8 Personal Qualities for Troubled Political Times According to Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

On March 26^th, our group’s subject was John Stuart Mill’s “The Criterion of a Good Form of Government,” a chapter from his book Representative Government. Mill considers how political philosophers describe the elements of a good government. He sees these elements becoming boiled down to “a partition of the exigencies of society between the two heads of Order and Progress.”

He goes on to delineate the following qualities of individuals that contribute to Order:

• Industry
• Integrity
• Justice
• Prudence

 Additional qualities that lead to Progress are

• Mental Activity
• Enterprise
• Courage

Mill concludes the Order and Progress debate, in reality, hinges on a false distinction between the two societal goals, and it's “unscientific and incorrect.”

He nevertheless does offer a plan for good government, one that's based on human excellence as an amalgam of the human qualities just mentioned. He expresses another idea that's key to his argument when he says, “If there is anything certain in human progress, it is that valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by a continuation of the same energies which gained them. Things left to themselves inevitably decay.”

Mill goes on to invoke an eighth attribute: Originality, or Invention.  In other words, we must (a) be constantly vigilant in order to preserve democracy, and (b) discover fresh means to protect it from decay.

Do you find this Millian formulation relevant to today's politics?