At first glance, On Liberty stands the principle of utility on its head. Mill was less concerned to promote the welfare of the majority, it seems, than to protect an eccentric minority from mass mediocrity. On closer inspection, however, his arguments reveal something other than a snobbish obsession with talented individuals. Only through the public influence of an enlightened minority, he believed, might common people aspire to self-improvement. This belief also shaped his attitude to representative government. Although acknowledging that universal suffrage provided an essential safeguard of individual interests, he rejected the Benthamite proposition that everyone should exert an equal influence upon politics. Democracy, he feared, was potentially an elective dictatorship which failed to restrain the inclination of the majority to enact ignorant and capricious measures. It would thereby reinforce the tendency of the modern age to stifle individuality in mass conformity.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "At first glance, On Liberty stands the principle of utility on its head. Mill was less concerned to promote the welfare of the majority, it seems, than to protect an eccentric minority from mass mediocrity. On closer inspection, however, his arguments reveal something other than a snobbish obsession with talented individuals. Only through the public influence of an enlightened minority, he believed, might common people aspire to self-improvement. This belief also shaped his attitude to representative government. Although acknowledging that universal suffrage provided an essential safeguard of individual interests, he rejected the Benthamite proposition that everyone should exert an equal influence upon politics. Democracy, he feared, was potentially an elective dictatorship which failed to restrain the inclination of the majority to enact ignorant and capricious measures. It would thereby reinforce the tendency of the modern age to stifle individuality in mass conformity." in the context of "Robert Eccleshall, British Liberalism: Liberal Thought from the 1640s to the 1980s (1986), p. 33" to mean that wisdom is timeless.