In common political debate a belief in absolute values is often opposed to relativism.1 Those who uphold the importance of “truth” in politics are usually on the side of the absolutists, and relativism tends to attract skeptics who deny that truth has much to do with politics or morality. John Stuart Mill was an unusual philosopher in adopting a historically based (and hence relativist) system of ethics and politics, a strong commitment to individual liberty, and, at the same time, a robust idea of truth.
His commitment to truth was developed primarily, though by no means exclusively, in his major work, the System of Logic (1843),2 and remained relevant to numerous works concerned with ethics and politics. Before turning to the Logic, however, we shall first consider a passage from Bernard Williams’s Truth and Truthfulness, which brings out in an interesting way a common misinterpretation of Mill this essay is meant to challenge. According to Williams:
Democracy (in its modern, constitutional, forms) is valued, to an important extent in the name of liberty. . . . The appeal to liberty comes in stronger and weaker versions. The minimal version insists merely that government should permit maximum freedom (compatible with other goods, especially others’ freedom), and that to deny people information and the right to spread information both violates liberty directly, in particular the freedom of speech, and devalues liberty in other areas, since effective action requires knowledge. A stronger version of the appeal calls, as J. S. Mill did, on the value of individuals’ exercising and developing their powers. Both versions of the appeal to liberty raise an important question: how far are we concerned with liberty (above all, the freedom of speech), and how far are we concerned with truth? The standard liberal assumption is that the two objectives go together, and to some extent this is true. Self-development has been understood as development in the light of the truth, and liberties do get their point, in good part, from the possibility of effective action, which implies true information. However, it does not follow that all liberty, and specifically the freedom of speech, is necessarily helpful to the spread of the truth. We cannot take for granted Mill’s optimistic conclusion that maximal freedom of speech must assist the emergence of truth in what has come to be called “a market-place of ideas.”3
This lengthy but helpful passage attempts to relate truth, liberty, and democracy with reference to Mill’s thought and with reference to the commitment of liberalism generally to freedom of speech. Nevertheless one may ask, does this fairly commonplace criticism of Mill embrace the whole of Mill’s approach? Did Mill believe, as Williams seems to suggest, that maximum freedom of speech “must assist” the emergence of truth? This view omits the emphasis Mill placed on logic, for it is logic that assists the discovery of truth, and liberty that simply, though importantly, keeps truth alive. Mill defined logic as “the science which treats of the operations of the human understanding in the pursuit of truth” (CW 7:6).4 Such a science might change from place to place or from age to age, but logic, though also evolving, as a rational science, remains committed to the discovery of truth. Mill put it dramatically: “If there were but one rational being in the universe, that being might be a perfect logician; and the science and art of logic would be the same for that one person as for the whole human race” (CW 7:6).
It is important to appreciate the novelty of Mill’s approach to logic and to truth in an age when great strides were being made to free logic from the scholastic tradition that in the early nineteenth century was still firmly entrenched in English universities.5 For Mill, there was considerable merit in the scholastic tradition, based on Aristotelian philosophy, but its study had become repetitive and lackluster. Nevertheless modern philosophy, from Locke onward, tended to reject the tradition and concentrated mainly on psychology and language, and in the process minimized the importance of traditional logic.6 For Locke, for example, traditional logic seemed to generate useless disputes of little practical benefit to society.7
In Elements of Logic (1826) Richard Whately made an attempt to revitalize the study of logic at Oxford by restating Aristotelian logic in a new context, using fresh examples and without the burdensome baggage of scholasticism.8 This context might be described as Coleridgean, as early versions of both the Elements of Logic and its companion, Elements of Rhetoric, first appeared in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, a work inspired by Coleridge to advance progressive views that could be seen as emerging out of traditional thought and institutions.9
Mill was an enthusiastic reviewer of Whately’s book on logic, and his review represented his first major essay in this field (CW 11:1–35).10 Among the ideas and arguments to which Mill was drawn was Whately’s defense of the syllogism, which was important both in traditional logic and for the discovery of truth (see CW 11:33). The whole thrust of modern philosophy and science was to dismiss the syllogism as irrelevant to the pursuit of truth, as the conclusion (e.g., Socrates is mortal) was considered already present in the premise (e.g., all men are mortal). The rejection of Aristotelianism by modern philosophers usually included the dismissal of the syllogism almost in passing, in favor of an emphasis on induction. Francis Bacon was generally credited with initiating this shift in focus to investigating nature by means of induction. Mill, however, argued that Bacon did not reject the syllogism, but simply criticized the scholastic philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition for being poor investigators of nature, that is to say, for neglecting inductive logic (see CW 11:12ff). Mill then proceeded to argue that the syllogism enabled one to discover new truths, even though these truths were implicit in the premises of the syllogism. He pointed to numerous fields, from geometry to mechanics, where the syllogism had been used to discover new truths. In the Logic Mill retained the syllogism and also created a new theory of inductive logic. In addition, he developed features of Aristotelian thought, such as the theory of logical fallacies, in which he adopted the traditional fallacies and then expanded the whole genre in a novel and striking manner.11
In the Logic, as in the early essay on Whately, as we have seen, Mill took the view that logic was concerned with the pursuit of truth. He acknowledged that many writers on logic believed that it was wholly concerned with an art of reasoning or thinking (see CW 7:4–5). For Mill, no such art could stand alone, as all arts were connected with various sciences, and logic had to be regarded as a science as well as an art. This science, like all others, had to aim at truth, in this case, universally true laws of thought and reasoning.
We might gain some insight into Mill’s emphasis on truth in logic by considering those whom he regarded as his opponents. In the Autobiography he referred to the Logic as providing “a text-book of the opposite doctrine” to the “German, or à priori view [early draft: “German or ontological view”] of human knowledge and of the knowing faculties” (CW 1:232–33). Mill’s doctrine, in contrast, “derives all knowledge from experience, and all moral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to the associations.” Mill’s opposition to the “German, or à priori view” was deeply felt. He went on to declare:
The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep seated prejudices. And the chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science. (CW 1:233)
Mill clearly believed that the task of the Logic was to oppose this doctrine and even “to expel” it from mathematics and physical sciences through his own system of logic. In the Logic, however, he was far less combative. Logic, he declared, was “common ground on which the partisans of Hartley and of Reid, of Locke and of Kant, may meet and join hands” (CW 7:14). Doubtless, there would be disputes between the successors of these figures, but such disputes could be resolved. Even metaphysics needed to use the tools of logic to deal with the themes that fell within the scope of its enquiries. When metaphysics proceeded, like other sciences, to require evidence to establish a position, it was forced to draw inferences from evidence. To accomplish this, “logic becomes the sovereign judge” as to whether the inferences were properly grounded or whether or not other inferences should be considered (CW 7:14).
For logic to become “the sovereign judge,” however, it had to base itself on truth. Other philosophers were prepared to recognize the importance of logic, but in their view its province was limited to that of achieving consistency in argument rather than truth. Mill ascribed this view to Henry Mansel and, particularly, to Sir William Hamilton, who either held that logic had no concern with truth or that it was subordinate to other studies or sciences that did have these concerns. Mill called their conceptions of logic “formal logic” (see CW 11:367), which consisted mainly of syllogistic logic that considered only the consistency of arguments from premises to conclusions. It rejected the possibility of a general theory of evidence, which Bacon had envisaged (see CW 11:368). For Hamilton, each science contained its own criterion of truth, and he denied that there could be some general theory of evidence applicable to all enquiries (see CW 11:369).
Mill did not reject formal logic, or what he called at times the logic of consistency (see CW 7:208). He regarded it as a small, though important part of the logic of truth. He also pointed out that the study of the logic of truth, which rivaled in complexity and difficulty the study of mathematics and many sciences, would be open to and attract only a few superior minds in any generation. Formal logic, however, was separable from logic as a whole and could be introduced into education at a much lower level. It aimed at removing obstacles to the attainment of truth by functioning in a negative manner and pointing out fallacies and inconsistencies (see CW 11:370). Formal logic thus retained its connection with truth, though it could be taught, as it was, almost as sporting exercises.
In his essay on education, the Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews (1867), Mill restated these ideas in a new context. Here we again find the emphasis on logic as being concerned with truth (“Logic lays down the general principles and laws of the search after truth”) and closely related to mathematics and physics (CW 21:238). He also distinguished between ratiocinative and inductive logic, with the former “already carried to a high degree of perfection by Aristotle,” and the latter, more difficult, requiring a knowledge of the inductive sciences. All logic is praised, including ratiocinative logic, roughly equivalent to what he earlier had called formal logic. But in this work on education he dwelled more on this aspect of logic and its importance in society. Discovering and pointing out error is mainly a negative function designed “not so much to teach us to go right, as to keep us from going wrong” (CW 21:328). “Logic,” he continued, “is the great disperser of hazy and confused thinking: it clears up the fogs which hide us from our own ignorance, and make us believe that we understand a subject when we do not.” For those who disparaged school logic, he wrote, “Take the trouble to learn it. You will easily do so in a few weeks, and you will see whether it is of no use to you in making your mind clear, and keeping you from stumbling in the dark over the most outrageous fallacies” (CW 21:329).
These allusions to keeping one from going wrong, curing ignorance, and preventing one from stumbling in the dark lead us to the importance of Plato’s Socrates in Mill’s account of logic. Although most discussions of the history of scholastic logic include Aristotle and Thomas, one seldom finds many of Mill’s contemporaries (or ours) going back to Socrates. Yet Mill’s logic is almost unique in its being grounded in an understanding of the Socratic elenchus.12 He wrote in the early draft of the Autobiography that “the Socratic method . . . is unsurpassed as a discipline for abstract thought on the most difficult subjects. Nothing in modern life and education in the smallest degree supplies its place” (CW 1:24). Even as a boy, he was persuaded of its importance: “[The Socratic method] took such hold on me that it became part of my own mind; and I have ever felt myself, beyond any modern that I know of except my father and perhaps even beyond him, a pupil of Plato, and cast in the mould of his dialectics” (CW 1:24).
Mill did not refer to the Plato of the transcendent forms, but to Plato’s Socrates in the early dialogues, where a negative dialectic revealed the ignorance of the most confident and learned of his interlocutors. Mill was strongly impressed by Plato’s picture in the Gorgias and Republic “of the solitary and despised position of the philosopher in every existing society, and the universal impression against him, as at best an useless person, but more frequently an eminently wicked one” (CW 11:399).13 He adopted George Grote’s arguments that while Plato might have despised the Sophists, because they were more concerned with appearances than with reality, and took money for their services, they were not the real enemy. The real corruptors of the young were not the Sophists, but “their families, their associates, all whom they see and converse with, the applauses and hootings of the public assembly, the sentences of the court of justice. These are what pervert young men, by holding up to them a false standard of good and evil, and giving an entirely wrong direction to their desires. As for the Sophists, they merely repeat the people’s own opinions” (CW 11:400). Mill not only adopted Grote’s view of the importance of the Sophists to public debate and the role of Socrates in this debate, but in a review of Grote’s posthumously published study of Aristotle, he acknowledged the importance of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations in the development of an important aspect of logic and in the pursuit of truth. Even though Aristotle’s work was a study of the art of arguing for victory rather than for truth, Mill saw nothing wrong with such public debates so long as they took place within established rules. Furthermore he believed that Aristotle regarded such exercises in dialectical argument to be valuable in the pursuit of truth. Quoting from Grote, Mill gave three reasons for this belief (CW 11:508). First, the debates constituted a kind of mental exercise that was valuable and stimulating. Second, the debates put one in touch with the ordinary opinions held by other members of society. Third, such dialectical debate influenced science and philosophy, encouraging one to look at both sides of questions and to determine which answers were true and which were false. Mill believed that Aristotle’s method in dialectical argument “was greatly in advance not only of his own time, but of ours”: “His general advice for exercise and practice in Dialectic is admirably adapted to the training of one’s own mind for the pursuit of truth. ‘You ought to test every thesis by first assuming it to be true, then assuming it to be false, and following out the consequences on both sides.’ This was already the practice of the Eleatic dialecticians, as we see in the Parmenides” (CW 11:508). In Mill’s view Aristotle’s account of dialectic also took one directly back to the Socratic elenchus.
One of the most striking arguments in On Liberty (1859), in which Socrates was invoked, arose from Mill’s defense of liberty of expression.14 Mill was concerned with the lack of attention paid to truth in the way most people, even those who were willing to entertain dissenting opinions, formed their views and enforced them on others. He noted that they tended to be diffident about their own opinions and were happy to accept those held by “the world,” or by that part of the world with which they came into contact. Few were troubled by the fact that this acquiescence in the views of others led to a kind of relativism, as opinions differed in various parts of the world—“The same causes . . . make him a Churchman in London . . . [and] a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin”—or in different ages (CW 18:230).
The legal or popular enforcement of these opinions involved an assumption of infallibility, and it is worth noting that such an assumption went hand in hand with what might be called an indifference to truth. The deaths of Socrates and Jesus were terrible events on which we look back with horror. But Mill believed that those who carried out these crimes were not evil people but “men who possessed in a full . . . measure, the religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and people: the very kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have every chance of passing through life blameless and respected” (CW 18:236). What was missing in these “ordinary” people was a serious concern for the truth, which initially involved a recognition that they might not know the truth and hence could not act with any infallible certainty. According to Mill, for people to act on the basis of their opinions with regard to truth, they should accept, as a condition of doing so, a complete liberty of challenging their opinions (see CW 18:231ff). This condition should apply whether or not the received opinions were false or true. If they were false, then freedom of expression would enable people to have access to the truth. If they were true, Mill believed that freedom of expression would enable the truths to be living truths and not dead dogmas. Mill regarded received truths as particularly dangerous. They lulled the mind into a passive acceptance and almost a vacancy of understanding, in which the truth was forgotten or never reconsidered. In some cases, he argued, accepted doctrines remained “outside the mind, incrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature” (CW 18:248).
Mill’s approach to truth was a crucial part of his doctrine of freedom of expression. His admiration of Socrates was as much due to Socrates’ insistence on the search for truth as on whatever truths Socrates uncovered in his searches (except, perhaps, for the main one, that he knew nothing). Nevertheless Mill was never optimistic that truth would prevail over error; after all, Socrates and Jesus died for truth (CW 18:235–36). Mill could write, “On any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now justify” (CW 18:231). But just following this pessimistic view of the human condition, he posed a different question, which seems somewhat at odds with his view of ninety-nine of a hundred persons and, strikingly, provided an answer apparently at odds with it: “Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If there really is this preponderance—which there might be unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state—it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely that his errors are corrigible: (CW 18:231).
Mill’s sudden ascription of rationality in mankind reveals an important duality in On Liberty and in his thought generally. On the one hand, the great thinker must be free to follow his intellect wherever it led. The person who thought for himself and did not give up was superior to those who held only opinions, some possibly true and others possibly false, due to an indifference to the truth. But, as we have seen, Mill was not satisfied only to provide liberty of thought and discussion or liberty generally for a few great people: “Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much and even more indispensable, to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been, and may again be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually active people” (CW 18:243). His argument regarding “an intellectually active people” takes us back to the Logic and to the Socratic dimension in numerous other works. The study of elementary logic and, particularly, the study of logical fallacies reveal a Socratic dimension to this intellectual activity. It is within the grasp of most people to question the opinions they have accepted, and with an understanding of the elements of logic and argument to discover their ignorance and its significance. With freedom of expression it is also within their grasp to look for truth and to keep truth alive, so long as they retain this knowledge of their ignorance and the belief that their errors are corrigible.
Mill was also restating in this context his distinction in the Logic between formal logic, or the logic of consistency, and the logic of truth. The former was an important part of the latter, and could play a significant role in the great Socratic enterprise of making people aware of their own ignorance and the need to pursue and maintain truth. In opposition to the view set forth by Williams, quoted above, we can see that for Mill it is not liberty that assists the emergence of truth, but that the pursuit of truth (even if confined to the recognition of one’s ignorance) that assists the emergence of liberty. For each person there is potentially a Socratic moment when an acknowledgment of ignorance allows one to pursue truth. This pursuit then requires liberty of thought and discussion to be successful. To possess liberty without a Socratic moment leads nowhere, except perhaps to an endless pursuit of variety and novelty, as entertainment or something worse substitutes for truth.
It is well-known that Mill was highly ambivalent about the virtues of modern democracy and, like Tocqueville, was critical and fearful of the tyranny of the majority. But despite his fears regarding democracy, he became a strong admirer of ancient Athenian democracy as depicted in Pericles’ famous funeral oration.15
Prior to Grote’s magisterial History of Greece there were few champions of ancient Athenian democracy, which, after all, had condemned Socrates, who remained a major hero of the Victorian period and, additionally, was known as a critic of democracy.16 Most historians of Greece followed Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Lysias, and Isocrates, and favored Sparta over Periclean Athens, as did Rousseau and other philosophers.17 It is important to appreciate the significance of Grote’s history of Greece for Mill’s thought. Grote referred to the emphasis Pericles placed on liberty of thought and action not only from legal restraints but also “from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pursuit.”18 In a remarkable passage Grote elevated Periclean Athens above all modern states, including modern democracies, in the liberty it granted to individuals. For Grote, Pericles’ funeral speech both encouraged a wide diversity of tastes and sentiments and reflected this encouragement within Athenian democracy.19
Grote was well aware that his praise of Periclean Athens required him to provide an account of the life and death of Socrates that was compatible with it. Just as with Mill, Socrates was a philosophical hero for Grote, and both emphasized the significance for later thought of Socrates’ negative method.20 Grote had also corrected the general opinion of the Sophists as corrupt and subversive, and he did not hesitate to link Socrates with the best (particularly those who encouraged liberty of thought and discussion) among the Sophists.21 As for the Athenian condemnation of Socrates, he wrote, “In any other government of Greece, as well as in the Platonic Republic, Sokrates would have been quickly arrested in his career, even if not severely punished; in Athens, he was allowed to talk and teach publicly for twenty-five or thirty years, and then condemned when an old man. Of these two applications of the same mischievous principle, assuredly the latter is at once the more moderate and less noxious.”22
Mill accepted this new version of Greek history with enthusiasm (see CW 24:867–75, 1084–88; 25:1121–28, 1128–34, 1157–64). He twice reprinted the passage on Pericles that Grote had written (as well as quoting at length from Pericles’ funeral oration as it appeared in Thucydides), and referred to the passage as a valuable contribution to a “vital question of social morals” (CW 11:319–20; 25:1129–31). He wrote, “In the greatest Greek commonwealth, as described by its most distinguished citizen [Pericles], the public interest was held of paramount obligation in all things which concerned it; but, with that part of the conduct of individuals which concerned only themselves, public opinion did not interfere: while in the ethical practice of the moderns, this is exactly reversed, and no one is required by opinion to pay any regard to the public, except by conducting his own private concerns in conformity to its expectations” (CW 11:319). In most modern European states vigorous self-assertion on the public stage was not encouraged. Not only was submission and obedience the norm in public life, but Mill also noted the tendency for individuals to conform in private life to the expectations of society. By emphasizing the example of Periclean Athens, Mill was first pointing to the importance of a free and vigorous public sphere in which there was full debate of ethical and political issues. This public sphere then enabled the private sphere to be free as well, insofar as it was left to its own devices.
Mill was mainly concerned here with the public sphere of modern societies in which the tyranny of the majority in its “collective mediocrity” had begun to assume power (CW 18:268ff). He found this majority, however powerful in limiting liberty, nonetheless passive and susceptible to being led by others. He particularly criticized Carlyle’s idea of hero worship, in which the “strong man of genius” would undoubtedly be corrupted in the process of exercising power (CW 18:269). Mill sought instead a society that embraced individual liberty and allowed and encouraged individuality to flourish, as did Athens with its acceptance of Socrates for seventy years. Mill wanted to oppose the “tyranny of opinion” in his own society by the encouragement of eccentricity. As he wrote, “Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time” (CW 18:269). The cultivation of individuality thus depended on individuals of strong character and genius daring to be eccentric, but to dare to be eccentric depended in turn on a public sphere that encouraged such eccentricity to develop. Without the Periclean perspective Mill believed that the cultivation of eccentricity would seriously diminish and, with it, the existence of liberty throughout society.
As we have seen, Mill’s conception of Periclean democracy encouraged liberty in both the public and private spheres. But to say that Mill’s conception of democracy was based on liberty is to state only half (or even less than half) of the story. Let us contrast Mill with Bentham, whose theory of constitutional democracy was well-known to Mill and, on some important issues, was rejected by him.23 Bentham (who tended to write of representative democracy rather than simply of representative government, as Mill did) believed that his theory of constitutional democracy was based on liberty. The liberty that was relevant here was civil liberty, whereby the law prevented others from interfering in one’s life and activities, and one should be free to think and act freely so long as one did not harm others. Bentham came to believe that civil liberty could not establish the security an individual required without constitutional liberty, because it could not on its own secure the individual from the corruption and tyranny exercised by government itself. The only way to establish constitutional liberty, as an extension of civil liberty, was to provide institutions to remove from power those rulers who threatened it. This was to be achieved by representative democracy, including a widespread and equal suffrage, the use of the secret ballot, and freedom of expression.24
It is worth noting that Bentham was as concerned with truth as was Mill. He wrote extensively on logic and on evidence, but his theory of democracy was based on liberty rather than truth.25 A well-run representative democracy would, of course, give those dedicated to the search for truth the liberty to do so, and government officials were to be educated in their fields of expertise, but democracy would not be based on some attempt to embody the pursuit and representation of truth in its very institutions.
Mill’s idea of representative government was entirely different, and was based on a diffusion of the Socratic elenchus, via the negative and critical dialectic, throughout society. This diffusion took various kinds of active character in the population and directed them toward establishing and sustaining representative institutions. For Mill, human beings were for the most part active beings, but unless their critical faculties were awakened, they tended to accept the prevailing opinions of their nation and their generation. A growing knowledge of one’s ignorance could first crack the shell that enclosed the human mind in received opinion. Liberating the individual mind to question such opinions and to challenge the utility of established institutions in turn encouraged active character in families, society, and government. Mill believed that in most societies the level of such development of active character was not sufficient to create and maintain representative government. In a few, such as Britain and the United States, it was. Thus Socratic self-awareness of ignorance, plus a psychological disposition to be active, plus the development of active character could lead to representative democracy and the institutions that might support it, such as the open ballot.
It is possible to argue, as Williams seems to do, that Mill is nonetheless basing democracy on a different notion of liberty than that employed by Bentham and the earlier generation of radicals. Williams depicts this liberty in terms of “individuals exercising and developing their powers,” but he then finds it inadequate to believe that freedom of speech will deliver the truth involved in the exercise of human powers. I have already suggested that for Mill it is not liberty that assists in the emergence of truth, but truth, via the Socratic dialectic, that assists the emergence of liberty. Furthermore this truth-based liberty works only indirectly in politics, as it is mainly confined to the sphere of “ethology” and the cultivation of active character in society. It is important to note that, unlike philosophers such as Aristotle and Montesquieu, Mill did not develop a typology of political constitutions. Following Comte, he looked to a historically based social science, but one that, unlike Comte, assumed that societies were capable of “improvement.” The details of this “improvement” would be unique to the society under consideration, and Mill’s emphasis on national character reflects this focus.26 Active character in turn may or may not develop into democratic political institutions, so that Mill’s emphasis on the development of the individual’s powers may not lead to democracy at all.
In On Liberty Mill did not dwell on politics to any extent, as he was concerned with liberty in society. At the end of the essay, however, he referred to a form of government for which he had earlier coined the term “pedantocracy.”27 In an early letter to Comte, Mill had written, “The majority of an educated class may well be less disposed than any other to be led by the most advanced minds in its midst; and since this majority would doubtless be composed, not of great thinkers, but simply of scholars or scientists lacking true originality, there could result only what one finds in China, a pedantocracy” (CW 13:502).28 The context of Mill’s remark was his acceptance of Comte’s arguments for the separation of the temporal and spiritual powers that would prevent some kind of rule by philosophers or educated bureaucrats in a Platonic, St. Simonian, or other utopian form of rule by intellectuals.29 For Mill, the allusion to “pedantocracy” in On Liberty was closely connected with his estimation of the kind of bureaucratic regime existing in China, where virtually all liberty was extinguished (see CW 18:308). As he wrote elsewhere, “If the lettered and cultivated class, embodied and disciplined under a central organ, could become in Europe, what it is in China, the Government—unchecked by any power residing in the mass of citizens, and permitted to assume a parental tutelage over all operations of life—the result would probably be a darker despotism, one more opposed to improvement, than even the military monarchies and aristocracies have in fact proved” (CW 20:270).30
He also referred to this kind of rule as “a perfection of despotism” (CW 20:274). In On Liberty itself he evoked the Chinese mandarin, who was “as much the tool and creature of a despotism as the humblest cultivator” (CW 18:308). This material in On Liberty was concerned with the extent to which government interference might assist with the development of individual liberty in society. As Collini has pointed out, this discussion might easily be confused (and was confused) with a debate over individualism versus collectivism.31 But Mill was arguing here, more profoundly perhaps, that rule by an educated elite, even a liberal elite, apparently in favor of helping people to possess and enjoy liberty, might easily degenerate into despotic rule. For this very reason we would do well not to seek “improvement” through government but through the maintenance of groups of educated people outside government able and willing to criticize and challenge the ruling bureaucracy.
For Mill in On Liberty the opposing term to pedantocracy, if he possessed a constitutional typology, might be Athenian democracy under Pericles. The key feature of this form of rule was less its commitment to democracy than its commitment to a private space in which the Socratic elenchus and its cultivation could take root. It is possible to see the Considerations on Representative Government (1861) as an attempt to establish modern liberal democracy on the foundations of Athenian democracy,32 but such a view abstracts the regime from the context, on which Mill insisted, of particular societies evolving historically. The Considerations was clearly written for Britain in the 1860s, and despite ingenious attempts to see in it some relevance to later politics and other societies, Mill’s doctrine, unlike that of On Liberty, has resisted most attempts at reincarnation. Perhaps, as I have argued elsewhere, the Considerations is linked more with a “method of reform” than with a typology of constitutions, as a way to bring together liberals and conservatives to pursue reform in an ideologically divided society.33
The status of Mill as a liberal, and what kind of liberal he was, has been hotly debated over the past fifty years. Alan Ryan has written of On Liberty, “That it is a liberal manifesto is clear beyond doubt; What the liberalism is that it defends and how it defends it remain matters of controversy.”34 Ryan’s point is undoubtedly true, and Mill’s On Liberty is deeply embedded in current debates about liberty as well as in the history of liberalism.35 Nevertheless one might easily argue that how Mill saw himself as a liberal in his nineteenth-century context and how we see Mill today are considerably different, because liberalism itself has evolved. But Mill is as much a part of the evolution as its historical source, and his ideas appear and reappear in numerous contexts. The passage from Williams, to which we have returned on several occasions, almost innocently ascribes to Mill a view to which Mill himself might not have subscribed. I have emphasized Mill’s concern with truth, not just in the Logic, but in On Liberty as well. In a letter to Alexander Bain written in 1859, just after the publication of On Liberty, Mill rejected Bain’s interpretation of his position and emphasized the importance of truth: “The ‘Liberty’ has produced an effect on you which it was never intended to produce if it has made you think that we ought not to attempt to convert the world. I meant nothing of the kind, & hold that we ought to convert all we can. We must be satisfied with keeping alive the sacred fire in a few minds when we are unable to do more—but the notion of an intellectual aristocracy of lumières while the rest of the world remains in darkness fulfils none of my aspirations—& the effect I aim at by the book is, on the contrary, to make the many more accessible to all truth by making them more open minded” (CW 15:631). Mill continued by asserting that only in the matter of religion was he not prepared to convert the world to all of his views but only “really superior intellects & characters.” As for the rest, he would prefer “to improve their religion than to destroy it,” which might occur if his views were fully revealed at that time (CW 15:631).
The “sacred fire” to which Mill and Bain are dedicated is that of truth, and liberty of thought and discussion is a way of extending a concern for truth to a wider group in society. Mill’s reservations regarding religion are not reservations about freedom of worship, but about the extent to which people generally in Britain were prepared in the 1850s to have their deepest views on religion challenged by Mill. He had clearly hoped that one day he would be able to reveal the truth to all, that is to say, that British society would be able to put his position regarding truth and religion to good use and not merely react negatively against Mill himself.36
At the outset of this essay I noted that although Mill was a relativist, he held to the importance of truth in society and for the individual. This adherence to truth did not mean that truths concerning the individual and society could not change from time to time and from place to place. On the contrary, unless this change took place, stagnation in science and politics might occur. A commitment to truth also embodied a belief that there were new truths to discover, that natural and social science evolved, and improvement in all aspects of human life and understanding was possible. Nevertheless, to favor liberty without any concern for truth (as some liberals might argue today) would not make much sense to Mill. The foundation of his liberalism, as we have seen, is in logic, but it is fair to acknowledge that he regarded some developments in logic to be as great a threat to the pursuit of truth as its apparent disregard by later liberals. For the logic Mill favored was one inspired by the Socratic elenchus, and even in his lifetime this approach was threatened by highly technical work in mathematical aspects of logic.37 When Mill began writing on logic, he found that it had been dismissed by many as irrelevant to truth, and the same may be said nowadays, though for different reasons. To appreciate Mill’s liberalism requires us, almost as archaeologists, to recover the Socratic dimension in his logic and to show its connection with liberty in numerous areas of ethics and politics.