Mill's Views on the Past as a Source of Creativity

In On Liberty (1859) John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) begins his meditations on the past as the source of creativity by citing the philosophical and social writings of the German thinker, Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt (1761-1835). In his chapter "On Individual-ity", Mill focuses on Humboldt's claim that "originality" derives from the "individuality of power and development" which depends upon "the two requisites of freedom and variety of situations" allowing "individual vigour and manifold diversity" to manifest itself (Mill, 1985, 121). Mill agrees with Humboldt that individuality is to be highly prized. Mill's position is that individuals should not be expected merely to mimic the past and its greatness. Rather the greatest achievement for an individual according to Mill is to "use and interpret experience in his own way" (Mill, 1985, 122). Here the past serves as a point of inspiration, a sort of jumping off point for one's own deepest reflections. Mill indicates that the individual's task is to discern "what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his own circumstances and character" (Mill, 1985, 122). The past here is presented as an open field, a space in which creativity can be tempered rather than absolutely fixed and limited. Mill desires that individuals not be enslaved to custom. For Mill anyone who allows the world to choose one's path is merely following in "ape-like imitation" (Mill, 1985, 123).

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ful passion and self-interest" over and above John Knox's "rigid self-control" (Mills, 1985, 127). What is desired is an individual who can surmount the conventional modes of restrictive behavior which a too-controlling culture might seek to impose upon him. A society is best which does not attempt to "wear down" uniformity but to "cultivate" individual-ity (Mills, 1985, 127). Mills indicates that culture is always in need of originality, of individuals who are capable of point-ing out "new truths" (Mills, 1985, 129). One of On Liberty's most famous sentences is when Mills observes that "genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom" (Mills1985 129). Nietzsche's Views on Creative Individuals In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche observes that every society which has been involved in the shaping of variable types of "man" has been a society concerned with the issue of rank (Nietzsche, 1989, 201). Nietzsche contends that without the pathos of difference instilled by the division between men (often expressed as the difference between slave and owner), there would have been no "craving for an ever widening set of differences within the soul itself", that is, the development of an enhancement of the type, "the continual
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