SOURCE: "Sympathy and the Social Value of Poetry: J. S. Mill's Literary Essays," in University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. LX, No. 4, Summer, 1991, pp. 452-68.

In the following essay, Green traces the development of Mill's views on poetry as part of the intellectual tradition of the Scottish philosophers and the Romantic poets, which emphasized poetry's ability to develop sympathy, and therefore, according to Mill, made it a necessary addition to purely rational Benthamism.

In 1835, nearly a decade after the mental crisis which initiated his reevaluation of Benthamism, John Stuart Mill took another step towards intellectual independence with the launching of the London Review. As editor, he hoped that the London Review would represent 'a utilitarianism which takes into account the whole of human nature not the ratiocinative faculty only.' This more complete Utilitarianism depended upon the recognition that poetry was the 'necessary condition of any true and comprehensive...