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The Worm at the Root of the Passions: Poetry and Sympathy in Mill's Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

L. A. Paul
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Abstract

I claim that Mill has a theory of poetry which he uses to reconcile nineteenth century associationist psychology, the tendency of the intellect to dissolve associations, and the need for educated members of society to desire utilitarian ends. The heart of the argument is that Mill thinks reading poetry encourages us to feel the feelings of others, and thus to develop pleasurable associations with the pleasurable feelings of others and painful associations with the painful feelings of others. Once the associations are developed, they are supported and maintained by our natural capacity for sympathy and by external elements in society, and provide motivation for the pursuit of utilitarian ends. Further, the additional support causes the associations to be strengthened to the extent that they come to be seen as ‘natural and necessary’, and as such are immune from the dissolving force of the intellect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 83 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

1 Wordsworth, William, ‘Intimations of Immortality’, in William Wordsworth: A Lake-land Anthology, ed. Browne, Piers, London, 1991, p. 51Google Scholar.

2 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, in Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillenger, Jack, Toronto, 1981Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, i. 149–53.

3 Autobiography, CW, i. 141.

4 ‘I felt that the flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And I felt that unless I could see my way to some better hope for human happiness in general, my dejection must continue…’ (Autobiography, CW, i. 149). Elizabeth S. Anderson has argued that from Mill's perspective his experience (‘experiment in living’) served to disconfirm Bentham's psychology. Anderson, Elizabeth S., ‘John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living’, Philosophers Annual, xiv (1991), 1–23Google Scholar.

5 I will use ‘poetic’ and ‘aesthetic’ interchangeably in this paper; what Mill called ‘poetry’ was not restricted to poems or poetry per se (see below).

6 Mill's views on poetry have not received enough attention from philosophers. Extant works include Sharpless, F. Parvin, The Literary Criticism of John Stuart Mill, The Hague, 1967Google Scholar, and a discussion in the University of Toronto Quarterly starting with Robson, John M., ‘J. S. Mill's Theory of Poetry’, University of Toronto Quarterly, xxix (1960), 420–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and continuing with Alexander, Edward, ‘Mill's Theory of Culture: The Wedding of Literature and Democracy’, University of Toronto Quarterly, xxxv (1965), 75–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Green, Michele, ‘Sympathy and the Social Value of Poetry: J. S. Mill's Literary Essays’, University of Toronto Quarterly, lx (1991), 452–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Burnstone, Daniel, ‘The Very Culture of the Feelings: Poetry and Poets in Mill's Moral Philosophy’, Utilitas, iv (1992), 81–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Vogler, Candace, ‘Means, Ends and Mill’, unpub. TS., 1994Google Scholar, also presents this problem.

8 Mill, James, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 2 vols., edited with additional notes by Mill, John Stuart, London, 1869, ii. 219–20Google Scholar. Italics added.

9 Mill, James, Analysis, ii. 220Google Scholar. Consider also: ‘The affection which exists among Brothers and Sisters, has in it most of the ingredients which go to the formation of friendship. There is first of all Companionship; the habit of enjoying pleasures, in common, and also of suffering pains; hence a great readiness in sympathizing with one another; that is, in associating trains of their own pains and pleasures, with the pains and pleasures of one another’ (Mill, James, Analysis, ii. 225Google Scholar).

10 Ibid., ii. 218n. Sympathy should not be confused with sociability. Sociability involves the fondness of the company of others (which may involve companionship), whereas sympathy involves the ability to have an intimate, empathetic connection with others by ‘taking on’ or experiencing in some form the feelings of others. A sociable nature may increase one's capacity for sympathy.

11 Mill does not explicitly give a definition of sympathy here, but his use of the word in his writings seems to rely upon the definition that was accepted by both his father and Alexander Bain. In Mill's writing upon Bain (Mill, J. S., Bain's Psychology, in Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. Robson, John M., CW, xi, Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar and editing of his father's book (James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind), he is very outspoken when he disagrees, either in footnotes or (in the treatise on Bain), in the text itself. Since nowhere does Mill contradict this notion of sympathy and indeed seems to accept it without question, I think it is reasonable to accept the definition given by James Mill as John Stuart's also. The definition of sympathy as involving taking on the pains and pleasures of another is clearly laid out in James Mill, and J. S. Mill writes about this characterization of sympathy approvingly in the treatise on Bain, (Bain's Psychology, CW, xi. 362–3)Google Scholar. Further, in a footnote in James Mill, J. S. Mill indirectly endorses the definition of sympathy: ‘By virtue of the same law of association it is pointed out in the present chapter that human actions, both our own and those of other people… tend naturally to become inclosed in a web of associated ideas of pleasures or of pains at a very early period of life, in such sort that the ideas of acts beneficial to ourselves and to others become pleasurable in themselves, and the ideas of acts hurtful to ourselves and to others become painful in themselves… Mr. Bain, in the preceding note, makes in this theory [of disinterested feelings of moral approbation and dis-approbation] a correction, to which the author himself [James Mill] would probably not have objected, namely, that the mere idea of a pain or pleasure, by whomsoever felt, is intrinsically painful or pleasurable, and when raised in the mind with intensity is capable of becoming a stimulus to action, independent, not merely of expected con-sequences to ourselves, but of any reference whatever to Self; so that care for others is, in an admissible sense, as much an ultimate fact of nature, as care for ourselves; though one which greatly needs strengthening by the concurrent force of the manifold associations insisted on in the author's text. Though this of Mr. Bain is rather an account of disinterested Sympathy…’ (Mill, James, Analysis, ii. 308–9Google Scholar).

12 Mill, J. S., “What is Poetry’, part I of Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties, in Auto-biography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillenger, Jack, Toronto, 1981, CW, i. 352Google Scholar.

13 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 354n. This was part of the actual text of the article when originally published, and changed to a footnote when the essay was revised for republication.

14 Except, as Mill indicates, those that involve oratory or narrative. Unless otherwise specified, when I use the term ‘poetry’, etc., I will be using it in the wide, i.e. Millian, sense.

15 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 344, i. 347.

16 Mill, J. S., ‘The Two Kinds of Poetry’, part II of Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties, in Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillenger, Jack, Toronto, 1981, CW, i. 362Google Scholar.

17 ‘The Two Kinds of Poetry’, CW, i. 365.

18 ‘The Two Kinds of Poetry’, CW, i. 361.

19 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 353–4n.

20 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 349.

21 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 353–in. Given that the poet and the reader have enough similarity in character and mind, i.e. they must think about things in somewhat the same way. Vogler has a nice discussion of this point.

22 Robson, , ‘J. S. Mill's Theory’, 424–6Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 433.

24 Mill, J. S., ‘Sedgwick's Discourse’, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, CW, 1963, x. 60Google Scholar.

25 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 354n.

26 ‘The Two Kinds of Poetry’, CW, i. 361.

27 Mill, J. S., On Liberty, Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977, CW, xviii. 249–50, xviii. 262Google Scholar.

28 Mill, J. S., ‘Letter to Gustave d'Eichthal’, in The Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, Francis E., 2 vols., Toronto, 1963, CW, xii. 42Google Scholar.

29 ‘What is Poetry’, CW, i. 348.

30 James Mill, ii. 218n. Green argues that Mill thinks that conceptive genius, the kind of genius that is necessary to understand any work of art, depends on the ability mentally to create the ‘structure’ of the mind of another (‘Sympathy and the Social Value’, 459).

31 Mill, J. S., ‘Bentham’ in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1963, CW, x. 92Google Scholar. Schneewind, J. B. in the introduction to his (ed.) Mill's Essays on Literature and Society, New York, 1965Google Scholar, argues for this thesis, and further that, ‘through the power of poetry, [Mill] thought, we can work to overcome our natural onesidedness and to reach that understanding of a wide variety of men and institutions which is essential to a sound social science. From that basis we may be able to move ahead to plan for the reconstruction of a stable society’ (p. 19).

32 Additional support for this hypothesis comes from Mill's notes for a speech he gave for the London Debating Society: ‘There is no depth, no intensity, no force, in our descriptions of feelings, unless we have ourselves experienced the feelings we describe…’ Mill, J. S., ‘Wordsworth and Byron’, Journals and Debating Speeches, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., CW, Toronto, 1988, xxvi. 438CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 ‘Bentham’, CW, x. 92.

34 Autobiography, CW, i. 141.

35 Ibid.

36 For Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, the utilitarian state would be made up of such individuals; James Mill had educated Mill accordingly, so as to be the perfect utilitarian agent. ‘[My father] endeavored to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education’ (Autobiography, CW, i. 7).

37 Autobiography, CW, i. 143.

38 Ibid., i. 115.

39 Ibid., i. 151.

40 Anderson, (‘John Stuart Mill’, 14)Google Scholar argues that Mill's crisis led him to adopt the hypothesis that ‘a lasting attachment to objects of pleasure (besides physical ones) depends on viewing them as intrinsically valuable’. Although Anderson may be correct, this paper presents an alternative explanation of the role of the aesthetic in Mill's programme and of the way poetry fostered Mill's recovery. If my argument is correct, then Mill need not be seen as adopting a view of the intrinsic worth of ends that conflicts with the utilitarian rejection of nonhedonic (pleasure-independent) values.

41 James Mill, ii. 218n.

42 Yet we may still take pleasure in reading a poem which expresses painful feelings. To resolve this (apparent) paradox, we need to make a distinction between the feelings that are ‘called up’ by the poem, and the feelings we feel as the result of experiencing art in general. I suggest that we may have feelings of pleasure when we read a good poem if we enjoy experiencing something of aesthetic value. This does not conflict with the experience of being inspired to feel the second-order pain (pleasure) of the poet through the poet's expression of these emotions in her verses.

43 Robson argues that poetry played an essential role in Mill's revision of Benthamism. Robson thinks that for Mill the poet ‘presents a scene and characters so representative of valid human feelings as to be a moral lesson to all who hear him. He teaches men to share the feelings of others’ (‘J. S. Mill's Theory”, 434). Robson also argues that the function of the poet is to show people how to develop empathy, based upon his contention that for Mill, the poet is moralist who portrays other-regarding affections (those who portray selfish and immoral feelings are not true poets.) Robson's main thesis is that Mill's conception of the poet is the moralist-poet, and that ‘the ethical claim of the poet [is] apparent: he presents scenes and characters which play upon the feelings of the readers in such a way as to pattern out for them a standard of beautiful conduct’ (ibid.). His interpretation is supported by passages in ‘Wordsworth and Byron’, CW, xxvi. 441.

44 In addition to directly supporting utilitarian ends, Mill's new thesis taught him that happiness is a by-product of a search for some other goal, i.e. the happiness of others, the improvement of mankind, or perhaps the perfection of some quality or art (Autobiography, CW, i. 145–7).

45 Mill, J. S., ‘Inaugural Address’, in Essays on Equality, Law and Education, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1984, CW, xxi. 254Google Scholar.

46 Autobiography, i. 151–2. Also: ‘I have learned from Wordsworth that it is possible… to connect cheerful and joyous states of mind with almost every object, to make every thing speak to us of our own enjoyments or those of other sentient beings, and to multiply ourselves as it were in the enjoyments of other creatures…’ (‘Wordsworth and Byron’, CW, xxvi. 441).

47 For Mill, to have motivation towards a goal an individual must have some sort of reason or personal experience that inspires real and heartfelt conviction (On Liberty, CW, xviii. 258, 261). The experience necessary to feel motivated to maximize happiness for all people is provided by the experience of understanding the emotions of another. This idea is consistent with Mill's ideas about the role of experience in understanding truth and meaning (ibid., pp. 247–50, 258, 261).

48 Mill, J. S., ‘Whewell on Moral Philosophy’, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1963, CW, x. 184nGoogle Scholar.

49 ‘Sedgwick's Discourse’, CW, x. 39. Further, ‘[t]he habit of analysis has really this tendency [to wear away the feelings] when no other mental habit is cultivated…’ (Autobiography, CW, i. 115).

50 Alexander argues that ‘Mill's definition of poetry's moral function as its power of arousing imaginative sympathy is the link between his theory of literature and his idea of a democratic culture. By widening the sympathies of men and extending them to more objects, poetry re-enforces the peculiar power of democratic society; by elevating the sympathies of men, poetry brings to democratic society precisely those aristocratic qualities which it lacks’ (‘Mill's Theory’, 87).

51 Mill, J. S., ‘Letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer’, in The Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, Francis E., 2 vols., Toronto, 1963, CW, xii. 312Google Scholar.

52 ‘Sedgwick's Discourse’, CW, x. 60.

53 Mill, J. S., The Subjection of Women, in Essays on Equality, Law and Education, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1984, CW, xviGoogle Scholar.

54 A related topic involves the cultivation of the will. In Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1963, CW, x. 238–9Google Scholar, Mill discusses a distinction between the will to be virtuous and the desire to be virtuous. As Mill sees it, we desire something if it brings us pleasure. However, the truly virtuous agent (as common opinion would have it) does not act virtuously because of the pleasure she receives by doing so: in fact, many times the pain a virtuous agent receives will far outweigh the pleasure. Mill grants this, explaining that often agents will things as a matter of habit, since the will can be cultivated to cause people to act so as to fulfil a general intention (i.e. the intention to be virtuous) even when to do so means that they experience pain instead of pleasure. ‘The distinction between will and desire thus understood, is an authentic and highly important psychological fact; but the fact consists solely in this – that will, like all other parts of our constitution, is amenable to habit, and that we may will from habit what we no longer desire for itself, or desire only because we will it’ (Utilitarianism, CW, x. 238). For this reason (and because the trained will provides a useful constancy of habit), the will should be cultivated so as to encourage virtuous behaviour. People are to be trained to desire morally good ends by associating them with pleasure, which will then cultivate the will and thus the force of habit to encourage the selection of morally good over bad ends. Here again we see a possible role for poetic education, since the cultivation of the sympathetic sentiments via poetry could help to cultivate the agent's will to achieve ends that benefit humankind by strengthening or implanting pleasurable associations with the pleasure of other people. (Poetic education is certainly not inconsistent with the need for the cultivation of the will.) ‘It is by associating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong with pain, or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home to the person's experience the pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain in the other, that it is possible to call forth that will to be virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without any thought of either pleasure or pain’ (Utilitarianism, CW, x. 239).

55 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 230–1.

56 Robson also makes this connection between poetry and sympathy. However, he does not argue extensively for the point. Although I agree with his assertion, I have attempted to develop it in more detail and to provide a clear assessment of the need for such a thesis in Mill's utilitarianism.

57 ‘Bain's Psychology’, CW, xi. 162–3.

58 Autobiography, CW, i. 151.

59 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 230–31.

60 Mill, J. S., ‘Nature’, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1963, CW, x. 394Google Scholar.

61 ‘Nature’, CW, x. 394–6; Utilitarianism, CW, x. 231.

62 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 231.

63 Ibid., CW, x. 231–2.

64 ‘Nature’, CW, x. 396.

65 Anderson makes this point as well: ‘Mill thought it essential that a person's moral training appeal to sentiments cultivated by aesthetic and not just scientific training… Aesthetic education provides this connection [between moral associations and the social sentiment of unity with fellow creatures], linking the moral sentiments with the sym-pathetic elements through the aesthetic ones… Thus, aesthetic education inspires the feeling of unity with mankind which Mill thought necessary to support a utilitarian morality’ (‘John Stuart Mill’, 15n).

66 ‘Inaugural Address’, CW, xxi. 255. Berger, Fred R., Happiness, Justice and Freedom: The Moral and Political Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, California, 1984Google Scholar, also argues that Mill thought that ‘the idea of others experiencing pleasure through acts of our own can be itself pleasurable and be the cause of other acts.’ Further, Berger discusses the link to sympathy via the associations we have with respect to the pleasures and pains of others. However, Berger does not develop the connection between poetry and these associations. ‘[Mill's] idea seems to have been that sympathy arises out of a process of association in which we experience pleasure in the pleasure of others, and pains in their pains’ (p. 21). Berger suggests tentatively that we simply develop these associations via our interaction with others.

67 Mill, J. S., ‘Tennyson's Poems’ in sAutobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillenger, Jack, Toronto, 1981, CW, i. 414Google Scholar. The development of the link between the moral feelings and sympathy seems to be what Mill is emphasizing when he argues for the importance of ‘character’ (‘Inaugural Address’, CW, xxi. 255–6).

68 ‘Inaugural Address’, CW, xxi. 255.

69 Green also argues that aesthetic education is supposed to work in tandem with sympathy. Her thesis is that Mill's theory of poetry is part of a wider programme, put forward by English Romantics like Wordsworth and Coleridge, in which sympathy connects poetry to moral and social philosophy. The Romantics argued that poetry was the main vehicle for expanding and developing one's capacity for sympathy, and that to be virtuous one must be sensitive to the pains and pleasures of others. Green argues that Mill placed himself between this group and the Benthamites, arguing for the moderate view that sympathy, as opposed to self-interest, could become a motive for promoting a utilitarian society. According to Green, Mill attempted 'to show how poetry, by faithfully presenting human motives, inspired sympathy. In order to facilitate a sympathetic identification, poets must represent human feelings as accurately as possible… If the poet does not present a true and recognizable expression of human emotion, he or she will be unable to prompt the reader's sympathy’ (‘Sympathy and the Social Value’, 459–60). For more on the relationship between Mill and the Romantic poets, see Poston, Lawrence, ‘Poetry as Pure Act: A Coleridgean Ideal in Early Victorian England’, Modern Philology, lxxxiv (1986), 162–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Green seems to assume the connection between sympathy and poetry based upon the earlier work of Robson and Sharpless and her thesis that Mill was receptive to the philosophy of the Romantics. However, the references to Mill which are cited as justification for the poetry-sympathy connection do not clearly state the connection she makes (i.e. ‘Bentham’, CW, x. 113–14, Auto-biography, CW, i. 112–15, 143–5, 151). Although I agree with much of Green's thesis and I find the connection between Mill and the Romantics enlightening, I think that the idea that, for Mill, poetry and sympathy are intimately related requires the additional justification, i.e. of the sort that I present above.

Burnstone criticizes Green, Robson and Alexander, arguing that they have overemphasized the role of poetry in Mill's thought, and that the link between poetry and sympathy has not been effectively advocated. His position is that Mill encourages aesthetic education merely in order to promote the self-development of members of society, and that this sort of self-culture is ‘better seen against the background of On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, than in the context of those parts of Mill's thinking which are directly focused on collective or co-operative virtues’ (‘The Very Culture’, 103). However, Burnstone's criticism does not address the connection between Mill's theory of psychological associations and the problem of motivation of agents. The existence of this problem, the emphasis on poetry in Mill's autobiography, and the comments in many of the lesser known works cited in this paper, provide an argument against Burnstone's position. I take this paper to be an attempt ‘effectively to advocate’ the connection between Mill's theory of poetry and sympathy.

70 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 231.

71 Sharpless argues that for Mill ‘the development of the moral feelings depends upon an imaginative conception of the experience of others, when that experience is some-thing of which we have no first hand knowledge. When we make this conscious effort to sympathize with others, and when our feelings have been cultivated to a proper degree of awareness and keenness, then, the concern for others becomes natural’ (The Literary Criticism, 206).

72 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 232.

73 Autobiography, CW, i. 152.

74 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 231–2.

75 Autobiography, CW, i. 143.

76 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 233.

77 I am indebted to Sarah Buss, Roger Crisp, Elijah Millgram and John Skorupski for helpful comments which led to the improvement of this paper.