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

SOVBREIONTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 535
community, but he would have insisted, as against the
dictators, that the object of such control should be to make
the people independent of it, by so improving their intel-
lectual capacity that they could be trusted to form for
themselves a responsible judgment on all matters of
controversy presented to them*
Thus the functions of Mill's controller! of opinion are
not unlike those of Plato's Guardians. Each would seek
to mould the opinions of the masses by education, by
propaganda, by the laws and through whatever avenues
they can be reached. But while Plato's Guardians would have
sought to mould them to a recognition of and acquiescence
in that subordinate status for which the masses were by
nature fitted, it was Mill's hope that the intellectual few
would aim at so improving the moral qualities and intellectual
capacities of the many, that the many would become
capable of taking their share in the government of the
community. Until, however, the requisite qualities and
capacities were developed, Mill proposed that the real
holders of Sovereignty in the community should be the
intellectual minority. It is by the intellectual minority that,
Mill thought, government is, or at any rate should be,
carried on -"a representative constitution," he declared,
"it a means of bringing the general standard of intelligence
and honesty existing in the community, and the individual
intellect and virtue of its wisest members, more directly
to bear upon the government" but the minority should
never forget that the object of government is to bring all
the members of the community up to the intellectual level
of the governing few.
Comment upon Mill's Political Philosophy, Mill's
views have been given in detail not only because of their
intrinsic importance, but because ofthe conflict ofprinciples which they exemplify. The question, it will be remembered,
with which in the first part of this chapter we
"
were concerned was the question, Where in a coin*
1 '
in the last resort to reside? To this
munity ought power