Mill and Newman

1
Mill and Newman

• ENGL 203
• Dr. Fike

2
Review

• Major characteristics of Victorian period
• Expansion
• Industrialization (steam power) led to misery for
  many
• Communication (telegraph)
• Advances in science (Darwin)
• Religious controversy (doubt)

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More Review

• Dramatic monologue (T, B, A)
• GRL vs. failed GRL (A vs. B)
• Role of the poet in society (T)
• Compensation for lack of faith (A)
• A Arnold
• B Browning
• T Tennyson

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Mills Dates

• 1806 Birth
• 1826 Nervous breakdown at age 20
• 1859 On Liberty
• 1873 Autobiography
• 1873 Death

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Background on Mill

• The young JSM was fully educated by the age of 14
  in language and philosophy.
• Therefore, his life was characterized by lack of
  emotion and of liberty.
• On the other hand, the mature JSM, who wrote On
  Liberty, argues for the antithesis of his early
  experiences. Next slide.

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Page 872-73/86-87

• 872 Human nature is not.
• 873 A person whose desires and impulses.
• What is Mills point?

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Possible Answer

• Man is not a machine (steam engine
  mechanical 876/90) but an organism (trees
  874/88 emotion, body life), and freedom of
  thought is a great value vs. following custom or
  parental prescription.

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Analogy to Blakes Eden and Beulah

• Eden creativity
• Beulah the realm of sexual joy, pleasure,
  repose.
• You can reach Eden through Beulah.
• Remember Bs emphasis on touch?

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Mills Life

• Fatherwifereasonemotion/sexual life (Beulah)
• Therefore, his wife was a kind of savior for
  himshe nourished a part of him that had been
  neglected during his youth.
• See top of page 874/88 Thus the mind. . .
  .
• Sexual union opens up creativity (cf. Yeats).

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Opposition in the Autobiography

• Attainment of goals through the application of
  reason.
• vs.
• Personal happinessemotional fulfillment.
• See the key question on 885-86/99-100 In this
  frame of mind.

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What Mill Realizes

• POINT Reason abrades (wears away, acts as an
  abrasive to) the emotions unless it exists in
  harmony with qualities that balance it. Page
  887/101 the habit of analysis reason has a
  tendency to wear away the feelings. . . . Also,
  Analytic habits . . . tend altogether to weaken
  those which are . . . a matter of feeling.
• Page 888/102 All those to whom.
• Last paragraph on 888/102 I went on with them
  mechanically (my emphasis).
• POINT As academic persons, we must be careful
  not to let our humanity get lost in a shuffle of
  papers. Mill, the consummate young student,
  later warns us not to overdo study (reason) to
  the exclusion of all else (emotion, sexuality).

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How Does Mill Change?

• Page 889/103 When, however, not more than
  half.
• What do you make of this passage?

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Possible Answers

• He reads about the death of a father in
  Marmontels Memoirs, which provides a model that
  Mill needs in order to feel constructive emotion.
• Plus, the death of the father is symbolic it
  corresponds to the death of paternal control.
  (Someone says that you are never fully an adult
  until both of your parents are deadsaid in
  reference to JFK, Jr.)
• The boy in the Memoirs becomes the father-figure
  in the family.
• POINT Deep emotion the archetypal killing and
  taking the place of the father.
• RESULT Mill is no longer his fathers lean,
  mean, studying machine.

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Further Results of This Change

• Lets discuss this question
• How can you achieve happiness?
• The answer is on 889/103, last par.

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Possible Answer

• You achieve happiness not as your object but as
  the by-product of some other endeavor such as
  helping others (the best way to be happy) or
  engaging in an activity that means something to
  you (cf. New York Stories if you have fun,
  others will want to join you).

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The Importance of Balance

• Mill begins to understand the importance of
  nourishing parts of himself other than the mind
  (e.g., the nonrational part). See 890/104.
• Mills awakening corresponds to his growing
  interest in poetry and music, which, like
  Marmontels Memoirs, convey strong feeling.
• See in particular WW on page 891/105 my
  reading wordsworth . . . was an important evnt
  in my life. And page 892/106 What made WWs
  poems a medicine. . . .
• See the effect of The World Is Too Much with
  Us, page 174 next slide. How does this poem
  provide an analogy for the transformation that
  Mill achieved?

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The World Is Too Much with Us

• The world is too much with us late and soon,
• Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
• Little we see in Nature that is ours
• We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
• The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon
• The winds that will be howling at all hours,
• And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers
• For this, for everything, we are out of tune
• It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
• A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn
• So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
• Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
• Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea
• Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

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WWs Poetic Theory

• Page 892/106
• the love of rural objects and natural scenery
• pleasure
• feeling
• joy
• In other words, Mill responded in exactly the way
  WW says in the Preface that a reader should.

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POINT

• Emotional balance and liberty are linked.
• In On Liberty he argues that a well-balanced
  person should enjoy liberty.
• In other words, that work deals with the kind of
  person Mill becomes as a result of the crisis in
  his mental history.
• AND WW, the quintessential Romantic poet, thus
  takes the edge off Mills quintessential
  Victorian rationalism.

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Digression on the Liberal Arts

• Poetry and music are things with no extrinsic
  value, but Mill endorses them, presumably as part
  of a liberal arts curriculum. Mill favors the
  liberal arts!
• They create a well-balanced quality of mind,
  which is what Newman argues for in The Idea of a
  University.
• See page 913/127, top par.

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Two Types of Utility

• Extrinsic utility__________ _________. See
  913/127, section 2.
• Intrinsic utility, page 913-14/127-28, section 5

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Possible Answer

• Extrinsic utility immediate usefulness
• Intrinsic utility something cannot be put to
  immediate use, but it is an end in itself because
  it enables goodness, which is prolific.
• POINT Newman is against the Utilitarian
  objection to liberal education (i.e., the
  objection that it is worthless because it is not
  professional training). He favors instead an
  education that fosters a quality of mind over
  direct practical applicability. Such education,
  he says, has true utility.

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Closed-Book (Unofficial) Pop Quiz

• Answer True of False to following statements (3
  minutes)
• The free expression of opinion must always be
  allowed. 
• Those who do anything because it is the custom
  make no choice at all. 
• Whatever is not a duty is a sin. 
• Man needs no capacity but that of surrendering
  himself to the will of God. 
• Whatever crushes individuality is despotism
• Only the cultivation of individuality can produce
  well-developed human beings. 
• Collective mediocrity rules America. 
• Calvinism patronizes (i.e., serves as a sponsor
  for) pinched, hidebound people. 
• Calvinist self-denial is better than pagan
  self-assertion. 
• Eccentricity is admirable and essential. 
• Women will never be the equals of men. 
• There are definite moral and rational differences
  between men and women. 
• You are more like a Dutch canal than a Niagara
  Falls. 
•  

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Group Activity

• Get with a partner or a small group and check
  your answers against the text (next slide). You
  have 10 minutes.

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Mills On Liberty Group Activity

• The free expression of opinion must always be
  allowed (870/84).
• Those who do anything because it is the custom
  make no choice at all (872/86).
• Whatever is not a duty is a sin (874/88). 
• Man needs no capacity but that of surrendering
  himself to the will of God (874/88). 
• Whatever crushes individuality is despotism
  (875/89).
• Only the cultivation of individuality can produce
  well-developed human beings (875/89). 
• Collective mediocrity rules America (877/91). 
• Calvinism patronizes (i.e., serves as a sponsor
  for) pinched, hidebound people (874/88). 
• Calvinist self-denial is better than pagan
  self-assertion (874/88). 
• Eccentricity is admirable and essential
  (878/92). 
• Women will never be the equals of men (On the
  Subjection of Women). 
• There are definite moral and rational differences
  between men and women (883/97). 
• You are more like a Dutch canal than a Niagara
  Falls (876/90). 
•  

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Correct Answers

1. False
2. True
3. False
4. False
5. True
6. True
7. True
8. True
9. False
10. True
11. False
12. False
13. ???

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Summary of Mills Points in On Liberty

• An individual person is not accountable to
  society for his actions insofar as they concern
  no one but himself. But when they have an impact
  on others, he becomes accountable. That is,
  there is a difference between freedom to do
  something positive and the right to be free from
  something negative. ?

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From the HMXP Book

• Pope John Paul II freedomfreedomconsists
  not in doing what we like, but in having the
  right to do what we ought (150).

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Question/Brainstorming

• What things does Mill favor/value?
• What does he condemn?
• Take 2 minutes and make a list.

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What Mill Favors/Condemns

• Mill favors the following
• Individuality (873/87)
• Choice
• Spontaneity (873/87)
• Opinion
• Character
• Differences between people
• Cultivation of all human faculties
• Genius/originality in thought or opinion
• Eccentricity
• Energy
• Improvement

• Mill condemns the following
• Custom
• Despotism
• Mediocrity
• POINT Liberty enables the things that Mill
  favors and helps us keep the things in this
  column at bay.

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Governmental Interference

• It is okay as long as it does not infringe upon
  liberty.
• When an individual person can do a thing better,
  the government should stay out of it.
• Even if individuals cannot do something better
  than government, they should do it for their own
  good/self-improvement.
• Do not give the government more power than we
  need to give itavoid bureaucracy.
• Government should encourage individual
  development and initiative.

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Conclusion

• Mill History
• Past Repression spontaneity and individuality
• (Romanticism)
• Present Freedom the deficiency of personal
• impulses
  and preferences
• (Victorian period)
• (This is why people must struggle as
• Mill did.)
• Both quotations are from page 873/87.

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Re. assimilation (881/95) Mill 882/96, top

• Industrialization (steam power)
• Communication (telegraph)
• Advances in science (Darwin) universal education

• The increase of commerce and manufactures
  promotes it
• Improvement in the means of communication
  promotes it
• Every extension of education promotes it
• POINT This work really clearly reflects the
  Victorian age think periodicity.

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Periodicity

• 18th Century/Neoclassical period Reason
• Romantic period imagination
• Victorian period reaction to imagination and
  feeling greater emphasis on reason ? literature
  about the resulting problems
• Arnolds Dover Beach (loss of faith)
• Mills Autobiography (loss of feeling)
• END