Together with Rousseau, John Stuart Mill (1806–73) supplied nearly all of the arguments and most of the emotional weather – the texture of sentiment – that have gone into defining the Left-liberal vision of the world.

Mill’s peculiar brand of utilitarianism – a cake of Benthamite hedonism glazed with Wordsworthian sentimentality – accounts for part of his appeal: it provides a perfect recipe for embellishing programmatic shallowness with a cosmetic patina of spirituality. It is a recipe that has proven irresistible to those infatuated with the spectacle of their own virtue.