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

536
POLITICS
question Mill gives two answers, The first is, "in the people
as a whole". This answer provides the democratic element
in his thought, and is responsible for his insistence upon
the need for popular control. But Mill also held an ethical
theory which caused him to value some pleasures as
"higher" than others, from which it followed that those
persons who were the more valuable in a community were
those capable of enjoying the "higher" pleasures. Since the
State ?xists to promote the welfare of its members, it
must seek to increase the number of those capable of
enjoying the "higher" pleasures. The State, therefore,
has a moral end, that of improving the intellectual quality
of its citizens, and power in a State ought to be vested in
those who can enable it to fulfil its end, that is to say,
in those who are capable of enjoying "higher" pleasures
now. At this point, then, we tap a Platonic vein in Mill's
thought, following which he proceeds to endow the intellectual
tlite with the power (always subject to popular
control) to make the laws and 'to govern the community,
both on the ground that they have superior value in
themselves, and because it will be their object so to raise
-the mental level of the community, as to enable all to
become capable of enjoying the pleasures in which their
own superiority consists. It is from the conflict of these
fundamentally different answers to the problem of Sovereignty
that the somewhat complicated provisions, whose
purpose is to combine the appearance of popular government
with effective control by the most knowledgeable
element in the community derive. Mill does not say
outright, as Plato does, that the few should rule in the
interests of the many, because the few know what is good
for the many; what he does say is that the few can and
should persuade the many to give them a degree of
influence in the community which is out of all proportion
to their numbers, in order that they may administer the
community's affairs, in the interests of what they conceive
to be the welfare of the many, better than the many,
with their limited vision and undeveloped tastes, could