Abstract
The view that contemporary society was a commercial civilization with a dominant commercial class was shared by most of his predecessors and contemporaries in Britain, including Whig thinkers and James Mill, and J. S. Mill developed his notion of civilization in this intellectual milieu. In the late 1830s, Mill came to see contemporary society as a commercial civilization led by the commercial middle class, and attained a perspective from which he understood various phenomena in contemporary society. He sought to give a systematic and comprehensive explanation of the tendencies of civilized society, and to propose practicable solutions for them.
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24 February 2019
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Fontana states: ‘The eighteenth-century Scottish writers who saw in the growth of the middling ranks the distinctive feature in the development of modern commercial society, were quite vague as to who precisely the middling ranks were.’ (Fontana 1985, 108).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Mill (1811: Chas, 417).
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Mill (1836: Aristocracy, 286).
- 11.
Mill (1819: Education, 32).
- 12.
Ibid. John Mill’s early education was a realization of this idea.
- 13.
Mill (1830: Ballot, 36–37).
- 14.
Ibid., 37. See also Mill (1836: Aristocracy, 284).
- 15.
Mill (1820: Government, 505). By the expression ‘corruptive operation’, James Mill meant, as John Mill noted, ‘not that a people are corrupted by the amount of the wealth which they possess in the aggregate, but that the inequalities in the distribution of it have a tendency to corrupt those who obtain the large masses, especially when these come to them by descent, and not by merit, or any kind of exertion employed in earning them’. (JSM, ‘Use and Abuse of Political Terms’ (May 1832), CW, xviii, 12).
- 16.
Mill (1836: Aristocracy, 285).
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Mill (1820: Government, 493).
- 19.
Mill (1836: Aristocracy, 290).
- 20.
Mill (1820: Government, 495).
- 21.
See Mill (1819: Education, 33).
- 22.
Robert Fenn points out that James Mill’s favourable opinion on the middle class relied primarily on the view that ‘they are the bearers of the intellectual elite, who give society its tone and also provide the catalyst of progressive ideas in all fields of the arts and the sciences’. (Fenn 1987, 75).
- 23.
James Mill (1820: Government, 505). Hence, it is not plausible to insist that James Mill was eager to advocate the interest of the industrial middle class, based on the supposition that, by the middle class, he meant the capitalist or industrial class. He excluded the rich merchants from his definition of the middle class. (ibid.) A typical interpretation of James Mill’s notion of the middle class from an economic point of view can be found in Sabine (1993, 662).
- 24.
Notwithstanding, it is worth pointing out that James Mill never overlooked the importance of economic condition. Without the improvement of their economic condition, men could not have developed their moral and intellectual faculties. For this point, see Collini et al. (1983, 117–119).
- 25.
See, for example, JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 196, where he stated: ‘the American Many, and our middle class, agree in being commercial classes’.
- 26.
JSM, ‘Reorganization of the Reform Party’ (April 1839), CW, vi, 475–476. See also his comment in JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 200: ‘The American Many are not essentially a different class from our ten-pound householders.’
- 27.
JSM, ‘Notes on the Newspapers [4]’ (June 1834), CW, vi, 218.
- 28.
For John Mill’s views at that time, see, for example, JSM, ‘Parliamentary Reform’ (read at the Mutual Improvement Society in August 1824), CW, xxvi, 261–285; JSM, ‘Law of Libel and Liberty of the Press’ (April 1825), CW, xxi, 1–34; JSM, ‘The British Constitution’ (read at the London Debating Society in 19 May [?] 1826), CW, xxvi, 358–385.
- 29.
- 30.
James Mill (1825: ER on reform, 227).
- 31.
JSM, ‘Parliamentary Reform’, CW, xxvi, 264; JSM, ‘The British Constitution’, ibid., 359, 377. See also Mill (1824: ER, 215).
- 32.
JSM, ‘The British Constitution’, CW, xxvi, 363–366, 375, 380–381.
- 33.
JSM, ‘Law of Libel and Liberty of the Press’, CW, xxi, 11. See also CW, xxvi, 380–382.
- 34.
JSM, ‘Cooperation’ (read at the Cooperative Society, 1825), CW, xxvi, 324.
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
Mill did not cease to think that the ruling class prevented the improvement of the people: ‘while these [the sinister interests of the ruling class] exist, those, who would otherwise be the instructed classes, have no motive to obtain real instruction in politics and morals, and are subjected to biases from which the students of the physical sciences are exempt.’ (JSM to Gustav d’Eichthal, 7 November 1829, CW, xii, 40).
- 37.
The romantic ideas of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his followers led Mill to recognize the problem of the moral corruption of the commercial class. In his A Lay Sermon, Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, published in 1817, Coleridge criticized contemporary society, employing the distinction between ‘civilization’ and ‘cultivation’, which Mill borrowed in ‘Civilization’. See Coleridge (1990, 117–118, 172–176).
- 38.
JSM to Gustav d’Eichthal, 8 October 1829, CW, xii, 36.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
See JSM, ‘Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy’ (1833), CW, x, 3–18; JSM, ‘Bentham’ (1838), CW, x, 75–115.
- 41.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 121.
- 42.
- 43.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, 119.
- 44.
Ibid., 120.
- 45.
Ibid., 120–121.
- 46.
Ibid., 121.
- 47.
It should be noted that Mill’s emphasis was on the diffusion, not accumulation, of wealth. He stated: ‘a further increase of the wealth of particular individuals beyond this point [i.e., a comfortable subsistence], makes a very questionable addition to the general happiness; and is even, if the same wealth would otherwise have been employed in raising other persons from a state of poverty, a positive evil.’ (JSM, ‘The Quarterly Review on the Political Economists’ (30 January 1831), CW, xxii, 249)
- 48.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 122.
- 49.
Unlike Tocqueville, Mill used the term democracy only to indicate a democratic government.
- 50.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 126–127. Mill used here the term ‘natural’ in the sense that it is understandable and predictable in terms of scientific inquiry. This expression did not imply that it was invariable.
- 51.
Mill stated that ‘this growing equality is only one of the features of progressive civilization; one of the incidental effects of the progress of industry and wealth: a most important effect, and one which as our author [i.e., Tocqueville] shows, re-acts in a hundred ways upon the other effects, but not therefore to be confounded with the cause.’ (JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 192)
- 52.
JSM, Autobiography, CW, i, 211. This caused Bain’s discontent with the essay: ‘I never felt quite satisfied with the article on Civilization. The definition given at the outset seems inadequate; and the remainder of the article is one of his many attacks on the vicious tendencies of the time …. To my mind, these topics should have been detached from any theory of Civilization, or any attempt to extol the past at the cost of the present.’ (Bain 1882b, 48)
- 53.
JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 197–198.
- 54.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 143.
- 55.
In his letter of 1828 to Comte, d’Eichthal wrote: ‘As for the industrial aspect [of England], you can imagine I felt only one thing, admiration.’ (Gustav d’Eichthal to Auguste Comte, 17 October 1828, D’Eichthal 1977, 7)
- 56.
JSM to d’Eichthal, 15 May 1829, CW, xii, 31–32. See also JSM to Gustav d’Eichthal, 8 October 1829, CW, xii, 34–38.
- 57.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 129–135.
- 58.
JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 191–192. See also ibid., 196, where he stated: ‘The defects which M. de Tocqueville points out in the American, and which we see in the modern English mind, are the ordinary ones of a commercial class.’
- 59.
Pappé (1964, 230).
- 60.
See pp. 51–52 above. Mill stated: ‘America is … nearly the most unfavourable field in which democracy could have been tried.’ (JSM, ‘America’, CW, xviii, 107)
- 61.
JSM, ‘Bentham’, CW, x, 107.
- 62.
JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 198.
- 63.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 136.
- 64.
Ibid.
- 65.
Ibid., 138ff. Mill had already criticized the institutions of higher education in ‘Sedgwick’s Discourse’ (April 1835), CW, x, 95–159. On this point, see Alexander Brady, ‘Introduction’, CW, xviii, xxv–xxvii.
- 66.
JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 146–147. In January 1836, three months before the publication of John Mill’s ‘Civilization’, James Mill had expressed a very similar view to this. See Mill (1836: Aristocracy, 301–302). It should also be noted here that John Mill later abandoned his hope for the leisured class. On 13 April 1847, Mill wrote to John Austin : ‘I have even ceased to think that a leisured class, in the ordinary sense of the term, is an essential constituent of the best form of society.’ (JSM to John Austin , 13 April, 1847, CW, xiii, 713)
- 67.
Mill claimed that the reason why the agricultural spirit was not seen in America was that the agricultural class there was ‘to all intents and purposes a commercial class’. (JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 198).
- 68.
Ibid., 199. In ‘Coleridge’, Mill referred to Coleridge’s argument that the landed property represented ‘[t]he interest of permanence, or the Conservative interest’ in society. (JSM, ‘Coleridge’, CW, x, 152–153)
- 69.
JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 197.
- 70.
JSM, ‘Bentham’, CW, x, 108. For his reference to China as an example of a nation being at a standstill due to the lack of social antagonism, see also ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 188–189. Mill probably took the idea of Chinese stagnation from his reading of Guizot, as Tocqueville did also. (Varouxakis 1999, 296–305) For Mill’s argument on China, see Levin (2004, 94–120).
- 71.
JSM, ‘Tocqueville [2]’, CW, xviii, 196.
- 72.
As far as such a view was concerned, John Austin’s influence on Mill was vital, as well as that of the Saint-Simonians. In particular, it was not the Saint-Simonians, but Austin, who grounded this view on a utilitarian basis. For the influence of Austin on Mill, see Friedman (1968).
- 73.
JSM to John Sterling, 20–22 October 1831, CW, xii, 79.
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Kawana, Y. (2018). The Notion of Civilization. In: Logic and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52221-4_4
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