ABSTRACT
The examination of John Stuart Mill's views on politics and ethics is made in a vacuum. This probably accounts for the author's readiness to accept Mill at face value, an approach calculated to digest his confusions while eradicating none. Mill lived a long life. He began his career at the tail end of the Enlightenment and continued well into the late Romantic epoch. The historical requirements of Mill's early years hinged on a final settlement of accounts between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, whereas during latter part of the nineteenth century, energies polarized between the power of commerce and the numerical power of the industrial mass. Thus, while Mill absorbed and even defended the humanitarian and socialist faith of Gustave D'Eichthal and the genetic vision of Comte, he did not fall victim to the myth of infallibility common to advanced French social theory.
