Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

deeper, no

doubt, than any which can be attributed to my father. He is a much

greater name in history. But my father exercised a far greater personal

ascendency. He _was_ sought for the vigour and instructiveness of his

conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion

of his opinions. I have never known any man who could do such ample

justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect

command over his great mental resources, the terseness and

expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as

intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of

all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty

laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing

companion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely

intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more

through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to

appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard

above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and

activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came

in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the

shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and

his very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, and

the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among

them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to

the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in

the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good

which individuals could do by judicious effort.

 

If was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing character to

the Benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of that time. They fell

singly, scattered from him, in many directions, but they flowed from him

in a continued stream principally in three channels. One was through me,

the only mind directly formed by his instructions, and through whom

considerable influence was exercised over various young men, who became,

in their turn, propagandists. A second was through some of the Cambridge

contemporaries of Charles Austin, who, either initiated by him or under

the general mental impulse which he gave, had adopted many opinions

allied to those of my father, and some of the more considerable of whom

afterwards sought my father's acquaintance and frequented his house.

Among these may be mentioned Strutt, afterwards Lord Belper, and the

present Lord Romilly, with whose eminent father, Sir Samuel, my father

had of old been on terms of friendship. The third channel was that of a

younger generation of Cambridge undergraduates, contemporary, not with

Austin, but with Eyton Tooke, who were drawn to that estimable person by

affinity of opinions, and introduced by him to my father: the most

notable of these was Charles Buller. Various other persons individually

received and transmitted a considerable amount of my father's influence:

for example, Black (as before mentioned) and Fonblanque: most of these,

however, we accounted only partial allies; Fonblanque, for instance, was

always divergent from us on many important points. But indeed there was

by no means complete unanimity among any portion of us, nor had any of

us adopted implicitly all my father's opinions. For example, although

his _Essay on Government_ was regarded probably by all of us as a

masterpiece of political wisdom, our adhesion by no means extended to

the paragraph of it in which he maintains that women may, consistently

with good government, be excluded from the suffrage, because their

interest is the same with that of men. From this doctrine, I, and all

those who formed my chosen associates, most positively dissented. It is

due to my father to say that he denied having intended to affirm that

women _should_ be excluded, any more than men under the age of forty,

concerning whom he maintained in the very next paragraph an exactly

similar thesis. He was, as he truly said, not discussing whether the

suffrage had better be restricted, but only (assuming that it is to be

restricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction which does not

necessarily involve a sacrifice of the securities for good government.

But I thought then, as I have always thought since that the opinion

which he acknowledged, no less than that which he disclaimed, is as

great an error as any of those against which the _Essay_ was directed;

that the interest of women is included in that of men exactly as much as

the interest of subjects is included in that of kings, and no more; and

that every reason which exists for giving the suffrage to anybody,

demands that it should not be withheld from women. This was also the

general opinion of the younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to be able

to say that Mr. Bentham, on this important point, was wholly on our side.

 

But though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with my father,

his opinions, as I said before, were the principal element which gave

its colour and character to the little group of young men who were the

first propagators of what was afterwards called "Philosophic Radicalism."

Their mode of thinking was not characterized by Benthamism in any sense

which has relation to Bentham as a chief or guide, but rather by a

combination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern political

economy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's population

principle was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, as

any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine,

originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite

improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the

contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that

improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole

labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of

their numbers. The other leading characteristics of the creed, which we

held in common with my father, may be stated as follows:

 

In politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of two

things: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion.

So complete was my father's reliance on the influence of reason over the

minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt as

if all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if

all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word and

in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a

legislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought that

when the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would

aim at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; since

the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educated

intelligence, to make in general a good choice of persons to represent

them, and having done so, to leave to those whom they had chosen a

liberal discretion. Accordingly aristocratic rule, the government of the

Few in any of its shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood

between mankind and an administration of their affairs by the best

wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternest

disapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the principal article of his

political creed, not on the ground of liberty, Rights of Man, or any of

the phrases, more or less significant, by which, up to that time,

democracy had usually been defended, but as the most essential of

"securities for good government." In this, too, he held fast only to

what he deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent to

monarchical or republican forms--far more so than Bentham, to whom a

king, in the character of "corrupter-general," appeared necessarily very

noxious. Next to aristocracy, an established church, or corporation of

priests, as being by position the great depravers of religion, and

interested in opposing the progress of the human mind, was the object of

his greatest detestation; though he disliked no clergyman personally who

did not deserve it, and was on terms of sincere friendship with several.

In ethics his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points

which he deemed important to human well being, while he was supremely

indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in

personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality, which

he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priestcraft. He

looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in

the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define

exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that

freedom. This opinion was connected in him with no sensuality either of

a theoretical or of a practical kind. He anticipated, on the contrary,

as one of the beneficial effects of increased freedom, that the

imagination would no longer dwell upon the physical relation and its

adjuncts, and swell this into one of the principal objects of life; a

perversion of the imagination and feelings, which he regarded as one of

the deepest seated and most pervading evils in the human mind. In

psychology, his fundamental doctrine was the formation of all human

character by circumstances, through the universal Principle of

Association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the

moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education. Of all his

doctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to be

insisted on; unfortunately there is none which is more contradictory to

the prevailing tendencies of speculation, both in his time and since.

 

These various opinions were seized on with youthful fanaticism by the

little knot of young men of whom I was one: and we put into them a

sectarian spirit, from which, in intention at least, my father was

wholly free. What we (or rather a phantom substituted in the place of

us) were sometimes, by a ridiculous exaggeration, called by others,

namely a "school," some of us for a time really hoped and aspired to be.

The French _philosophes_ of the eighteenth century were the examples we

sought to imitate, and we hoped to accomplish no less results. No one of

the set went to so great excesses in his boyish ambition as I did; which

might be shown by many particulars, were it not an useless waste of

space and time.

 

All this, however, is properly only the outside of our existence; or, at

least, the intellectual part alone, and no more than one side of that.

In attempting to penetrate inward, and give any indication of what we

were as human beings, I must be understood as speaking only of myself,

of whom alone I can speak from sufficient knowledge; and I do not

believe that the picture would suit any of my companions without many

and great modifications.

 

I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as a

mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those

who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of

my life not altogether untrue of me. It was perhaps as applicable to me

as it can well be to anyone just entering into life, to whom the common

objects of desire must in general have at least the attraction of

novelty. There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth of

the age I then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and this

was the thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction I had

in abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good of mankind was my

strongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal

was as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal for

speculative opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or

sympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in

my ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for

ideal nobleness. Yet of this feeling I was imaginatively very

susceptible; but there was at that time an intermission of its natural

aliment, poetical culture, while there was a superabundance of the

discipline antagonistic to it, that of mere logic and analysis. Add to

this that, as already mentioned, my father's teachings tended to the

undervaluing of feeling. It was not that he was himself cold-hearted or

insensible; I believe it was rather from the contrary quality; he

thought that feeling could take care of itself; that there was sure to

be enough of it if actions were properly cared about. Offended by the

frequency with which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feeling

is made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, instead of

being itself called on for a justification, while, in practice, actions

the effect of which on human happiness is mischievous, are defended as

being required by feeling, and the character