John Stuart Mill and the Emotions

In the midst of Mill's distress, when he felt as if the analytical abilities he had developed would actually prevent him from developing any feelings, he turned to music but found no consolation. In one telling statement which illustrates his hopelessness he says: "I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations." He even dwelled on that thought:

"The octave consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these had done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty," (5.10).

It was akin to fearing, as had the philosopher Laputa, that the sun was about to burn out and that we should all then freeze in an instant.

In this period of depression he picked up the poet Byron because he had heard that this romantic poet was supposed to be effective at rousing the "intenser feelings." Indeed, he did, but, as Mill plaintively relates, "I got no good from this reading, but the reverse." Apparently their minds were too much in harmony, and the doleful longing of Byron's poetry plunged Mill yet deeper into distress. Wordsworth, however, came to his rescue not only because of the rural subject matter of the poetry but because Wordsworth was able to express "states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty" (5.12). What else did Wordsworth teach?

"Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings. And the delight which these poems gave me, proved that with culture of this sort, there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of analysis," (5.12).

Or, to put it slightly differently:

"The intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness," (5.13).

Thus, analysis and feeling could go hand in hand; the heart could be open to the world without the mind's feeling neglected and abandoned.

Reorienting Life

He then related how this new insight opened him up to new people; to the "Coleridgian" elements in his society; to the influences flowing into the country through German poetry and French politics. But, most of all, he seems to have been bitten by a theory of progress that was "in the air" in the 1820s-1830s. He mentions the French philosopher/sociologist Comte, who posited three stages in the development of human history, from the religious to the secular, and Mill thought that the age in which he lived would demonstrate the triumph of the last.

But his ideas also took on a more critical tone with respect to English society. He was greatly impressed by the early French socialists and decided to apply their analysis to English institutions. He says:

"I was as much as ever a radical and democrat for Europe, and especially for England. I thought the predominance of the aristocratic classes, the noble and the rich, in the English Constitution, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes, or any such comparatively small inconvenience, but as the great demoralizing agency in the country," (5.22).

The whole system of inheritance, of property rights, of the abuse of the powers of legislation for the advantage of the upper classes was an example of the "demoralizing" agency in the country. The chief passport to power in his day was "riches, hereditary or acquired." The signs of riches were "almost the only things really respected, and the life of the people was mainly devoted to the pursuit of them" (Id.).

Conclusion

Even though he entertained these radical ideas, however, I think Mill partook of some of the timorousness that he attributed to his adversaries, such as FD Maurice. For when he began to realize that his ideas would bring him into conflict with his father, Mill was at a loss what to do. He knew that his father's educational method emphasized the virtue of independent thinking, but still it was difficult for him to bring himself to disagree with such a powerful man. He says:

"I expected no good, but only pain to both of us, from discussing our differences: and I never expressed them but when he gave utterance to some opinion of feeling repugnant to mine, in a manner which would have made it disingenuousness on my part to remain silent," (5.26).

Mill was now his own man but he was never so much his own man, I suppose, as when he followed the critical methods taught him by his father.

2213