His basic intuition is revealed in the statement "A new science of politics is needed for a new world." Such a new science, he felt, was developing, not always harmoniously, not without travail, in the United States. And he knew quite well what he was doing: "I have not undertaken to see differently from others, but to look further, and while they are busied for the morrow only, I have turned my thoughts to the whole future."
What probably interests us most, as we read Tocqueville, is the startling applicability of his insight to our present condi- tion. He foresaw, while America was still largely an agricultural country, the attraction that business and industry would have for us ali. He foresaw our materialism, but also our idealism.
He foresaw the inequities industry would bring in its train. And, most important, he foresaw our future power and, let us hope, our future greatness.
C.F.
72
JOHN STUART MILL
1806-1873
On Liberty, The Subjection of Women
Mill is the classic instance of the child prodigy who, despite an abnormal education, manages to live a good and useful life. You will find his story in his sober but extremely interesting Autobiography.
The elder Mill was a follower of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham^ name is linked with utilitarianism, an unimaginative if well-intentioned doctrine that stressed utility and reason, two terms it never strictly defined. It taught that the object of social action was to bring about the greatest happiness for the great- est number, and tended to ignore the temperamental and psy- chic differences among human beings. Young John was brought up in the shadow of this doctrine, caricatured by Dickens [77] in his Gradgrind.
Educated entirely by his logic-factory of a father, Mill was reading Greek at three and starting a history of Roman government at eleven. At thirteen he was about as well educated as an English university graduate. This force-feeding saved him at least ten of the years most first-rate minds are com- pelled to waste in our own school system. But it had its draw- backs: "I never was a boy," confessed Mill. The morbid emphasis on reason produced a mental crisis in his twentieth year, from which he was saved partly by the youthful resilience of his own fine mind and partly by his reading. Wordsworth [64] in particular revealed to him the existence of a life of feel- ing. (This criticai experience \yould appear to give the lie to W. H. Auden's [126] famous statement, ". . . for poetry makes nothing happen.")
His crisis, together with the influence of Mrs. Harriet Taylor, whom he met in 1830 and married twenty-one years later, led Mill to recognize the weaknesses of his fathers iron calculus of pleasures and pains. He was to spend much of his life, as writer, Member of Parliament, and social reformer, in liberalizing and humanizing utilitarianism. Thus, working with other "philosophical radicais," he helped to create a climate of opinion that led to many of the reform movements of the last hundred years, from woman suffrage to the New Deal. His The Subjection of Women stands as a milestone in the history of the evolution of human freedom.
Mill thought that except for his Logic his essay On Liberty would outlast his other works. In its own unemotional, English way it is a masterpiece of lucid persuasion and humane feel- ing. Probably no finer plea has ever been written for the claims of the individual against the state. Mill stresses the need for creating a great diversity of temperaments. He urges the protection of minorities. He advocates the utmost possible freedom of thought and expression. He comes out for the encouragement of nonconformist, even eccentric thinkers. His central principie is still far from realization in our state- dominated era, and still worth realizing: "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection."
Mill should be read as the representative of the purest liberal English thought of his century. His American brothers are Thoreau [80] and Emerson [69], though he lacks the radical daring of the first and the eloquence of the second.
C.F.
73
CHARLES DARWIN
1809-1882
The Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species
But for the good luck of having been invited to participate in the round-the-world voyage of the survey ship Beagle, Charles Darwin might well have spent his life as a country parson, giv- ing lackluster sermons, indulging his amateur passion for geol- ogy and natural history, and presenting obscure papers on his observations at meetings of the county's learned society. His powers of observation and deduction would have been keen even in such a humble setting; presented instead with the fos- sils of Argentina, the geology of the Andes, the finches of the Galapagos Islands, and much more, his genius took root, blos- somed, and bore fruit. Darwin^ powerful intellect and his uncompromising intellectual honesty led him down paths that he was reluctant to follow, finally making him one of the great- est scientific revolutionaries of ali time.
Charles Darwin was born into a life of affluent comfort and high intellectual expectations. He was not expected ever to have to work for a living, but he was expected to be very bright and to use his intelligence well. His paternal grandfather was the poet and natural philosopher Erasmus Darwin; his mater- nal grandfather (and grandfather also of his future wife Emma Wedgewood) was Josiah Wedgewood, wealthy founder of the famous pottery works. Both were part of a large circle of friends and scientific associates that included Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestly. Young Charles, passionately interested in beetles and rocks but not particularly interested in a profession, spent an undistinguished college career at Edinburgh and Cambridge and took holy orders for want of anything better to do. He was just the sort of well-to-do young man likely to be placed, through family influence, in a com- fortable country parsonage to live a bland and blameless life.
Fate intervened in 1831 in the form of Captain Robert FitzRoy, who was about to take the Beagle on a planned two years' voyage to survey the coasts of South America, and who needed an amiable young man, preferably a naturalist, to serve as his companion and messmate—basically to give him the intellectual companionship of someone of his own social class during what promised to be a long and tedious trip. Darwin was chosen, and chose to go, despite the vehement objections of his father; the voyage (which turned out to last five years, not two) changed his life.
He was ready to see the world's natural wonders with an open mind. He had read—devoured—LyelFs path-breaking Principies of Geology; he had participated in discussions at Cambridge speculating about the "transmutation" of species from their original Edenic forms; he was well aware of good reasons to think that fossils were something more than relics of Noah's Flood. On the Beagle's voyage he showed the capacity for hard work that was to distinguish the rest of his life. Whenever the ship touched land Darwin was ashore collecting specimens, observing geological strata, riding on horseback for miles inland and for weeks at a time in search of new material. His own assistant was kept busy preparing bonйs, skins, rocks, and pressed plants, ali of which Darwin shipped back to London by the ton.