This certainly is a gloomy, not to say hopeless, view of life, and one which, in spite of Mill's attempt to produce a contrary impression, pervades the whole book. The thoughtful reader cannot help feeling that Mill's state of mind was very like that described by the apostle: "having no hope, and without God in the world." A deep and settled dissatisfaction with all he saw around him, the feeling that all was wrong—society, religion, government, the family, human life, the philosophic opinions of the whole world except himself, together with an undercurrent of despair, which made him doubt whether they would ever be right, gave a coloring of melancholy to his character which he is unable to hide. Life was no boon, and not even the faintest ray of light pierced the black gloom of the grave.
Of his father he writes: "In ethics, his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points which he deemed important to human well-being, while he was supremely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality which he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priest-craft. He looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that freedom."[260]
Here we have an instance of the truth of the inference which we have already drawn from the principles of the utilitarian ethics—that they take no account of personal purity of character, and teach that man's duties are towards others, and not towards himself. There is a still more striking example of this in Mill's Autobiography.
He early in life made the acquaintance of a married lady, for whom he conceived a very strong affection. He spent a good deal of his time with her, and says: "I was greatly indebted to the strength of character which enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together"; though their relation at that time, he tells us, was only that of strong affection and confidential intimacy. The reason which he assigns for this is certainly most curious: "For though," he says, "we did not consider the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore on herself."[261]
In other words, Mill recognizes no obligation of personal purity, even in the married, but holds that unchastity is wrong only when it brings discredit on others; though he was unfaithful even to this loose ethical code, since, according to his own account, his conduct was such as to be liable to misinterpretation, and, therefore, such as might bring disgrace upon the husband of the woman with whom he was associating.
His hatred of marriage and of the restraints which it imposes is seen in several parts of the work before us.
Of the Saint-Simonians he says: "I honored them most of all for what they have been most cried down for—the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which they treated the subject of the family, the most important of any, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformer has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations with one another, the Saint-Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of future generations."[262]
A man who puts himself forward as the advocate of free-love should not, one would think, insist especially on the moralities, or give himself prominence as a proof that belief in God is not useful either to the individual or to society.
Mill's social ethics are of the same character. He is a socialist of the most radical type, and considers the great problem of the future to be how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor; though the "uncultivated herd who now compose the laboring masses," as well as the mental and moral condition of the immense majority of their employers, convince him that this social transformation is not now either possible or desirable. Still, his ethics lead him to hope that private property will be abolished, and that the whole earth will be converted into a kind of industrial school, in which every man, woman, and child will be required to do certain work, and receive in remuneration whatever the controllers of the general capital may see fit to give them. Thus, in the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, personal purity, the family, private property, society, are all to be no more, and the human race is to be managed somewhat like a model stock-farm, in which everything, from breeding down to the minutest details of food and exercise, is to be under the control of a supervisory committee.
As we have already seen, Mill, after reading Bentham, got what he called a religion: he had an object in life—to be a reformer of the world.