ABSTRACT
John Stuart Mill (1806-73), logician, economist and philosopher, has an assured place in British jurisprudence largely as the result of his important modifications of Bentham’s ‘fundamentalism’, and his classic enunciation of the liberal approach to the rights of the individual. It is necessary to qualify his title of ‘utilitarian’. In Schumpeter’s words: ‘In some respects he outgrew the creed; in others he refined it. But he never renounced it explicitly’. The growing interest in utilitarianism expressed by jurists during Mill’s day was due in large measure to his skill in refining, in sophisticated fashion, the approach associated with Bentham. As Mill came to understand that a severe, utilitarian rationality tended to prove deficient as an analytical tool when used outside a very limited range of problems, so he proceeded to elaborate a number of qualifications to the strict Benthamite position. In this area of activity, Mill seemed to exemplify the truth of the observation that no school of thought makes any significant advance until it feels sufficiently assured to question the tenets of its founders.
