Abstract

On Mill’s view, aesthetic education or the education of the feelings and the cultivation of the beautiful, like intellectual education or moral education, is an important ingredient of human culture, which is indispensable to the completeness of the human being. By historically analyzing the difference of ideas of virtue, which may have been existing between the British people and those of the European Continent, namely, for the former, virtue is almost exclusively an affair of duty, but for the latter, virtue is an affair of the sentiments, Mill believes that a higher and nobler form of expressing the feelings and the beautiful, i.e. Art, enables both sides to aim at a complete and perfect virtue. His reason is as follows, since the perfection is itself the object of Art, Art enables the human mind to maintain a high tone, consequently, the human mind with a high tone will regard human life as a work of Art and will strive for improving it. Mill’s this view of life as Art fully conforms to his belief on self-development and moral progress, and both of them represent his profound understanding and insights of individual person and individual life.