He cannot upon these terms draw a satisfactory distinction between the individual and the society.When man is taken for a ready-made product,while his social relation can be 'made'off-hand by the sovereign,it is impossible to give a satisfactory account of the slow processes of evolution in which making and growing are inextricably united,and the individual and the society are slowly modified by the growth of instincts and customs under constant action and reaction.The difficulty of course is not solved by recognising its existence.No one has yet laid down a satisfactory criterion of the proper limits of individual responsibility.The problem is too vast and complex to admit of any off-hand solution;and Mill's error lies chiefly in under-estimating the difficulty.
The contrast to Comte is significant.The inventor of 'sociology'had seen in the 'individualism'of the revolutionary school a transitory and negative stage of thought,which was to lead to a reconstruction of intellectual and social authority.
Mill could see in Comte's final Utopia nothing but the restoration of a spiritual despotism in a form more crushing and all-embracing than that of the medieval church.They went together up to a certain point.Comte held that 'contradiction'and 'antagonism'were not ultimate ends,though they may be inseparable incidents of progress.In the intellectual sphere we should hope for the emergence of a rational instead of an arbitrary authority,and a settlement of first principles,not a permanent conflict of opinion.The hope of achieving some permanent conciliation is the justification of scepticism in speculation and revolutions in politics.Comte supposed that such a result might be achieved in sociology.If that science were constituted,its professors might have such an authority as now possessed by astronomers and teachers of physical sciences.
Society might then be reconstructed on sound principles which would secure the responsibility of rulers to subjects,and the confidence of the subjects in rulers.Mill in his early enthusiasm had admitted the necessity of a 'spiritual power'to be founded on free discussion.(61)He had,with Comte,condemned the merely critical attitude of the revolutionary school.When he saw Comte devising an elaborate hierarchy to govern speculation,and even depreciating the reason in comparison with the 'heart,'he revolted.Comte was a great thinker,greater,even,he thought,than Descartes or Leibniz,(62)but had plunged into absurdities suggestive of brain disease.The absurdities were,indeed,flagrant,yet Mill still sympathises with much of Comte's doctrine;with the positivist religion;and the general social conceptions.Even a 'spiritual authority'is,he thinks,desirable.But it must be developed through free discussion and the gradual approximation of independent thinkers,not by premature organisation and minute systematisation.(63)The regeneration of society requires a moral and intellectual transformation,which can only be regarded as a distant ideal.We may dream of a state of things in which even political authority shall be founded upon reason:in which statesmanship shall really mean an application of scientific principles,and rulers be recognised as devoted servants of the state,Even an approximation to such a Utopia would imply a change in moral instincts,and in the corresponding social structure,to be worked out slowly and tentatively.Yet Mill is equally over-sanguine in his own way.He puts an excessive faith in human 'contrivances,'representation of minorities,and the forces of 'antagonism'and 'individuality.'If Comte's scheme really amounts,as Mill thought,to a suppression of individual energy,Mill's doctrine tends to let energy waste itself in mere eccentricity.As originality of intellect is useful when it accepts established results,so energy of character is fruitful when it is backed by sympathy.The degree of both may be measured by their power of meeting opposition;but the positive stimulus comes from cooperation.The great patriots and founders of religion have opposed tyrants and bigots because they felt themselves to be the mouthpiece of a nation or a whole social movement.And,therefore,superlative as.may be the value of energy,it is not generated in a chaos where every man's hand is against his neighbour,but in a social order,where vigorous effort may be sure of a sufficient backing.When the individual is regarded as an isolated being,and state action as necessarily antagonistic,this side of the problem is insufficiently taken into account,and the question made to lie between simple antagonism and enforced unity.
VIII.ETHICS
