GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 5x9
than the distinction between qualities of pleasure. Sover-
eignty, Bentham had said, is, or at any rate ought to be,
vested in the masses. Sovereignty, Mill maintained, ought
to be, but is not, vested in the intellectual flite. In order
that the nature and significance of this transformation
of Bentham's doctrine may be fully grasped, it is necessary
to give an outline of the arguments and conclusions of
Mill's Essay on Liberty, returning later to the problem of
Sovereignty.
II. LIBERTY
Mill's Liberty. Mill's Essay on Liberty is a work of
first-rate importance. It draws attention to political and
ethical values which are widely neglected to-day, and, in
opposition to the over-riding claims of the nation-state,
it maintains with the greatest persuasiveness and force
the integrity of the individual, his right to self-development
and his claim to be considered as an end in himself. Liberty
is in the strict sense of the word a "readable' 9
book which
rises on occasion to heights of noble eloquence. It is
disingenuous for a writer to pretend to impartiality in
regard to matters on which his feelings are strong and his.
views dear. I had better, therefore, say at once that the
case which Mill seeks to establish in his Essay, the case
for individual freedom and its corollary, the value of individual
variety, seems to me to be both unanswered and
unanswerable. The neglect of the truths which Mill states
is, I hold, in some part responsible for the distresses of
contemporary Europe.
Mill's case for liberty falls into two parts. There is, first,
a series of arguments for freedom of thought, whether
expressed in speech or writing or enjoyed in reading.
These arguments are derived from Mill's utilitarian-
'principles. Socrates had defended liberty on the ground
that it was valuable to "society, and Mill, taking Socrates's
hint, bases his defence not upon any abstract right to liberty
which the individual may be hypothetically supposed to
possess, but upon "utility, in the largest sense, grounded