Food for Thought

Tuesday, September 16

John Stuart Mill and "The Spirit of the Age"

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) in a portrait taken in later life.
"The Spirit of the Age" will be your first encounter with John Stuart Mill in this course. Mill (1806-1873) was a leading intellectual during the mid-Victorian era, and if his opinions did not command universal assent, they commanded universal respect. His stature during this period was such that he became known as one of the Victorian "sages" along with figures like Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and John Ruskin (all of whom you will meet in this course). After receiving an extremely rigorous education at the hands of his father, James Mill, the historian and utilitarian philosopher, the younger Mill followed in his father's footsteps and began working for the East India Company until 1858. Mill wrote extensively about political economy and philosophy. As a philosopher, Mill was heavily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. In fact, Mill knew Bentham through his father who was a keen Benthamite. Another major influence on Mill's work was his wife, Harriet Taylor, a very good friend of his whom he married in 1851 after her first husband died. Although Mill claimed that she played a very important part in his studies, the extent and nature of that part remains a subject of debate among his biographers. Mill was particularly exercised about the problem of liberty in the modern age: On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869) are among his most famous and influential works. Politically, one would probably have to classify his positions as those of an "advanced liberal" or "radical," to use the language of the day. Among other things, he supported women's suffrage and proportional representation. For this reason, although many admired his reason, they could not agree with his conclusions.

Mill wrote "The Spirit of the Age" in 1831 when he was still a young man. In later years, Mill was not particularly proud of this piece, but it is useful for our purposes. Although the publication date is somewhat earlier than the time frame of this course (1851-1867), this essay captures some of the anxieties associated with this period. Not only can we find many of the same issues contemplated in works of other sages like Arnold and Carlyle, we can find them expressed throughout the 1850s and 1860s.

1) According to Mill, what are the leading elements or peculiarities of the age in which he lived?

2) Mill appears to believe that one day, humanity will find its way out of this murky age of transition. What will knowledge look like once we escape from this age? How do the physical sciences provide a model of what knowledge might look like in this succeeding period?

3) Mill makes the argument that Europe has entered a "transitional state" as opposed to a "natural" one. What is his reasoning? What is wrong with Europe?

Other Questions

1) Mill attemps to lay down some universal maxims concerning the state of society. Do you agree or disagree with him? Why?

2) Mill indicates that the age in which he lived was unprecedented. Do you think his description of the age is only applicable to his own time, or does it accurately describe the modern age as a whole? Does our own age display some of the elements Mill saw in his own time? As you consider your answer, you might want to think about what elements are associated with modernity. Winks and Neuberger's Europe and the Making of Modernity 1815-1914, for example, claims "modernity is most often associated with some combination of:

  • rapid social, economic and technological change
  • industrial, mechanized production and the growth of cities
  • individualism as a basic source of cultural expression, political rights, and public and private identities
  • struggles over popular sovereignty
  • the power of states organized as nations and based on mass mobilization
  • bureaucratic routinzation and governmental inerference in life
  • tension between a worldview based on reason and science, and one based on feeling and religion
  • nationalism as the primary source of publc loyalty and cohesion"

3) Mill mentions three sources of moral influence. What are they? What is their relationship to one another in a "natural state" as opposed to a "transitional state"?

Mid-Victorian Poets and the Spirit of the Age

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892)
We recommend that, as you prepare for class, you refer to the document "How to Analyze a Poem," found in the Study Aids section under Reading Texts.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Matthew Arnold are two of the most important literary artists of the Victorian period. Tennyson was a poet, pure and simple; in fact, he was the most popular poet of his time. Beloved by the Queen and appointed Poet Laureate in 1850, Tennyson by mid-century represented the Victorian frame of mind, in many people's opinions. His early poem, "Ulysses," expresses one facet of this Victorian mindset, in what looks to be a "sequel" to Homer's The Odyssey.
As a poet, Matthew Arnold seems wildly different from Tennyson, but Arnold, too, came to stand for the Victorian intellectual belief in culture, beauty, and the liberal arts, which opposed Victorian praise for progress and industry. Though he is more important as a cultural critic than as a poet, Arnold's best poems express an ambivalence with the present moment and ask questions about the relationship between the past, present and future. We see this melancholy put in personal and universal terms in "To Marguerite—Continued." "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse" narrates a strange expedition and the speaker's mid-nineteenth-century reaction to his visit to a much older place with very different values.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "Ulysses" (1842)

4) What is Ulysses persuading his mariners to do?

5) According to Ulysses, what's the difference between Ulysses and his son, Telemachus?

6) What things does Ulysses compare himself to?

Matthew Arnold: "To Marguerite-Continued" (1852)

7) What does the last word of line 1 mean ("enisled")? How is this word a theme of the entire poem?

8) What question about God arises in the last stanza?

Matthew Arnold, "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse" (1855)

9) Where is the speaker and what is he doing?

10) In what ways does the speaker describe "his race" (he means his kind or generation).

11) According to the speaker, what might happen "years hence"?

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

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Copyrighted by Hugh Dubrulle and Meg Cronin, 2006.