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

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POLITICS
calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights
and interests of others, that human beings become a noble
and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works
partake the character of those who do them, by the same
process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and
animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high
thoughts and elevating feelings* and strengthening the
tie which binds every individual to the race, by making
the race infinitely better worth belonging to."
Mill based his advocacy of variety upon a further ground.
Variety was, he held, the indispensable condition of the
advkncc of the human mind. The arguments with which he
supports this view, are not essentially different from those
which were adduced in another connection in criticism
of the traditional moral sense theories of ethics. The moral
sense, it was argued in Chapter VIII, 1 as embodied in the
public opinion of a community, is apt to be critical of any
departure from accepted moral standards. Public opinion
is no less conservative in the realms of art and politics.
In all these spheres, the tendency of the mass mind is to
discourage experiment, to denounce novelty as heterodoxy,
and to iron out differences by demanding conformity
with existing codes. The fact that a code ofmorals or a mode
of behaviour is condemned by contemporary standards
does not, therefore, it was concluded, constitute in itself a
ground for rejecting it
Mill's argument for variety entitles us to go further. So
far from he would rejecting,. have us actually encourage
heterodoxies, not necessarily because they are true, but
because they are heterodox and because heterodoxy
makes for variety. For, granted that a particular heterodoxy
for dissent
may not be true, it is only by giving scope
that we give opportunity to truth. The very incapacity
of contemporary opinion to discern truth when it meets it,
its fear of novelty and its impatience with what flouts its
prejudices, render it essential, in Mill's view, deliberately
to safeguard the right ofindividuals to indulge in intellectual
1 See Chapter VIII, pp. 308-310.