On J. S. Mill’s literary style

I’ve been reading John Stuart Mill’s “On the utility of religion” here lately, and it is frankly something of a chore. Although his ideas are good, he states them in the most godawful convoluted Victorian tangle of verbiage I’ve ever seen outside Dickens or Melville. His sentences remind me of the nuclei of trans-uranium elements, which are so gargantuan that they spontaneously fall apart and decay. (Okay, so do a lot of sub-uranium isotopes, not because they’re gargantuan but for other reasons of instability. No matter.) And as I suggested in an earlier post, I tend to fall into the same snare, evidently being influenced by him more than I should be. But if you can wade through Mill’s stylistic sludge, there are some real nuggets in the mess. Here’s one from that essay—one of the less tortuous sentences, believe it or not, and one which I editorially cleaned up a little:

“ … there is a very real evil consequent on ascribing a supernatural origin to the received maxims of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them, and protects them from being discussed or criticized; so that if, among the moral doctrines received as a part of religion, there be any which are imperfect—which were either erroneous from the first or not properly limited and guarded in their expression, or which, unexceptionable once, are no longer suited to the changes that have taken place in human relations (and it is my firm belief that instances of all these kinds are to be found in so-called Christian morality)—these doctrines are considered equally binding on the conscience with the noblest, most permanent, and most universal precepts of Christ."

Sounds like me at my worst, doesn’t it? To condense that into slightly more accessible and vernacular terms: the gay-bashing fundamentalists are full of shit. At least that’s my take on it. Doubtless many other applications could be found for it, but that’s the first one that struck me. Let me know if you think of any others yourselves.