Englishman John Stuart Mill, philosopher, political economist and civil servant, was among the greatest thinkers of the 18th century. A child prodigy, by the time he was 8, he could read Aesop’s Fables in the original Greek. At 12, he read Aristotle’s works on logic. He could read Latin and was fluent in French, as well. Known for his liberal ideas and reformist bent, he was an early proponent of women’s suffrage and favored more civilized treatment of the Irish. A prolific letter writer, “letters came to him from Frenchmen, Italians, Germans and Americans.” His most important writing, “On Liberty and Utilitarianism,” supported democratic processes and influenced American and European leaders. Here is how he might greet this Christmas season.

My Friend,

It would please me to know that you are surrounded by family and friends this Yule season, for in the companionship of others can the greatest happiness be found.

“In our age and country, every person with any mental power at all, who both thinks for himself and has a conscience, must feel himself, to a very great degree, alone.” I count blessed the friendship and communion with my dear wife, Harriet Taylor, on whose counsel I have mightily relied. She was who helped me see clearly and deeply into the worth of my ideas.

Even if people disagree with my ideas, anger is not reason — though mobs may sit in crowds boorishly expressing their displeasure. Disagreement does not mean disagreeable, for that would do injustice to reason, that a crowd would lay hands on a person who holds a different view.

Observe what I wrote in my essay, Utilitarianism: I cannot help referring…to a systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of thinkers, the Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does…lay down an universal first principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation…But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to offer a guide for correct behavior.

Yet, while a person may think another’s reasoning and conclusions errant, may they share a meal, eating in communion without contention. My sentiment is surely how this joyous season ought unfold.

Truly, “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection,” as stated clearly in my Principle of Liberty. “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”

Each person should pursue happiness as each chooses. And inasmuch as happiness is so closely attached to pleasure, I offered “Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, which holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”

Despite the clear language in my treatise, “the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually falling into the shallow mistake” of reporting that human beings would debase themselves and act like animals. However, “if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other.” Nay, ”human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites,” therefore, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

When some in this great country, “tolerably fortunate in their outward lot, do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is caring for nobody but themselves… Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation. A cultivated mind—I do not mean that of a philosopher… finds sources of inexhaustible interest in…the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind past and present, and their prospects in the future.” The cultivated mind listens to others, with attentive respect, that some new lesson be gained.

Finally, “I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned.” Further, “though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world’s arrangements that any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own life, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man.”

Thus, “in the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”

Such is the Spirit of Christmas.

Yours ever faithfully,

John Stuart Mill

Richard McGowan, an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, has taught philosophy and ethics cores for more than 40 years, most recently at Butler University. Citations are viewable at inpolicy.org. Send comments to [email protected].