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John Stuart Mill
English Philosopher
1806-1873 A selection from
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Narrated by Ralph Cosham
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Crisis in My Mental History
For some years after this time I wrote very little, and nothing
regularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which I
derived from the intermission. It was of no common importance to me, at
this period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind
only, without any immediate call for giving them out in print. Had I
gone on writing, it would have much disturbed the important
transformation in my opinions and character, which took place during
those years. The origin of this transformation, or at least the process
by which I was prepared for it, can only be explained by turning some
distance back.
From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from
the commencement of the "Westminster Review", I had what might truly be
called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception
of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. The
personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in this
enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the
way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon,
my whole reliance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to felicitate
myself on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placing
my happiness in something durable and distant, in which some progress
might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete
attainment.
This did very well for several years, during which the
general improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as
engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill
up an interesting and animated existence. But the time came when I
awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826. I was
in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to;
unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moods
when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent;
the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are,
when smitten by their first "conviction of sin."
In this frame of mind
it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that
all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in
institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be
completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and
happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly
answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on
which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have
been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to
charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I
seemed to have nothing left to live for.
At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did
not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of
life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed consciousness of the
woful fact. I carried it with me into all companies, into all
occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes'
oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and
thicker. The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection"—I was not then acquainted
with them—exactly describe my case:
"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear."
In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past
nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength
and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed
feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of
mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I
sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved
anyone sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should
not have been in the condition I was.
I felt, too, that mine was not an
interesting, or in any way respectable distress. There was nothing in it
to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek it, would have
been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the physician often occurred
to my thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build the faintest
hope of such assistance. My father, to whom it would have been natural
to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last
person to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything
convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as I was
suffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, he
was not the physician who could heal it.
My education, which was wholly
his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of
its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of
thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably
irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of _his_ remedies. Of
other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making
my condition intelligible. It was, however, abundantly intelligible to
myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.
These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry, heavy dejection of
the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I was not incapable of
my usual occupations. I went on with them mechanically, by the mere
force of habit. I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental
exercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone
out of it.
In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it,
and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state;
but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general
phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of
causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove.
I frequently
asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life
must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did
not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, not
more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light
broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's
"Mémoires", and came to the passage which relates his father's death,
the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by
which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be
everything to them—would supply the place of all that they had lost. A
vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was
moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression
of the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. I was no
longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed,
some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all
capacity for happiness, are made.
Relieved from my ever-present sense of
irremediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary incidents
of life could again give me some pleasure; that I could again find
enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and
sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that there was,
once more, excitement, though of a moderate, kind, in exerting myself
for my opinions, and for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew
off, and I again enjoyed life; and though I had several relapses, some
of which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I
had been.
The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions
and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life,
very unlike that on which I had before I acted, and having much in common
with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-
consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction
that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life.
But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it
the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds
fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of
others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit,
followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at
something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life
(such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing,
when they are taken _en passant_, without being made a principal object.
Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.
They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you
are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not
happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your
self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust
themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will
inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or
thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or
putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the
basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best
theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and
of capacity I for enjoyment; that is, for the great majority of mankind.
The other important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was
that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime
necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the
individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the
ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being
for speculation and for action.
I had now learnt by experience that the passing susceptibilities needed
to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be
nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant,
lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen
before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to
consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition
both of individual and of social improvement But 1 thought that it had
consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of
cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the
faculties now seemed to be of primary importance. The cultivation of the
feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical
creed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degree
towards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object.
I now began to find meaning in the things, which I had read or heard
about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture.
In this frame of mind the French Revolution of July found me: It roused
my utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as it were, a new existence. I went
at once to Paris, was introduced to Lafayette, and laid the groundwork
of the intercourse I afterwards kept up with several of the active
chiefs of the extreme popular party. After my return I entered warmly,
as a writer, into the political discussions of the time. More information about John Stuart Mill from Wikipedia
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