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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 111.: REPLY OF THE BRIGHTON GUARDIAN TO THE EXAMINER EXAMINER, 19 JUNE, 1831, P. 387 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

111.: REPLY OF THE BRIGHTON GUARDIAN TO THE EXAMINER EXAMINER, 19 JUNE, 1831, P. 387 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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111.

REPLY OF THE BRIGHTON GUARDIAN TO THE EXAMINER

EXAMINER, 19 JUNE, 1831, P. 387

Here Mill responds to “Literature and Patronage,” Brighton Guardian, 15 June, 1831, p. 2, which replied to No. 109. The article, headed as title, appears in the “Political Examiner.” Described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘Reply of the Brighton Guardian to the Examiner’; in the Examiner of 19th June 1831” (MacMinn, p. 17), the article is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.

the brighton guardian has honoured our article of last Sunday by a reply. His opinion is not changed; and as the manner in which he has again presented it has produced no change in ours, we have no wish that the discussion should proceed farther. The question will full surely reproduce itself often enough; connected, as it is, with principles which lie still deeper, and for which we may hereafter be called upon to do battle, not solely with our present antagonist, but with some of the strongest tendencies of the age. But as our contemporary, whose tone in conducting the controversy is temperate and decorous, thinks that he has reason to complain of ours, we are unwilling to quit the subject without attempting to remove this impression.

We admit that we wronged our contemporary in representing him to have asserted, that literary men are of no use. He merely affirmed (what, however, is substantially the same) that they do not, in any material degree, influence the opinions or sentiments of mankind; and this he now repeats, calling in, as his voucher, a writer in the Edinburgh Review, who says of men of genius, that they are “only the first to catch and reflect the light, which, without their assistance, must, in a short time have become visible to those who were far beneath them.”1 We well remember the passage: but we do not think that our contemporary derives much additional strength from such backers. The stronger should not lean for support upon the weaker. The doctrine, in the mind of the Edinburgh Reviewer, was but one of those crude and thoughtless paradoxes, which unsettled and juvenile minds think it clever to fling out at random: but in the mind of our contemporary, we are bound to allow that to all appearance it forms part of a connected course of thought. An opinion thus adopted belongs to a far higher quality of mind, but to one of which the aberrations are pregnant with far greater evil. Almost the only dangerous error is systematic error.

We must have looked at our contemporary’s productions with as perverse an eye, as we think he has at his subject, if we had, as he accuses us, classed him “with the tribe of dunces.” He will find, on reperusing our remarks, that we expressly distinguished him from that class. But we could not help testifying our sense of the immense advantage which he enjoyed, in having the whole tribe of dunces on his side: for we well know how numerous, potent, and united a body these are. And we know, that, in an age of transition, in which mankind have just found out that their guides have lost their way, the spell of intellectual superiority is broken, or greatly impaired, and the dunces are prone to believe that they are fully competent to their own guidance, and that instruction and intellect are no such mighty matters, after all. We are not blind to the danger, or to the ridiculousness, of the self-worship to which literary men are liable in common with all other possessors of power; but we deem the self-idolatry of ignorance rather more ridiculous and dangerous still; and the regret we felt at finding it countenanced by one who, in no sense, belongs to the ignoble fraternity, alone provoked us to the warmth of language of which our contemporary complains.

Be it remembered, that, lofty as are the claims which we have set up in behalf of genius, we have never asserted that men are entitled to consideration merely because they labour with the pen, rather than with the hod. The honour due to any man depends not upon his occupation, but upon the spirit in which he pursues it, and the qualities of mind which he evinces in carrying it on. Nor have we said one word in exaltation or vindication of the common herd of littérateurs, respecting whom our opinion, in the main, coincides with that of our contemporary. The whole mind of a reading nation is reflected in its literature; and we claim admiration solely for the nobler parts of both. But the highest literature is the food of the highest minds, without which they wither and die. The Globe of Thursday last contains an excellent article on the subject of this controversy, to which we have great pleasure in calling the attention of our readers.2

[1 ]Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59), “Dryden,” Edinburgh Review, XLVII (Jan. 1828), 3.

[2 ]Globe and Traveller, 16 June, 1831, pp. 2-3.