Mill’s Theory of Culture: The Wedding of Literature and Democracy

MILL'S THEORY OF CULTURE: THE WEDDING OF LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY EDWARD ALEXANDER Ever since M. H. Abrams' directed attention to John Stuart Mill's essays on the nature of poetry, it has been generally recognized that his literary speculations, however slight in proportion to the main body of his work, are worthy of study. The 1833 essays, "What is Poetry?" and 'The Two Kinds of Poetry," are now to be found in anthologies of nineteenth-century literature, as is the delinition of poetry as moral inspiration from the 1867 Inaugural Address at St. Andrews University. Much has been written about Mill's theory of poetry, including a booklength study which makes his attitude towards poetry the basis of an inquiry into the relation between poetry and philosophy as such2 Most discussions of Mill's writings on literature have considered them as isolated phenomena of the early part of his career, laudable yet temporary diversions of a mind essentially political from its fundamental interests." Since most of the specilically literary pieces appeared in the early part of Mill's career (before 1840) they are viewed as so many outgrowths of the mental crisis from which he recovered with the aid of poetry. When he had paid sufficient tribute to what had saved him, it is quietly assumed, he returned to his old non-literary occupations. But John Robson, in his 1960 article on Mill's theory of poetry, has shown that although Mill's theory of the nature and function of poetry was indeed complete by 1840, the fact that he wrote no specilically literary essays after that date does not prove that he had lost either his interest in poetry or his conviction of its importance. By viewing Mill's theory of poetry as a branch of his ethical thought, and by documenting Mill's continued interest in poetry from some of the works of the 'siXties, Robson is able to show that "Mill not only had emotions and was motivated by them, but recognized their place in a complete moral and social theory.'" I would like in this essay to extend Professor Robson's thesis by showing that we can grasp the wider relevance of Mill's more literary essays and the comprehensiveness of his social philosophy only if we see how his view of literature is connected with his delinition of cUlture and of the form it must take in democratic society. Vohmre xxxv; Numher I, Oc.tobet,.. 1965._ ___ __________ 76 EDWARD ALEXANDER If we admit that Mill returned after 1840 to his old, non-literary concerns, we must remember that he returned to them a new man, and one determined to apply the insights which his mental crisis and recovery from it had given him to the solution of the great social and political questions of his time. Having learned from his own experience that the fulfilment of the objects of Benthamite reform would not ensure individual happiness, he set out to show that the triumph of democracy would not guarantee a high culture. One of the major results of the mental crisis from which Mill had recovered with the help of poetry was a change of political outlook: I now looked upon the choice of political institutions as a moral and educational question more than one of material interests, thinking that it ought to be decided mainly by the consideration, what great improvement in life and culture stands next in order for the people concerned, as the condition of their further progress, and what institutions are most likely to promote that. ...5 Mill's greatness lay in his ability to define and espouse the ideals of individual culture without forsaking the goals of Benthamite reform and democracy itself. The principles of permanence and progression which Mill (following Coleridge) said that good governments ought to incorporate were embodied in his own career in his simultaneous allegiance to Coleridge and to Bentham; to Romantic ideals of the absolute and eternal demands of the self and to Utilitarian demands for the reform of existing society; to Greek ideals of culture and to the modern movement towards democracy . In fact, Mill saw the reconciliation of the ancient...