the legal bond is constructed, Mill exaggerates the power of 'making' as contradistinguished from the 'growing.' He seems to assume that institutions can 'create' the instincts by which they are worked: or to forget that they primarily transmit instead of originating power, though indirectly they foster or hinder the development of certain tendencies. Mill would guard against the abuse of political power by dividing it among the separate individuals. He then perceives that he is only redistributing this tremendous power instead of diminishing its intensity. By isolating the 'individual' he has condemned him to narrow views and petty ideals, but has not prevented him from impressing them upon the mass of homogeneous units. Hence, he is alarmed by the inevitable 'tyranny of the majority.' He has put a tremendous power into the hands of Demos, and can only suggest that it should not be exercised. It is, if I am right, the acceptance of this antithesis, put absolutely, the 'individual,' as something natural on one side, and law, on the other side, as a bond imposed upon the society, which at every step hampers Mill's statement of any vital truths. He cannot upon these terms draw a satisfactory distinction between the individual and the society. When man is taken for a ready-made product, while his social relation can be 'made' off-hand by the sovereign, it is impossible to give a satisfactory account of the slow processes of evolution in which making and growing are inextricably united, and the individual and the society are slowly modified by the growth of instincts and customs under constant action and reaction. The difficulty of course is not solved by recognising its existence. No one has yet laid down a satisfactory criterion of the proper limits of individual responsibility. The problem is too vast and complex to admit of any off-hand solution; and Mill's error lies chiefly in under-estimating the difficulty. The contrast to Comte is significant. The inventor of 'sociology' had seen in the 'individualism' of the revolutionary school a transitory and negative stage of thought, which was to lead to a reconstruction of intellectual and social authority. Mill could see in Comte's final Utopia nothing but the restoration of a spiritual despotism in a form more crushing and all-embracing than that of the medieval church. They went together up to a certain point. Comte held that 'contradiction' and 'antagonism' were not ultimate ends, though they may be inseparable incidents of progress. In the intellectual sphere we should hope for the emergence of a rational instead of an arbitrary authority, and a settlement of first principles, not a permanent conflict of opinion. The hope of achieving some permanent conciliation is the justification of scepticism in speculation and revolutions in politics. Comte supposed that such a result might be achieved in sociology. If that science were constituted, its professors might have such an authority as now possessed by astronomers and teachers of physical sciences. Society might then be reconstructed on sound principles which would secure the responsibility of rulers to subjects, and the confidence of the subjects in rulers. Mill in his early enthusiasm had admitted the necessity of a 'spiritual power' to be founded on free discussion.(61*) He had, with Comte, condemned the merely critical attitude of the revolutionary school. When he saw Comte devising an elaborate hierarchy to govern speculation, and even depreciating the reason in comparison with the 'heart,' he revolted. Comte was a great thinker, greater, even, he thought, than Descartes or Leibniz,(62*) but had plunged into absurdities suggestive of brain disease. The absurdities were, indeed, flagrant, yet Mill still sympathises with much of Comte's doctrine; with the positivist religion; and the general social conceptions. Even a 'spiritual authority' is, he thinks, desirable. But it must be developed through free discussion and the gradual approximation of independent thinkers, not by premature organisation and minute systematisation.(63*) The regeneration of society requires a moral and intellectual transformation, which can only be regarded as a distant ideal. We may dream of a state of things in which even political authority shall be founded upon reason: in which statesmanship shall really mean an application of scientific principles, and rulers be recognised as devoted servants of the state, Even an approximation to such a Utopia would imply a change in moral instincts, and in the corresponding social structure, to be worked out slowly and tentatively. Yet Mill is equally over-sanguine in his own way. He puts an excessive faith in human 'contrivances,' representation of minorities, and the forces of 'antagonism' and 'individuality.' If Comte's scheme really amounts, as Mill thought, to a suppression of individual energy, Mill's doctrine tends to let energy waste itself in mere eccentricity. As originality of intellect is useful when it accepts established results, so energy of character is fruitful when it is backed by sympathy. The degree of both may be measured by their power of meeting opposition; but the positive stimulus comes from cooperation. The great patriots and founders of religion have opposed tyrants and bigots because they felt themselves to be the mouthpiece of a nation or a whole social movement. And, therefore, superlative as. may be the value of energy, it is not generated in a chaos where every man's hand is against his neighbour, but in a social order, where vigorous effort may be sure of a sufficient backing. When the individual is regarded as an isolated being, and state action as necessarily antagonistic, this side of the problem is insufficiently taken into account, and the question made to lie between simple antagonism and enforced unity. VIII. ETHICS The problem must be left to posterity. Mill's doctrine, if I am right, is vitiated rather by an excessive emphasis upon one aspect of facts than by positive error. He seems often to be struggling to express half-recognised truths, and to be hampered by an inadequate dialect. I have already touched upon the morality more or less involved in his political and economic views. His ethical doctrine shows the source of some of his perplexities and apparent inconsistencies. His position is given in the little book upon Utilitarianism, which is scarcely more, however, than an occasional utterance.(64*) In a more systematic treatise some difficulties would have been more carefully treated, and assumptions more explicitly justified. The main lines, however, of Mill's Utilitarianism are plain enough. The book is substantially a protest against the assertion that Utilitarian morality is inferior to its rivals. 'Utilitarians,' he says, 'should never cease to claim the morality of self-devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them as to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist.'(65*) The Utilitarian standard is 'not the agent's own happiness, but the happiness of all concerned.' The Utilitarian must be 'as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator' in determining his course of action. The spirit of his ethics is expressed in 'the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth.' Mill insists as strongly as possible upon the paramount importance of the social aspect of morality. Society must be founded throughout upon justice and sympathy. Every step in civilisation generates in each individual 'a feeling of unity with all the rest.' (66*) Characteristically he refers to Comte's Politique Positive in illustration. Though he has the 'strongest objections' to the system of morals and politics there set forth, he thinks that Comte has 'superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the psychical power and the social efficacy of a religion.' Nay, it may 'colour all thought, feeling, and action, in a manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religion may be but a type or foretaste.' The danger is that the ascendency may be so marked as to suppress 'human freedom and individuality.' The love of the right is to become an all-absorbing passion, and selfish motives admitted only so far as subordinated to desire for the welfare of the social body. Clearly this is a loftier line than Bentham's attempt to evade the difficulty by ignoring the possibility of a conflict between private and public interest. The only question, then, is as to the logic. Can Mill's conclusions be deduced from his premises? We must first observe that Mill's argument is governed by his antipathy to the 'intuitionist.' The intuitionist was partly represented by his old antagonist Whewell, who in a ponderous treatise had set forth a theory of morality intended not only to give first principles but to elaborate a complete moral code. Mill attacked him with unusual severity in an article in the Westminster Review.(67*) Whewell, in truth, appears at one time to be founding morality upon positive law -- a doctrine which is at best a strange perversion of a theory of experience; and yet he denounces Utilitarians by the old arguments, and brings in such an 'intuitionism' as always roused Mill's combative propensities. Mill defends Bentham against Whewell, and his Utilitarianism starts essentially from Bentham's famous saying, 'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.' Happiness, says Mill, is the 'sole end of human action'; to 'desire' is to find a thing pleasant; to be averse from a thing is to think of it as painful; and, as happiness gives the criterion of all conduct, it must give 'the standard of morality.' (68*) To 'prove' the first principle may be impossible; one can only appeal to self-consciousness in general; but it seems to him so obvious that it will 'hardly be disputed.' (69*) It still requires explicate statement in order to exclude a doctrine held by many philosophers. Mill (70*) refers to Kant, whose formula that you are to act so that the rule on which you act may be law for all rational beings, is the most famous version of the doctrine which would deduce morality from reason. It really proves at most, as Mill says, the formal truth that laws must be consistent, but it fails 'almost grotesquely' in showing which consistent laws are right. Absolute selfishness or absolute benevolence would equally satisfy the formula. For Mill, then, all conduct depends on pain and pleasure; every theory of conduct must therefore be based upon psychology, or consequently upon experience, not upon abstract logic. Every attempt to twist morality out of pure reason is foredoomed to failure; logical contradiction corresponds to the impossible, not to the immoral, which is only too possible. That is a first principle, which seems to me, I confess, to be unassailable. It follows, in the next place, that Mill's argument is substantially an interpretation of facts, a sketch of a scientific theory of certain social phenomena. We find that certain rules of conduct are as a matter of fact generally approved; and we have to show that those rules are deducible from the assumed criterion. The rule, 'act for the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' coincides with the conduct approved in the recognised morality, and we need and can ask for no further explanation of the 'criterion.' Mill answers the usual objections. The criterion, it is said, can only justify the 'expedient' not the 'right.' The Utilitarian must act from a calculation of 'consequences,' and consequences are so uncertain that no general rule can be framed. To this, as urged by Whewell, Mill replied that his adversary had proved too much.(71*) The argument would destroy 'prudence' as well as morality. We can make general rules about the interests of the greatest number as easily as about our own personal interests. And, if it be urged that such general rules always admit of exceptions, all moralists have had to admit exceptions to moral rules. Exceptions, however, as James Mill had said, can only be admitted in morality, when the exception itself expresses a general rule. All moralists admit of lying in some extreme cases, but only where the obligation to speak truth conflicts with some higher obligation. If something be wanting in this defence, it may perhaps be supplied from Mill himself. The importance of cultivating a sensitive love of truth is, he says, so great as to possess a 'transcendent expediency' (72*) not to be violated by temporary considerations. When discussing the question of justice Mill insists upon the importance of the confidence in our fellow-creatures as corresponding to the 'very groundwork of our existence.' The general rule, that is, corresponds to an individual quality which is essential to the social union. A strong sense of veracity is unconditionally good, though circumstances may require exceptions to any rule when stated in terms of outward conduct. Lying may be necessary, but should always be painful. This is familiar ground on which it is needless to dwell. But another criticism of the 'criterion' is more important and leads to one of Mill's most characteristic arguments. The greatest happiness criterion, it is often said, will be interpreted differently as men form different judgments of what constitutes happiness. The 'felicific calculus' will give different results for the philosopher and the clown, the sensualist and the ascetic, the savage and the civilised man; and it is part of the empiricist contention that in fact the standard has varied widely. Mill himself observes, and he is only following Locke (73*) and Hume, 'that morality has varied widely; has in some cases sanctioned practices the most revolting' to others, and that the 'universal will of mankind is universal only in its discordance.'(74*) It is indeed precisely for that reason that the Utilitarian has defined to accept the authority of the 'moral sense' and appealed to facts. The belief that our feeling is right, simply because it is ours, is the 'mental infirmity which Bentham's philosophy tends to correct and Dr Whewell's to perpetuate.' (75*) That is to say, Bentham can lay down an 'objective criterion' because he calculates actual pains and pleasures. But will not this criterion be after all 'subjective' because our estimate of pains and pleasures is so discordant? Mill tries to meet this by a famous distinction between the qualities of pleasures. Bentham had insisted that one pleasure was as good as another. 'Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry.' (76*) Mill now declares that it is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.' We must consider 'quality' as well as 'quantity.'(77*) The 'only competent judges,' he argues, are those who have known both. Now, it is an 'unquestionable fact' that those who have this advantage prefer the higher or intellectual to the lower or sensual pleasures. It is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. If the fool or the pig dissents it is because he only knows his own side of the question.(78*) Answers are only too obvious. What is 'quantity' as distinguished from 'quality' of pleasure? The statement, 'A cubic foot of water weighs less than a cubic foot of lead' is intelligible; but what is the corresponding proposition about pleasure? Can we ask, How much benevolence is equal to how much hunger? The 'how much' is strictly meaningless. Moreover, are not both Socrates and the pig right in their judgment? Pig's-wash is surely better for the pig than dialogue; and dialogue may be better for Socrates than pig's-wash. If 'desirable' means that pleasure which each desires, each may be right. If it means some quality independent of the agent, we have the old fallacy which in political economy makes 'value' something 'objective.' All 'value' must depend upon the man as well as upon the thing. And this again suggests that neither Socrates nor a Christian saint would really make the supposed assertion. It is not true absolutely that 'intellectual' pleasures are simply 'better' than sensual. Each is better in certain circumstances. There are times when even the saint prefers a glass of water to religious musings; and moments when even a fool may at times find such intellectual pleasures as he can enjoy better than a glass of wine. This seems to be so obvious that we must suspect Mill of hastily stopping a gap in his argument without duly working out the implications. Indeed, he seems to be making room for something very like an intuition. He assumes the proposition, doubtful in itself and apparently inconsistent with his own position, that all competent people agree, and then makes this agreement decisive of a disputable question. Bentham, from his own point of view, was, I think, perfectly right in his statement. To calculate pleasures, the only question must be which are the greatest pleasures, and the only answer, those which, as a fact, attract people most. If a man is more attracted by 'push-pin' than by poetry, the presumption is that push-pin gives him most pleasure. We are simply investigating facts; and cannot overlook the obvious fact that estimates of pleasure vary indefinitely. Some things are pleasant to the refined alone, while others are more or less pleasant to everybody, and others, again, cease to be pleasant or become disgusting as men advance. To introduce the moral valuation in an estimate of facts to change the 'desirable' as 'that which is desired' into the 'desirable' as 'that which ought to be desired' is to beg the question or to argue in circle. Yet Mill was aiming at an obvious truth. As men advance intellectually, intellectual pleasures will clearly fill a larger space in their ideal of life. The purely sensual pleasures will have their value as long as men have bodies and appetites; but they will come to have a subordinate place in defining the whole ends of human conduct. The morality of the higher being will include higher aspirations. We have then to inquire, In what sense is a 'felicific calculus' possible or required? The moral rule is, as Mill holds, a statement of certain fundamental conditions of social life, giving, as he puts it, the 'ground-work' upon which all social relations are built up. This again supposes essentially a society made of the most varying elements, poets and men of science, philosophers and fools, nay, according to him, including both Socrates and the pig. In criticising Whewell, for example, he quotes (79*) with most emphatical approval that 'admirable passage' in which Bentham includes animal happiness in his criterion. We are to promote the pig's happiness so far as the pig is 'sentient,' little as he may care for a Socratic dialogue. But if so, the 'greatest happiness' rule must have for its end the conditions under which the most varying types of happiness may be promoted and each kind of happiness promoted according to the character of the subject. And in point of fact, the actual moral rules, 'Love your neighbour as yourself,' be truthful, honest, and so forth, do not as such define any special type of happiness as good. They assume rather that happiness, as happiness, is so far good; and that we ought to promote the happiness of others if our action be not objectionable upon some other ground. This indicates a really weak point of the old Utilitarianism, which Mill was trying to remedy. If, as Bentham would seem to imply, we are to form Our estimate of happiness simply by accepting average estimates of existing human beings, we shall be tempted to approve conduct conducive to the lower kinds of happiness alone. I should reply that this is to misunderstand the true nature of morality. If morality, as Mill would admit, corresponds essentially to the primary relations of social life, it is defined not by any average estimates of happiness, but by a statement of the conditions of the welfare of the social organism. It states the fundamental terms upon which men can best associate. It gives the fundamental 'social compact' (if we may accept the phrase without its fallacious connotation) implied in an ordered system of society. The happiness of each is good, so far as it does not imply anti-social characteristics. But morality leaves room for the existence of the most varied types of character from the saint to the pig, and aims at producing happiness -- not by taking the existing average man as an ultimate unalterable type, but -- by leaving room for such a development of men themselves as will alter their character and therefore their views of happiness. As the society progresses the individual will himself be altered, and the type which implies a greater development of intellect, sympathy, and energy come to prevail over the lower, more sensual, selfish, and feeble type. Though happiness is still the ultimate base, the morality applies immediately to the social bond, which contemplates a general development of the whole man and a modification of the elements of happiness itself. Mill, perceiving that something was wanted, makes the unfortunate attempt at supplying the gap by his assumption of an imaginary consensus of the better minds. What is true is that all men may consent to conditions of society which leave a free play to the higher influences: that is, are favourable to the more advanced type with greater force of intellect and richness of emotional power. Here we return to the old Utilitarian problem: What is the 'sanction' of morality? The 'sanction' can be nothing else than the sum of all the motives which induce men to act morally. What, then, are they? The Utilitarians, starting from the juridical point of view, had a ready answer in the case of positive law. The sanction, briefly, is the gallows. Law means coercion, and as everybody (with very insignificant exceptions) objects to being hanged, the gallows may be regarded as a sanction of universal efficacy. If the moral law be taken in the same way as implying a rule of conduct to be enforced by an external sanction, the correlative to the gallows was hell-fire. This satisfied Paley, but as the Utilitarians had abolished hell, they were at some loss for a substitute. Here Mill accepts the principles laid down by his father. He defends the Utilitarians upon the ground that they 'had gone beyond all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the morality of the agent.'(80*) They based morality upon 'consequences,' and the consequences of an action are no doubt independent of the motive. If I burn a man for heresy, the 'consequences' to him are the same whether my motive be love of his soul or the hatred of a bigot for a free-thinker. To estimate the goodness or badness of an action, we must consider all that it implies. We must inquire whether a society in which heretics are repressed by the stake is better or worse than one in which they are left at liberty; and that cannot be settled by simply asking whether the persecutor is benevolent or malevolent. The purest benevolence may be misguided if it is directed by erroneous belief. The 'sentimentalism,' denounced by Utilitarians, implied refusal to look at consequences, and the justification, for example, of corrupting charity on the ground that it was pleasant to the sympathy of the corrupter. Their especial function was to warn philanthropists that misguided philanthropy might stimulate the greatest evils. But to infer from this the general principle that the 'motive' was indifferent involves the characteristic fallacy. The true inference is that sound morality has an intellectual as well as an emotional basis; it supposes a just foresight of consequences as well as a desire for happiness. Conduct depends throughout upon character; it cannot be altered without altering character, though the alteration may imply enlightenment of the intellect rather than development of the feelings. When we come to the moral 'sanction' the motive becomes all important. The legislator may be contented if he can induce a bad man to act like a good man or to refrain from murder in the presence of the policeman. He can take the policeman and the gallows for granted; and assume the existence of the fundamental social instincts upon which the judicial machinery depends. But it is precisely with those instincts that the moralist is concerned. He has to ask what are the forces which work the machinery and cannot be indifferent to the question of 'motive.' Mill only half recognises the point when he admits that the 'motive' has much to do with the 'morality of the agent.' If 'motive' be interpreted widely enough it constitutes the agent's morality. An action is moral in so far as it implies a character thoroughly 'moralised' or fitted to play the right part in society. The distinction between the morality of the conduct and the morality of the agent vanishes. A good act is that which a good man would perform. If a bad man, under compulsion, acts in the same way, he acts from fear, and his act is therefore morally neutral, and to call him good on account of his action is therefore a mistake. He simply shows that he is a man, and dislikes hanging even more than he hates his fellow-men. An 'external sanction' really means a motive for acting as though you were good even if you are not good. That such sanctions are essential to society, that they provide a shelter under which true morality may or must grow up, is obvious. It is true, also, that in early stages the distinction between the law which rests upon force and that which rests upon the character is not manifest. But ultimately morality means nothing but the expression of the character itself. Hence to find a universal 'sanction' for morality is chimerical. Such a sanction would be 'a motive' which would apply to all men good or bad; that is, it would not be a moral motive. Fear of hell or the gallows may indirectly help (or hinder) the development of a moral character; but in itself the fear is neither good nor bad. The very attempt, therefore, to find such a 'sanction' implies the 'external' or essentially inadequate view of morality, into which the Utilitarians with their legal prepossessions were too apt to fall. The law, resting upon external sanctions, may be useful or prejudicial to morals, but must always be subordinate; for its application depends upon instincts by which it is guided and which it cannot create. Mill recognises this, virtually, though not explicitly, in his discussion of the 'Utilitarian sanction.' He declares in rather awkward phrase that the 'ultimate sanction of all morality (external motives apart)' is 'a subjective feeling in our own minds.' (Where else can such a feeling be, and what is 'an objective feeling'?) These feelings exist, as he argues, equally for the Utilitarian and the 'Transcendentalist,' though the 'Transcendentalists' think that their existence 'in the mind' implies that they have a 'root out of the mind.'(81*) The 'conscience,' that is, pain in breaking the moral law, exists as a fact, whatever its origin. If 'innate' it can still be opposed, and the question, 'Why should I obey it?' is equally difficult to answer. Even if innate, again, it may be an innate regard for other men's pains and pleasures, and so coincide with the Utilitarian view. He argues accordingly, that, in point of fact, we may acquire that 'feeling of unity' with others which gives the really 'ultimate sanction' to the 'Happiness morality.' (82*) With this result I at least can have no quarrel. I hold it to be perfectly correct and as good an account of morality as can be given. The fault is in placing the 'external sanction ' on the same level with the 'internal' and failing to see that it is not properly 'moral' at all. But here, once more, it is necessary to look at the difficulty of deriving his conclusion from the premises inherited from his teachers. The essential difficulty lies in the psychological analysis and the theory of association. We are again at James Mill's point of view. Conduct is determined by pain and pleasure. An action supposes an end, and that 'end' must be a pleasure. If we ask, pleasure to whom? the answer must be, pleasure to the agent. All conduct, it would seem, must be directly or indirectly self-regarding, for the 'end ' must always be my own pleasure. Mill maintains that 'virtue' may, for the Utilitarian as well as for others, be a 'thing desirable in itself.' (83*) That is a 'psychological fact,' independently of the explanation. But at this point he lapses into the old doctrine. Virtue, he admits, is not 'naturally and originally part of the end.' Virtue was once-desired simply 'for its conduciveness to pleasure' and especially 'to protection from pain.' It becomes a good in itself. This is enforced by the familiar illustration of the 'love of money' and of the love of power or fame. Each passion aimed originally at a further end, which has dropped out while the desire for means has become original. The moral feelings, as he says in answer to Whewell,(84*) are 'eminently artificial and the product of culture.' We may grow corn, or we may as easily grow hemlocks or thistles. Yet, as he declares in the Utilitarianism,(85*) 'moral feelings' are not 'the less natural' because 'acquired.' The 'moral faculty' is a 'natural outgrowth' of our nature. The antithesis of 'natural' and 'artificial' is generally ambiguous; but Mill's view is clear enough upon the main point. Virtue is the product of the great force 'indissoluble association.' Now 'artificial associations' are dissolved 'as intellectual culture goes on.' But the association between virtue and utility is indissoluble, because there is a 'natural basis of sentiment' which strengthens it -- that basis being 'our desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures.'(86*) One further corollary deserves notice. To become virtuous, it is necessary to acquire virtuous habits. We 'will' at first simply because we desire. Afterwards we come to desire a thing because we will it. 'Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit.' (87*) Thus, as he had said in the Logic,(88*) we learn to will a thing 'without reference to its being pleasurable' -- a fact illustrated by the habit of 'hurtful excess' and equally by moral heroism. It would surely be more consistent to say that habit is a modification of character which alters our pains and pleasures but does not enable us to act against our judgment of pains and pleasures. He is trying to escape from an awkward consequence; but the mode of evasion will hardly bear inspection. Mill's arguments imply his thorough adherence to the 'association psychology.' They really indicate, I think, an attempt to reach a right conclusion from defective premises. The error is implied in the analysis of 'ends' of action. When a man acts with a view to an 'end' the true account is that his immediate action is affected by all the consequences which he foresees. This or that motive conquers because it includes a perception of more or less remote results. But what determines conduct is not a calculation of some future pains or pleasures, but the actual painfulness or pleasurableness of the whole action at the moment. I shrink from the pain of a wound or from the pain of giving a wound to another person. Both are equally my immediate feelings; and it is an error to analyse the sympathetic pain into two different factors, one the immediate action and the other the anticipated reaction. It is one indissoluble motive, just as natural or original as the dislike to the unpleasant sensation of my own wound. To distinguish it into two facts and make one subordinate and a product of association is a fallacy. We can hardy believe that 'association' accounts even for 'love of money' or 'fame.' Avarice and vanity mean an exaggerated fear of poverty or regard to other people's opinions. They do not imply any forgetfulness of end for means, but an erroneous estimate of the proportion of means to ends. The really noticeable point, again, has already met us in James Mill's ethics. When Mill speaks of 'virtue' as 'artificial' or derivative, he is asserting a truth not to be denied by an evolutionist. Undoubtedly the social sentiments have been slowly developed; and undoubtedy they have grown up under the protection of external 'sanctions.' The primitive society did not distinguish between law and morality; the pressure of external circumstances upon character and the influence of the character itself upon the society. A difficulty arises from the defective view which forces Mill to regard the whole process as taking place within the life of the individual. The unit is then a being without moral instincts at all, and they have to be inserted by the help of the association machinery. Sympathy is not an intrinsic part of human nature in its more advanced stages, but something artificial stuck on by indissoluble association. Mill, himself, when discussing the virtue of justice in his last chapter, substantially adopts a line of argument which, if not satisfactory in details, sufficiently recognises this point of view. And, if he still fails to explain morality sufficiently, it is in the main because he never freed himself from the unsatisfactory assumptions of the old psychology. Here, as in so many other cases, he sees the inadequacy of the old conclusions, but persuades himself that a better result can be reached without the thorough revision which was really necessary. NOTES: 1. Autobiography, p. 50. the most elaborate attack upon the Liberty is contained in Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (1873), by my brother Sir James FitzJames Stephen, in whose I life I have given an account of the book. I shall not here go into the controversy. I am content to say that, though I cannot agree with my brother, I think that he strikes very forcibly at some weak points in Mill's scheme. The most remarkable point is that the book is substantially a criticism of Mill's from the older Utilitarian point of view. It shows, therefore, how Mill diverged from Bentham. 2. I refer for the Liberty and the Representative Government to the People's Editions of 1867. 3. Works, ii. 451. 4. Autobiography, p. 231. 5. Ibid., pp. 191-95. 6. Liberty (People's Edition, 1867), p. 3 7. Ibid., p. 5. 8. Liberty, 17 n. The Bradlaugh case showed that the old spirit was not extinct twenty-five years later. 9. See Bain's James Mill, p. 304. 10. Liberty, pp. 30, 31. 11. Liberty, p. 21. The excellent Abraham Tucker remarks that if he met 'a person of credit, candour, and understanding.' who denied that two and two made four, he would give him a hearing. -- Light of Nature (1834), p. 125. 12. Liberty, pp. 25, 26. 'To become properly acquainted with a truth,' says Novalis (quoted in Carlyle's essay upon him), 'we must first have disbelieved and disputed against it.' But Novalis also observed that 'my faith gains infinitely the moment I see it should by some one else.' 13. Liberty, p. 24. 14. Liberty, p. 22. 15. Liberty, p. 17. 16. Note in Liberty Mill's theory that the impulse given at 'three periods' -- the Reformation, the last half of the eighteenth century, and the 'Goethean and Fichtean' period in Germany -- have made Europe what it is. Yet each 'period' is only the product of the preceding periods. Has Europe owed nothing to the seventeenth century? 17. Subjection of Women, p. 6. 18. Dissertations, p. 351. So in Subjection of Women (second edition, 1869, p. 129) he remarks that originality generally presupposes 'elaborate discipline,' and agrees with F.D. Maurice that the most original thinkers are those who know most thoroughly what has been done by their predecessors. 19. Liberty, p. 32. 20. Ibid., p. 7. 21. Humboldt's Sphere and Duties of Government was translated by Joseph Coulthard in 1854. Though originally written in 1791 it did not appear in a complete form till published in the collected edition of his works by his brother Alexander in 1852. The book shows the influence of Kant and Rousseau. Humboldt was at a time a kind of philosophical antimonian objecting to all external law as injurious to spontaneous spiritual development. Marriage should be left to individual contract, because, 'where law has imposed no fetters morality most surely binds.' In Bentham's phrase 'external sanctions' weaken the internal. The state should provide 'security,' and leave religion and morality to themselves. Humboldt's philosophy is not Mill's, though on most points the practical application coincides. 22. It would be curious to compare Mill's theory with the very interesting books in which M. Tarde has shown the vast importance of 'imitation' in sociology. 23. Mill, in his Representative Government (p. 17), argues that the Hebrew prophets discharged the functions of modern liberty of the press; and that the Jews were therefore the 'most progressive people of antiquity' after the Greeks. Still, their 'culture' was hardly so wide. 24. Liberty, p. 41. 25. Political Economy, bk. iv. ch. I, section 2. 26. See chap. v. 27. Representative Government, p. 45. 28. Ibid., p. 104. 29. Representative Government, p. 5. 30. Coleridge, he observes, had also distinguished 'permanence' and 'progression.' -- Representative Government. p. 8. 31. See Philosophie Positive, iv, 318, etc. 32. Auguste Comte and Positivism (reprinted from the Westminister Review, 1865) p. 36. 33. Representative Government, p. 14. 34. Ibid., p. 22. 35. Representative Government, ch. iv. 36. Ibid., p. 21. 37. Ibid., p. 22. 38. Representative Government, p. 47. 39. ibid., p. 52. 40. ibid., p. 53 41. Ibid., p. 57. 42. Ibid., p. 59. 43. Representative Government, p. 60. 44. Subjection of Women (1869), p. 16. 45. Logic, p. 572 (bk. vi. ch. vi, section 2). 46. Representative Government p. 76. Cf. Political Economy, p. 493 (bk. iv. ch. vii. section 2). 47. Subjection of Women, pp. 41, 104. 48. Subjection of Women, pp. 48-9. 49. Ibid., p. 105. In one of the letters to Carlyle Mill asks whether the highest masculine, are not identical with the highest feminine, qualities. I should like to see Carlyle's answer. 50. This argument is put by Comte in his correspondence with Mill. So far, Comte seems to have the best of it; and Mill's inability to appreciate the doctrine is characteristic. At this time Mill seems to have been undecided upon the question of divorce. See the discussion in the Letters, pp. 208-73. 51. Subjection of Women, p. 36. 52. Subjection of Women, p. 59. Cf. Liberty, p. 61. 53. Subjection of Women, p. 81. 54. Liberty, p. 44. 55. Ibid. p. 46. 56. Liberty, p. 47. 57. Liberty, p. 48. 58. Representative Government, p. 74. 59. Liberty, p. 41. 60. See in Representative Government, p. 62, his argument against the objection to Hare's scheme that it would destroy the local character of representation. The objectors think, he says, that 'a nation does not consist of persons but of artificial units, the creation of geography and statistics'; that 'Liverpool and Exeter are the proper objects of a legislator's care in contradistinction to the population of those places.' this, he thinks, is 'a curious specimen of delusion produced by words.' The local interests and affections which bind neighbours and townsmen together may thus be simply set aside. 61. See Correspondence with Comte, p. 414. 62. August Comte, p. 200. 63. ibid. pp. 94-100. 64. I refer to the second edition (1864). Mill's Utilitarianism, and some other parts of his writings referring to the same subject, have been republished in 1897 by Mr Charles Douglas as The Ethics of John Stuart Mill. He has prefixed some interesting 'Introductory Essays.' Mr Douglas had previously published John Stuart Mill: a Study of his Philosophy, 1895. Both are valuable studies of Mill. 65. Utilitarianism, p. 24. 66. Ibid. p. 48. 67. October 1852, reprinted in Dissertation, ii. 450, etc. 68. Utilitarianism, pp. 17, 58. 69. Ibid. p. 59. 70. Utilitarianism, p. 5. 71., Dissertations, ii, 474. 72. Utilitarianism, p. 33. 73. See Locke's Essay (bk. i, ch. iii, section 9) upon the 'Caribbees' and 'Tououpinambos'. 74. Dissertation, ii, 198. 75. Ibid. ii, 389. 76. ibid, ii, 389. 77. Utilitarianism, p. 12. It is rather odd to find Mr Ruskin making the same remark. -- Fors Clavigera, xiv, 8. 78. Utilitarianism, p. 14. The argument is virtually Plato's. See Republic, book ix, (581-83). 79. Dissertations, ii, 482. 80. Utilitarianism, p. 26. Mill is answering the criticism that Utilitarianism puts the standard of morality too high if it assumes that every man is to be prompted by desire for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' I have spoken of this in considering James Mill's ethical position. 81. Utilitarianism, p. 42. 82. Ibid., p. 48. 83. Utilitarianism, p. 54. 84. Dissertations, ii, p. 472. 85. Utilitarianism, p. 45. 86. Ibid. p. 46. 87. Utilitarianism, p. 60. 88. Logic, bk. vi, ch. iii. section 4.