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

prejudice can only be successfully combated by

philosophy, no way can really be made against it permanently until it

has been shown not to have philosophy on its side.

 

Being now released from any active concern in temporary politics, and

from any literary occupation involving personal communication with

contributors and others, I was enabled to indulge the inclination,

natural to thinking persons when the age of boyish vanity is once past,

for limiting my own society to a very few persons. General society, as

now carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the persons

who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than

the pleasure it affords. All serious discussion on matters on which

opinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency

in liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the

art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the last

century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called society

to those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aided

to climb a little higher in it; while to those who are already at the

top, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposed

requirements of their station. To a person of any but a very common

order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal

objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people,

in the present day, of any really high class of intellect, make their

contact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost

considered as retiring from it altogether. Those persons of any mental

superiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatly

deteriorated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone of their

feelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about those of their

opinions respecting which they must remain silent in the society they

frequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects as

unpractical, or, at least, too remote from realization to be more than a

vision, or a theory, and if, more fortunate than most, they retain their

higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and

affairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and

judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep.

A person of high intellect should never go into unintellectual society

unless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only person with

high objects who can safely enter it at all. Persons even of

intellectual aspirations had much better, if they can, make their

habitual associates of at least their equals, and, as far as possible,

their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment.

Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few

cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on

these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of

anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All

these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose

society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.

 

Among these, by far the principal was the incomparable friend of whom I

have already spoken. At this period she lived mostly with one young

daughter, in a quiet part of the country, and only occasionally in town,

with her first husband, Mr. Taylor. I visited her equally in both

places; and was greatly indebted to the strength of character which

enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on

the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr.

Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together, though in all other

respects our conduct during those years gave not the slightest ground

for any other supposition than the true one, that our relation to each

other at that time was one of strong affection and confidential intimacy

only. For though we did not consider the ordinances of society binding

on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct

should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor

therefore on herself.

 

In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which

now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth

and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood

before I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned

back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against

Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much

more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more

willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which

had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose

convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was

much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more

decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost

the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate

society. But in addition to this, our opinions were far _more_ heretical

than mine had been in the days of my most extreme Benthamism. In those

days I had seen little further than the old school of political

economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social

arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance,

appeared to me, as to them, the _dernier mot_ of legislation: and I

looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on

these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The

notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the

injustice--for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy

or not--involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast

majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by

universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the

portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a

democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less

democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be

so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the

selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate

improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly

under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with

the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which

most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward

to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the

industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will

be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the

division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great

a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert

on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer

either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert

themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be

exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to.

The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the

greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the

raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the

benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that

we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these

objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how

distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to

render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an

equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated

herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority

of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour

and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social

purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But

the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor

is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of

the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as

readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow

degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive

generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But

the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature.

Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the

generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind

is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on

things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity,

as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred

from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is

capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions

as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which

forms the general character of the existing state of society, is _so_

deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions

tends to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more than

ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do

anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent

in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity. These

considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts

to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs,

while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we

regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in

a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed

with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by

select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether

they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful

education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity

of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making

them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of

doing so.

 

In the _Principles of Political Economy_, these opinions were

promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more so

in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. The difference

arose partly from the change of times, the first edition having been

written and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, after

which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in

opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought

very startling a short time before. In the first edition the

difficulties of Socialism were stated so strongly, that the tone was on

the whole that of opposition to it. In the year or two which followed,

much time was given to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the

Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics

involved in the controversy: and the result was that most of what had

been written on the subject in the first edition was cancelled, and

replaced by arguments and reflections which represent a more advanced

opinion.

 

The _Political Economy_ was far more rapidly executed than the _Logic_,

or indeed than anything of importance which I had previously written. It

was commenced in the autumn of 1845, and was ready for the press before

the end of 1847. In this period of little more than two years there was

an interval of six months during which the work was laid aside, while I

was writing articles in the _Morning Chronicle_ (which unexpectedly

entered warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasant

properties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of

the Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities of the

time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared to

me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with

permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the

Irish people. But the idea was new and strange; there was no English

precedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of English

politicians and the English public concerning all social phenomena not

generally met with in England (however common elsewhere), made my

endeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste

lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, Parliament

passed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation has

not since found