# Семья Трампа - попаданцы в Постатом!!!!

Region Davao

Вначале было Слово, и слово было Благим Матом по-русски. А что было вначале попаданства семьи Трампа в ужасные антиутопические дали постатомного века в руинах США?

Семья Трампа - попаданцы в Постатом!!!!

"Вначале было Слово, и слово было Благим Матом по-русски. А что было вначале попаданства семьи Трампа в ужасные антиутопические дали постатомного века в руинах США?

Краткая предыстория событий:

В начале 2022 (январь месяц, до СВО) НАТО-наёмники убили много русских детей и расстреляли несколько автобусов, эвакуировавших детей-сирот войны, которую блок НАТО руками нацистов Киева начал против веками Русского Донбасса в 2014 году... в 2015 в 2018 году расстрелы автобусов с детьми у НАТО выходили, как и столкновение в лоб с немецкой фурой девочек 13-леток из олимпийского резерва России по баскетболу, ехавших на Кавказ 9 Мая в День Победы 2021, а вот в тот раз нет. Началось СВО.

Летом 2022 года в США взорвались десятки НПЗ, принадлежащие акционерам банка-президента по имени Эгоист-Трамп, карьера которого оплачена эгоистическими олигархами в США, которым нет нужды в глобальном долларе НАТО и прочем дерьме, так как они зарабатывают в США на американском народе, и у них нет собственности в Тайване Сингапуре Южной Кореи и других местах, где тысячи баз США и дежурит флот и береговая охрана штатов, охраняя собственность демократов-мировой-элиты (что могут отнять, если США будет слабым, и на что Трамп и его промышленники США срать хотели). После чего НАТО смешно устроило в РФ череду расстрелов в школах детей руками нацистов и осенью 2022 взорвали Северные Потоки, чтобы компенсировать штатам ремонт НПЗ продажей по огромным ценам в ЕС газа и прочего дерьма... Заодно США направило морпехов, дельту, британцы сасовцев, французы много кого, поляки гром и прочий спецназ, который участвовал в геноциде исконно русскоязычного населения исконно русского Русской Императрицей построенного города Херсон и не только... (это было до вторжения НАТО в Курскую область после волнений в Британии и прочего, но принцип тот же: внезапное использование закладок, разрыв связи с войсками, имитация ударов в спину).

В 2023 помимо Курска и вторжения НАТО в РФ были выборы в США, во время подсчёта голосов в демократах возникли сомнения и в дом, где собрались члены семьи Трампа - влетел дрон, под завязку начинённой Самой что ни на Есть Демократией C4...

А также поражающими элементами в виде свинцовых ослов, символизирующих демпартию, чтобы точно свалить на Кремль.

Но Иванка Трамп общалась с решившими купить по дешёвку после третьей мировой Землю дельцами-инопланетянами-пришельцами х_х в сети Икс! Поэтому тел не найдут, Эквадорская у РФ все бананы укравшая Макака Станет Президентом США, и всё будет покрыто занавесой тайны ещё больше самонаводящихся пуль в голову, убивших Кеннеди, лол.

Пришельцы решили отправить семью Трампа в некоторое будущее, может прямое или альтернативное. И семья Трампа очнулась в руинах прокажённого радиацией города США по названию..."

[Начало постатомного трешевого гротескно-пародийного горе муки пафос приключенческого романа в третьем лице в стиле Фоллаут в руинах постапокалиптических США, где антиутопия и нищета... а всем заправляют жуткие разные дельцы-капиталисты-инопланетяне, строящие для обслуживания их щупалец дырками гражданок НАТО публичные дома "Интерстеллар" и всяко издевающиеся над штатами, выдумывая разные запреты и спаивая народ, в общем, поступая с американцами как те с индейцами поступали, пришельцы стравливают разные города в США и элиты, а любой призыв к объединению в США оборачивается ужасами мглы... При этом пришельцы защищают от монстров мглы города, которые им присягнули в США, инопланетяне постоянно рассуждают словно лживые американские политики-законодатели о демократии и толерантности, у пришельцев дела злы, а речи только о гуманизме и всеобщей гармонии, они ещё боле лицемерны чем политики США и клеветой убивают в США едва ли не больше граждан НАТО, чем биологическим внеземным оружием и колонизацией штатов... Из-за терраформинга всё заражено пришельцами (смотрите фильм "Цвет Иных Миров" и аналогичное, включая Лавкрафта и Томминокеров, Мглу, Рак (Ловца Снов) Керри и Бурю столетия С. Кинга) Третье лицо, настоящее время!]


On liberty


Publication date 1864

Topics Liberty, Democracy, Representative government and representation

Publisher London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green

Collection lincolncollection; americana

Contributor Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection


4.


"^coc ^^


<


(


^fc : ^^ 4t.


f


^ <£c<: c


■MlrJlifL f-k-


-nmj ''


^Jfe^ ; 0^ ^^


p


CS^


m


c


9f^ ■ ^^ ^^


0


r <^^S ^


L!^,


■'^


c


^pr) .;^ ^^- ^^


' C'


t" ^'< 5^^


^ Jf - - r i


^c


c


4^^~ ' ^' ^k^


B^^


^^fe^c%


'If- (


V <&c -^


^ V


^-^gp^'t-C, *^^^


C'


Nc^ c< ^^


<,"∙ . i


^'. c ^ ' ^


V^^T3 "^^.^


S


c <^'-^^


r <-<■■■■


^ i


ir V *:


c^BCs^ f C ^


∙∙^-


V


> .iu'^


C A ^


^ ^


r ^^C^ - i^


^


V: ^^


^ C-


^<.


1^


; . ∙^-


-, ^^G- 5 S /^


c


^ - ^ ^&<.


> fV.


< c


^


C^L^ '^ *"


. ;<"i


^ e^ <^


S:


. '^ 5^


$


'- ;


->*^ "^ >


■■■i


CC ^ , ┬At


r t-


∙ c <_


^k


=^-


x^^^ '^


∙5^ ir? cc


∙ <-(<-.


^

'


ft ' ^^


^t-- '^


<3C 'V CC


c ^


r ' C<


^^g- - ^


^Jl^^


C


\ ^^


^


∙^^


^


-∙^■%:,". ^-


^


^E


C


<<:.C" "-


V-. .-∙


< <^


^y'


C(^^'


"ii'


'^- ■? ∙■


Cv


'<: '' ' "' _


V 5


c. !^


M 1 i


4


■%i


*-


% ^4r


^'^


'1 . < ''


-C_


^^ 4


Li-'' ^ ^^B


'c.


■ ''∙:'*^=- >


C^C


,'■ *<. '■


v%-^ '


C- ■; -;. ^


F^<


x^ <


^^ . , '


^■^


CT ^ ^


f


<


1 ?£|


. ^t


==-


C ┬iC


, (''


■^f-x:- ^<^


^^- -- , ^" '


C


<


' Ki


*fe ^


i.


c


i


^ c <-\


C <1


<


. c


^


( .


. <^ <:


^^■' ^^


c

' <

^t' *^ *^*^

<' ■■

∙.■-c < '

r"^ ∙ ^

, c

i

;:;

^1. ^ *^^

L. *--^-

- "c '-

c ^

t

^ / i:

-^' V^'

C ^

<'

c

^L_ *■ : y<,-

Cl

■■ fvv -

∙C '^

■<"

*

c

*:>,<:''

c ^

<

^ I

c

^tl r^

c^

;.vC

c

H. E. BARKER

dncolniana

1714 WD0TMOnBfo">"<"-B┬)ULEVAnP

Los Angeles, California

*♦* Q

LIBERTY***

^

John Stuart Ilill

Noah E rooks cherished a personal

and intimate acquaintance v/ith Abra-

ham Lincoln, paying him frequent vis-

its at the \7hite House^ and among the

subjects discussed was that of books.

The follov/ing paragraph from an

article by Brooks, in Harper's Maga-

zine for July, 1865, includes this book

by John Stuart Mill;

"But he also v^as a lover of many

philosophical books, and particularly

liked Putler's Analogy of Religion,

Jolm Stuart Mill on Liberty, and he al-

ways hoped to get at President Edv<-ards

on the Will."

J\ht (1.^^-^yhi^^

^\

^ -a.

^^^

r ' >-- ' i.

∙∙<^. ..

(■ ^ Vi- '

e^

c-^

>- ' ■' ■■ CjfC, ■■ '

c^

^^ ' ■^^^'' ■

^ <^'

'^ c 'CL

c <^

: c<-

<:-<

^ ^<2£^

.. c;"

^ ^^^

■∙ .

C'

^ ^

^

^ K ^

'^ ^ <-'^^

c

<

^f^ s

i

∙-■■s-o' r ■■ CS*-i>'- c

^<^:^je^

^X "*

7^7^-

Digitized by the Internet Arcliive

in 2010 witli funding from

The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

http://www.archive.org/details/onlibertyOOinmill

ON

LIBERTY

BY

JOHN STUAET MILL.

THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, GEEEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS & GREEN.

M.DCCC.LXIV.

32-3 //4\M 4^-/5 o\. I<^^^

\The right of Translation is reserved.^

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGB

INTEODUCTOEY r . 7

CHAPTER II.

OF THE LIBEETT OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION . . 31

CHAPTER III.

OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF

WELL-BEING 99

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER

THE INDIVIDUAL 134

CHAPTER V.

APPLICATIONS 168

a2

The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument

unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and

essential importance of human development in its richest

diversity. - Wilhelm VON Humboldt : Sphere and Duties oj

Government.

nnO the beloved and deplored memory

of her who was the inspirer, and in

. part the author, of all that is best in my

writings - the friend and wife whose exalted

sense of truth and right was my strongest

incitement, and whose approbation was my

chief reward - I dedicate this volume. Like

all that I have written for many years, it

belongs as much to her as to me ; but the

work as it stands has had, in a very insuf-

ficient degree, the inestimable advantage of

her revision; some of the most important

portions having been reserved for a more

careful re -examination, which they are now

6

never destined to receive. Were I but

capable of interpreting to the world one

half the great thoughts and noble feelings

which are buried in her grave, I should be

the medium of a greater benefit to it, than

is ever likely to arise from anything that I

can write, unprompted and unassisted by

her all but unrivalled wisdom.

ON LIBERTY.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called

Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed

to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Neces-

sity ; but Civil, or Social Liberty : the nature and

limits of the power which can be legitimately ex-

ercised by society over the individual. A question

seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general

terms, but which profoundly influences the practi-

cal controversies of the age by its latent presence,

and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the

vital question of the future. It is so far from

being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided

mankind, almost from the remotest ages ; but in

the stage of progress into which the more civiUzed

portions of the species have now entered, it pre-

sents itself under new conditions, and requires a

different and more fundamental treatment.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is

the most conspicuous feature in the portions of

8 INTRODUCTOBY.

history witli whicli we are earliest familiar, parti-

cularly in that of Greece, Eome, and England.

But in old times this contest was between subjects,

or some classes of subjects, and the Government.

By liberty, was meant protection against the

tyranny of the political rulers. The rulers were

conceived (except in some of the popular govern-

ments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic

position to the people whom they ruled. They

consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe

or caste, who derived their authority from in-

heritance or conquest, who, at all events, did not

hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and whose

supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not

desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be

taken against its oppressive exercise. Their power

was regarded as necessary, but also as highly dan-

gerous ; as a weapon which they would attempt to

use against their subjects, no less than against

external enemies. To prevent the weaker mem-

bers of the community from being preyed upon by

innumerable vultures, it was needful that there

should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest,

commissioned to keep them down. But as the

king of the vultures would be no less bent upon

preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies,

it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude

of defence against his beak and claws. The aim,

therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power

INTRODUCTORY. 9

which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over

the community ; and this limitation was what

they meant by liberty. It was attempted in two

ways. First, by obtaining a recognition of certain

immunities, called political liberties or rights, which

it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the

ruler to infringe, and which if he did infringe,

specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held to

be justifiable. A second, and generally a later ex-

pedient, was the establishment of constitutional

checks, by which the consent of the community,

or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its

interests, was made a necessary condition to some

of the more important acts of the governing power.

To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling

power, in most European countries, was compelled,

more or less, to submit. It was not so with the

second ; and, to attain this, or when already in

some degree possessed, to attain it more com-

pletely, became everywhere the principal object of

the lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind

were content to combat one enemy by another,

and to be ruled by a master, on condition of being

guaranteed more or less efficaciously against his

tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond

this point.

A time, however, came, in the progress of human

affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of

nature that their governors should be an indepen-

10 INTRODUCTORY.

dent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It

appeared to them much better that the various

magistrates of the State should be their tenants or

delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way

alone, it seemed, could they have complete security

that the powers of government would never be

abused to their disadvantage. By degrees this

new demand for elective and temporary rulers

became the prominent object of the exertions of

the popular party, wherever any such party existed ;

and superseded, to a considerable extent, the pre-

vious efforts to limit the power of rulers. As

the struggle proceeded for making the ruling

power emanate from the periodical choice of the

ruled, some persons began to think that too much

importance had been attached to the limitation

of the power itself. That (it might seem) was

a resource against rulers whose interests were

habitually opposed to those of the people. What

was now wanted was, that the rulers should be

identified with the people ; that their interest and

will should be the interest and will of the nation.

The nation did not need to be protected against

its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing

over itself. Let the rulers be effectually respon-

sible to it, promptly removable by it, and it could

afford to trust them with power of which it could

itself dictate the use to be made. Their power

was but the nation's own power, concentrated, and

INTRODUCTORY. 11

in a form convenient for exercise. This mode of

thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common

among the last generation of European liberalism,

in the Continental section of which it still appa-

rently predominates. Those who admit any limit

to what a government may do, except in the case

of such governments as they think ought not to

exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions among the

political thinkers of the Continent. A similar tone

of sentiment might by this time have been preva-

lent in our own country, if the circumstances

which for a time encouraged it, had continued

unaltered.

But, in political and philosophical theories, as

well as in persons, success discloses faults and in-

firmities which failure might have concealed from

observation. The notion, that the people have no

need to limit their power over themselves, might

seem ^axiomatic, when popular government was a

thing only dreamed about, or read of as having

existed at some distant period of the past. Neither

was that notion necessarily disturbed by such tem-

porary aberrations as those of the French Revolu-

tion, the worst of which were the work of an

usurping few, and which, in any case, belonged,

not to the permanent working of popular institu-

tions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak

against monarchical and aristocratic despotism.

In time, however, a democratic republic came to

1 2 INTRODUCTORY.

occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and

made itself felt as one of the most powerful mem-

bers of the community of nations ; and elective

and responsible government became subject to the

observations and criticisms which wait upon a

great existing fact. It was now perceived that

such phrases as ' self-government/ and ' the power

of the people over themselves/ do not express the

true state of the case. The 'people' who exercise

the power are not always the same people with

those over whom it is exercised ; and the ' self-

government' spoken of is not the government of

each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The

will of the people, moreover, practically means the

will of the most numerous or the most active jpart

of the people ; the majority, or those who succeed

in making themselves accepted as the majority ;

the people, consequently, inay desire to oppress a

part of their number ; and precautions are as much

needed against this as against any other abuse of

power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of

government over individuals loses none of its im-

portance when the holders of power are regularly

accountable to the community, that is, to the

strongest party therein. This view of things, re-

commending itself equally to the intelligence of

thinkers and to the inclination of those important

classes in European society to whose real or sup-

posed interests democracy is adverse, has had no

INTRODUCTORY. 13

difficulty in establishing itself; and in political

speculations 'the tyranny of the majority' is now

generally included among the evils against which

society requires to be on its guard.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority

was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread,

chiefly as operating through the acts of the public

authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that

when society is itself the tyrant - society collec-

tively, over the separate individuals who compose

it - its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to

the acts which it may do by the hands of its poli-

tical functionaries. Society can and does execute

its own mandates : and if it issues wrong mandates

instead of right, or any mandates at all in things

with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a

social tyranny more formidable than many kinds

of political oppression, since, though not usually

upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer

means of escape, penetrating much more deeply

into the details of life, and enslaving the soul it-

self. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of

the magistrate is not enough : there needs pro-

tection also against the tyranny of the prevailing

opinion and feeling; against the tendency of

society to impose, by other means than civil penal-

ties, its own ideas and practices as rules of con-

duct on those who dissent from them ; to fetter

the development, and, if possible, prevent the

14 INTRODUCTORY.

formation, of any individuality not in harmony

with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion

themselves upon the model of its own. There is a

limit to the legitimate interference of collective

opinion with individual independence : and to find

that limit, and maintain it against encroachment,

is as indispensable to a good condition of human

affairs, as protection against political despotism.

But though this proposition is not likely to be

contested in general terms, the practical question,

where to place the limit - how to make the fitting

adjustment between individual independence and

social control - is a subject on which nearly every-

thing remains to be done. All that makes exis-

tence valuable to any one, depends on the enforce-

ment of restraints upon the actions of other people.

Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed,

by law in the first place, and by opinion on many

things which are not fit subjects for the operation

of law. What these rules should be, is the prin-

cipal question in human affairs ; but if we except a

few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those

which least progress has been made in resolving.

No two ages, and scarcely any two countries, have

decided it alike ; and the decision of one age or

country is a wonder to another. Yet the people

of any given age and country no more suspect any

difficulty in it, than if it were a subject on which

mankind had always been agreed. The rules

INTRODUCTORY. 15

which obtain among themselves appear to them

self-evident and self-justifying. This all but uni-

versal illusion is one of the examples of the magical

influence of custom, which is not only, as the pro-

verb says, a second nature, but is continually

mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in

preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of

conduct which mankind impose on one another, is

all the more complete because the subject is one on

which it is not generally considered necessary that

reasons should be given, either by one person to

others, or by each to himself. People are accus-

tomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the

belief by some who aspire to the character of

philosophers, that their feelings, on subjects of this

nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons

unnecessary. The practical principle which guides

them to their opinions on the regulation of human

conduct, is the feeling in each person's mind that

everybody should be required to act as he, and

those with whom he sympathizes, would like them

to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself

that his standard of judgment is his own liking ;

but an opinion on a point of conduct, not sup-

ported by reasons, can only count as one person's

preference ; and if the reasons, when given, are a

mere appeal to a similar preference felt by other

people, it is still only many people's liking instead

of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own

16 INTRODUCTORT.

preference, thus supported, is not only a perfectly

satisfactory reason, but the only one he generally

has for any of his notions of morality, taste, or

propriety, which are not expressly written in his

religious creed ; and his chief guide in the inter-

pretation even of that. Men's opinions, accordingly,

on what is laudable or blameable, are affected by

all the multifarious causes which influence their

wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and

which are as numerous as those which determine

their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes

their reason - at other times their prejudices or

superstitions : often their social affections, not sel-

dom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy,

their arrogance or contemptuousness : but most

commonly, their desires or fears for themselves -

their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wher-

ever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of

the morality of the country emanates from its

class interests, and its feelings of class superiority.

The morality between Spartans and Helots,between

planters and negroes, between princes and subjects,

between nobles and roturiers, between men and

women, has been for the most part the creation of

these class interests and feelings : and the senti-

ments thus generated, react in turn upon the moral

feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in

their relations among themselves. Where, on the

other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost

INTRODUCTORY. 17

its ascendancy, or where its ascendancy is unpopu-

lar, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently

bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superi-

ority. Another grand determining principle of the

rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance, which

have been enforced by law or opinion, has been

the servility of mankind towards the supposed

preferences or aversions of their temporal masters,

or of their gods. This servility, though essentially

selfish, is not hypocrisy ; it gives rise to perfectly

genuine sentiments of abhorrence ; it made men

burn magicians and heretics. Among so many

baser influences, the general and obvious interests

of society have of course had a share, and a large

one, in the direction of the moral sentiments : less,

however, as a matter of reason, and on their own

account, than as a consequence of the sympathies

and antipathies which grew out of them : and

sympathies and antipathies which had little or

nothing to do with the interests of society, have

made themselves felt in the estabhshment of

moralities with quite as great force.

The likings and dislikings of society, or of some

powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing

which has practically determined the rules laid

down for general observance, under the penalties

of law or opinion. And in general, those who have

been in advance of society in thought and feeliDg,

have left this condition of things unassailgd in

B

18 INTRODUCTORY.

principle, however they may have come into con-

flict with it in some of its details. They have

occupied themselves rather in inquiring what

things society ought to like or dislike, than in

questioning whether its likings or dislikings should

be a law to individuals. They preferred endeavour-

ing to alter tlie feelings of mankind on the parti-

cular points on which they were themselves here-

tical, rather than make common cause in defence

of freedom, with heretics generally. The only case

in which the higher ground has been taken on

principle and maintained with consistency, by any

but an individual here and there, is that of religious

beUef : a case instructive in many ways, and- not

least so as forming a most striking instance of the

fallibility of what is called the moral sense : for

the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of

the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling. Those

who first broke the yoke of what called itself the

Universal Church, were in general as little willing

to permit difference of religious opinion as that

church itself. But when the heat of the conflict

was over, without giving a complete victory to any

party, and each church or sect was reduced to

Hmit its hopes to retaining possession of the ground

it already occupied ; minorities, seeing that they

had no chance of becoming majorities, were under

the necessity of pleading to those whom they could

not convert, for permission to differ. It is accord-

INTRODUCTORT. 19

ingly on this battle field, almost solely, tliat the

rights of the individual against society have been

asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the

claim of society to exercise authority over dissen-

tients, openly controverted. The great writers to

whom the world owes what religious liberty it pos-

sesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience

as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that

a human being is accountable to others for his reli-

gious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intole-

rance in whatever they really care about, that reli-

gious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically

realized, except where religious indifference, which

dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological

quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. In the

minds of almost all religious persons, even in the

most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is

admitted with tacit reserves. One person will bear

with dissent in matters of church government, but

not of dogma; another can tolerate everybody,

short of a Papist or an Unitarian ; another, every

one who believes in revealed religion; a few

extend their charity a little further, but stop at

the belief in a God and in a future state. Wher- ^

ever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine

and intense, it is found to have abated little of its

claim to be obeyed.

In England, from the peculiar circumstances of

our political history, though the yoke of opinion is

b2

20 INTRODUCTORY.

perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter, than in

most other countries of Europe ; and there is con-

siderable jealousy of direct interference, by the

legislative or the executive power, with private

conduct ; not so much from any just regard for the

independence of the individual, as from the still

subsisting habit of looking on the government as

representing an opposite interest to the public.

The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power

of the government their power, or its opinions

their opinions. When they do so, individual

liberty will probably be as much exposed to inva-

sion from the government, as it already is from

public opmion. But, as yet, there is a considerable

amount of feeling ready to be called forth against

any attempt of the law to control individuals in

things in which they have not hitherto been accus-

tomed to be controlled by it ; and this with very

little discrimination as to whether the matter is, or

is not, within the legitimate sphere of legal control ;

insomuch that the feeling, highly salutary on the

whole, is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well

grounded in the particular instances of its applica-

tion. There is, in fact, no recognised principle by

which the propriety or impropriety of government

interference is customarily tested. People decide

according to their personal preferences. Some,

whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to

be remedied, would willingly instigate the govern-

INTRODUCTORY. 21

ment to undertake the business ; while others prefer

to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather

than add one to the departments of human inter-

ests amenable to governmental control. And men

range themselves on one or the other side in any

particular case, according to this general direction

of their sentiments ; or according to the degree of

interest which they feel in the particular thing

which it is proposed that the government should

do, or according to the belief they entertain that

the government would, or would not, do it in the

manner they prefer ; but very rarely on account

of any opinion to which they consistently adhere,

as to what things are fit to be done by a govern-

ment. And it seems to me that in consequence of

this absence of rule or principle, one side is at

present as often wrong as the other ; the inter-

ference of government is, with about equal fre-

quency, improperly invoked and improperly con-

demned.

The object of this Essay is to assert one very

simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely

the dealings of society with the individual in the

way of compulsion and control, whether the means

used be physical force in the form of legal penal-

ties, or the moral coercion of public opinion.

That principle is, that the sole end for which

mankind are warranted, individually or collec-

tively, in interfering with the liberty of action

22 INTRODUCTORY.

of any of their number, is self-protection. That

the only purpose for which power can be right-

fully exercised over any member of a civilized

community, against his will, is to prevent harm to

others. His own good, either physical or moral,

is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully

be compelled to do or forbear because it will be

better for him to do so, because it will make him

happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do

so would be wise, or even right. These are good

reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning

with him, or persuading him, or entreating him,

but not for compelling him, or visiting him with

any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that,

the conduct from which it is desired to deter him,

must be calculated to produce evil to some one

else. The only part of the conduct of any one,

for which he is amenable to society, is that which

concerns others. In the part which merely con-

cerns himself, his independence is, of right, abso-

lute. Over himself, over his own body and mind,

the individual is sovereign.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this

doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings

in the maturity of their faculties. We are not

speaking of children, or of young persons below

the age which the law may fix as that of manhood

or womanhood. Those who are still in a state to

require being taken care of by others, must be pro-

INTRODUCTORY. 23

tected against their own actions as well as against

external injury. For the same reason, we may

leave out of consideration those backward states of

society in which the race itself may be considered

as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way

of sjjontaneous progress are so great, that there is

seldom any choice of means for overcoming them ;

and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is

warranted in the use of any expedients that will

attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in

dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their

improvement, and the means justified by actually

effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no

application to any state of things anterior to the

time when mankind have become capable of being

improved by free and equal discussion. Until

then, there is nothing for them but implicit obe-

dience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are

so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind

have attained the capacity of being guided to

their own improvement by conviction or persua-

sion (a period long since reached in all nations

with whom we need here concern ourselves), com-

pulsion, either in the direct form or in that of

pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no

longer admissible as a means to their own good,

and justifiable only for the security of others.

It is proper to state that I forego any advantage

24 INTRODUCTORY.

which could be derived to my argument from the

idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of

utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on

all ethical questions ; but it must be utility in

the largest sense, grounded on the permanent

interests of man as a progressive being. Those

interests, I contend, authorize the subjection of in-

dividual spontaneity to external control, only in

respect to those actions of each, which concern the

interest of other people. If any one does an act

hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for

punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties

are not safely applicable, by general disapproba-

tion. There are also many positive acts for the

benefit of others, which he may rightfully be

compelled to perform ; such as, to give evidence

in a court of justice ; to bear his fair share in

the common defence, or in any other joint work

necessary to the interest of the society of which he

enjoys the protection ; and to perform certain acts

of individual beneficence, such as saving a fellow-

creature's life, or interposing to protect the de-

fenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever

it is obviously a man's duty to do, he may right-

fully be made responsible to society for not doing.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his

actions but by his inaction, and in either case he

is justly accountable to them for the injury. The

latter case, it is true, requires a much more

INTRODUCTORY. 25

cautious exercise of compulsion than the former.

To make any one answerable for doing evil to

others, is the rule ; to make him answerable for not

preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the

exception. Yet there are many cases clear

enough and grave enough to justify that excep-

tion. In all things which regard the external

relations of the individual, he is de jure amenable

to those whose interests are concerned, and if

need be, to society as their protector. There are

often good reasons for not holding him to the

responsibility ; but these reasons must arise from

the special expediencies of the case : either be-

cause it is a kind of case in which he is on the

whole likely to act better, when left to his own

discretion, than when controlled in any way in

which society have it in their power to control

him ; or because the attempt to exercise control

would produce other evils, greater than those

which it w^ould prevent. When such reasons as

these preclude the enforcement of responsibility,

the conscience of the agent himself should step

into the vacant judgment seat, and protect those

interests of others which have no external protec-

tion ; judging himself all the more rigidly, because

the case does not admit of his being made account-

able to the judgment of his fellow-creatures.

But there is a sphere of action in which society,

as distinguished from the individual, has, if any,

26 INTRODUCTORY.

only an indirect interest ; comprehending all that

portion of a person's life and conduct which affects

only himself, or if it also affects others, only with

their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and

participation. When I say only himself, I mean

directly, and in the first instance : for whatever

affects himself, may affect others through himself;

and the objection which may be grounded on this

contingency, will receive consideration in the

sequel. This, then, is the appropriate region of

human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward

domain of consciousness ; demanding liberty of

conscience, in the most comprehensive sense ; li-

berty of thought and feeling ; absolute freedom of

opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or

speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The

liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may

seem to fall under a different principle, since it

belongs to that part of the conduct of an indivi-

dual which concerns other people ; but, being al-

most of as much importance as the liberty of

thought itself, and resting in great part on the

same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.

Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes

and pursuits ; of framing the plan of our life to

suit our own character ; of doing as we like, sub-

ject to such consequences as may follow : without

impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as

what we do does not harm them, even though

INTRODUCTORY. 27

they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or

wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of each indivi-

dual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of

combination among individuals ; freedom to unite,

for any purpose not involving harm to others :

the persons combining being supposed to be of

full age, and not forced or deceived.

No society in which these liberties are not, on

the whole, respected, is free, whatever may be its

form of government ; and none is completely free

in which they do not exist absolute and unquali-

fied. The only freedom which deserves the name,

is that of pursuing our own good in our own way,

so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of

theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each

is the proper guardian of his own health, whether

bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are

greater gainers by suffering each other to live as

seems good to themselves, than by compelling

each to live as seems good to the rest.

Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to

some persons, may have the air of a truism, there is

no doctrine which stands more directly opposed to

the general tendency of existing opinion and prac-

tice. Society has expended fully as much effort in

the attempt (according to its lights) to compel people

to conform to its notions of personal, as of social

excellence. The ancient commonwealths thought

themselves entitled to practise, and the ancient

28 INTRODUCTORY.

philosopliers countenanced, the regulation of every

part of pri\'ute conduct by public authority, on the

ground that the State had a deep interest in the

whole bodily and mental discipline of every one

of its citizens ; a mode of thinking which may

have been admissible in small republics surrounded

by powerful enemies, in constant peril of being

subverted by foreigu attack or internal com-

motion, and to which even a short interval

of relaxed energy and self-command might so

easily be fatal, that they could not afford to

wait for the salutary permanent effects of free-

dom. In the modern world, the greater size of

political communities, and above all, the separa-

tion between spiritual and temporal authority

(which placed the direction of men's consciences

in other hands than those which controlled

their worldly affairs), prevented so great an in-

terference by law in the details of private life ;

but the engines of moral repression have been

wielded more strenuously against divergence from

the reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even

in social matters ; religion, the most powerful of

the elements which have entered into the forma-

tion of moral feeling, having almost always been

governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy,

seeking control over every department of human

conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism. And some

of those modern reformers who have placed them-

INTRODUCTORY. 29;

selves in strongest opposition to the religions of

the past, have been noway behind either churches

or sects in their assertion of the right of spiritual

domination : M. Comte, in particular, whose social

system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique

Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral

more than by legal appliances) a despotism of

society over the individual, surpassing anything

contemplated in the political ideal of the most

rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philoso-

phers.

Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual

thinkers, there is also in the world at large an

increasing inclination to stretch unduly the

powers of society over the individual, both by the

force of opinion and even by that of legislation :

and as the tendency of all the changes taking

place in the world is to strengthen society, and

diminish the power of the individual, this en-

croachment is not one of the evils which tend

spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary,

to grow more and more formidable. The dispo-

sition of mankind,, whether as rulers or as fellow-

citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclina-

tions as a rule of conduct on others, is so ener-

getically supported by some of the best and by

some of the worst feelings incident to human

nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint

by anything but want of power ; and as the power

30 OF THE LIBERTY OF

is not declining, but growing, unless a strong

barrier of moral conviction can be raised against

the mischief, we must expect, in the present cir-

cumstances of the world, to see it increase.

It will be convenient for the argument, if, in-

stead of at once entering upon the general thesis,

we confine ourselves in the first instance to a

single branch of it, on which the principle here

stated is, if not fully, yet to a certain point, re-

cognised by the current opinions. This one

branch is the Liberty of Thought : from which it

is impossible to separate the cognate liberty of

speaking and of writing. Although these liberties,

to some considerable amount, form part of the

political morality of all countries which profess

religious toleration and free institutions, the

grounds, both philosophical and practical, on which

they rest, are perhaps not so familiar to the

general mind, nor so thoroughly appreciated by

many even of the leaders of opinion, as might

have been expected. Those grounds, when rightly

understood; are of much wider application than

to only one division of the subject, and a thorough

consideration of this part of the question will be

found the best introduction to the remainder.

Those to whom nothing which I am about to say

will be new, may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if

on a subject which for now three centuries has

been so often discussed, I venture on one discus-

sion more.

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 31

CHAPTER II.

OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION.

THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any

defence would be necessary of the ' liberty of

the press' as one of the securities against corrupt

or tyrannical government. No argument, we may

suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a

legislature or an executive, not identified in interest

with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and

determine what doctrines or what arguments they

shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the ques-

tion, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly

enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be

specially insisted on in this place. Though the

law of England, on the subject of the press, is as

servile to this day as it was in the time of the

Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually

put in force against political discussion, except

during some temporary panic, when fear of in-

surrection drives ministers and judges from their

propriety ;* and, speaking generally, it is not, in

* These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give

them an emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press

Prosecutions of 1858. That ill-judged interference with the

liberty of public discussion has not, however, induced me to alter

32 OF THE LIBERTY OF

constitutional countries, to be apprehended, that

the government, whether completely responsible to

the people or not, will often attempt to control the

expression of opinion, except when in doing so it

makes itself the organ of the general intolerance

of the public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the

government is entirely at one with the people, and

a single word in the text, nor has it at all weakened my convic-

tion that, moments of panic excepted, the era of pains and

penalties for political discussion has, in our own country, passed

away. For, in the first place, the prosecutions were not per-

sisted in ; and, in the second, they were never, properly speak-

ing, political prosecutions. The offence charged was not that of

criticising institutions, or the acts or persons of rulers, but of

circulating what was deemed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness

of Tyrannicide.

If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity,

there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discuss-

ing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however

immoral it may be considered. It would, therefore, be irrelevant

and out of place to examine here, whether the doctrine of Tyran-

nicide deserves that title. I shall content myself with saying

that the subject has been at all times one of the open questions

of morals ; that the act of a private citizen in striking down a

criminal, who, by raising himself above the law, has placed him-

elf beyond the reach of legal punishment or control, has been

accounted by whole nations, and by some of the best and wisest

of men, not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue ; and that,

right or wrong, it is not of the nature of assassination, but of

civil war. As such, I hold that the instigation to it, in a specific

case, may be a proper subject of punishment, but only if an

overt act has followed, and at least a probable connexion can be

established between the act and the instigation. Even then, it

is not a foreign government, but the very government assailed,

which alone, in the. exercise of self-defence, can legitimately

punish attacks directed against its own existence.

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 33

never thinks of exerting any power of coercion

unless in agreement with what it conceives to be

their voice. But I deny the right of the people to

exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by

their government. The power itself is illegitimate.

The best government has no more title to it than

the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when

exerted in accordance with public opinion, than

when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus

one, were of one opinion, and only one person were

of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no

more justified in silencing that one person, than he,

if he had the power, would be justified in silencing

mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession

of no value except to the owner ; if to be obstructed

in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury,

it would make some difference whether the injury

was inflicted only on a few persons or on many.

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of

an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race;

posterity as well as the existing generation ; those

v^ho dissent from the opinion, still more than those

who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived

of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth :

if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a bene-

fit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of

truth, produced by its collision wuth error.

It is necessary to consider separately these two

hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of

C

M OF THE LIBERTY OF

the argument corresponding to it. We can never

be sure that the opioion we are endeavouring to

stifle is a false opinion ; and if we were sure, stifling

it would be an evil still.

First: the opinion which it is attempted

to suppress by authority may possibly be true.

Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its

truth ; but they are not infallible. They have no

authority to decide the question for all mankind,

and exclude every other person from the means of

judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion,

because they are sure that it is false, is to assume

that their certainty is the same thing as absolute

certaiuty. All silencing of discussion is an assump-

tion of infallibility. Its condemnation may be

allowed to rest on this common argument, not the

worse for being common.

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind,

the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the

weight in their practical judgment, which is always

allowed to it in theory ; for while every one well

knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary

to take any precautions against their own fallibility,

or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which

they feel very certain, may be one of the examples

of the error to which they acknowledge them-

selves to be liable. Absolute princes, or others

who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 35

feel this complete confidence in their own opinions

on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated,

who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and

are not wholly unused to be set right when they

are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only

on such of their opinions as are shared by all who

surround them, or to whom they habitually defer :

for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in

his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose,

with implicit trust, on the infallibility of *the

world ' in general. And the world, to each indi-

vidual, means the part of it with which he comes

in contact ; his party, his sect, his church, his class

of society : the man may be called, by comparison,

almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means

anything so comprehensive as his own country or

his own age. Nor is his faith in this collective

authority at all shaken by his being aware that

other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and

parties have thought, and even now think, the

exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the

responsibility of being in the right against the dis-

sentient worlds of other people; and it never

troubles him that mere accident has decided which

of these numerous worlds is the object of his

reliance, and that the same causes which make

him a Churchman in London, would have made

him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is

as evident in itself, as any amount of argument can

e2

86 OF THE LIBERTY OF

make it, that ages are no more infallible than

individuals ; every age having held many opinions

which subsequent ages have deemed not only false

but absurd ; and it is as certain that many opinions,

now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it

is that many, once general, are rejected by the

present.

The objection likely to be made to this argu-

ment, would probably take some such form as the

following. There is no greater assumption of in-

fallibility in forbidding the propagation of error,

than in any other thing which is done by public

authority on its own judgment and responsibility.

Judgment is given to men that they may use it.

Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be

told that they ought not to use it at all ? To pro-

hibit what they think pernicious, is not claiming

exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty in-

cumbent on them, although fallible, of acting on

their conscientious conviction. If we were never

to act on our opinions, because those opinions may

be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared

for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection

which applies to all conduct, can be no valid ob-

jection to any conduct in particular. It is the

duty of governments, and of individuals, to form

the truest opinions they can ; to form them care-

fully, and never impose them upon others unless

they are quite sure of being right. But when they

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 37

are sure (such reasoners may say), it is not con-

scientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting

on their opinions, and allow doctrines which they

honestly think dangerous to the welfare of man-

kind, either in this life or in another, to be scat-

tered abroad without restraint, because other

people, in less enlightened times, have persecuted

opinions now believed to be true. Let us take care,

it may be said, not to make the same mistake : but

governments and nations have made mistakes in

other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects

for the exercise of authority : they have laid on bad

taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to

lay on no taxes, and, under whatever provocation,

make no wars ? Men, and governments, must act

to the best of their ability. There is no such thing

as absolute certainty, but there is assurance suffi-

cient for the purposes of human life. We may,

and must, assume our opinion to be true for the

guidance of our own conduct : and it is assuming

no more when we forbid bad men to pervert society

by the propagation of opinions which we regard as

false and pernicious.

I answer, that it is assuming very much more.

There is the greatest difference between presuming

an opinion to be true, because, with every oppor-

tunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted,

and assuming its truth for the purpose of not per-

mitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contra-

88 OP THE LIBERTY OF

dieting and disproving our opinion, is the very con-

dition which justifies us in assuming its truth for

purposes of action ; and on no other terms can a

being with human faculties have any rational

assurance of being right.

When we consider either the history of opinion,

or the ordinary conduct of human life, to what is

it to be ascribed that the one and the other are no

worse than they are ? Not certainly to the inhe-

rent force of the human understanding ; for, on any

matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine per-

sons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who

is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth

person is only comparative ; for the majority of

the eminent men of every past generation held

many opinions now known to be erroneous, and

did or approved numerous things which no one

will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on

the whole a preponderance among mankind of

rational opinions and rational conduct ? If there

really is this preponderance - which there must be

unless human affairs are, and have always been, in

an almost desperate state - it is owing to a quality

of the human mind, the source of everything re-

spectable in man either as an intellectual or as a

moral being, namely, that his errors are corrigible.

He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discus-

sion and experience. Not by experience alone.

There must be discussion, to show how experience

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. S9

is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and prac-

tices gradually yield to fact and argument : but

facts and arguments, to produce any effect on

tbe mind, must be brought before it. Very few

facts are able to tell their own story, without

comments to bring out their meaning. The whole

strength and value, then, of human judgment, de-

pending on the one property, that it can be set

right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on

it only when the means of setting it right are kept

constantly at hand. In the case of any person

whose judgment is really deserving of confidence,

how has it become so ? Because he has kept his

mind open to criticism of his opinions and con-

duct. Because it has been his practice to listen to

all that could be said against him ; to profit by as

much of it as was just, and expound to himself,

and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what

was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only

way in which a human being can make some ap-

proach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by

hearing what can be said about it by persons of

every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in

which it can be looked at by every character of

mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in

any mode but this ; nor is it in the nature of

human intellect to become wise in any other

manner. The steady habit of correcting and

completing his own opinion by collating it with

40 OF THE LIBERTY OF

those of others, so far from causing doubt and

hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only

stable foundation for a just reliance on it : for,

being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously,

be said against him, and having taken up his posi-

tion against all gainsayers - knowing that he has

sought for objections and difficulties, instead of

avoiding them, and has shut out no light which

can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter

- he has a right to think his judgment better than

that of any person, or any multitude, who have

not gone through a similar process.

It is not too much to require that what the

wisest of mankind, those who are best entitled to

trust their own judgment, find necessary to war-

rant their relying on it, should be submitted to by

that miscellaneous collection of a few wise and

many foolish individuals, called the pubhc. The

most intolerant of churches, the Koman Catholic

Church, even at the canonization of a saint, ad-

mits, and listens patiently to, a * devil's advocate/

The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted

to posthumous honours, until all that the devil

could say against him is known and weighed. If

even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted

to be questioned, mankind could not feel as com-

plete assurance of its truth as they now do. The

beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no

safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 41

the whole world to prove them unfounded. If

the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and

the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty

still ; but we have done the best that the existing

state of human reason admits of ; we have ne-

glected nothing that could give the truth a chance

of reaching us : if the lists are kept open, we may

hope that if there be a better truth, it will be

found when the human mind is capable of receiv-

ing it ; and in the meantime we may rely on hav-

ing attained such approach to truth, as is possible

in our own day. This is the amount of certainty

attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way

of attaining it.

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity

of the arguments for free discussion, but object to

their being ' pushed to an extreme ;' not seeing

that unless the reasons are good for an extreme

case, they are not good for any case. Strange

that they should imagine that they are not assum-

ing infallibility, when they acknowledge that there

should be free discussion on all subjects which

can possibly be doubtful, but think that some

particular principle or doctrine should be forbid-

den to be questioned because it is so certain, that

is, because they are certain that it is certain. To

call any proposition certain, while there is any one

who would deny its certainty if permitted, but

who is not permitted, is to assume that we our-

42 OF THE LIBERTY OF

selves, and those who agree with us, are the

judges of certainty, and judges without hearing

the other side.

In the present age - which has been described

as * destitute of faith, but terrified at scepticism ' -

in which people feel sure, not so much that their

opinions are true, as that they should not know

what to do without them - the claims of an

opinion to be protected from public attack are

rested not so much on its truth, as on its impor-

tance to society. There are, it is alleged, certain

beliefs, so useful, not to say indispensable to well-

being, that it is as much the duty of governments

to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any other of

the interests of society. In a case of such neces-

sity, and so directly in the hne of their duty,

something less than infallibility may, it is main-

tained, warrant, and even bind, governments, to act

on their own opinion, confirmed by the general

opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and

still oftener thought, that none but bad men

would desire to weaken these salutary beliefs ;

and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought,

in restraining bad men, and prohibiting what only

such men would wish to practise. This mode of

thinking makes the justification of restraints on

discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines,

but of their usefulness ; and flatters itself by that

means to escape the responsibility of claiming to

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 43

be an infallible judge of opinions. But those who

thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the

assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from

one point to another. The usefulness of an

opinion is itself matter of opinion : as disputable,

as open to discussion, and requiring discussion as

much, as the opinion itself. There is the same

need of an infallible judge of opinions to decide

an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be

false, unless the opinion condemned has full

opportunity of defending itself. And it will not

do to say that the heretic may be allowed to

maintain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion,

though forbidden to maintain its truth. The

truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we

would know whether or not it is desirable that

a proposition should be believed, is it possible to

exclude the consideration of whether or not it is

true ? In the opinion, not of bad men, but of the

best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can

be really useful : and can you prevent such men

from urging that plea, when they are charged

with culpability for denying some doctrine which

they are told is useful, but which they believe to

be false ? Those who are on the side of received

opinions, never fail to take all possible advantage

of this plea ; you do not find them handling the

question of utility as if it could be completely

abstracted from that of truth : on the contrary, it

44 OF THE LIBERTY OF

is, above all, because their doctrine is ' the truth,'

that the knowledge or the belief of it is held to

be so indispensable. There can be no fair discus-

sion of the question of usefulness, when an argu-

ment so vital may be employed on one side, but

not on the other. And in point of fact, when law

or public feeling do not permit the truth of an

opinion to be disputed, they are just as little

tolerant of a denial of its usefulness. The utmost

they allow is an extenuation of its absolute neces-

sity, or of the positive guilt of rejecting it.

In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of

denying a hearing to opinions because we, in our

own judgment, have condemned them, it will be

desirable to fix down the discussion to a concrete

case ; and I choose, by preference, the cases which

are least favourable to me - in which the argument

against freedom of opinion, both on the score of

truth and on that of utility, is considered the

strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the

belief in a God and in a future state, or any of

the commonly received doctrines of morality. To

fight the battle on such ground, gives a great ad-

vantage to an unfair antagonist ; since he will be

sure to say (and many who have no desire to be

unfair will say it internally), Are these the doc-

trines which you do not deem sufficiently certain

to be talven under the protection of law ? Is the

belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure of

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 45

which, you hold to be assuming infallibility ? But

I must be permitted to observe, that it is not the

feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which

I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the

undertaking to decide that question for others,

without allowing them to hear what can be said

on the contrary side. And I denounce and repro-

bate this pretension not the less, if put forth on

the side of my most solemn convictions. How-

ever positive any one's persuasion may be, not

only of the falsity but of the pernicious conse-

quences- not only of the pernicious consequences,

but (to adopt expressions which I altogether con-

demn) the immorality and impiety of an opinion ;

yet if, in pursuance of that private judgment,

though* backed by the public judgment of his

country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the

opinion from being heard in its defence, he as-

sumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption

being less objectionable or less dangerous because

the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is

the case of all others in which it is most fatal.

These are exactly the occasions on which the men

of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes,

which excite the astonishment and horror of pos-

terity. It is among such that we find the instances

memorable in history, when the arm of the law

has been employed to root out the best men and

the noblest doctrines; with deplorable success as to

46 OF THE LIBERTY OF

the men, though some of the doctrines have sur-

vived to be (as if in mockery) invoked, in defence

of similar conduct towards those who Hissent from

the^rfi, or from their received interpretation.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded,

that there was once a man named Socrates, be-

tween whom and the legal authorities and public

opinion of his time, there took place a memorable

collision. Born in an age and country abounding

in individual greatness, this man has been handed

down to us by those who best knew both him and

the age, as the most virtuous man in it ; while we

know him as the head and prototype of all subse-

quent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the

lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utili-

tarianism of Aristotle, H maestri di color die

sanno,' the two headsprings of ethical as of all

other philosophy. This acknowledged master of

all the eminent thinkers who have since lived -

whose fame, still growing after more than two

thousand years, all but outweighs the whole re-

mainder of the names which make his native city

illustrious - was put to death by his countrymen,

after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immo-

rality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognised

by the State ; indeed his accuser asserted (see the

* Apologia ') that he believed in no gods at all.

Immorahty, in being, by his doctrines and instruc-

tions, a 'corrupter of youth.' Of these charges

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 47

the tribunal, there is every ground for believing,

honestly found him guilty, and condemned the

man who probably of all then born had deserved

best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal.

To pass from this to the only other instance of

judicial iniquity, the mention of which, after the

condemnation of Socrates, would not be an anti-

climax : the event which took place on Calvary

rather more than eighteen hundred years ago.

The man who left on the memory of those who

witnessed his life and conversation, such an im-

pression of his moral grandeur, that eighteen sub-

sequent centuries have done homage to him as the

Almighty in person, was ignominiouslyputto death,

as what ? As a blasphemer. Men did not merely

mistake their benefactor ; they mistook him for

the exact contrary of what he was, and treated

him as that prodigy of impiety, which they them-

selves are now held to be, for their treatment of

him. The feelings with which mankind now re-

gard these lamentable transactions, especially the

later of the two, render them extremely unjust in

their judgment of the unhappy actors. These

were, to all appearance, not bad men - not worse

than men commonly are, but rather the contrary ;

men who possessed in a full, or somewhat more

than a full measure, the religious, moral, and

patriotic feelings of their time and people : the

very kind of men who, in all times, our own in-

48 OF THE LIBERTY OP

eluded, have every chance of passing through hfe

blameless and respected. The high-priest who

rent his garments when the words were pro-

nounced, which, according to all the ideas of his

country, constituted the blackest guilt, was in all

probability quite as sincere in his horror and in-

dignation, as the generality of respectable and

pious men now are in the religious and moral sen-

timents they profess ; and most of those who now

shudder at his conduct, if they had lived in his

time, and been born Jews, would have acted pre-

cisely as he did. Orthodox Christians who are

tempted to think that those who stoned to death

the first martyrs must have been worse men than

they themselves are, ought to remember that one

of those persecutors was Saint Paul.

Let us add one more example, the most striking

of all, if the impressiveness of an error is measured

by the wisdom and virtue of him who falls into it.

If ever any one, possessed of power, had grounds

for thinking himself the best and most enlightened

among his cotemporaries, it was the Emperor

Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole

civilized world, he preserved through life not only

the most unblemished justice, but what was less to

be expected from his Stoical breeding, the tenderest

heart. The few failings which are attributed to

him, were all on the side of indulgence : while his

writings, the highest ethical product of the ancient

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 49

mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they differ at all,

from the most characteristic teachings of Christ.

This man, a better Christian in all but the dogmatic

sense of the word, than almost any of the osten-

sibly Christian sovereigns who have since reigned,

persecuted Christianity. Placed at the summit of

all the previous attainments of humanity, with an

open, unfettered intellect, and a character which

led him of himself to embody in his moral writings

the Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that

Christianity was to be a good and not an evil to

the world, with his duties to which he was so

deeply penetrated. Existing society he knew to be

in a deplorable state. But such as it was^ he saw,

or thought he saw, that it was held together, and

prevented from being worse, by belief and reverence

of the received divinities. As a ruler of mankind,

he deemed it his duty not to suffer society to fall

in pieces ; and saw not how, if its existing ties were

removed, any others could be formed which could

again knit it together. The new religion opeuly

aimed at dissolving these ties : unless, therefore^

it was his duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to

be his duty to put it down. Inasmuch then as

the theology of Christianity did not appear to him

true or of divine origin ; inasmuch as this strange

history of a crucified God was not credible to him,

and a system which purported to rest entirely

upon a foundation to him so wholly unbeliev-

D

50 OF THE LIBERTY OF

able, could not be foreseen by him to be that

renovating agency which, after all abatements, it

has in fact proved to be ; the gentlest and most

amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn

sense of duty, authorized the persecution of Chris-

tianity. To my mind this is one of the most tra-

gical facts in all history. It is a bitter thought,

how different a thing the Christianity of the world

might have been, if the Christian faith had been

adopted as the religion of the empire under the

auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of

Constantine. But it would be equally unjust to

him and false to truth, to deny, that no one plea

which can be urged for punishing anti-Christian

teaching, was wanting to Marcus Aurelius for

punishing, as he did, the propagation of Christianity.

No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism is

false, and tends to the dissolution of society, than

Marcus Aurelius believed the same things of

Christianity ; he who, of all men then living, might

have been thought the most capable of appreciating

it. Unless any one who approves of punishment

for the promulgation of opinions, flatters himself

that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus

Aurelius - more deeply versed in the wisdom of

his time, more elevated in his intellect above it -

more earnest in his search for truth, or more

single-minded in his devotion to it when found ; -

let him abstain from that assumption of the joint

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 51

infallibility of himself and the multitude, which

the great Antoninus made with so unfortunate a

result.

Aware of the impossibility of defending the use

of punishment for restraining irreligious opinions,

by any argument which will not justify Marcus

Antoninus, the enemies of religious freedom, when

hard pressed, occasionally accept this consequence,

and say, with Dr. Johnson, that the persecutors of

Christianity were in the right ; that persecution is

an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and

always passes successfully, legal penalties being, in

the end, powerless against truth, though sometimes

beneficially effective against mischievous errors.

This is a form of the argument for religious into-

lerance, sufficiently remarkable not to be passed

without notice.

A theory which maintains that truth may justi-

fiably be persecuted because persecution cannot pos-

sibly do it any harm, cannot be charged with being

intentionally hostile to the reception of new truths ;

but we cannot commend the generosity of its deal-

ing with the persons to whom mankind are in-

debted for them. To discover to the world some-

thing which deeply concerns it, and of which it was

previously ignorant; to prove to it that it bad

been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or

spiritual interest, is as important a service as a

human being can render to his fellow-creatures,

d2

5^ OF THE LIBERTY OF

and in certain cases, as in those of the early Chris-

tians and of the Reformers, those who think with

Dr. Johnson believe it to have been the most pre-

cious gift which could be bestowed on mankind.

That the authors of such splendid benefits should

be requited by martyrdom; that their reward

should be to be (Jealt with as the vilest of crimi-

nals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error

and misfortune, for which humanity should mourn

in sackcloth and ashes, but the normal and justifi-

able state of things. The propounder of a new

truth, according to this doctrine, should stand, as

stood, in the legislation of the Locrians, the pro-

poser of a new law, with a halter round his neck,

to be instantly tightened if the public assembly

did not, on hearing his reasons, then and there

adopt his proposition. People who defend this

mode of treating benefactors, cannot be supposed

to set much value on the benefit ; and*I believe

this view of the subject is mostly confined to the

sort of persons who think that new truths may

have been desirable once, but that we have had

enough of them now.

But, indeed, the dictum that truth always

triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant

falsehoods which men repeat after one another till

they pass into commonplaces, but which all expe-

rience refutes. History teems with instances of

truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 53

for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To

speak only of religious opinions : the Reformation

broke out at least twenty times before Luther, and

was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down.

Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put

down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vau-

dois were put down. The Lollards were put down.

The Hussites were put down. Even after the era

of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in,

it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the

Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out;

and, most likely, would have been so in England,

had Queen Mary lived, or Queen EUzabeth died.

Persecution has always succeeded, save where the

heretics were too strong a party to be effectually

persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that

Christianity might have been extirpated in the

Roman Empire. It spread, and became predomi-

nant, because the persecutions were only occasional,

lasting but a short time, and separated by long inter-

vals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a

piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as

truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of

prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.

Men are not more zealous for truth than they

often are for error, and a sufficient application of

legal or even of social penalties will generally

succeed in stopping the propagation of either.

The real advantage which truth has, consists in

H or THE LIBERTY OP

this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extin-

guished once, twice, or many times, but in the

course of ages there will generally be found per-

sons to rediscover it, until some one of its reap-

pearances falls on a time when from favourable

circumstances it escapes persecution until it has

made such head as to withstand all subsequent

attempts to suppress it.

It will be said, that we do not now put to death

the introducers of new opinions : we are not like

our fathers who slew the prophets, we even build

sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put

heretics to death ; and the amount of penal inflic-

tion which modern feeling would probably tolerate,

even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not

sufficient to extirpate them. But let us not flatter

ourselves that we are yet free from the stain even

of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at

least for its expression, still exist by law ; and their

enforcement is not, even in these times, so unex-

ampled as to make it at all incredible that they

may some day be revived in full force. In the year

1857, at the summer assizes of the county of Corn-

wall, an unfortunate man,* said to be of unexcep-

tionable conduct in all relations of life, was sen-

tenced to twenty-one months' imprisonment, for

uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive

* Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In De-

cember following, he received a free pardon from the Crown.

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 55

words concerning Christianity. Within a month of

the same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on

two separate occasions,* were rejected as jurymen,

and one of them grossly insulted by the judge and

by one of the counsel, because they honestly

declared that they had no theological belief; and

a third, a foreigner,-j- for the same reason, was

denied justice against a thief. This refusal of

redress took place in virtue of the legal doctrine,

that no person can be allowed to give evidence in

a court of justice, who does not profess belief in a

God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state ;

which is equivalent to declaring such persons to be

outlaws, excluded from the protection of the tribu-

nals ; who may not only be robbed or assaulted

with impunity, if no one but themselves, or per-

sons of similar opinions, be present, but any one

else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if

the proof of the fact depends on their evidence.

The assumption on which this is grounded, is that

the oath is worthless, of a person who does not be-

lieve in a future state ; a proposition which be-

tokens much ignorance of history in those who

assent to it (since it is historically true that a large

proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons

* George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857 ; Edward Truelove,

July, 1857.

f Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough-street Police Court,

August 4, 1857.

56 OF THE LIBERTr OF

of distiDguished integrity and honour) ; and would

be maintained by no one who had the smallest

conception how many of the persons in greatest

repute with the world, both for virtues and for

attainments, are well known, at least to their inti-

mates, to be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is

suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under

pretence that atheists must be liars, it admits the

testimony of all atheists who are willing to lie, and

rejects only those who brave the obloquy of pub-

licly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm

a falsehood. A rule thus self-convicted of absur-

dity so far as regards its professed purpose, can be

kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of

persecution ; a persecution, too, having the pecu-

liarity, that ihe qualification for undergoing it, is

the being clearly proved not to deserve it. The

rule, aud the theory it implies, are hardly less in-

sulting to believers than to infidels. For if he who

does not believe in a future state, necessarily lies, it

follows that they who do believe are only prevented

from lying, if iDrevented they are, by the fear of

hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of

the rule the injury of supposing, that the concep-

tion which they have formed of Christian virtue is

drawn from their own consciousness.

These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of

persecution, and may be thought to be not so much

an indication of the wish to persecute, as an ex-

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 57

ample of that very frequent infirmity of English

minds, which makes them take a preposterous

pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle, when

they are no longer bad enough to desire to carry

it really into practice. But unhappily there is no

security in the state of the public mind, that the

suspension of worse forms of legal persecution,

which has lasted for about the space of a genera-

tion, will continue. In this age the quiet surface

of routine is as often rufiSed by attempts to resusci-

tate past evils, as to introduce new benefits. What

is boasted of at the present time as the revival of re-

ligion, is always, in narrow and uncultivated minds,

at least as much the revival of bigotry ; and

where there is the strong permanent leaven of in-

tolerance in the feelings of a people, which at all

times abides in the middle classes of this country,

it needs but little to provoke them into actively

persecuting those whom they have never ceased to

think proper objects of persecution."^ For it is this -

* Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the

passions of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display

of the worst parts of our national character on the occasion of the

Sepoy insurrection. The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from

the pulpit may be unworthy of notice ; but the heads of the

Evangelical party have announced as their principle for the

government of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools be

supported by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and

by necessary consequence that no public employment be given to

any but real or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of

State, in a speech delivered to his constituents on the 12th of

58 OF THE LIBERTY OF

it is the opinioDs men entertain, and the feelings tliey

cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs

they deem important, which makes this country

not a place of mental freedom. For a long time

past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is

that they strengthen the social stigma. It is that

stigma which is really effective, and so effective is

it, that the profession of opinions which are under

the ban of society is much less common in Eng-

land, than is, in many other countries, the avowal

of those which incur risk of judicial punishment.

In respect to all persons but those whose pe-

cuniary circumstances make them independent

of the good will of other people, opinion, on this sub-

ject, is as efficacious as law ; men might as well be

imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earn-

November, 1857, is reported to have said: 'Toleration of their

faith' (the faith of a hundred millions of British subjects), 'the

superstition which they called religion, by the British Government,

had had the effect of retarding the ascendancy of the British name,

and preventing the salutary gi-owth of Christianity. . . . Tole-

ration was the great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this

country ; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration .

As he understood it, it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom

of worship, among Christians, who worshipped upon the same

foundation. It meant toleration of all sects and denominations

of Christians who believed in the one mediation.' I desire to call

attention to the fact, that a man who has been deemed fit to fill

a high office in the government of this country, under a liberal

Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe in

the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who,

after this imbecile display, can indulge the illusion that religious

persecution has passed away, never to return ?

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 5&

ing their bread. Those whose bread is already se-

cured, and who desire no favours from men in

power, or from bodies of men, or from the public,

have nothing to fear from the open avowal of any

opinions, but to be ill-thought of and ill-spoken

of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic

mould to enable them to bear. There is no room

for any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of

such persons. But though we do not now inflict

so much evil on those who think differently from

us, as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be

that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our

treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but

the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven,

and spread its illumination over the whole intel-

lectual firmament. Christians were cast to the

lions, but the Christian church grew up a stately

and spreading tree, overtopping the older and less

vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade.

Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots

out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them,

or to abstain from any active effort for their diffu-

sion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly

gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or gene-

ration ; they never blaze out far and wide, but

continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of

thinking and studious persons among whom they

originate, without ever lighting up the general

affairs of mankind with either a true or a decep-

60 or THE LIBERTY OF

tive light. And thus is kept up a state of things

very satisfactory to some minds, because, without

the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning

anybody, it maintains all prevailing opinions out-

wardly undisturbed, while it does not absolutely

interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients

afflicted with the malady of thought. A conve-

nient plan for having peace in the intellectual

world, and keeping all things going on therein

very much as they do already. But the price paid

for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice

of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A

state of things in which a large portion of the most

active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to

keep the general principles and grounds of their

convictions within their own breasts, and attempt,

in what they address to the public, to fit as much

as they can of their own conclusions to premises

which they have internally renounced, cannot send

forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, con-

sistent intellects who once adorned the thinking

world. The sort of men who can be looked for

under it, are either mere conformers to common-

place, or time-servers for truth, whose arguments

on all great subjects are meant for their hearers,

and are not those which have convinced them-

selves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so

by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things

which can be spoken of without venturing within

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 61

the region of principles, that is, to small practical

matters^ which would come right of themselves, if

but the minds of mankind were strengthened and

enlarged, and which will never be made effectually

ri^ht until then : while that which would strengthen

and enlarge men's minds, free and daring specu-

lation on the highest subjects, is abandoned.

Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part

of heretics is no evil, should consider in the first

place, that in consequence of it there is never any

fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions ;

and that such of them as could not stand such a

discussion, though they may be prevented from

spreading, do not disappear. But it is not the

minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by

the ban placed on all inquiry which does not end in

the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done

Ls to those who are not heretics, and whose whole

mental development is cramped, and their reason

cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute

what the world loses in the multitude of promising

intellects combined with timid characters, who dare

not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train

of thought, lest it should land them in something

which would admit of being considered irreligious

or immoral ? Among them we may occasionally

see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtle

and refined understanding, who spends a life in

sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot

62 OF THE LIBERTY OF

silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in

attempting to reconcile the promptings of his con-

science and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he

does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing.

No one can be a great thinker who does not re-

cognise, that as a thinker it is his first duty to

follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may

lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one

who, with due study and preparation, thinks for

himself, than by the true opinions of those who

only hold them because they do not suffer them-

selves to think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to

form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking is

required. On the contrary, it is as much and even

more indispensable, to enable average human

beings to attain the mental stature which they

are capable of. There have been, and may again

be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmo-

sphere of mental slavery. But there never has

been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere, an intel-

lectually active people. Where any people has

made a temporary approach to such a character, it

has been because the dread of heterodox specula-

tion was for a time suspended. Where there is a

tacit convention that principles are not to be dis-

puted ; where the discussion of the greatest ques-

tions which can occupy humanity is considered to be

closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high

scale of mental activity which has made some

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 63

periods of history so remarkable. Never when

controversy avoided the subjects which are large

and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, was

the mind of a people stirred up from its founda-

tions, and the impulse given which raised even

persons of the most ordinary intellect to some-

thing of the dignity of thinking beings. Of such

we have had an example in the condition of

Europe during the times immediately following the

Reformation ; another, though limited to the Con-

tinent and to a more cultivated class, in the

speculative movement of the latter half of the

eighteenth century ; and a third, of still briefer

duration, in the intellectual fermentation of Ger-

many during the Goethian and Fichtean period.

These periods differed widely in the particular

opinions which they developed ; but were alike in

this, that during all three the yoke of authority

was broken. In each, an old mental despotism

had been thrown off, and no new one had yet

taken its place. The impulse given at these

three periods has made Europe what it now is.

Every single improvement which has taken place

either in the human mind or in institutions, may

be traced distinctly to one or other of them.

Appearances have for some time indicated that all

three impulses are well nigh spent ; and we can

expect no fresh start, until we again assert our

mental freedom.

64) OP THE LIBERTY OP

Let us now pass to the second division of the

argument, and dismissing the supposition that any

of the received opinions maybe false, let us assume

them to be true, and examine into the worth of the

manner in which they are likely to be held, when

their truth is not freely and openly canvassed.

However unwillingly a person who has a strong

opinion may admit the possibility that his

opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by

the consideration that however true it may be, if

it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed,

it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living

truth.

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so

numerous as formerly) who think it enough if a

person assents undoubtingly to what they think

true, though he has no knowledge whatever of

the grounds of the opinion, and could not make a

tenable defence of it against the most superficial

objections. Such persons, if they can once get their

creed taught from authority, naturally think that

no good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed

to be questioned. Where their influence prevails,

they make it nearly impossible for the received

opinion to be rejected wisely and considerately,

though it may still be rejected rashly and igno-

rantly ; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom

possible, and when it once gets in, beliefs not

grounded on conviction are apt to give way before

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 65

tlie sliofhtest semblance of an argument. Wavinof,

however, this possibility - assuming that the true

opinion abides in the mind, but abides as a pre-

judice, a belief independent of, and proof against,

argument - this is not the way in which truth

ought to be held by a rational being. This is not

knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but one

superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the

words which enunciate a truth.

If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought

to be cultivated^ a thing which Protestants at least

do not deny, on what can these faculties be more

appropriately exercised by any one, than on the

things which concern him so much that it is con-

sidered necessary for him to hold opinions on

them ? If the cultivation of the understanding con-

sists in one thing more than in another, it is surely

in learning the grounds of one's own opinions.

Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is

of the first importance to believe rightly, they

ought to be able to defend against at least the

common objections. But, some one may say, ' Let

them be taught the grounds of their opinions. It

does not follow that opinions must be merely par-

roted because they are never heard controverted.

Persons who learn geometry do not simply com-

mit the theorems to memory, but understand and

learn likewise the demonstrations ; and it would be

absurd to say that they remain ignorant of the

E

6Q OF THE LIBERTY OF

grounds of geometrical truths, because they never

hear any one deny, and attempt to disprove them/

Undoubtedly : and such teaching suffices on a sub-

ject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all

to be said on the wrong side of the question. The

peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths

is, that all the argument is on one side. There

are no objections, and no answers to objections.

But on every subject on which difference of opinion

is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be

struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.

Even in natural philosophy, there is always some

other explanation possible of the same facts ; some

geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some

phlogiston instead of oxygen ; and it has to be

shown why that other theory cannot be the true

one : and until this is shown, and until we knov/

how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds

of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects

infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion,

politics, social relations, and the business of life,

three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed

opinion consist in dispelling the appearances

which favour some opinion different from it. The

greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on

record that he always studied his adversary's case

with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than

even his own. What Cicero practised as the

means of forensic success, requires to be imitated

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 67

by all who study any subject in order to arrive at

the truth. He who knows only his own side of

the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be

good, and no one may have been able to refute

them. But if he is equally unable to refute the

reasons on the opposite side ; if he does not so much

as know what they are, he has no ground for pre-

ferring either opinion. The rational position for

him would be suspension of judgment, and unless

he contents himself with that, he is either led by

authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world,

the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor

is it enough that he should hear the arguments of

adversaries from his own teachers, presented as

they state them, and accompanied by what they

offer as refutations. That is not the way to do

justice to the arguments, or bring them into real

contact with his own mind. He must be able to

hear them from persons who actually believe them ;

who defend them in earnest, and do their very

utmost for them. He must know them in their

most plausible and persuasive form ; he must feel

the whole force of the difficulty which the true view

of the subject has to encounter and dispose of;

else he will never really possess himself of the

portion of truth which meets and removes that

difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are

called educated men are in this condition ; even af

those who can argue fluently for their opinions.

e2

68 OF THE LIBERTY OP

Their conclusion may be true, but it might be

false for anything they know : they have never

thrown themselves into the mental position of

those who think differently from them, and con-

sidered what such persons may have to say ; and

consequently they do not, in any proper sense of

the word, know the doctrine which they themselves

profess. They do not know those parts of it which

explain and justify the remainder ; the considera-

tions which show that a fact which seemingly con-

flicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of

two apparently strong reasons, one and not the

other ought to be preferred. All that part of the

truth which turns the scale, and decides the judg-

ment of a completely informed mind, they are

strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those

who have attended equally and impartially to both

sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in

the strongest hght. So essential is this discipline

to a real understanding of moral and human sub-

jects^ that if opponents of all important truths do

not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and

supply them with the strongest arguments which

the most skilful devil's advocate can conjure up.

To abate the force of these considerations, an

enemy of free discussion may be supposed to say,

that there is no necessity for mankind in general

to know and understand all that can be said

against or for their opinions by philosophers and

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 69

theologians. That it is not needful for common

men to be able to expose all the misstatements or

fallacies of an ingenious opponent. That it is

enough if there is always somebody capable of

answering them, so that nothing likely to mislead

uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That

simple minds, having been taught the obvious

grounds of the truths inculcated on them, may

trust to authority for the rest, and being aware

that they have neither knowledge nor talent to

resolve every difficulty which can be raised, may

repose in the assurance that all those which have

been raised have been or can be answered^ by those

who are specially trained to the task.

Conceding to this view of the subject the ut-

most that can be claimed for it by those most

easily satisfied with the amount of understanding

of truth which ought to accompany the belief of

it ; even so^ the argument for free discussion is no

way weakened. For even this doctrine acknow-

ledges that mankind ought to have a rational

assurance that all objections have been satisfac-

torily answered ; and how are they to be answered

if that which requires to be answered is not

spoken ? or how can the answer be known to be

satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity

of showing that it is unsatisfactory ? If not the

public, at least the philosophers and theologians

who are to resolve the difficulties, must make

70 OF THE LIBERTY OF

themselves familiar with those difficulties in their

most puzzling form ; and this cannot be accom-

plished unless they are freely stated, and placed

in the most advantageous light which they admit

of. The Catholic Church has its own way of

dealing with this em barrassing problem. It makes

a broad separation between those who can be per-

mitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and

those who must accept them on trust. Neither,

indeed, are allowed any choice as to what they

will accept ; but the clergy, such at least as can

be fully confided in, may admissibly and meri-

toriously make themselves acquainted with the

arguments of opponents, in order to answer them,

and may, therefore, read heretical books ; the

laity, not unless by special permission, hard to be

obtained. This discipline recognises a knowledge

of the enemy's case as beneficial to the teachers,

but finds means, consistent with this, of denying

it to the rest of the world : thus giving to the

elite more mental culture, though not more mental

freedom, than it allows to the mass. By this de-

vice it succeeds in obtaining the kind of mental

superiority which its purposes require ; for though

culture without freedom never made a large and

liberal mind, it can make a clever nisi ijvius

advocate of a cause. But in countries professing

Protestantism, this resource is denied ; since

Protestants hold, at least in theory, that the re-

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 71

sponsibilifcy for the choice of a religion must be

borne by each for himself, and cannot be thrown

off upon teachers. Besides, in the present state of

the world, it is practically impossible that writings

which are read by the instructed can be kept from

the uninstructed. If the teachers of mankind are

to be cosfnisant of all that thev ouo^ht to know%

everything must be free to be written and pub-

lished without restraint.

If, however, the mischievous operation of the

absence of free discussion, when the received opi-

nions are true, were confined to leaving men

ignorant of the grounds of those opinions, it might

be thought that this, if an intellectual, is no moral

evil, and does not affect the worth of the opinions,,

regarded in their influence on the character. The

fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the

opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion,

but too often the meaning of the opinion itself.

The words which convey it, cease to suggest ideas,

or suggest only a small portion of those they were

originally employed to communicate. Instead of a

vivid conception and a living belief, there remain

only a few phrases retained by rote ; or, if any

part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is

retained, the finer essence being lost. The great

chapter in human history which this fact occupies

and fills, cannot be too earnestly studied and

meditated on.

72 OP THE LIBERTY OF

It is illustrated in the experieDce of almost all

ethical doctrines and religious creeds. They are

all full of meaning and vitality to those who ori-

ginate them, and to the direct disciples of the

originators. Their meaning continues to be felt

in undiminished strength, and is perhaps brought

out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the

struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an

ascendancy over other creeds. At last it either

prevails, and becomes the general opinion, or its

progress stops ; it keeps possession of the ground

it has gained, but ceases to spread further. When

either of these results has become apparent, con-

troversy on the subject flags, and gradually dies

away. The doctrine has taken its place, if not as

a received opinion, as one of the admitted sects or

divisions of opinion : those who hold it have gene-

rally inherited, not adopted it ; and conversion

from one of these doctrines to another, being now

an exceptional fact, occupies little place in the

thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as

at first, constantly on the alert either to defend

themselves against the world, or to bring the world

over to them, they have subsided into acqui-

escence, and neither listen, when they can help it,

to arguments against their creed, nor trouble dis-

sentients (if there be such) with arguments in

its favour. From this time may usually be dated

the decline in the living power of the doctrine.

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 73

We often bear the teachers of all creeds lamentinof

the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of

believers a lively apprehension of the truth which

they nominally recognise, so that it may penetrate

the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the

conduct. No such difficulty is complained of

while the creed is still fiohtino^ for its existence :

even the weaker combatants then know and feel

what they are fighting for, and the difference

between it and other doctrines ; and in that period

of every creed's existence, not a few persons may

be founds who have realized its fundamental prin-

ciples in all the forms of thought, have weighed

and considered them in all their important bear-

ings, and have experienced the full effect on the

character, which belief in that creed ought to pro-

duce in a mind thoroughly imbued with it. But

when it has come to be an hereditary creed, and

to be received passively, not actively - when the

mind is no longer compelled, in the same degree

as at first, to exercise its vital powers on the

questions which its belief presents to it, there is

a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief

except the formularies, or to give it a dull and

torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust dispensed

with the necessity of realizing it in consciousness,

or testing it by personal experience ; until it

almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner

life of the human being. Then are seen the cases,

74 OF THE LIBERTY OF

SO frequent in this age of the world as almost to

form the majority, in which the creed remains as

it were outside the mind, incrusting and petri-

fying it against all other influences addressed to

the higher parts of our nature ; manifesting its

power by not suffering any fresh and living con-

viction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the

mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them

to keep them vacant.

To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted

to make the deepest impression upon the mind

may remain in it as dead beliefs, without being

ever realized in the imagination, the feelings, or

the understanding, is exemplified by the manner

in which the majority of believers hold the

doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I here

mean what is accounted such by all churches and

sects - the maxims and precepts contained in

the New Testament. These are considered sacred,

and accepted as laws, by all professing Christians.

Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one

Christian in a thousand guides or tests his _indi-

vidual conduct by reference to those laws. The

standard to which he does refer it, is the custom

of his nation, his class, or his religious profession.

He has thus, on the one hand, a collection of

ethical maxims, which he believes to have been

vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules

for his government; and on the other, a set of

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 75

every-day judgments and practices, which go a

certain length with some of those maxims, not

so great a length with others, stand in direct oppo-

sition to some, and are, on the whole, a compro-

mise between the Christian creed and the interests

and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of

these standards he gives his homage ; to the other

his real allegiance. All Christians believe that

the blessed are the poor and humble, and those

who are ill-used by the world ; that it is easier

for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle

than for a rich m,an to enter the kingdom of

heaven; that they should judge not, lest they be

judged ; that they should swear not at all ; that

they should love their neighbour as themselves ;

that if one take their cloak, they should give

him their coat also ; that they should take no

thought for the morrow ; that if they would be

perfect, they should sell all that they have and

give it to the poor. They are not insincere when

they say that they believe these things. They do

believe them, as people believe what they have

always heard lauded and never discussed. But in

the sense of that living belief which regulates

conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to

the point to which it is usual to act upon them.

The doctrines in their integrity are serviceable to

pelt adversaries with; and it is understood that

they are to be put forward (when possible) as

76 OF THE LIBERTY OF

the reasons for whatever people do that they think

laudable. But any one who reminded them that

the maxims require an infinity of things which

they never even think of doing, would gain nothing

but to be classed among those very unpopular

characters who affect to be better than other

people. The doctrines have no hold on ordinary

behevers - are not a power in their minds. They

have an habitual respect for the sound of them,

but no feeling which spreads from the words to the

things signified, and forces the mind to take them

in, and make them conform to the formula. When-

ever conduct is concerned, they look round for

Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in

obeying Christ.

Now we may be well assured that the case

was not thus, but far otherwise, with the early

Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity never

would have expanded from an obscure sect of the

despised Hebrews into the religion of the Roman

empire. When their enemies said, * See how these

Christians love one another ' (a remark not likely

to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had

a much livelier feeling of the meaning of their

creed than they have ever had since. And to this

cause, probably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity

now makes so little progress in extending its

domain, and after eighteen centuries, is still nearly

confined to Europeans and the descendants of

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 77

Europeans. Even with the strictly religious, who

are much in earnest about their doctrines, and

attach a greater amount of meaning to many of

them than people in general, it commonly happens

that the part which is thus comparatively active

in their minds is that which was made by Calvin,

or Knox, or some such person much nearer in

character to themselves. The sayings of Christ

coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly

any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening

to words so amiable and bland. There are many

reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which are the

badge of a sect retain more of their vitality than

those common to all recognised sects, and why

more pains are taken by teachers to keep their

meaning alive; but one reason certainly is, that

the peculiar doctrines are more questioned, and

have to be oftener defended against open gain-

sayers. Both teachers and learners go to sleep at

their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field.

The same thing holds true, generally speaking,

of all traditional doctrines - those of prudence and

knowledge of life, as well as of morals or religion.

All languages and literatures are full of general

observations on life, both as to what it is,, and

how to conduct oneself in it ; observations which

everybody knows, which everybody repeats, or

hears with acquiescence, which are received as

truisms, yet of which most people first truly

78 OF THE LIBERTY OP

learn the meaning, when experience, generally

of a painful kind, has made it a reality to them.

How often, when smarting under some unfore-

seen misfortune or disappointment, does a person

call to mind some proverb or common saying,

familiar to him all his life, the meaning of

which, if he had ever before felt it as he does

now, would have saved him from the calamity.

There are indeed reasons for this, other than the

absence of discussion : there are many truths of

which the full meaning cannot be realized, until

personal experience has brought it home. But

much more of the meaning even of these would

have been understood, and what was understood

would have been far more deeply impressed on

the mind, if the man had been accustomed to hear

it argued pro and con by people who did under-

stand it. The fatal tendency of mankind to leave

off thinking about a thing when it is no longer

doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. A co-

temporary author has well spoken of * the deep

slumber of a decided opinion.'

But what ! (it may be asked) Is the absence of

■unanimity an indispensable condition of true

knowledge ? Is it necessary that some part of

mankind should persist in error, to enable any to

realize the truth ? Does a belief cease to be real

and vital as soon as it is generally received - and is

a proposition never thoroughly understood and felt

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 79

unless some doubt of it remains ? As soou as

mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does

the truth perish within them ? The highest aim

and best result of improved intelligence, it has

hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more

and more in the acknowledgment of all important

truths : and does the intelligence only last as long

as it has not achieved its object ? Do the fruits

of conquest perish by the very completeness of

the victory ?

I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve,

the number of doctrines which are no lonofer dis-

puted or doubted will be constantly on the

increase : and the well-being of mankind may al-

most be measured by the number and gravity of

the truths which have reached the point of being

uncontested. The cessation, on one question after

another, of serious controversy, is one of the ne-

cessary incidents of the consolidation of opinion ; a

consolidation as salutary in the case of true opi-

nions, as it is dangerous and noxious when the

opinions are erroneous. But though this gradual

narrowing of the bounds of diversity of opinion is

necessary in both senses of the term, being at

once inevitable and indispensable, we are not

therefore obliged to conclude that all its conse-

quences must be beneficial. The loss of so im-

portant an aid to the intelligent and living

apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by the

80 OF THE LIBERTY OF

necessity of explaining it to, or defending it

against, opponents, though not sufficient to out-

weigh, is no trifling drawback from, the benefit

of its universal recognition. Where this advan-

tage can no longer be had, I confess I should like

to see the teachers of mankind endeavourinor to

o

provide a substitute for it ; some contrivance for

making the difficulties of the question as present

to the learner's consciousness, as if they were

pressed upon him by a dissentient champion,

eager for his conversion.

But instead of seeking contrivances for this pur-

pose, they have lost those they formerly had. The

Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in

the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this

description. They were essentially a negative dis-

cussion of the great questions of philosophy and

life, directed with consummate skill to the pur-

pose of convincing any one who had merely

adopted the commonplaces of received opinion,

^that he did not understand the subject - that he

as yet attached no definite meaning to the doc-

trines he professed ; in order that, becoming

aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the

way to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear ap-

prehension both of the meaning of doctrines and

of their evidence. The school disputations of the

middle ages had a somewhat similar object. They

were intended to make sure that the pupil under-

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 81

stood his own opinion, and (by necessary correla-

tion) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce

the grounds of the one and confute those of the

other. These last-mentioned contests had indeed

the incurable defect, that the premises appealed to

were taken from authority, not from reason ; and,

as a discipline to the mind, they were in every

respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which

formed the intellects of the ' Socratici viri : ' but

the modern mind owes far more to both than it is

generally willing to admit, and the present modes

of education contain nothing which in the smallest

degree supplies the place either of the one or of

the other. A person who derives all his instruc-

tion from teachers or books, even if he escape the

besetting temptation of contenting himself wdth

cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides;

accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplish-

ment, even among thinkers, to know both sides ;

and the weakest part of what everybody says in

defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a

reply to antagonists. It is the fashion of the

present time to disparage negative logic - that

which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in

practice, without establishing positive truths. Such

negative criticism would indeed be poor enough

as an ultimate result ; but as a means to attaining

any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the

name, it cannot be valued too highly ; and until^

F

82 OF THE LIBERTY OF

people are again systematically trained to it, there

will be few great thinkers, and a low general ave-

rage of intellect, in any but the mathematical and

physical departments of speculation. On any other

subject no oner's opinions deserve the name of know-

ledge, except so far as he has either had forced

upon him by others, or gone through of himself,

the same mental process which would have been

required of him in carrying on an active contro-

versy with opponents. That, therefore, which

when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult,

to create, how worse than absurd it is to forego,

when spontaneously offering itself ! If there are

any persons who contest a received opinion, or

who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let

us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to

them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for

us what we otherwise ought, if we have any re-

gard for either the certainty or the vitality of our

convictions, to do with much greater labour for

ourselves.

It still remains to speak of one of the principal

causes which make diversity of opinion advanta-

geous, and will continue to do so until mankind

shall have entered a stage of intellectual advance-

ment which at present seems at an incalculable

distance. We have hitherto considered only two

possibilities: that the received opinion may be

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 83

false, and some other opinion, consequently, true ;

or that, the received opinion being true, a conflict

with the opposite error is essential to a clear ap-

prehension and deep feeling of its truth. But

there is a commoner case than either of these ;

when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being

one true and the other false, share the truth be-

tween them; and the nonconforming opinion is

needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of

which the received doctrine embodies only a part.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to

sense, are often true, but seldom or never the

whole truth. They are a part of the truth ; some-

times a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but

exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the

truths by which they ought to be accompanied and

limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand,

are generally some of these suppressed and neg-

lected truths, bursting the bonds which kept them

down, and either seeking reconciliation with the

truth contained in the common opinion, or front-

ing it as enemies, and setting themselves up, with

similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The

latter case is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the

human mind, one-sidedness has always been the

rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence,

even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth

usually sets while another rises. Even progress,

which ought to superadd, for the most part only

r2

84 OF THE LIBERTY OP

substitutes, one partial and incomplete truth for

another; improvement consisting chiefly in this,

that the new fragment of truth is more wanted,

more adapted to the needs of the time, than that

which it displaces. Such being the partial cha-

racter of prevailing opinions,- even when resting

on a true foundation, every opinion which em-

bodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the

common opinion omits, ought to be considered

precious, with whatever amount of error and con-

fusion that truth may be blended. No sober

judge of human affairs will feel bound to be in-

dignant because those who force on our notice

truths which we should otherwise have overlooked,

overlook some of those which we see. Rather, he

will think that so long as popular truth is one-

sided, it is more desirable than otherwise that

unpopular truth should have one-sided asserters

too ; such being usually the most energetic, and

the most likely to compel reluctant attention to

the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if

it were the whole.

Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly

all the instructed, and all those of the uninstructed

who were led by them, were lost in admiration of

what is called civilization, and of the marvels of

modern science, literature, and philosophy, and

while greatly overrating the amount of unlikeness

between the men of modern and those of ancient

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 85

times, indulged the belief that the whole of the

difference was in their own favour ; with what a

salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau

explode like bombshells in the midst, dislocating

the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and

forcing its elements to recombine in a better

form and with additional ingredients. Not that

the current opinions were on the whole farther

from the truth than Rousseau's were ; on the

contrary, they were nearer to it ; they contained

more of positive truth, and very much less of error.

Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and

has floated down the stream of opinion along

with it, a considerable amount of exactly those

truths which the popular opinion wanted ; and

these are the deposit which was left behind when

the flood subsided. The superior worth of sim-

plicity of life, the enervating and demoralizing

effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial

society, are ideas which have never been entirely

absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau

wrote ; and they will in time produce their due

effect, though at present needing to be asserted as

much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for

words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their

power.

In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace,

that a party of order or stability, and a party of

progress or reform, are both necessary elements

86 OF THE LIBERTY OF

of a healthy state of political life ; until the one or

the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp

as to be a party equally of order and of progress,

knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be

preserved from what ought to be swept away.

Each of these modes of thinking derives its

utility from the deficiencies of the other ; but it

is in a great measure the opposition of the other

that keeps each within the limits of reason and

sanity. Unless opinions favourable to democracy

and to aristocracy, to property and to equality,

to co-operation and to competition, to luxury and

to abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to

liberty and discipline, and all the other standing

antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with

equal freedom, and enforced and defended with

equal talent and energy, there is no chance of

both elements obtaining their due ; one scale is

sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, in

the great practical concerns of life, is so much a

question of the reconciling and combining of

opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently

capacious and impartial to make the adjustment

with an approach to correctness, and it has to

be made by the rough process of a struggle

between combatants fighting under hostile ban-

ners. On any of the great open questions just enu-

merated, if either of the two opinions has a better

claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated,

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 87

but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is

the one which happens at the particular time and

place to be in a minority. That is the opinion

which, for the time being, represents the neglected

interests, the side of human well-being which is

in danger of obtaining less than its share. I am

aware that there is not, in this country, any in-

tolerance of differences of opinion on most of

these topics. They are adduced to show, by

admitted and multiplied examples, the universality

of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion

is there, in the existing state of human intellect, a

chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.

When there are persons to be found, who form

an exception to the apparent unanimity of the

world on any subject, even if the world is in the

right, it is always probable that dissentients have

something worth hearing to say for themselves,

and that truth would lose something by their

silence.

It may be objected, ' But some received prin-

ciples, especially on the highest and most vital

subjects, are more than half-truths. The Chris-

tian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on

that subject, and if any one teaches a morality

which varies from it, he is wholly in error.' As

this is of all cases the most important in practice,

none can be fitter to test the general maxim.

But before pronouncing what Christian morality

88 OF THE LIBERTY OF

is or is not, it would be desirable to decide what

is meant by Christian morality. If it means

the morality of the New Testament, I wonder

that any one who derives his knowledge of this

from the book itself, can suppose that it was an-

nounced^ or intended, as a complete doctrine of

morals. The Gospel always refers to a pre-exist-

ing morality, and confines its precepts to the

particulars in which that morality was to be cor-

rected, or superseded by a wider and higher ; ex-

pressing itself, moreover, in terms most general,

often impossible to be interpreted literally, and

possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or

eloquence than the precision of legislation. To

extract from it a body of ethical doctrine, has never

been possible without eking it out from the Old

Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed,

but in many respects barbarous, and intended only

for a barbarous people. St. Paul, a declared enemy

to this Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine

and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally

assumes a pre-existing morality, namely that of

the Greeks and Romans ; and his advice to Chris-

tians is in a great measure a system of accommo-

dation to that: even to the extent of sivinof an

apparent sanction to slavery. What is called

Christian, but should rather be termed theolosfical,

morality, was not the work of Christ or the

Apostles, but is of much later origin, having been

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 89'

gradually built up by the Catholic church of the

first five centuries, and though not implicitly

adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been

much less modified by them than might have been

expected. For the most part, indeed, they have con-

tented themselves with cutting off the additions

which had been made to it in the middle ages, each

sect supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted

to its own character and tendencies. That mankind

owe a great debt to this morality, and to its early

teachers, I should be the last person to deny ; but

I do not scruple to say of it, that it is, in many

important points, incomplete and one-sided, and

that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by

it, had contributed to the formation of European

life and character, human affairs would have been

in a worse condition than they now are. Christian

morality (so called) has all the characters of a reac-

tion; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism.

Its ideal is negative rather than positive ; passive

rather than active ; Innocence rather than Noble-

ness ; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic

Pursuit of Good : in its precepts (as has been well

said) * thou shalt not' predominates unduly over

* thou shalt. ^ In its horror of sensuality, it made

an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually

compromised away into one of legality. It holds

out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as

the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous

90 OF THE LIBERTY OF

life : in this falling far below the best of the ancients,

and doing what lies in it to give to human morality

an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting

each man's feelings of duty from the interests of

his fellow-creatures, except so far as a self-interested

inducement is offered to him for consulting them.

It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience ; it

inculcates submission to all authorities found esta-

blished ; who indeed are not to be actively obeyed

when they command what religion forbids, but

who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against,

for any amount of wrong to ourselves. And while,

in the morality of the best Pagan nations, duty to

the State holds even a disproportionate place, in-

fringing on the just liberty of the individual ; in

purely Christian ethics, that grand department of

duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It is in

the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read

the maxim - 'A ruler who appoints any man to an

office, when there is in his dominions another man

better qualified for it, sins against God and against

the State.' What little recognition the idea of

obligation to the public obtains in modern morality,

is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from

Christian ; as, even in the morality of private life,

whatever exists of magnanimity, highmindedness,

personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is

derived from the purely human, not the religious

part of owe education, and never could have grown

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 91

oat of a standard of ethics in whicli the only

worth, professedly recognised, is that of obedience.

I am as far as any one from pretending that

these defects are necessarily inherent in the Chris-

tian ethics, in every manner in which it can be

conceived, or that the many requisites of a com-

plete moral doctrine which it does not contain, do

not admit of being reconciled with it. Far less

would I insinuate this of the doctrines and pre-

cepts of Christ himself I believe that the sayings

of Christ are all, that I can see any evidence of

their having been intended to be ; that they are

irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive

moralityrequires; that everything which is excellent

in ethics may be brought within them, with no

greater violence to their language than has been

done to it by all who have attempted to deduce

from them any practical system of conduct what-

ever. But it is quite consistent with this, to believe

that they contain, and were meant to contain, only

a part of the truth ; that many essential elements

of the highest morality are among the things

which are not provided for, nor intended to be

provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the

Founder of Christianity, and which have been

entirely thrown aside in the system of ethics

erected on the basis of those deliverances by the

Christian Church. And this being so, I think it a

great error to persist in attempting to find in the

92 OF THE LIBERTY OF

Cliristian doctrine that complete rule for our guid-

ance, wMcli its author intended it to sanction and

enforce, but ouly partially to provide. I believe,

too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave

practical evil, detracting greatly from the value of

the moral training and instruction, which so many

well-meaning persons are now at length exerting

themselves to promote. I much fear that by

attempting to form the mind and feelings on an

exclusively religious type, and discarding those

secular standards (as for want of a better name

they may be called) which heretofore co-existed

with and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiv-

ing some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of

theirs, there will result, and is even now resulting,

a low, abject, servile type of character, which, submit

itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme Will,

is incapable of rising to or sympathizing in the

conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that

other ethics than any which can be evolved from

exclusively Christian sources, must exist side by

side with Christian ethics to produce the moral

regeneration of mankind ; and that the Christian

system is no exception to the rule, that in an im-

perfect state of the human mind, the interests of

truth require a diversity of opinions. It is not

necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral

truths not contained in Christianity, men should

ignore any of those which it does contain. Such

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 93

prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether

an evil ; but it is one from which we cannot hope

to be always exempt, and must be regarded as the

price paid for an inestimable good. The exclusive

pretension made by a part of the truth to be the

whole, must and ought to be protested against ;

and if a reactionary impulse should make the pro-

testors unjust in their turn, this one-sided ness, like

the other, may be lamented, but must be tolerated.

If Christians would teach infidels to be just to

Christianity, they should themselves be just to

infidelity. It can do truth no service to blink the

fact, known to all who have the most ordinary

acquaintance with literary history, that a large

portion of the noblest and most valuable moral

teaching has been the work, not only of men who

did not know, but of men who knew and rejected,

the Christian faith.

I do not pretend that the most unlimited use

of the freedom of enunciating all possible opinions

would put an end to the evils of religious or phi-

losophical sectarianism. Every truth which men

of narrow capacity are in earnest about, is sure to

be asserted, inculcated, and in many ways even

acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world,

or at all events none that could limit or qualify

the first. I acknowledge that the tendency of all

opinions to become sectarian is not cured by the

freest discussion, but is often heightened and ex-

$4i OF THE LIBERTY OF

acerbated thereby ; the truth which ought to have

been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the

more violently because proclaimed by persons re-

garded as opponents. But it is not on the impas-

sioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more dis-

interested bystander, that this collision of opinions

works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict

between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppres-

sion of half of it, is the formidable evil ; there is

always hope when people are forced to listen to

both sides ; it is when they attend only to one that

errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases

to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated

into falsehood. And since there are few mental

attributes more rare than that judicial faculty

which can sit in intelligent judgment between two

sides of a question, of which only one is represented

by an advocate before it, truth has no chance but

in proportion as every side of it, every opinion

which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only

finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be

listened to.

We have now recognised the necessity to the

mental well-being of mankind (on which all their

other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion,

and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four

distinct grounds ; which we will now briefly reca-

pitulate.

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 95

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence,

tliat opinion may, for aught we can certainly

know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own

infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error,

it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion

of truth ; and since the general or prevailing

opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole

truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions

that the remainder of the truth has any chance of

being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only

true, but the whole truth ; unless it is suffered to

be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly con-

tested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be

held in the manner of a prejudice, with little com-

prehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And

not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the

doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or

enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the cha-

racter and conduct : the dogma becoming a mere

formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cum-

bering the ground, and preventing the growth of

any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or

personal experience.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion,

it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that

the free expression of all opinions should be per-

mitted, on condition that the manner be temperate,

96 OP THE LIBERTY OF

and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion.

Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing

where these supposed bounds are to be placed ; for

if the test be offence to those whose opinion is

attacked, I think experience testifies that this

offence is given whenever the attack is telling and

powerful, and that every opponent who pushes

them hard, and whom they find it difficult to

answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong

feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

But this, though an important consideration in a

practical point of view, merges in a more funda-

mental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of

asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one,

may be very objectionable, and may justly incur

severe censure. But the principal offences of the

kind are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by

accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to convic-

tion. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically,

to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the

elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite

opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated

degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith,

by persons who are not considered, and in many

other respects may not deserve to be considered,

ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible

on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the

misrepresentation as morally culpable ; and still

less could law presume to interfere with this kind

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 97

of controversial misconduct. With regard to what

is commonly meant by intemperate discussion,

namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the

like, the denunciation of these weapons would

deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed

to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is

only desired to restrain the employment of them

against the prevailing opinion : against the unpre-

vailing they may not only be used without general

disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him

who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righte-

ous indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises

from their use, is greatest when they are employed

against the comparatively defenceless ; and what-

ever unfair advantage can be derived by any

opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost

exclusively to received opinions. The worst offence

of this kind which can be committed by a polemic,

is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary

opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of

this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion

are peculiarly exposed, because they are in general

few and uninfluential, and nobody but themselves

feels much interested in seeiog justice done them ;

but this weapon is, from the nature of the case,

denied to those who attack a prevailing opinion :

they can neither use it with safety to themselves,

nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil

on their own cause. In general, opinions contrary

G

98 OF THE LIBERTY OF

to those commonly received can only obtain a

hearing by studied moderation of language, and the

most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from

which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight

degree without losing ground : while unmeasured

vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing

opinion, really does deter people from professing

contrary opinions, and from listening to those who

profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth

and justice, it is far more important to restrain

this employment of vituperative language than the

other ; and, for example, if it were necessary to

choose, ' there would be much more need to dis-

courage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on

religion. It is, however, obvious that law and

authority have no business with restraining either,

while opinion ought, in every instance, to deter-

mine its verdict by the circumstances of the indi-

vidual case ; condemning every one, on whichever

side of the argument he places himself, in whose

mode of advocacy either want of candour, or malig-

nity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest

themselves ; but not inferring these vices from the

side which a person takes, though it be the con-

trary side of the question to our own : and giving

merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he

may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to

state what his opponents and their opinions really

are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keep-

THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 99

ing nothing back which tells, or can be supposed

to tell, in their favour. This is the real morality

of public discussion : and if often violated, I am

happy to think that there are many controver-

sialists who to a great extent observe it, and a

still greater number who conscientiously strive

towards it.

Cf2

100 OF INDIVIDUALITY; AS ONE OF

CHAPTER III.

OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF

WELL-BEING.

^TJCH being the reasons whicli make it impera-

tive that human beings should be free to form

opinions, and to express their opinions without

reserve ; and such the baneful consequences to the

intellectual, and through that to the moral nature

of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or

asserted in spite of prohibition ; let us next examine

whether the same reasons do not require that men

should be free to act upon their opinions - to carry

these out in their lives, without hindrance, either

physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long

as it is at their own risk and peril. This last pro-

viso is of course indispensable. No one pretends

that actions should be as free as opinions. On the

contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when

the circumstances in which they are expressed are

such as to constitute their expression a positive in-

stigation to some mischievous act. An opinion

that corn -dealers are starvers of the poor, or that

private property is robbery, ought to be unmo-

lested when simply circulated through the press, but

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 101

may justly incur punishment when delivered orally

to an excited mob assembled before the house of a

corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same

mob in the form of a placard. Acts, of whatever

kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to

others, may be, and in the more important cases

absolutely require to be, controlled by the un-

favourable sentiments, and, when needful, by the

active interference of mankind. The liberty of the

individual must be thus far limited ; he must not

make himself a nuisance to other people. But if

he refrains from molesting others in what concerns

them, and merely acts according to his own incli-

nation and judgment in things which concern him-

self, the same reasons which show that opinion

should be free, prove also that he should be allowed,

without molestation, to carry his opinions into

practice at his own cost. That mankind are not

infallible ; that their truths, for the most part, are

only half-truths ; that unity of opinion, unless re-

sulting from the fullest and freest comparison

of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity

not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much

more capable than at present of recognising all sides

of the truth, are principles applicable to men's

modes of action, not less than to their opinions.

As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect

there should be different opinions, so is it that

there should be different experiments of living;

102 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OP

that free scope should be given to varieties of

character, short of injury to others ; and that the

worth of different modes of life should be proved

practically, when any one thinks fit to try them.

It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not

primarily concern others, individuality should assert

itself. Where, not the person's own character, but

the traditions or customs of other people are the

rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the prin-

cipal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the

chief ingredient of individual and social progress.

In maintaining this principle, the greatest diffi-

culty to be encountered does not lie in the appre-

ciation of means towards an acknowledged end, but

in the indifference of persons in general to the end

itself. If it were felt that the free development of

individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-

being ; that it is not only a co-ordinate element with

all that is designated by the terms civilization, in-

struction, education, culture, but is itself a neces-

sary part and condition of all those things ; there

would be no danger that liberty should be under-

valued, and the adjustment of the boundaries be-

tween it and social control would present no extra-

ordinary difficulty. But the evil is, that individual

spontaneity is hardly recognised by the common

modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic worth,

or deserving any regard on its own account. The

majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 103

as they now are (for it is they who make them what

they are), cannot comprehend why those ways

should not be good enough for everybody ; and

what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the

ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers,

but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a trouble-

some and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the

general acceptance of what these reformers, in

their own judgment, think would be best for man-

kind. Few persons, out of Germany, even compre-

hend the meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm

Von Humboldt, so eminent both as a savant and

as a politician, made the text of a treatise - that

c the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the

eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not

suggested by vague and transient desires, is the

highest and most harmonious development of his

powers to a complete and consistent whole ,' that,

therefore, the object ' towards which every human

being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on

which especially those who design to influence

their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the

individuality of power and development -,' that for

this there are two requisites, * freedom, and

variety of situations ;' and that from the union of

these arise ' individual vigour and manifold diver-

sity,' which combine themselves in ' originality.'*

* The Sphere and Duties of Government^ from the German

of Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, pp. 11-13.

104 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

Little, however, as people are accustomed to a

doctrine like that of Yon Humboldt, and surprising

as it may be to them to find so high a value

attached to individuality, the question, one must

nevertheless think, can only be one of degree. No

one's idea of excellence iu conduct is that' people

should do absolutely nothing but copy one another.

No one would assert that people ought not to put

into their mode of life, and into the conduct of their

concerns, any impress whatever of their own judg-

ment, or of their own individual character. On

the other hand, it would be absurd to pretend that

people ought to live as if nothing whatever had

been known in the world before they came into

it ; as if experience had as yet done nothing to-

wards showing that one mode of existence, or of

conduct, is preferable to another. Nobody denies

that people should be so taught and trained in

youth, as to know and benefit by the ascertained

results of human experience. But it is the privi-

lege and proper condition of a human being,

arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and

interpret experience in his own way. It is for him

to find out what part of recorded experience is

properly applicable to his own circumstances and

character. The traditions and customs of other

people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what

their experience has taught them; presumptive

evidence, and as such, have a claim to his defe-

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 105

rence : but, in the first place, their experience may

be too narrow ; or they may not have interpreted it

rightly. Secondly, their interpretation of experience

may be correct, but unsuitable to him. Customs

are made for customary circumstances, and custom-

ary characters ; and his circumstances or his charac-

ter may be uncustomary. Thirdly, though the

customs be both good as customs, and suitable to

him, yet to conform to custom, merely as custom,

does not educate or develop in him any of the quali-

ties which are the distinctive endowment of a human

being. The human faculties of perception, judg-

ment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and

even moral preference, are exercised only in making

a choice. He who does anything because it is the

custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice

either in discernino: or in desirino^ what is best.

The mental and moral, like the muscular powers,

are improved only by being used. The faculties are

called into no exercise by doing a thing merely

because others do it, no more than by believing a

thing only because others believe it. If the grounds

of an opinion are not conclusive to the person's

own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened, but

is likely to be weakened, by his adopting it : and if

the inducements to an act are not such as are con-

sentaneous to his own feelings and character (where

affection, or the rights of others, are not concerned)

it is so much done towards rendering his feelings

106 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

and character inert and torpid, instead of active

and energetic.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it,

choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any

other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.

He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all

his faculties. He must use observation to see,

reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to

gather materials for decision, discrimination to de-

cide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-

control to hold to his deliberate decision. And

these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in

proportion as the part of his conduct which he

determines according to his own judgment and

feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might

be guided in some good path, and kept out of

harm's way, without any of these things. But what

will be his comparative worth as a human being ?

It really is of importance, not only what men do,

but also what manner of men they are that do it.

Among the works of man, which human life is

rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the

first in importance surely is man himself. Sup-

posing it were possible to get houses built, corn

grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even

churches erected and prayers said, by machinery -

by automatons in human form - it would be a consi-

derable loss to exchange for these automatons even

the men and women who at present inhabit the

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 107

more civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly

are but starved specimens of what nature can and

will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be

built after a model, and set to do exactly the work

prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow

and develope itself on all sides, according to the

tendency of the inward forces which make it a

living thing.

It will probably be conceded that it is desirable

people should exercise their understandings, and

that an intelligent following of custom, or even

occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom,

is better than a blind and simply mechanical adhe-

sion to it. To a certain extent it is admitted, that

our understanding should be our own : but there is

not the same willingness to admit that our desires

and impulses should be our own likewise ; or that

to possess impulses of our own, and of any strength,

is anything but a peril and a snare. Yet desires

and impulses are as much a part of a perfect

human being, as beliefs and restraints: and strong

impulses are only perilous when not properly

balanced ; when one set of aims and inclinations is

developed into strength, while others, which ought

to co-exist with them, remain weak and inactive.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they

act ill ; it is because their consciences are weak.

There is no natural connexion between strong im-

pulses and a weak conscience. The natural con-

108 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

nexion is the other way. To say that one person's

desires and feelings are stronger and more various

than those of another, is merely to say that he has

more of the raw material of human nature, and is

therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but

certainly of more good. Strong impulses are

but another name for energy. Energy may

be turned to bad uses ; but more good may

always be made of an energetic nature, than of an

indolent and impassive one. Those who have most

natural feeling, are always those whose cultivated

feelings may be made the strongest. The same

strong susceptibilities which make the personal

impulses vivid and powerful, are also the source

from whence are generated the most passionate love

of virtue, and the sternest self-control. It is

through the cultivation of these, that society both

does its duty and protects its interests : not by

rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made,

because it knows not how to make them. A person

whose desires and impulses are his own - are the

expression of his own nature, as it has been deve-

loped and modified by his own culture - is said to

have a character. One whose desires and impulses

are not his own, has no character, no more than a

steam-engine has a character. If, in addition to

being his own, his impulses are strong, and are

under the government of a strong will, he has an

enerojetic character. Whoever thinks that indi-

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEIXG. 109

vidnality of desires and impulses should not be

encouraged to unfold itself, must maintain that

society has no need of strong natures - is not the

better for containing many persons who have much

character - and that a high general average of

energy is not desirable.

In some early states of society, these forces

might be, and were, too much ahead of the power

which society then possessed of disciplining and con-

trolling them. There has been a time when the

element of spontaneity and individuality was in

excess, and the social principle had a hard struggle

with it. The difficulty then was, to induce men of

strong bodies or minds to pay obedience to any

rules which required them to control their impulses.

To overcome this difficulty, law and discipline, like

the Popes struggling against the Emperors, asserted

a power over the whole man, claiming to control

all his life in order to control his character - which

society had not found any other sufficient means of

binding. But society has now fairly got the better

of individuality ; and the danger which threatens

human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency,

of personal impulses and preferences. Things are

vastly changed, since the passions of those who were

strong by station or by personal endowment were

in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and

ordinances^ and required to be rigorously chained

up to enable the persons within their reach to enjoy

110 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

any particle of security. In our times, from the

highest class of society down to the lowest, every

one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded

censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but

in what concerns only themselves, the individual

or the family do not ask themselves - what do I

prefer? or, what would suit my character and dis-

position ? or, what would allow the best and highest

in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and

thrive ? They ask themselves, what is suitable to

my position ? what is usually done by persons of

my station and pecuniary circumstances ? or (worse

still) what is usually done by persons of a station

and circumstances superior to mine? I do not

mean that they choose what is customary, in pre-

ference to what suits their own inclination. It

does not occur to them to have any inclination,

except for what is customary. Thus the mind

itself is bowed to the yoke : even in what people

do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought

of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only

amoDcr things commonly done : peculiarity of taste,

eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with

crimes : until by dint of not following their own

nature, they have no nature to follow : their human

capacities are withered and starved : they become

incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures,

and are generally without either opinions or feel-

ings of home growth, or properly their own. Now

THE ELEMENTS OP WELL-BEING. Ill

is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human

nature ?

It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. According

to that, the one great offence of man is self-will.

All the good of which humanity is capable, is com-

prised in obedience. You have no choice ; thus

you must do, and no otherwise : ' whatever is not a

duty, is a sin.' Human nature being radically

corrupt, there is no redemption for any one until

human nature is killed within him. To one hold-

ing this theory of life, crushing out any of the

human faculties, capacities, and susceptibilities, is

no evil : man needs no capacity, but that of sur-

rendering himself to the will of God : and if he

uses any of his faculties for any other purpose but

to do that supposed will more effectually, he is

better without them. This is the theory of Cal-

vinism ; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by

many who do not consider themselves Calvinists ;

the mitigation consisting in giving a less ascetic

interpretation to the alleged will of God ; asserting

it to be his will that mankind should gratify some

of their inclinations; of course not in the manner

they themselves prefer, but in the way of obedi-

ence, that is, in a way prescribed to them by

authority; and, therefore, by the necessary condi-

tions of the case, the same for all.

In some such insidious form there is at present

a strong tendency to this narrow theory of life, and

112 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

to the pinched and hidebound type of human cha-

racter which it patronizes. Many persons, no doubt,

sincerely think that human beings thus cramped

and dwarfed, are as their Maker designed them to

be ; just as many have thought that trees are a

much finer thing when chpped into pollards, or cut

out into figures of animals, than as nature made

them. But if it be any part of religion to believe

that man was made by a good Being, it is more

consistent with that faith to believe, that this

Being gave all human faculties that they might be

cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and con-

sumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer

approach made by his creatures to the ideal con-

ception embodied in them, every increase in any

of their capabilities of comprehension, of action, or

of enjoyment. There is a different type of human

excellence from the Calvinistic ; a conception of

humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for

other purposes than merely to be abnegated.

'Pasfan self-assertion ' is one of the elements of

human worth, as well as ' Christian self-denial.'*

There is a Greek ideal of self- development, which

the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government

blends with, but does not supersede. It may be

better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades,

but it is better to be a Pericles than either ; nor

w^ould a Pericles, if we had one in ^ these days,

* Sterling's Essays.

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 113

be without anything good which belonged to John

Knox.

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that

is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and

calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the

rights and interests of others, that human beings

become a noble and beautiful object of contempla-

tion ; and as the works partake the character of

those who do them, by the same process human life

also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, fur-

nishino^ more abundant aliment to hidi thouo^hts

and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie

which binds every individual to the race, by making

the race infinitely better worth belonging to. In

proportion to the development of his individuality,

each person becomes more valuable to himself,

and is therefore capable of being more valuable to

others. There is a greater fulness of life about his

own existence, and when there is more life in the

units there is more in the mass which is composed

of them. As much compression is as necessary to

prevent the stronger specimens of human nature

from encroaching on the rights of others, cannot be

dispensed with ; but for this there is ample com-

pensation even in the point of view of human de-

velopment. The means of development which the

individual loses by being prevented from gratifying

his inclinations to the injury of others, are chiefly

obtained at the expense of the development of

H

114. OF INDIVIDUALITY; AS ONE OF

other people. And even to himself there is a full

equivalent in the better development of the social

part of his nature, rendered possible by the

restraint put upon the selfish part. To be held to

rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, deve-

lopes the feelings and capacities which have the

good of others for their object. But to be restrained

in things not affecting their good, by their mere

displeasure, developes nothing valuable, except such

force of character as may unfold itself in resisting

the restraint. If acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts

the whole nature. To give any fair play to the

nature of each, it is essential that different persons

should be allowed to lead different lives. In pro-

portion as this latitude has been exercised in any

age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity.

Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so

long as individuality exists under it ; and whatever

crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever

name it maybe called, and whether it professes to be

enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

Having said that Individuality is the same thing

with development, and that it is only the cultiva-

tion of individuality which produces, or can pro-

duce, well- developed human beings, I might here

close the argument : for what more or better can

be said of any condition of human affairs, than

that it brings human beings themselves neiirer to

the best thing they can be ? or what worse can be

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 115

said of any obstruction to good, than that it pre-

vents this ? Doubtless, however, these considera-

tions will not suffice to convince those who most

need convincing ; and it is necessary further to

show, that these developed human beings are of

some use to the undeveloped - to point out to those

who do not desire liberty, and would not avail

themselves of it, that they may be in some intelli-

gible manner rewarded for allowing other people to

make use of it without hindrance.

In the first place, then^ I would suggest that

they might possibly learn something from them. It

will not be denied by anybody, that originality is a

valuable element in human affairs. There is always

need of persons not only to discover new truths,

and point out when what were once truths are true

no longer, but also to commence new practices, and

set the example of more enlightened conduct, and

better taste and sense in human life. This cannot

well be gainsaid by anybody who does not believe

that the world has already attained perfection in all

its ways and practices. It is true that this benefit is

not capable of being rendered by everybody alike :

there are but few persons, in comparison with

the whole of mankind, whose experiments, if

adojDted by others, would be likely to be any im-

provement on established practice. But these few

are the salt of the earth ; without them, human

life w^ould become a stagnant pool. Not only is it

h2

116 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

they who introduce good things which did not

before exist ; it is they who keep the life in those

which already existed. If there were nothing new

to be done, would human intellect cease to be ne-

cessary ? Would it be a reason why those who do

the old things should forget why they are done,

and do them like cattle, not like human beings ?

There is only too great a tendency in the best

beliefs and practices to degenerate into the me-

chanical ; and unless there were a succession of

persons whose ever-recurring originality prevents

the grounds of those beliefs and practices from

becoming merely traditional, such dead matter

would not resist the smallest shock from anything

really alive, and there would be no reason why

civilization should not die out, as in the Byzantine

Empire. Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are

always likely to be, a small minority ; but in order

to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil

in which they grow. Genius can only breathe

freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of

genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any

other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting

themselves, without hurtful compression, into any

of the small number of moulds which society pro-

vides in order to save its members the trouble of

forming their own character. If from timidity they

consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and

to let all that part of themselves which cannot ex-

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 117

pand under the pressure remain unexpanded,

society will be little the better for their genius. If

they are of a strong character, and break their

fetters, they become a mark for the society which

has not succeeded in reducing them to common-

place, to point at with solemn warning as ' wild/

* erratic,' and the like ; much as if one should

complain of the Niagara river for not flowing

smoothly between its banks like a Dutch

canal.

I insist thus emphatically on the importance of

genius, and the necessity of allowing it to unfold

itself freely both in thought and in practice, being

well aware that no one will deny the position in

theory, but knowing also that almost every one, in

reality, is totally indifferent to it. People think

genius a fine thing if it enables a man to write

an exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in its

true sense, that of originality in thought and

actioD, though no one says that it is not a thing to

be admired, nearly all, at heart, think that they

can do very well without it. Unhappily this is

too natural to be wondered at. Originality is the

one thino: which unoriginal minds cannot feel the

use of. They cannot see what it is to do for

them : how should they ? If they could see what

it would do for them, it would not be originality.

The first service which originality has to render

them, is that of opening their eyes : which being

118 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

once fully done, they would have a chance of being

themselves original. Meanwhile, recollecting that

nothing was ever yet done which some one was

not the first to do, and that all good things which

exist are the fruits of originality, let them be

modest enough to believe that there is something

still left for it to accomplish, and assure themselves

that they are more in need of originality, the less

they are conscious of the want.

In sober truth, whatever homage may be pro-

fessed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental

superiority, the general tendency of things

throughout the world is to render mediocrity the

ascendant power among mankind. In ancient

history, io the middle ages, and in a diminishing

degree through the long transition from feudality

to the present time, the individual was a power in

himself ; and if he had either great talents or a

high social position, he was a considerable power.

At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In

politics it is almost a triviality to say that public

opinion now rules the world. The ouly power

deserving the name is that of masses, and of go-

vernments while they make themselves the organ

of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This is

as true in the moral and social relations of private

life as in pubhc transactions. Those whose opi-

nions go by the name of public opinion, are not

always the same sort of public : in America they

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 119

are the whole white population; in England,

chiefly the middle class. But they are always a

mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And

what is a still greater novelty, the mass do not

now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church

or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books.

Their thinking is done for them by men much like

themselves, addressing them or speaking in their

name, on the spur of the moment, through the

newspapers. I am not complaining of all this. I

do not assert that anything better is compatible,

as a general rule, with the present low state of

the human mind. But that does not hinder the

government of mediocrity from being mediocre go-

vernment. No government by a democracy or a

numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or

in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which

it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity,

except in so far as the sovereign Many have let

themselves be guided (which in their best times

they always have done) by the counsels and influ-

ence of a more highly gifted and instructed One or

Few. The initiation of all wise or noble things,

comes and must come from individuals ; generally

at first from some one individual. The honour

and glory of the average man is that he is capable

of following that initiative ; that he can respond

internally to wise and noble things, and be led to

them with his eyes open. I am not countenancing

120 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

the sort of 'hero-worship' which applauds the

strong man of genius for forcibly seizing on the

government of the world and making it do his

bidding in spite of itself. All he can claim is,

freedom to point out the way. The power of

compelling others into it, is not only inconsistent

with the freedom and development of all the rest,

but corrupting to the strong man himself. It does

seem, however, that when the opinions of masses

of merely average men are everywhere become or

becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise

and corrective to that tendency would be, the more

and more pronounced individuality of those who

stand on the higher eminences of thought. It is

in these circumstances most especially, that excep-

tional individuals, instead of being deterred, should

be encouraged in acting differently from the mass.

In other times there was no advantage in their

doing so, unless they acted not only differently, but

better. In this age, the mere example of non-

conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to

custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the

tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity

a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break

through that tyranny, that people should be

eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded

when and where strength of character has

abounded ; and the amount of eccentricity in a

society has generally been proportional to the

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEIKG. 121

amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral cou-

rage which it contained. That so few now dare

to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the

time. ∙

I have said that it is important to give the

freest scope possible to uncustomary things, in

order that it may in time appear which of these

are fit to be converted into customs. But inde-

pendence of action, and disregard of custom, are

not solely deserving of encouragement for the

the chance they afford that better modes of action,

and customs more worthy of general adoption, may

be struck out; nor is it only persons of decided

mental superiority who have a just claim to carry

on their lives in their own way. There is no

reason that all human existence should be con-

structed on some one or some small number of

patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable

amount of common sense and experience, his own

mode of laying out his existence is the best, not

because it is the best in itself, but because it is his

own mode. Human beings are not like sheep ;

and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike.

A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit

him, unless they are either made to his measure,

or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from :

and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a

coat, or are human beings more like one another

in their whole physical and spiritual conformation

12a OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE Ol'

than in the shape of their feet ? If it were only

that people have diversities of taste, that is reason

enough for not attempting to shape them all after

one model. But different persons also require

different conditions for their spiritual develop-

ment; and can no more exist healthily in the

same moral, than all the variety of plants can in

the same physical, atmosphere and climate. The

same things which are helps to one person towards

the cultivation of his higher nature, are hin-

drances to another. The same mode of life is a

healthy excitement to one, keeping all his facul-

ties of action and enjoyment in their best order,

while to another it is a distracting burthen, which

suspends or crushes all internal life. Such are

the differences amonof human beings in their

sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain,

and the operation on them of different physical

and moral agencies, that unless there is a corre-

sponding diversity in their modes of life, they

neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor

grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature

of which their nature is capable. Why then

should tolerance, as far as the public sentiment

is concerned, extend only to tastes and modes of

life which extort acquiescence by the multitude

of their adherents? Nowhere (except in some

monastic institutions) is diversity of taste entirely

unrecognised ; a person may, without blame,

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 123

either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or music,

or athletic exercises, or chess, or cards, or study,

because both those who like each of these things,

and those who dislike them, are too numerous to

be put down. But the man, and still more the

woman, who can be accused either of doing * what

nobody does,' or of not doing ' what everybody

does,' is the subject of as much depreciatory remark

as if he or she had committed some grave moral

delinquency. Persons require to possess a title,

or some other badge of rank, or of the considera-

tion of people of rank, to be able to indulge

somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like

without detriment to their estimation. To in-

dulge somewhat, I repeat : for whoever allow

themselves much of that indulgence, incur the

risk of something worse than disparaging speeches

- they are in peril of a commission cle luncoticOj

and of having their property taken from them

and given to their relations.*

* There is something both contemptible and frightful in the

sort of evidence on which, of late years, any person can be

judicially declared unfit for the management of his afiairs ; and

after his death, his disposal of his property can be set aside, if

there is enough of it to pay the expenses of litigation - which are

charged on the property itself. All the minute details of his

daily life are pried into, and whatever is found which, seen

through the medium of the perceiving and describing faculties of

the lowest of the low, bears an appearance unlike absolute com-

monplace, is laid before the jury as evidence of insanity, and

often with success ; the jurors being little, if at all, less vulgar

and ignorant than the witnesses ; while the judges, with that

124 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OP

There is one characteristic of the present direc-

tion of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to

make it intolerant of any marked demonstration

of individuality. The general average of mankind

are not only moderate in intellect, but also mode-

rate in inclinations : they have no tastes or wishes

strong enough to incline them to do anything

unusual, and they consequently do not understand

those who have, and class all such with the wild

and intemperate whom they are accustomed to

look down upon. Now, in addition to this fact

which is general, we have only to suppose that a

strong movement has set in towards the improve-

ment of morals, and it is evident what we have to

expect. In these days such a movement has set

in ; much has actually been effected in the way

of increased regularity of conduct, and discourage-

extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which

continually astonishes us in English lawyers, often help to

mislead them. These trials speak volumes as to the state of

feeUng and opinion among the vulgar with regard to human

liberty. So far from setting any value on individuality - so far

from respecting the right of each individual to act, in things

indifferent, as seems good to his own judgment and inclinations,

judges and juries cannot even conceive that a person in a state

of sanity can desire such freedom. In former days, when it was

proposed to bum atheists, charitable people used to suggest

putting them in a madhouse instead : it would be nothing sur-

prising now-a-days were we to see this done, and the doers

applauding themselves, because, instead of persecuting for reli-

gion, they had adopted so humane and Christian a mode of treat-

ing these unfortunates, not without a silent satisfaction at their

having thereby obtained their deserts.

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 125

ment of excesses ; and there is a philanthropic

spirit abroad, for the exercise of which there

is no more inviting field than the moral and

prudential improvement of our fellow-creatures.

These tendencies of the times cause the public

to be more disposed than at most former periods

to prescribe general rules of conduct, and endea-

vour to make every one conform to the approved

standard. And that standard, express or tacit, is

to desire nothing strongly. Its ideal of character

is to be without any marked character ; to maim

by compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every

part of human nature which stands out promi-

nently, and tends to make the person markedly

dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity.

As is usually the case with ideals which exclude

one-half of what is desirable, the present standard

of approbation produces only an inferior imitation

of the other half. Instead of great energies

guided by vigorous reason, and strong feelings

strongly controlled by a conscientious will, its

result is weak feelings and weak energies, which

therefore can be kept in outward conformity to

rule without any strength either of will or of

reason. Already energetic characters on any large

scale are becoming merely traditional. There is

now scarcely any outlet for energy in this country

except business. The energy expended in this

may still be regarded as considerable. What little

126 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

is left from that employment, is expended on some

hobby; which may be a useful, even a philan-

thropic hobby, but is always some one thing, and

generally a thing of small dimensions. The great-

ness of England is now all collective : individually

small, we only appear capable of anything great

by our habit of combining; and with this our

moral and religious philanthropists are perfectly

contented. But it was men of another stamp

than this that made England what it has been ;

and men of another stamp will be needed to pre-

vent its decline.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the

standing hindrance to human advancement, being

in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim

at something better than customary, which is

called, according to circumstances, the spirit of

liberty, or that of progress or improvement. The

spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of

liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on

an unwilling people ; and the spirit of liberty, in

so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself

locally and temporarily with the opponents of im-

provement ; but the only unfailing and perma-

nent source of improvement is liberty, since by it

there are as many possible independent centres of

improvement as there are individuals. The pro-

gressive principle, however, in either shape, whe-

ther as the love of liberty or of improvement, is

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 127

antagonistic to the sway of Custom, involving at

least emancipation from that yoke ; and the con-

test between the two constitutes the chief interest

of the history of mankind. The greater part of the

world has, properly speaking, no history, because

the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the

case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all

things, the final appeal ; justice and right mean

conformity to custom ; the argument of custom no

one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with powei^^

thinks of resisting. And we see the result. Those

nations must once have had originality ; they did

not start out of the ground populous, lettered,

and versed in many of the arts of life ; they made

themselves all this, and were then the greatest and

most powerful nations of the world. What are

they now? The subjects or dependents of tribes

whose forefathers wandered in the forests when

theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous

temples, but over whom custom exercised only

a divided rule with liberty and progress. A

people, it appears, may be progressive for a

certain length of time, and then stop : when does

it stop ? When it ceases to possess individuality.

If a similar change should befall the nations of

Europe, it will not be in exactly the same shape :

the despotism of custom with which these nations

are threatened is not precisely stationariness. It

proscribes singularity, but it does not preclude

128 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

change, provided all change together. We have

discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers;

every one must still dress like other people, but the

fashion may change once or twice a year. We

thus take care that when there is change, it shall be

for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty

or convenience ; for the same idea of beauty or

convenience would not strike all the world at the

same moment, and be simultaneously thrown aside

by all at another moment. But we are progressive

as well as changeable : we continually make new

inventions in mechanical things, and keep them

until they are again superseded by better ; we are

eager for improvement in politics, in education,

even in morals, though in this last our idea of im-

provement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing

other people to be as good as ourselves. It is not

progress that we object to ; on the contrary, we

flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive

people who ever lived. It is individuality that we

war against : we should think we had done won-

ders if we had made ourselves all alike ; forgetting

that the unlikeness of one person to another is

generally the first thing which draws the attention

of either to the imperfection of his own type, and

the superiority of another, or the possibility, by

combining the advantages of both, of producing

something better than either. We have a warning

example in China - a nation of much talent, and,

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 129

in some respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare

good fortune of having been provided at an early

period with a particularly good set of customs, the

work, in some measure, of men to whom even the

most enlightened European must accord, under

certain limitations, the title of sages and philoso-

phers. They are remarkable, too, in the excel-

lence of their apparatus for impressing, as far as

possible, the best wisdom they possess upon every

mind in the community, and securing that those

who have appropriated most of it shall occupy the

posts of honour and power. Surely the people

who did this have discovered the secret of human

progressiveness, and must have kept themselves

steadily at the head of the movement of the world.

On the contrary, they have become stationary-

have remained so for thousands of years ; and if

they are ever to be farther improved, it must be

by foreigners. They have succeeded beyond all

hope in what English philanthropists are so indus-

triously working at - in making a people all alike,

all governing their thoughts and conduct by the

same maxims and rules ; and these are the fruits.

The modern regime of public opinion is, in an

unorganized form, what the Chinese educational

and political systems are in an organized ; and

unless individuality shall be able successfully to

assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwith-

I

130 OP INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

standing its noble antecedents and its professed

Christianity, will tend to become another China.

What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe

from this lot? What has made the European

family of nations an improving, instead of a sta-

tionary portion of mankind ? Not any superior

excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as

the effect, not as the cause ; but their remarkable

diversity of character and culture. Individuals,

classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one

another : they have struck out a great variety of

paths, each leading to something valuable ; and

although at every period those who travelled in

different paths have been intolerant of one an-

other, and each would have thought it an excellent

thing if all the rest could have been compelled to

travel his road, their attempts to thwart each

other's development have rarely had any permanent

success, and each has in time endured to receive

the good which the others have offered. Europe

is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plu-

rality of paths for its progressive and many-sided

development. But it already begins to possess

this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is

decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of

making all people alike. M. de Tocqueville, in

his last important work, remarks how much more

the Frenchmen of the present day resemble one

another, than did those even of the last generation.

THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING. 131

The same remark miglit be made of Englishmen in

a far greater degree. In a passage already quoted

from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out two

things as necessary conditions of human develop-

ment, because necessary to render peoiole unlike

one another ; namely, freedom, and variety of

situations. The second of these two conditions

is in this country every day diminishing. The

circumstances which surround different classes and

individuals, and shape their characters, are daily

becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different

ranks, different neighbourhoods, different trades

and professions, lived in what might be called dif-

ferent worlds ; at present, to a great degree in the

same. Comparatively speaking, they now read the

same things, listen lo the same things, see the same

things, go to the same places, have their hopes and

fears directed to the same objects, have the same

rights and liberties, and the same means of assert-

ing them. Great as are the differences of position

which remain, they are nothing to those which have

ceased. And the assimilation is still proceeding.

All the political changes of the age promote it,

since they all tend to raise the low and to lower the

high. Every extension of education promotes it,

because education brings people under common in-

fluences, and gives them access to the general stock

of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the

means of communication promote it, by bringing

l2

1S2 OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF

the inhabitants of distant places into personal con-

tact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of

residence between one place and another. The in-

crease of commerce and manufactures promotes it,

by diffusing more widely the advantages of easy

circumstances, and opening all objects of ambition,

even the highest, to general competition, whereby

the desire of rising becomes no longer the character

of a particular class, but of all classes. A more

powerful agency than even all these, in bringing

about a general similarity among mankind, is the

complete establishment, in this and other free

countries, of the ascendancy of public opinion in

the State. As the various social eminences which

enabled persons entrenched on them to disregard

the opinion of the multitude, gradually become

levelled ; as the very idea of resisting the will of

the public, when it is positively known that they

have a will, disappears more and more from the

minds of practical politicians ; there ceases to be

any social support for nonconformity - any substan-

tive power in society, which, itself opposed to the

ascendancy of numbers, is interested in taking

under its protection opinions and tendencies at

variance with those of the public.

The combination of all these causes forms so

great a mass of influences hostile to Individuality,

that it is not easy to see how it can stand its

ground. It will do so with increasing difficulty^

THE ELEMENTS OP WELL-BEING. 133

unless the intelligent part of the public can be

made to feel its value - to see that it is good there

should be differences, even though not for the better,

even though, as it may appear to them, some should

be for the worse. If the claims of Individuality

are ever to be asserted, the time is now, while

much is still wanting to complete the enforced

assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that

any stand can be successfully made against the en-

croachment. The demand that all other people

shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds on.

If resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to

one uniform type, all deviations from that type

will come to be considered impious, immoral,

even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind

speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when

they have been for some time unaccustomed to

see it.

134 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

CHAPTER lY.

OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY

OVER THE INDIVIDUAL.

"TTTHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sove.

* * reigntj of the individual over himself? Where

does the authority of society begin ? How much

of human life should be assigned to individuality,

and how much to society ?

Each will receive its proper share, if each has

that which more particularly concerns it. To indi-

viduality should belong the part of life in which

it is chiefly the individual that is interested ; to

society, the part which chiefly interests society.

Though society is not founded on a contract,

and though no good purpose is answered by in-

venting a contract in order to deduce social obliga-

tions from it, every one who receives the protection

of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact

of living in society renders it indispensable that

each should be bound to observe a certain line of

conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists

first, in not injuring the interests of one another ;

or rather certain interests, which, either by ex-

press legal provision or by tacit understanding,

ought to be considered as rights ; and secondly.

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 135

in each person's bearing his share (to be fixed on

some equitable principle) of the labours and sacri-

fices incurred for defending the society or its mem-

bers from injury and molestation. These condi-

tions society is justified in enforcing at all costs to

those who endeavour to withhold fulfilment. Nor

is this all that society may do. The acts of an

individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in

due consideration for their welfare, without going

the length of violating any of their constituted

rights. The offender may then be justly punished

by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any

part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the

interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it,

and the question whether the general welfare will

or will not be promoted by interfering with it, be-

comes open to discussion. But there is no room

for entertaining any such question when a person's

conduct affects the interests of no persons besides

himself, or needs not affect them unless they like

(all the persons concerned being of full age, and

the ordinary amount of understanding). In all

such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal

and social, to do the action and stand the conse-

quences.

It would be a great misunderstanding of this

doctrine, to suppose that it is one of selfish indif-

ference, which pretends that human beings haye no

business with each other's conduct in life, and that

136 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

they should not concern themselves about the well-

doing or well-being of one another, unless their own

interest is involved. Instead of any diminution,

there is need of a great increase of disinterested

exertion to promote the good of others. But disin-

terested benevolence can find other instruments to

persuade people to their good, than whips and

scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical

sort. I am the last person to undervalue the self-

regarding virtues ; they are only second in impor-

tance, if even second, to the social. It is equally the

business of education to cultivate both. But even

education works by conviction and persuasion as

well as by compulsion, and it is by the former only

that, when the period of education is past, the self-

regarding virtues should be inculcated. Human

beings owe to each other help to distinguish the

better from the worse, and encouragement to

choose the former and avoid the latter. They

should be for ever stimulating each other to in-

creased exercise of their higher faculties, and in^

creased direction of their feelings and aims

towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead

of degrading, objects and contemplations. But

neither one person, nor any number of persons,

is warranted in saying to another human creature

of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for

his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He

is the person most interested in his own well-

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 137

being : tlie interest which any other person, ex-

cept in cases of strong personal attachment, can

have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he

himself has ; the interest which society has in him

individually (except as to his conduct to others) is

fractional, and altogether indirect : while, with re^

spect to his own feelings and circumstances, the

most ordinary man or woman has means of know-

ledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be

possessed by any one else. The interference of so-

ciety to overrule his judgment and purposes in

what only regards himself, must be grounded on

general presumptions ; which may be altogether

wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be

misapplied to individual cases, by persons no

better acquainted with the circumstances of such

cases than those are who look at them merely from

without. In this department, therefore, of human

affairs, Individuality has its proper field of action.

In the conduct of human beings towards one

another, it is necessary that general rules should

for the most part be observed, in order that people

may know what they have to expect ; but in each

person's own concerns, his individual spontaneity is

entitled to free exercise. Considerations to aid his

judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may

be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by

others ; but he himself is the final judge. All

errors which he is likely to commit against advice

138 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of

allowing others to constrain him to what they

deem his good.

I do not mean that the feelings with which a

person is regarded by others, ought not to be in

any way affected by his self-regarding qualities or

deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable.

If he is eminent in any of the qualities which con-

duce to his own good, he is, so far, a proper object

of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the

ideal perfection of human nature. If he is grossly

deficient in those qualities, a sentiment the oppo-

site of admiration will follow. There is a degree

of folly, and a degree of what may be called

(though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness

or depravation of taste, which, though it cannot

justify doing harm to the person who manifests it,

renders him necessarily and properly a subject of

distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt : a

person could not have the opposite qualities in

due strength without entertaining these feelings.

Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may

so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to

him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order :

and since this judgment and feeling are a fact which

he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a service

to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other dis-

agreeable consequence to which he exposes him-

self. It would be well, indeed, if this good office

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 139

were much more freely rendered than the common

notions of politeness at present permit, and if

one person could honestly point out to another

that he thinks him in fault, without being consi-

dered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right,

also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable

opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his

individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are

not bound, for example, to seek his society ; we

have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the

avoidance), for we have a right to choose the so-

ciety most acceptable to us. We have a right, and

it may be our duty, to caution others agamst him,

if we think his example or conversation likely to

have a pernicious effect on those with whom he

associates. We may give others a preference over

him in optional good offices, except those which

tend to his improvement. In these various modes

a person may suffer very severe penalties at the

hands of others, for faults which directly concern

only himself ; but he suffers these penalties only in

so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the

spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves,

not because they are purposely inflicted on him for

the sake of punishment. A person who shows

rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit - who cannot live

within moderate means - who cannot restrain him-

self from hurtful indulgences - who pursues animal

pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and in-

140 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

tellect - must expect to be lowered in tlie opinion

of others^ and to have a less share of their favour-

able sentiments ; but of this he has no right to

complain, unless he has merited their favour by

special excellence in his social relations, and has

thus established a title to their good offices,

which is not affected by his demerits towards

himself.

What I contend for is, that the inconveniences

which are strictly inseparable from the unfavour-

able judgment of others, are the only ones to which

a person should ever be subjected for that portion

of his conduct and character which concerns his

own good, but which does not affect the interests

of others in their relations with him. Acts inju-

lious to others require a totally different treat-

ment. Encroachment on their rights ; infliction

on them of any loss or damage not justified by

his own rights ; falsehood or duplicity in deal-

ing with them ; unfair or ungenerous use of ad-

vantages over them ; even selfish abstinence from

defending them against injury - these are fit objects

of moral reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral

retribution and punishment. And not only these

acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are

properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapproba-

tion which may rise to abhorrence. Cruelty of

disposition ; malice and ill-nature ; that most anti-

social and odious of all passions, envy ; dissimulation

SOCIETY OVER THE i:??DIVIDUAL. 141

and insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause,

and resentment disproportioned to the provocation ;

the love of domineering over others ; the desire

to engross more than one's share of advantages

(the TrXaove^ia of the Greeks) ; the pride which

derives gratification from the abasement of others ;

the egotism which thinks self and its concerns

more important than everything else, and decides

all doubtful questions in its own favour ; - these are

moral vices, and constitute a bad and odious moral

character: unlike the self- regarding faults pre-

viously mentioned, which are not properly immo-

ralities, and to whatever pitch they may be carried,

do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs

of any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity

and self-respect ; but they are only a subject of

moral reprobation when they involve a breach of

duty to others, for whose sake the individual is

bound to have care for himself. What are called

duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory, un-

less circumstances render them at the same time

duties to others. The term duty to oneself, when

it means anything more than prudence, means

self-respect or self- development ; and for none of

these is any one accountable to his fellow crea-

tures, because for none of them is it for the good of

mankind that he be held accountable to them.

The distinction between the loss of consideration

which a person may rightly incur by defect of

142 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

prudence or of personal dignity, and the reprobation

which is due to him for an offence against the

rights of others, is not a merely nominal distinc-

tion. It makes a vast difference both in our feel-

ings and in our conduct towards him, whether he

displeases us in things in which we think we have

a right to control him, or in things in which we

know that we have not. If he displeases us, we

may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof

from a person as well as from a thing that dis-

pleases us ; but we shall not therefore feel called

on to make his life uncomfortable. We shall

reflect that he already bears, or will bear, the

whole penalty of his error ; if he spoils his life by

mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason,

desire to spoil it still further : instead of wishing

to punish him, we shall rather endeavour to alle-

viate his punishment, by showing him how he may

avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring

upon him. He may be to us an object of pity,

perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment ;

we shall not treat him like an enemy of society :

the worst we shall think ourselves justified in

doing is leaving him to himself, if we do not inter-

fere benevolently by showing interest or concern

for him. It is far otherwise if he has infringed

the rules necessary for the protection of his fellow-

creatures, individually or collectively. The evil

consequences of his acts do not then fall on him-

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 143

self, but on others ; and society, as the protector

of all its members, must retaliate on him ; must

inflict pain on him for the express purpose of

punishment, and must take care that it be suffi-

ciently severe. In the one case, he is an offender

at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in

judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to

execute our own sentence : in the other case, it is

not our part to inflict any suffering on him, except

what may incidentally follow from our using the

same liberty in the regulation of our own affairs,

which we allow to him in his.

The distinction here pointed out between the

part of a person's life which concerns only himself,

and that which concerns others, many persons will

refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can any

part of the conduct of a member of society be a

matter of indifference to the other members ? No

person is an entirely isolated being ; it is impos-

sible for a person to do anything seriously or per-

manently hurtful to himself, without mischief

reaching at least to his near connexions, and often

far beyond them. If he injures his property, he does

harm to those who directly or indirectly derived

support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater

or less amount, the general resources of the com-

munity. If he deteriorates his bodily or mental

faculties, he not only brings evil upon all who

depended on him for any portion of their hap-

144 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

piness, but disqualifies himself for rendering the

services which he owes to his fellow creatures gene-

rally ; perhaps becomes a burthen on their affection

or benevolence ; and if such conduct were very

frequent, hardly any offence that is committed

would detract more from the general sum of good.

Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no

direct harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may be

said) injurious by his example ; and ought to be

compelled to control himself, for the sake of those

whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might

corrupt or mislead.

And even (it will be added) if the consequences

of misconduct could be confined to the vicious or

thoughtless individual, ought society to abandon to

their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit

for it? If protection against themselves is con-

fessedly due to children and persons under age, is

not society equally bound to afford it to persons of

mature years who are equally incapable of self-

government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or

incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as

injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to

improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited

by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so

far as is consistent with practicability and social

convenience, endeavour to repress these also?

And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfec-

tions of law, ought not opinion at least to organize

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 145

a powerful police against these vices, and visit-

rigidly with social penalties those who are known

to practise them ? There is no question here (it

may be said) about restricting individuality, or im-

peding the trial of new and original experiments

in living. The only things it is sought to prevent

are thing^s which have been tried and condemned

from the beginning of the world until now ; things

which experience has shown not to be useful or

suitable to any person's individuality. There must

be some length of time and amount of experience,

after which a moral or prudential truth may be

regarded as established : and it is merely desired

to prevent generation after generation from falling

over the same precipice which has been fatal to

their predecessors.

I fully admit that the mischief which a person

does to himself may seriously affect, both through

their sympathies and their interests, those nearly

connected with him, and in a minor degree, society

at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person

is led to violate a distinct and assio^nable oblisi-a-

tion to any other person or persons, the case is

taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes

amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper

sense of the term. If, for example, a man, through

intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to

pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral

responsibility of a family, becomes from the same

K

146 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

cause incapable of supporting or educating them,

he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly

punished ; but it is for the breach of duty to his

family or creditors, not for the extravagance. If

the resources which ought to have been devoted to

them, had been diverted from them for the most

prudent investment, the moral culpability would

have been the same. George Barnwell murdered his

uncle to get money for his mistress, but if he ha.d

done it to set himself up in business, he would

equally have been hanged. Again, in the frequent

case of a man who causes grief to his family by ad-

diction to bad habits, he deserves rejDroach for his un-

kindness or ingratitude ; but so he may for cultivat-

ing habits not in themselves vicious, if they are pain-

ful to those with whom he passes his life, or who

from personal ties are dependent on him for their

comfort. Whoever fails in the consideration gene-

rally due to the interests and feelings of others,

not being compelled by some more imperative

duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a

subject of moral disapprobation for that failure,

but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors,

merely personal to himself, which may have re-

motely led to it. In like manner, when a person

disables himself, by conduct purely self- regarding,

from the performance of some definite duty in-

cumbent on him to the public^ he is guilty of a

social offence. No person ought to be punished

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 147

simply for being drunk ; but a soldier or a police-

man should be punished for being drunk on duty.

Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or

a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or

to the public, the case is taken out of the province

of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law.

But with regard to the merely contingent, or, as

it may be called, constructive injury which a per-

son causes to society, by conduct which neither

violates any specific duty to the public, nor occa-

sions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual

except himself; the inconvenience is one which

society can afford to bear, for the sake of the

greater good of human freedom. If grown per-

sons are to be punished for not taking proper care

of themselves, I would rather it were for their own

sake, than under pretence of preventing them

from impairing their capacity of rendering to

society benefits which society does not pretend

it has a right to exact. But I cannot con-

sent to argue the point as if society had no means

of bringing its weaker members up to its ordi-

nary standard of rational conduct, except waiting

till they do something irrational, and then punish-

ing them, legally or morally, for it. Society

has had absolute power over them during all the

early portion of their existence : it has had the

whole period of childhood and nonage in which

to try whether it could make them capable of

k2

148 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OP

rational conduct in life. The existing generation

is master both of the training and the entire cir-

cumstances of the generation to come ; it cannot

indeed make them perfectly wise and good, be-

cause it is itself so lamentably deficient in good-

ness and wisdom ; and its best efforts are not

always, in individual cases, its most successful ones ;

but it is perfectly well able to make the rising

generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little

better than, itself. If society lets any considerable

number of its members grow up mere children,

incapable of being acted on by rational considera-

tion of distant motives, society has itself to blame

for the consequences. Armed not only with all

the powers of education, but with the ascendancy

which the authority of a received opinion always

exercises over the minds who are least fitted to

judge for themselves ; and aided by the natural

penalties which cannot be prevented from falling

on those who incur the distaste or the contempt

of those who know them ; let not society pretend

that it needs, besides all this, the power to issue

commands and enforce obedience in the personal

concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles

of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest

with those who are to abide the consequences.

Nor is there anything which tends more to dis-

credit and frustrate the better means of influencing

conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 149

among those whom it is attempted to coerce

into prudence or temperance, any of the material

of which vigorous and independent characters are

made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke-

No such person will ever feel that others have a

right to control him in his concerns, such as they

have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs ;

and it easily comes to be considered a mark of spirit

and courage to fly in the face of such usurped

authority, and do with ostentation the exact op-

posite of what it enjoins ; as in the fashion of gross-

ness which succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to

the fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans.

With respect to what is said of the necessity

of protecting society from the bad example set to

others by the vicious or the self-indulgent ; it is

true that bad example may have a pernicious

effect, especially the example of doing wrong to

others with impunity to the wrong-doer. But we

are now speaking of conduct which, while it does

no wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm

to the agent himself : and I do not see how those

who believe this, can think otherwise than that the

example, on the whole, must be more salutary than

hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it dis-

plays also the painful or degrading consequences

which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be

supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it

But the strongest of all the arguments against

150 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

∙

the interference of the public with purely personal

conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds

are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong-

place. On questions of social morality, of duty to

others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an

overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely

to be still oftener right ; because on such questions

they are only required to judge of their own inte-

rests ; of the manner in which some mode of con-

duct, if allowed to be practised, would affect them-

selves. But the opinion of a similar majority, im-

posed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-

regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as

right ; for in these cases public opinion means, at the

best, some people's opicion of what is good or bad

for other people ; while very often it does not even

mean that ; the public, with the most perfect in-

difference, passing over the pleasure or convenience

of those whose conduct they censure, and consi-

dering only their own preference. There are

many who consider as an injury to themselves any

conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent

it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious

bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious

feelings of others, has been known to retort that

they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their

abominable worship or creed. But there is no

parity between the feeling of a person for his own

opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 151

at his liolding it ; no more than between the desire

of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the

right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as

much his own pecuh'ar concern as his opinion or

his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an

ideal pubhc, which leaves the freedom and choice

of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed,

and only requires them to abstain from modes of

conduct which universal experience has condemned.

But where has there been seen a public which set

any such limit to its censorship ? or when does the

public trouble itself about universal experience?

In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom

thinkiug of anything but the enormity of acting or

feeling differently from itself ; and this standard of

judgment^ thinly disguised, is held up to mankind

as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine-

tenths of all moralists and speculative writers.

These teach that things are right because they are

right ; because we feel them to be so. They tell

us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws

of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others.

What can the poor public do but apply these m-

structions, and make their own personal feelings of

good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in

them, obligatory on all the world ?

The evil here pointed out is not one which exists

only in theory ; and it may perhaps be expected

that I should specify the instances in which the

152 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OP

public of this age and country improperly invests

its own preferences with the character of moral

laws. I am not writing an essay on the aberrations

of existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a

subject to be discussed parenthetically, and by way

of illustration. Yet examples are necessary, to

show that the principle I maintain is of serious

and practical moment, and that I am not endea-

vouring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils.

And it is not difficult to show, by abundant in-

stances, that to extend the bounds of what may be

called moral police, until it encroaches on the most

unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual,

is one of the most universal of all human propen-

sities.

As a first instance, consider the antipathies which

men cherish on no better grounds than that per-

sons whose religious opinions are different from

theirs, do not practise their religious observances,

especially their religious abstinences. To cite a

rather trivial example, nothing in the creed or

jDractice of Christians does more to envenom the

hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact

of their eating pork. There are few acts which

Christians and Europeans regard with more un-

affected disgust, than Mussulmans regard this par-

ticular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the

first place, an offence against their religion ; but

this circumstance by no means explains either the

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 153

degree or the kind of their repugnance ; for wine

also is forbidden by their religion, and to partake

of it is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but

not disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of the

* unclean beast ' is, on the contrary, of that peculiar

character, resembling an instinctive antipathy,

which the idea of uncleanness, when once it

thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems always to

excite even in those whose personal habits are

anything but scrupulously cleanly, and of which the

sentiment of religious impurity, so intense in the

Hindoos, is a remarkable example. Suppose now

that in a people, of whom the majority were Mus-

sulmans, that majority should insist upon not per-

mitting pork to be eaten wdthin the limits of the

country. This would be nothing new in Mahome-

dan countries.* Would it be a legitimate exercise

of the moral authority of public opinion ? and

if not, why not ? The practice is really revolting

* The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in

point. When this industrious and enterprising tribe, the de-

scendants of the Persian fire- worshippers, flying from their

native country before the CaUphs, arrived in Western India,

they were admitted to toleration by the Hindoo sovereigns, on

condition of not eating beef. When those regions afterwards

fell under the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors, the Parsees

obtained from them a continuance of indulgence, on condition of

refraining from pork. What was at first obedience to authority

became a second nature, and the Parsees to this day abstain

both from beef and pork. Though not required by their religion,

the double abstinence has had time to grow into a custom of

their tribe ; and custom, in the East, is a religion.

154 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITr OF

to such a public. They also sincerely think that

it is forbidden and abhorred by the Deity. Neither

could the prohibition be censured as religious

persecution. It might be religious in its origin,

but it would not be persecution for religion, since

nobody's religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The

only tenable ground of condemnation would be,

that with the personal tastes and self-regarding

concerns of individuals the public has no business

to interfere.

To come somewhat nearer home : the majority

of Spaniards consider it a gross impiety, offensive

in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to

worship him in any other manner than the Roman

Catholic ; and no other public worship is lawful

on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern

Europe look upon a married clergy as not only

irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, dis-

gusting. What do Protestants think of these

perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to

enforce them against non-Catholics ? Yet, if man-

kind are justified in interfering with each other's

liberty in things which do not concern the interests

of others, on what principle is it possible con-

sistently to exclude these cases ? or who can blame

people for desiring to suppress what they regard

as a scandal in the sight of God and man ? No

stronger case can be shown for prohibiting any-

thing which is regarded as a personal immorality.

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 155

than is made out for suppressing these practices

in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties j

and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of per-

secutors, and to say that we may persecute others

because we are right, and that they must not per-

secute us because they are wrong, we must beware

of admitting a principle of which we should resent

as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.

The preceding instances may be objected to,

although unreasonably, as drawn from contin-

gencies impossible among us : opinion, in this

country, not being likely to enforce abstinence

from meats, or to interfere with people for worship-

ping, and for either marrying or not marrying,

according to their creed or inclination. The

next example, however, shall be taken from an

interference with liberty which we have by no

means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puri-

tans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New

England, and in Great Britain at the time of the

Commonwealth, they have endeavoured, with

considerable success, to put down all public, and

nearly all private, amusements : especially music,

dancing, public games, or other assemblages for

purposes of diversion, and the theatre. There are

still in this country large bodies of persons by

whose notions of morality and religion these re-

creations are condemned; and those persons be-

longing chiefly to the middle class^ who are the

156 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

ascendant power in the present social and political

condition of the kingdom, it is by no means im-

possible that persons of these sentiments may at

some time or other command a majority in Par-

liament. How will the remaining portion of the

community hke to have the amusements that shall

be permitted to them regulated by the religious

and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and

Methodists ? Would they not, with considerable

peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious mem-

bers of society to mind their own business ? This

is precisely what should be said to every govern-

ment and every public, who have the pretension

that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they

think wrong. But if the principle of the preten-

sion be admitted, no one can reasonably object to

itsbeing acted on in the sense of the majority, or

other preponderating power in the country ; and

all persons must be ready to conform to the idea

of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by

the early settlers in New England, if a re-

hgious profession similar to theirs should ever

succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions

supposed to be declining have so often been known

to do.

To imagine another contingency, perhaps more

likely to be realized than the one last mentioned.

There is confessedly a strong tendency in the

modern world towards a democratic constitution of

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 157

society, accompanied or not by popular political

institutions. It is affirmed that in the country

where this tendency is most completely realized -

where both society and the government are most

democratic - the United States - the feeling of the

majority, to whom any appearance of a more

showy or costly style of living than they can hope

to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably

effectual sumptuary law, and that in many parts

of the Union it is really difficult for a person

possessing a very large income, to find any mode of

spending it, which will not incur popular disappro-

bation. Though such statements as these are

doubtless much exaggerated as a representation of

existing facts, the state of things they describe

is not only a conceivable and possible, but a pro-

bable result of democratic feeling, combined with

the notion that the public has a right to a veto on

the manner in which individuals shall spend their

incomes. We have only further to suppose a con-

siderable diffusion of Socialist opinions, and it may

become infamous in the eyes of the majority to

possess more property than some very small amount,

or any income not earned by manual labour.

Opinions similar in principle to these, already pre-

vail widely among the artizan class, and weigh

oppressively on those who are amenable to the

opinion chiefly of that class, namely, its own

members. It is known that the bad workmen

158 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

who form the majority of the operatives in many

branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that

bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as

good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through

piecework or otherwise, to earn by superior skill

or industry more than others can without it. And

they employ a moral police, which occasionally

becomes a physical one, to deter skilful workmen

from receiving, and employers from giving, a larger

remuneration for a more useful service. If the

public have any jurisdiction over private concerns,

I cannot see that these people are in fault, or that

any individual's particular public can be blamed

for asserting the same authority over his individual

conduct, which the general public asserts over

people in general.

But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases,

there are, in our own day, gross usurpations upon

the liberty of private life actually practised, and

still greater ones threatened with some expectation

of success, and opinions propounded which assert an

unlimited right in the public not only to prohibit

by law everything which it thinks wrong, but in

order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit

any number of things which it admits to be

innocent.

Under the name of preventing intemperance,

the people of one English colony, and of nearly

half the United States, have been interdicted by

I

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 159

law from making any use whatever of fermented

drinks, except for medical purposes : for prohibi-

tion of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to be,

prohibition of their use. And though the imprac-

ticability of executing the law has caused its repeal

in several of the States which had adopted it, in-

cluding the one from which it derives its name, an

attempt has notwithstanding been commenced, and

is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of

the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a

similar law in this country. The association, or

' Alliance ' as it terms itself, which has been formed

for this purpose, has acquired some notoriety

through the publicity given to a correspondence

between its Secretary and one of the very few

English public men who hold that a politician's

opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord

Stanley's share in this correspondence is calculated

to strengthen the hopes already built on him, by

those who know how rare such qualities as are

manifested in some of his public appearances, un-

happily are among those who figure in political

life. The organ of the Alliance, who would

' deeply deplore the recognition of any principle

which could be wrested to justify bigotry and per-

secution,' undertakes to point out the * broad and

impassable barrier ' which divides such principles

from those of the association. *A11 matters re-

lating to thought, opinion, conscience, appear to

160 LIMITS TO THE AUTHOEITY OF

me/ he says, * to be without the sphere of legisla-

tion ; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation,

subject onl}^ to a discretionary power vested in the

State itself^ and not in the individual, to be within

it/ No mention is made of a third class, different

from either of these, viz. acts and habits which

are not social, but individual ; although it is to this

class, surely, that the act of drinking fermented

liquors belongs. Selling fermented liquors, how-

ever, is trading, and trading is a social act. But

the infringement complained of is not on the

liberty of the seller, but on that of the buyer and

consumer ; since the State might just as well forbid

him to drink wine, as purposely make it impossible

for him to obtain it. The Secretary, however,

says, ' I claim, as a citizen, a right to legislate

whenever my social rights are invaded by the

social act of another.' And now for the definition

of these '' social rights/ * If anything invades my

social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink

does. It destroys my primary right of security, by

constantly creating and stimulating social disorder.

It invades my right of equality, by deriving a profit

from the creation of a misery I am taxed to sup-

port. It impedes my right to free moral and

intellectual development, by surrounding my path

with dangers, and by weakening and demoralizing

society, from which I have a right to claim mutual

aid and intercourse.' A theory of ' social rights,'

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 161

the like of which probably never before found its

way into distinct language : being nothing short of

this - that it is the absolute social right of every

individual, that every other individual shall act in

every respect exactly as he ought ; that whosoever

fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my

social right, and entitles me to demand from the

legislature the removal of the grievance. So

monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than

any single interference with liberty ; there is no

violation of liberty which it would not justify ; it

acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever,

except perhaps to that of holding opinions in

secret, without ever disclosing them : for, the

moment an opinion which I consider noxious

passes any one's lips, it invades all the * social

rights ' attributed to me by the Alliance. The

doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest

in each other's moral, intellectual, and even phy-

sical perfection, to be defined by each claimant

according to his own standard.

Another important example of illegitimate in-

terference with the rightful liberty of the individual,

not simply threatened, but long since carried into

triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legislation.

Without doubt, abstinence on one day in the

week, so far as the exigencies of life permit, from

the usual daily occupation, though in no respect

religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly

L

16a LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

i^eneficial custom. And inasmuch as this custom

cannot be observed without a general consent to

that effect among the industrious classes, therefore,

in so far as some persons by working may impose

the same necessity on others, it may be allowable

and right that the law should guarantee to each

the observance by others of the custom, by sus-

pending the greater operations of industry on a

particular day. But this justification, grounded on

the direct interest which others have in each indi-

viduaVs observance of the practice, does not apply

to the self-chosen occupations in which a person

may think fit to employ his leisure ; nor does it

hold good, in the smallest degree, for legal restric-

tions on amusements. It is true that the amuse-

ment of some is the day's work of others ; but the

pleasure, not to say the useful recreation, of many,

is worth the labour of a few, provided the occupation

is freely chosen, and can be freely resigned. The

operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all

worked on Sunday, seven days' work would have

to be given for six days' wages : but so long as the

great mass of employments are suspended, the

small number who for the enjoyment of others

must still work, obtain a proportional increase of

earnings ; and they are not obhged to follow those

occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument.

If a further remedy is sought, it might be found

in the establishment by custom of a holiday on

I

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 163

some other day of the week for those particular

classes of persons. The only ground, therefore, on

which restrictions on Sunday amusements can be

defended, must be that they are religiously wrong ;

a motive of legislation which never can be too

earnestly protested against. 'Deorum injurige Diis

curse.^ It remains to be proved that society or

any of its officers holds a commission from on high

to avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence,

which is not also a wrong to our fellow creatures.

The notion that it is one man's duty that another

should be religious, was the foundation of all the

religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and if ad-

mitted, would fully justify them. Though the

feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts

to stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the

resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like,

has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state

of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same.

It is a determination not to tolerate others in doing

what is permitted by their religion, because it is

not permitted by the persecutor's rehgion. It is

a belief that God not only abominates the act of

the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we

leave him unmolested.

I cannot refrain from adding to these examples

of the little account commonly made of human

liberty, the language of downright persecution

which breaks out from the press of this country,

l2

164 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OP

whenever it feels called on to notice the remark-

able phenomenon of Mormonism. Much might be

said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that

an alleged new revelation, and a religion founded

on it, the product of palpable imposture, not even

supported by the prestige of extraordinary qua-

lities in its founder, is believed by hundreds of

thousands, and has been made the foundation of a

society, in the age of newspapers, railways, and the

electric telegraph. What here concerns us is, that

this religion, like other and better religions, has its

martyrs ; that its prophet and founder was, for his

teaching, put to death by a mob ; that others of its

adherents lost their lives by the same lawless vio-

lence ; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body,

from the country in which they first grew up ;

while, now that they have been chased into a soli-

tary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this

country openly declare that it would be right (only

that it is not convenient) to send an expedition

against them, and compel them by force to conform

to the opinions of other people. The article of

the Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provo-

cative to the antipathy which thus breaks through

the ordinary restraints of religious tolerance, is its

sanction of polygamy; which, though permitted

to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems

to excite unquenchable animosity when practised

by persons who speak English, and profess to be a

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 165

kind of Christians. No one has a deeper disap-

probation than I have of this Mormon institution ;

both for other reasons, and because, far from being

in any way countenanced by the principle of

liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle,

being a mere rivetting of the chains of one half of

the community, and an emancipation of the other

from reciprocity of obligation towards them.

Still, it must be remembered that this relation is

as much voluntary on the part of the women con-

cerned in it, and who may be deemed the sufferers

by it, as is the case with any other form of the

marriage institution ; and however surprising this

fact may appear, it has its explanation in the

common ideas and customs of the world, which

teaching women to think marriage the one thing

needful, make it intelligible that many a woman

should prefer being one of several wives, to not

being a wife at all. Other countries are not asked

to recognise such unions, or release any portion of

their inhabitants from their own laws on the score

of Mormonite opinions. But when the dissen-

tients have conceded to the hostile sentiments of

others, far more than could justly be demanded ;

when they have left the countries to which their

doctrines were unacceptable, and established

themselves in a remote corner of the earth, which

they have been the first to render habitable to

human beings ; it is difficult to see on what prin-

166 LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF

ciples but those of tyranny they can be prevented

from living there under what laws they please,

provided they commit no aggression on other

nations, and allow perfect freedom of departure to

those who are dissatisfied with their ways. A re-

cent writer, in some respects of considerable merit,

proposes (to use his own words) not a crusade,

but a civilizade, against this polygamous commu-

nity, to put an end to what seems to him a retro-

grade step in civilization. It also appears so to

me, but I am not aware that any community has

a right to force another to be civilized. So long

as the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke as-

sistance from other communities, I cannot admit

that persons entirely unconnected with them ought

to step in and require that a condition of things

with which all who are directly interested appear

to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it

is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles

distant, who have no part or concern in it. Let

them send missionaries, if they please, to preach

against it; and let them, by any fair means (of

which silencing the teachers is not one,) oppose

the progress of similar doctrines among their own

people. If civilization has got the better of bar-

barism when barbarism had the world to itself, it

is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism,

after having been fairly got under, should revive

and conquer civilization. A civilization that can

SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 167

thus succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first

have become so degenerate, that neither its ap-

pointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has

the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up

for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization

receives notice to quit, the better. It can only go

on from bad to worse, until destroyed and rege-

nerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic

barbarians.

168 APPLICATIONS.

CHAPTER V.

APPLICATIONS.

rpHE principles asserted in these pages must be

-*- more generally admitted as tlie basis for dis-

cussion of details, before a consistent application of

them to all the various departments of government

and morals can be attempted with any prospect of

advantage. The few observations I propose to

make on questions of detail, are designed to illus-

trate the principles, rather than to follow them out

to their consequences. I offer, not so much appli-

cations, as specimens of application; which may

serve to bring into greater clearness the meaning

and limits of the two maxims which together form

the entire doctrine of this Essay, and to assist the

judgment in holding the balance between them,

in the cases where it appears doubtful which of

them is applicable to the case.

The maxims are, first, that the individual is not

accountable to society for his actions, in so far as

these concern the interests of no person but him-

self. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoid-

ance by other people if thought necessary by them

for their own good, are the only measures by which

APPLICATIONS. 169

society can justifiably express its dislike or disap-

probation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such

actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others,

the individual is accountable, and may be sub-

jected either to social or to legal punishment, if

society is of opinion that the one or the other is

requisite for its protection.

In the first place, it must by no means be sup-

posed, because damage, or probability of damage,

to the interests of others, can alone justify the

interference of society, that therefore it always

does justify such interference. In many cases,

an individual, in pursuing a legitimate object, ne-

cessarily and therefore legitimately causes pain

or loss to others, or intercepts a good which they

had a reasonable hope of obtaining. Such oppo-

sitions of interest between individuals often arise

from bad social institutions, but are unavoidable

while those institutions last ; and some would be

unavoidable under any institutions. Whoever

succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a

competitive examination ; whoever is preferred to

another in any contest for an object which both

desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from

their wasted exertion and their disappointment.

But it is, by common admission, better for the

general interest of mankind, that persons should

pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of

consequences. In other words, society admits no

170 APPLICATIONS.

right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed

competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffer-

ing ; and feels called on to interfere, only when

means of success have been employed which it is

contrary to the general interest to permit -

namely, fraud or treachery, and force.

Again, trade is a social act. Whoever under-

takes to sell any description of goods to the public,

does what affects the interest of other persons, and

of society in general ; and thus his conduct, in

principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society :

accordingly, it was once held to be the duty of

governments, in all cases which were considered of

importance, to fix prices, and regulate the pro-

cesses of manufacture. But it is now recognised,

though not till after a long struggle, that both

the cheapness and the good quality of commodities

are most effectually provided for by leaving the

producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole

check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying

themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine

of Free Trade, which rests on grounds different

from, though equally solid with, the principle of

individual liberty asserted in this Essay. Restric-

tions on trade, or on production for purposes

of trade, are indeed restraints ; and all restraint,

qua restraint, is an evil : but the restraints in

question affect only that part of conduct which

society is competent to restrain, and are wrong

APPLICATIONS. 171

solely because they do not really produce the re-

sults which it is desired to produce by them. As

the principle of individual liberty is not involved

in the doctrine of Free Trade, so neither is it in

most of the questions which arise respecting the

limits of that doctrine ; as for example, what

amount of public control is admissible for the

prevention of fraud by adulteration ; how far

sanitary precautions, or arrangements to protect

workpeople employed in dangerous occupations,

should be enforced on employers. Such ques-

tions involve considerations of liberty, only in so

far as leaving people to themselves is always

better, cceteris paribus, than controlling them :

but that they may be legitimately controlled for

these ends, is in principle undeniable. On the

other hand, there are questions relating to inter-

ference with trade, which are essentially questions

of liberty ; such as the Maine Law, already touched

upon ; the prohibition of the importation of opium

into China ; the restriction of the sale of poisons ;

all cases, in short, where the object of the inter-

ference is to make it impossible or difficult to

obtain a particular commodity. These inter-

ferences are objectionable, not as infringements on

the liberty of the producer or seller, but on that

of the buyer.

One of these examples, that of the sale of

poisons, opens a new question ; the proper limits

172 APPLICATIONS.

of what may be called the functions of police;

how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for

the prevention of crime, or of accident. It is one

of the undisputed functions of government to

take precautions against crime before it has been

committed, as well as to detect and punish it

afterwards. The preventive function of govern-

ment, however, is far more liable to be abused, to

the prejudice of liberty, than the punitory func-

tion; for there is hardly any part of the legiti-

mate freedom of action of a human being which

would not admit of being represented, and fairly

too, as increasing the facilities for some form or

other of delinquency. Nevertheless, if a public

authority, or even a private person, sees any one

evidently preparing to commit a crime, they are not

bound to look on inactive until the crime is com-

mitted, but may interfere to prevent it. If poisons

were never bought or used for any purpose except

the commission of murder, it wquld be right to

prohibit their manufacture and sale. They may,

however, be wanted not only for innocent but for

useful purposes, and restrictions cannot be imposed

in the one case without operating in the other.

Again, it is a proper office of public authority to

guard against accidents. If either a public officer

or any one else saw a person attempting to cross

a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe,

and there were no time to warn him of his

APPLICATIONS. 173

danger, they might seize him and turn him back,

without any real infringement of his liberty ; for

liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he

does not desire to fall into the river. Neverthe-

less, when there is not a certainty, but only a

danger of mischief, no one but the person himself

can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which

may prompt him to incur the risk : in this case,

therefore, (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in

some state of excitement or absorption incom-

patible with the full use of the reflecting faculty)

he ought, I conceive, to be only warned of the

danger ; not forcibly prevented from exposing

himself to it. Similar considerations, applied to

such a question as the sale of poisons, may enable

us to decide which among the possible modes of

regulation are or are not contrary to principle.

Such a precaution, for example, as that of labelling

the drug with some word expressive of its dan-

gerous character, may be enforced without violation

of liberty : the buyer cannot wish not to know

that the thing he possesses has poisonous qualities.

But to require in all cases the certificate of a

medical practitioner, would make it sometimes

impossible, always expensive, to obtain the article

for legitimate uses. The only mode apparent to

me, in which difficulties may be thrown in the

∙way of crime committed through this means,

without any infringement, worth taking into

174 APPLICATIONS.

account, upon tlie liberty of those who desire

the poisonous substance for other purposes, con-

sists in providing what, in the apt language of

Bentham, is called ' preappointed evidence.' This

provision is familiar to every one in the case of

contracts. It is usual and right that the law,

when a contract is entered into, should require

as the condition of its enforcing performance,

that certain formalities should be observed, such

as signatures, attestation of witnesses, and the

like, in order that in case of subsequent dispute,

there may be evidence to prove that the contract

was really entered into, and that there was nothing

in the circumstances to render it legally invalid :

the effect being, to throw great obstacles in the

way of fictitious contracts, or contracts made in

circumstances which, if known, would destroy their

validity. Precautions of a similar nature might

be enforced in the sale of articles adapted to be

instruments of crime. The seller, for example,

might be required to enter in a register the exact

time of the transaction, the name and address of

the buyer, the precise quality and quantity sold ;

to ask the purpose for which it was wanted, and

record the answer he received. When there was

no medical prescription, the presence of some

third person might be required, to bring home

the fact to the purchaser, in case there should

afterwards be reason to believe that the article had

APPLICATIONS. 175

been applied to criminal purposes. Such regula-

tions would in general be no material impediment

to obtaining the article, but a very considerable

one to making an improper use of it without de-

tection.

The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes

against itself by antecedent precautions, suggests

the obvious limitations to the maxim, that purely

self- regarding misconduct cannot properly be

meddled with in the way of prevention or punish-

ment. Drunkenness, for example, in ordinary

cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference ;

but I should deem it perfectly legitimate that a

person, who had once been convicted of any act of

violence to others under the influence of drink,

should be placed under a special legal restriction,

personal to himself; that if he were afterwards

found drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, and

that if when in that state he committed another

offence, the punishment to which he would be

liable for that other offence should be increased in

severity. The making himself drunk, in a person

whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is

a crime against others. So, again, idleness, except

in a person receiving support from the public, or

except when it constitutes a breach of contract,

cannot without tyranny be made a subject of legal

punishment ; but if, either from idleness or from

any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform

176 APPLICATIONS.

his legal duties to others, as for instance to support

his children, it is no tyranny to force him to fulfil

that obligation, by compulsory labour, if no other

means are available.

Again, there are many acts which, being directly

injurious only to the agents themselves, ought not

to be legally interdicted, but which, if done

publicly, are a violation of good manners, and

coming thus within the category of offences against

others, may rightfully be prohibited. Of this kind

are offences against decency ; on which it is un-

necessary to dwell, the rather as they are only con-

nected indirectly with our subject, the objection to

publicity being equally strong in the case of many

actions not in themselves condemnable, nor sup-

posed to be so.

There is another question to which an answer

must be found, consistent with the principles which

have been laid down. In cases of personal conduct

supposed to be blameable, but which respect for

liberty precludes society from preventing or punish-

ing, because the evil directly resulting falls wholly

on the agent ; what the agent is free to do, ought

other persons to be equally free to counsel or insti-

gate ? This question is not free from difficulty.

The case of a person who solicits another to do an

act, is not strictly a case of self-regarding conduct.

To give advice or offer inducements to any one, is

a social act, and may, therefore, like actions in

APPLICATIONS. 177

general which affect others, be supposed amenable

to social control. But a little reflection corrects

the first impression, by showing that if the case is

not strictly within the definition of individual

liberty, yet the reasons on which the principle of

individual liberty is grounded, are applicable to it.

If people must be allowed, in whatever concerns

only themselves, to act as seems best to themselves

at their own peril, they must equally be free to

consult with one another about what is fit to be so

done ; to exchange opinions, and give and receive

suggestions. Whatever it is permitted to do, it

must be permitted to advise to do. The question

is doubtful, only when the instigator derives a per-

sonal benefit from his advice ; when he makes it

his occupation, for subsistence or pecuniary gain,

to promote what society and the State consider to

be an evil. Then, indeed, a new element of com-

plication is introduced ; namely, the existence of

classes of persons with an interest opposed to what

is considered as the public weal, and whose mode

of living is grounded on the counteraction of it.

Ought this to be interfered with, or not ? Forni-

cation, for example, must be tolerated, and so must

gambling ; but should a person be free to be a

pimp, or to keep a gambling-house ? The case is

one of those which lie on the exact boundary line

between two principles, and it is not at once appa-

rent to which of the two it properly belongs.

M

178 APPLICATIONS.

There are arguments on both sides. On the side

of toleration it may be said, that the fact of fol-

lowing anything as an occupation, and living or

profiting by the practice of it, cannot make that

criminal which would otherwise be admissible ;

that the act should either be consistently permitted

or consistently prohibited ; that if the principles

which we have hitherto defended are true, society

has no business, as society, to decide anything to

be wrong which concerns only the individual ;

that it cannot go beyond dissuasion, and that one

person should be as free to persuade, as another to

dissuade. In opposition to this it may be con-

tended, that although the public, or the State, are

not warranted in authoritatively deciding, for pur-

poses of repression or punishment, that such or

such conduct affecting only the interests of the

individual is good or bad, they are fully justified

in assuming, if they regard it as bad, that its

being so or not is at least a disputable question :

That, this being supposed, they cannot be acting

wrongly in endeavouring to exclude the influence

of solicitations which are not disinterested, of in-

stigators who cannot possibly be impartial - who

have a direct personal interest on one side, and

that side the one which the State believes to be

wrong, and who confessedly promote it for per-

sonal objects only. There can surely, it may be

urged, be nothing lost, no sacrifice of good, by

APPLICATIONS. 179

SO ordering matters that persons shall make their

election, either wisely or foolishly, on their own

prompting, as free as possible from the arts of per-

sons who stimulate their inclinations for interested

purposes of their own. Thus (it may be said)

though the statutes respecting unlawful games are

utterly indefensible - though all persons should

be free to gamble in their own or each other's

houses, or in any place of meeting established by

their own subscriptions, and open only to the mem-

bers and their visitors - yet public gambling-houses

should not be permitted. It is true that the prohi-

bition is never effectual, and that, whatever amount

of tyrannical power may be given to the police,

gambling-houses can always be maintained under

other pretences ; but they may be compelled to con-

duct their operations with a certain degree of

secrecy and mystery, so that nobody knows any-

thing about them but those who seek them ; and

more than this, society ought not to aim at. There

is considerable force in these arguments. I will

not venture to decide whether they are sufficient

to justify the moral anomaly of punishing the

accessar}^ when the principal is (and must be) al-

lowed to go free ; of fining or imprisoning the pro-

curer, but not the fornicator, the gambling-house

keeper, but not the gambler. Still less ought the

common operations of buying and selKng to be inter-

fered with on analogous grounds. Almost every

M 2

180 APPLICATIONS.

article which is bought and sold may be used in

excess, and the sellers have a pecuniary interest in

encouraging that excess ; but no argument can be

founded on this, in favour, for instance, of the

Maine Law ; because the class of dealers in strong

drinksj though interested in their abuse, are indis-

pensably required for the sake of their legitimate

use. The interest, however, of these dealers in pro-

moting intemperance is a real evil_, and justifies the

State in imposing restrictions and requiring guaran-

tees which, but for that justification, would be in-

fringements of legitimate liberty.

A further question is, whether the State, while

it permits, should nevertheless indirectly discourage

conduct which it deems contrary to the best in-

terests of the agent ; whether, for example, it

should take measures to render the means of

drunkenness more costly, or add to the difficulty

of procuring them by limiting the number of the

places of sale. On this as on most other practical

questions, many distinctions require to be made.

To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making

them more difficult to be obtained, is a measure

differing only in degree from their entire prohibi-

tion ; and would be justifiable only if that were

justifiable. Every increase of cost is a prohibition,

to those whose means do not come up to the aug-

mented price ; and to those who do, it is a penalty

laid on them for gratifying a particular taste.

APPLICATIONS. 181

Their clioice of pleasures, and their mode of ex-

pending their income, after satisfying their legal

and moral obligations to the State and to indivi-

duals, are their own concern, and must rest with

their own judgment. These considerations may-

seem at first sight to condemn the selection of

stimulants as special subjects of taxation for pur-

poses of revenue. But it must be remembered

that taxation for fiscal purposes is absolutely in-

evitable; that in most countries it is necessary

that a considerable part of that taxation should be

indirect; that the State, therefore, cannot help

imposing penalties, which to some persons may be

prohibitory, on the use of some articles of consump-

tion. It is hence the duty of the State to consider,

in the imposition of taxes, what commodities the

consumers can best spare ; and a fortiori, to select

in preference those of which it deems the use, be-

yond a very moderate quantity, to be positively

injurious. Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, up

to the point which produces the largest amount of

revenue (supposing that the State needs all the

revenue which it yields) is not only admissible, but

to be approved of.

The question of making the sale of these com-

modities a more or less exclusive privilege, must

be answered differently, according to the purposes

to which the restriction is intended to be sub-

servient. All places of public resort require the

182 APPLICATIONS.

restraint of a police, and places of this kind pecu-

liarly, because offences against society are espe-

cially apt to originate there. It is, therefore, fit to

confine the power of selling these commodities (at

least for consumption on the spot) to persons of

known or vouched-for respectability of conduct;

to make such regulations respecting hours of open-

ing and closing as may be requisite for public sur-

veillance, and to withdraw the licence if breaches

of the peace repeatedly take place through the con-

nivance or incapacity of the keeper of the house,

or if it becomes a rendezvous for concocting and

preparing offences against the law. Any further

restriction I do not conceive to be, in principle,

justifiable. The limitation in number, for instance,

of beer and spirit houses, for the express purpose

of rendering them more difficult of access, and

diminishing the occasions of temptation, not only

exposes all to an inconvenience because there are

some by whom the facility would be abused, but

is suited only to a state of society in which the

labouring classes are avowedly treated as children

or savages, and placed under an education of

restraint, to fit them for future admission to the

privileges of freedom. This is not the principle

on which the labouring classes are professedly

governed in any free country ; and no person who

sets due value on freedom will give his adhesion

to their being so governed, unless after all efforts

APPLICATIOKS. 183

have been exhausted to educate them for freedom

and govern them as freemen, and it has been defi-

nitively proved that they can only be governed as

children. The bare statement of the alternative

shows the absurdity of supposing that such efforts

have been made in any case which needs be con-

sidered here. It is only because the institutions

of this country are a mass of inconsistencies, that

things find admittance into our practice which

belong to the system of despotic, or what is called

paternal^ government, while the general freedom

of our institutions precludes the exercise of the

amount of control necessary to render the restraint

of any real efficacy as a moral education.

It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay,

that the liberty of the individual, in things wherein

the individual is alone concerned, implies a cor-

responding liberty in any number of individuals to

regulate by mutual agreement such things as re-

gard them jointly, and regard no persons but them-

selves. This question presents no difficulty, so

long as the will of all the persons implicated re-

mains unaltered ; but since that will may change,

it is often necessary, even in things in which they

alone are concerned, that they should enter into

engagements with one another; and when they

do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those engage-

ments should be kept. Yet, in the laws, pro-

bably, of every country, this general rule has some

184 APPLICATIONS.

exceptions. Not only persons are not held to

engagements which violate the rights of third

parties, but it is sometimes considered a sufficient

reason for releasing them from an engagement,

that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most

other civilized countries, for example, an engage-

ment by which a person should sell himself, or

allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null

and void ; neither enforced by law nor by opinion.

The ground for thus limiting his power of volun-

tarily disposing of his own lot in life, is apparent,

and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The

reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of

others, with a person's voluntary acts, is considera-

tion for his liberty. His voluntary choice is evi-

dence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at

the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the

whole best provided for by allowing him to take

his own means of pursuing it. But by selling him-

self for a slave, he abdicates his liberty ; he fore-

goes any future use of it beyond that single act.

He therefore defeats, in his own case, the very

purpose which is the justification of allowing him

to dispose of himself. He is no longer free ; but is

thenceforth in a position which has no longer the

presumption in its favour, that would be afforded

by his voluntarily remaining in it. The principle

of freedom cannot require that he should be free

not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to

APPLICATIONS. 185

alienate his freedom. These reasons, the force of

which is so conspicuous in this peculiar case, are

evidently of far wider application ; yet a limit is

everywhere set to them by the necessities of life,

which continually require, not indeed that we

should resign our freedom, but that we should con-

sent to this and the other limitation of it. The

principle, however, which demands uncontrolled

freedom of action in all that concerns only the

agents themselves, requires that those who have

become bound to one another, in things which

concern no third party, should be able to release

one another from the engagement : and even with-

out such voluntary release, there are perhaps no

contracts or engagements, except those that relate

to money or money's worth, of which one can

venture to say that there ought to be no liberty

whatever of retractation. Baron Wilhelm von

Humboldt, in the excellent essay from which I

have already quoted, states it as his conviction,

that engagements which involve personal relations

or services, should never be legally binding beyond

a limited duration of time; and that the most

important of these engagements, marriage, having

the peculiarity that its objects are frustrated unless

the feelings of both the parties are in harmony

with it, should require nothing more than the

declared will of either party to dissolve it. This

subject is too important, and too complicated, to

186 APPLICATIONS.

be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch on it

only so far as is necessary for purposes of illustra-

tion. If the conciseness and generality of Baron

Humboldt's dissertation had not obliged him in

this instance to content himself with enunciating

his conclusion without discussing the premises, he

would doubtless have recognised that the question

cannot be decided on grounds so simple as those

to which he confines himself. When a person,

either by express promise ur by conduct, has en-

couraged another to rely upon his continuing to

act in a certain way - to build expectations and

calculations, and stake any part of his plan of life

upon that supposition - a new series of moral obli-

gations arises on his part towards that person,

which may possibly be overruled, but cannot be

ignored. And again, if the relation between two

contracting parties has been followed by conse-

quences to others ; if it has placed third parties in

any peculiar position, or, as in the case of marriage,

has even called third parties into existence, obli-

gations arise on the part of both the contracting

parties towards those third persons, the fulfilment

of which, or at all events the mode of fulfilment,

must be greatly affected by the continuance or dis-

ruption of the relation between the original parties

to the contract. It does not follow, nor can I

admit, that these obligations extend to requiring

the fulfilment of the contract at all costs to the

APPLICATIONS. 187

happiness of the reluctant party ; but they are a

necessary element in the question ; and even if, as

Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no

difference in the legal freedom of the parties to re-

lease themselves from the engagement (and I also

hold that they ought not to make much difference),

they necessarily make a great difference in the

moral freedom. A person is bound to take all these

circumstances into account, before resolving on a

step which may affect such important interests of

others ; and if he does not allow proper weight to

those interests, he is morally responsible for the

wrong. I have made these obvious remarks for the

better illustration of the general principle of

liberty, and not because they are at all needed on

the particular question, which, on the contrary, is

usually discussed as if the interest of children

was everything, and that of grown persons

nothing.

I have already observed that, owing to the ab-

sence of any recognised general principles, liberty

is often granted where it should be withheld, as

well as w^ithheld where it should be granted ; and

one of the cases in which, in the modern European

world, the sentiment of liberty is the strongest, is

a case where, in my view, it is altogether misplaced.

A person should be free to do as he likes in his

own concerns ; but he ought not to be free to do

as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext

ISS APPLICATIONS.

that the affairs of the other are his own affairs The

State, while it respects the liberty of each in what

specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a

vigilant control over his exercise of any power

which it allows him to possess over others. This

obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the

case of the foniily relations, a case, in its direct in-

fluence on human happiness, more important than

all others taken together. The almost despotic

power of husbi\nds over wives needs not be enlarged

upon here, because nothing more is needed for the

complete removal of the evil, than that wives

should have the same rights, and should receive

the protection of law in the same manner, as all

other persons ; and because, on this subject, the

defenders of established injustice do not avail them-

selves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly

as the champions of power. It is in the case of

children, that misapplied notions of liberty are a real

obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties.

One would almost think that a man's children

were supposed to be literally, and not metaphori-

cally, a part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the

smallest interference of law with his absolute and

exclusive control over them ; more jealous than of

almost any interference with his own freedom of

action : so much less do the generality of mankind

value liberty than power. Consider, for example,

the case of education. Is it not almost a self-eW-

APPLICATIONS. 1S9

dent axiom, that the State should require and

compel the educatiou, up to a certain standard, of

every human being who is born its citizen ? Yet

who is there that is not afraid to recognise and

assert this truth ? Hardly any one indeed will

deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of

the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the

father), after summoning a human being into the

world, to give to that being an education fitting

him to perform his part well in life towards

others and towards himself. But while this is

unanimously declared to be the fathers duty,

scarcely anybod}', in this country, will bear to hear

of obliging him to perform it. Instead of his being

required to make any exertion or sacrifice for

securing education to the child, it is left to his

choice to accept it or not when it is provided

oTatis ! It still remains unrecofrnised, that to brinor

a child into existence without a fair prospect of

being able, not only to provide food for its body,

but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral

crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and

against society ; and that if the parent does not

fulfil this oblio-ation, the State ouq-ht to see it ful-

filled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.

Were the duty of enforcing universal education

once admitted, there would be an end to the diffi-

culties about what the State should teach, and how

it should teach, which now convert the subject

100 APPLICATIONS.

into a mere battle-field for sects and parties,

causing the time and labour which should have

been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling

about education. If the government would make

up its mind to require for every child a good edu-

cation, it might save itself the trouble of iwoviding

one. It might leave to parents to obtain the edu-

cation where and how they pleased, and content

itself with helping to pay the school fees of the

poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire

school expenses of those who have no one else to

pay for them. The objections which are urged

with reason against State education, do not apply

to the enforcement of education by the State, but

to the State's taking upon itself to direct that

education : which is a totally different thing.

That the whole or any large part of the edu-

cation of the people should be in State hands,

I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that

has been said of the importance of individuality

of character, and diversity in opinions and modes

of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable

importance, diversity of education. A general

State education is a mere contrivance for moulding

people to be exactly like one another : and as the

mould in which it casts them is that which pleases

the predominant power in the government,

whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aris-

tocracy, or the majority of the existing generation

APPLICATIONS. 191

in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it

establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by

natural tendency to one over the body. An edu-

cation established and controlled by the State

should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among

many competing experiments, carried on for the

purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the

others up to a certain standard of excellence. Unless,

indeed, when society in general is in so backward

a state that it could not or would not provide

for itself any proper institutions of education, un-

less the government undertook the task : then,

indeed, the government may, as the less of two

great evils, take upon itself the business of schools

and universities, as it may that of joint stock

companies, when private enterprise, in a shape

fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does

not exist in the country. But in general, if the

country contains a sufficient number of persons

qualified to provide education under government

auspices, the same persons would be able and willing

to give an equally good education on the voluntary

principle, under the assurance of remuneration

afforded by a law rendering education compulsory,

combined with State aid to those unable to defray

the expense.

The instrument for enforcing the law could be

no other than public examinations, extendiug to

all children, and beginning at an early age. An

192 APPLICATIONS.

age might be fixed at whicli every cliild must be

examined, to ascertain if he (or she) is able to read.

If a child proves unable, the father, unless he has

some sufficient ground of excuse, might be subjected

to a moderate fine, to be worked out, if necessary,

by his labour, and the child might be put to school

at his expense. Once in every year the examina-

tion should be renewed, with a gradually extending

range of subjects, so as to make the universal

acquisition, and what is more^ retention, of a cer-

tain minimum of general knowledge, virtually

compulsory. Beyond that minimum, there should

be voluntary examinations on all subjects, at

which all who come up to a certain standard of pro-

ficiency might claim a certificate. To prevent the

State from exercising, through these arrangements,

an improper influence over opinion, the know-

ledge required for passing an examination (beyond

the merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such

as languages and their use) should, even in the

higher classes of examinations, be confined to facts

and positive science exclusively. The examina-

tions on religion, politics, or other disputed topics,

should not turn on the truth or falsehood of

opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and

such an opinion is held, on such grounds, by such

authors, or schools, or churches. Under this system,

the rising generation would be no worse off in

regard to all disputed truths, than they are at pre-

APPLICATIONS. 193

sent ; they would be brought up either churchmen

or dissenters as they now are, the State merely

taking care that they should be instructed church-

men, or instructed dissenters. There would be

nothinof to hinder them from beincr taught reliojion,

if their parents chose, at the same schools where

they were taught other things. All attempts by

the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on

disputed subjects, are evil ; but it may very properl3^

offer to ascertain and certify that a person possesses

the knowledge, requisite to make his conclusions,

on any given subject, worth attending to. A

student of philosophy would be the better for being

able to stand an examination both in Locke and in

Kant, whichever of the two he takes up with, or

even if with neither : and there is no reasonable

objection to examining an atheist in the evidences

of Christianity, provided he is not required to pro-

fess a belief in them. The examinations, however,

in the higher branches of knowledge should, I con-

ceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giving

too dangerous a power to governments, were they

allowed to exclude any one from professions, even

from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency

of qualifications : and I think, with Wilhelm von

Humboldt, that degrees, or other public certificates

of scientific or professional acquirements, should be

given to all who present themselves for examina-

tion, and stand the test ; but that such certificates

N

194 APPLICATIONS.

should confer no advantage over competitors, other

than the weight which may be attached to their

testimony by pubHc opinion.

It is not in the matter of education only, that

misplaced notions of liberty prevent moral obliga-

tions on the part of parents from being recognised,

and legal obligations from being imposed, where

there are the strongest grounds for the former

always, and in many cases for the latter also. The

fact itself, of causing the existence of a human

being, is one of the most responsible actions in

the range of human life. To undertake this re-

sponsibility- to bestow a life which may be either

a curse or a blessing - unless the being on whom it

is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary

chances of a desirable existence, is a crime agaiost

that being. And in a country either over-peopled,

or threatened with being so, to produce children,

beyond a very small number, with the effect of

reducing the reward of labour by their competition,

is a serious offence against all who live by the re-

muneration of their labour. The laws which, in

many countries on the Continent, for bidmarriage

unless the parties can show that they have the

means of supporting a family, do not exceed the

legitimate powers of the State : and whether such

laws be expedient or not (a question mainly de-

pendent on local circumstances and feelings), they

are not objectionable as violations of liberty.

APPLICATIONS. 195

Such laws are interferences of the State to prohibit

a mischievous act - an act injurious to others, which

ought to be a subject of reprobation, and social

stigma, even when it is not deemed expedient to

superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas

of liberty, which bend so easily to real infringe-

ments of the freedom of the individual in thino^s

which concern only himself, would repel the at-

tempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations

when the consequence of their indulgence is a life

or lives of wretchedness and depravity to the off-

spring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently

within reach to be in any way affected by their

actions. When we compare the strange respect of

mankind for liberty, with their strange want of

respect for it, we might imagine that a man had an

indispensable right to do harm to others, and no

right at all to please himself without giving pain

to any one.

I have reserved for the last place a large class

of questions respecting the limits of government

interference, which, though closely connected with

the subject of this Essay, do not, in strictness, be-

long to it. These are cases in which th(C) reasons

against interference do not turn upon the prin-

ciple of liberty : the question is not about restrain-

ing the actions of individuals, but about helping

them : it is asked whether the government should

do, or cause to be done, something for their

n2

196 APPLICATIONS.

benefit, instead of leaving it to be done bj them-

selves, individually, or in voluntary combination.

The objections to government interference,

when it is not such as to involve infringement of

liberty, may be of three kinds.

The first is, when the thing to be done is likely

to be better done by individuals than by the

government. Speaking generally, there is no one

so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how

or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are

personally interested in it. This principle con-

demns the interferences, once so common, of the

legislature, or the officers of government, with the

ordinary processes of industry. But this part of

the subject has been sufficiently enlarged upon by

political economists, and is not particularly related

to the principles of this Essay.

The second objection is more nearly allied to

our subject. In many cases, though individuals

may not do the particular thing so well, on the

average, as the officers of government, it is never-

theless desirable that it should be done by them,

rather than by the government, as a means to

their own mental education - a mode of strength-

ening their active faculties, exercising their judg-

ment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of

the subjects with which they are thus left to

deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, re-

commendation of jury trial (in cases not political) ;

APPLICATIONS. 197

of free and popular local and municipal institu-

tions; of the conduct of industrial and philan-

thropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These

are not questions of liberty, and are connected with

that subject only by remote tendencies ; but they are

questions of development. It belongs to a different

occasion from the present to dwell on these things

as parts of national education ; as being, in truth,

the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part

of the political education of a free people, taking

them out of the narrow circle of personal and family

selfishness, and accustoming them to the com-

prehension of joint interests, the management of

joint concerns - habituating them to act from

public or semi-public motives, and guide their con-

duct by aims which unite instead of isolating

them from one another. Without these habits and

powers, a free constitution can neither be worked

nor preserved ; as is exemplified by the too-often

transitory nature of political freedom in countries

where it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of

local liberties. The management of purely local

business by the localities, and of the great enter-

prises of industry by the union of those who

voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further

recommended by all the advantages which have

been set forth in this Essay as belonging to indi-

viduality of development, and diversity of modes

of action. Government operations tend to be

198 APPLICATIONS.

everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary

associations, on the contrary, there are varied ex-

periments, and endless diversity of experience.

What the State can usefully do, is to make itself

a central depository, and active circulator and dif-

fuser, of the experience resulting from many trials.

Its business is to enable each experimentalist to

benefit by the experiments of others ; instead of

tolerating no experiments but its own.

The third, and most cogent reason for restricting

the interference of government, is the great evil of

adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function

superadded to those already exercised by the

government, causes its influence over hopes and

fears to be more widely diffused, and converts,

more and more, the active and ambitious part of

the public into hangers-on of the government, or

of some party which aims at becoming the govern-

ment. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the

insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies,

the universities, and the public charities, were

all of them branches of the government; if, in

addition, the municipal corporations and local

boards, with all that now devolves on them, be-

came departments of the central administration ;

if the employes of all these different enterprises

were appointed and paid by the government,

and looked to the government for every rise in

life ; not all the freedom of the press and popu-

APPLICATIONS. 199

lar constitution of the legislature would make this

or any other country free otherwise than in name.

And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently

and scientifically the administrative machinery was

constructed - the more skilful the arrangements

for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads

with which to work it. In England it has of late

been proposed that all the members of the civil

service of government should be selected by com-

petitive examination, to obtain for those employ-

ments the most intelligent and instructed persons

procurable ; and much has been said and written

for and against this proposal. One of the argu-

ments most insisted on by its opponents, is that the

occupation of a permanent official servant of the

State does not hold out sufficient prospects of

emolument and importance to attract the highest

talents, which will always be able to find a more

inviting career in the professions, or in the service

of companies and other public bodies. One would

not have been surprised if this argument had

been used by the friends of the proposition, as an

answer to its principal difficulty. Coming from the

opponents it is strange enough. What is urged

as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed

system. If indeed all the high talent of the

country could be drawn into the service of the

government, a proposal tending to bring about

that result might well inspire uneasiness. If

200 APPLICATIONS.

every part of the business of society which required

organized concert, or large and comjDrehensive

views, were in the hands of the government, and

if government offices were universally filled by

the ablest men, all the enlarged culture and prac-

tised intelligence in the country, except the purely

speculative, would be concentrated in a numerous

bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest of the com-

munity would look for all things : the multitude

for direction and dictation in all they had to do ;

the able and aspiring for personal advancement.

To be admitted into the ranks of this bureau-

cracy, and when admitted, to rise therein, would be

the sole objects of ambition. Under this regime,

not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for

want of practical experience, to criticize or check

the mode of operation of the bureaucracy, but

even if the accidents of despotic or the natural

working of popular institutions occasionally raise

to the summit a ruler or rulers of reforming

inclinations, no reform can be effected which is

contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy. Such

is the melancholy condition of the Russian empire,

as shown in the accounts of those who have had

sufficient opportunity of observation. The Czar

himself is powerless against the bureaucratic body ;

he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he

cannot govern without them, or against their will.

On every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by

APPLICATIONS. 201

merely refraining from carrying it into effect. In

countries of more advanced civilization aud of a

more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed

to expect everything to be done for them by the

State, or at least to do nothing for themselves

without asking from the State not only leave to

do it, but even how it is to be done, naturally hold

the State responsible for all evil which befals

them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of

patience, they rise against the government and

make what is called a revolution ; whereupon

somebody else, with or without legitimate authority

from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his

orders to the bureaucracy, and everything goes

on much as it did before ; the bureaucracy being

unchanged, and nobody else being capable of

taking their place.

A very different spectacle is exhibited among a

people accustomed to transact their own business.

In France, a large part of the people having been

engaged in military service, many of whom have

held at least the rank of non-commissioned officers,

there are in every popular insurrection several

persons competent to take the lead, and improvise

some tolerable plan of action. What the French

are in military affairs, the Americans are in every

kind of civil business ; let them be left without a

government, every body of Americans is able to

improvise one, and to carry on that or any other

202 APPLICATIONS.

public business with a sufficient amount of intelli-

gence, order, and decision. This is what every

free people ought to be : and a people capable of

this is certain to be free ; it will never let itself be

enslaved by any man or body of men because these

are able to seize and pull the reins of the central

administration. No bureaucracy can hope to

make such a people as this do or undergo any-

thing that they do not like. But where every-

thing is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to

which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be

done at all. The constitution of such countries is

an organization of the experience and practical

ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the

purpose of governing the rest ; and the more per-

fect that organization is in itself, the more suc-

cessful in drawinof to itself and educating for itself

the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks

of the community, the more complete is the bon-

dage of all, the members of the bureaucrac}^ in-

cluded. For the governors are as much the slaves

of their organization and discipline, as the go-

verned are of the governors. A Chinese mandarin

is as much the tool and creature of a despotism as

the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is

to the utmost degree of abasement the slave of his

order, though the order itself exists for the collec-

tive power and importance of its members.

It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorp-

APPLICATIONS. 203

tion of all the principal ability of the country into

the governiDg body is fatal, sooner or later, to the

mental activity and progressiveness of the body

itself. Banded together as they are - working a

system which, like all systems, necessarily proceeds

in a great measure by fixed rules - the official

body are under the constant temptation of sinking

into indolent routine, or, if they now and then de-

sert that mill-horse round, of rushing into some

half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy

of some leading member of the corps : and the

sole check to these closely allied, though seemingly

opposite, tendencies, the only stimulus which can

keep the ability of the body itself up to a high

standard, is liability to the watchful criticism of

equal ability outside the body. It is indispensable,

therefore, that the means should exist, indepen-

dently of the government, of forming such ability,

and furnishing it with the opportunities and expe-

rience necessary for a correct judgment of great

practical affairs. If we would possess permanently

a skilful and efficient body of functionaries - above

all, a body able to originate and willing to adopt

improvements ; if we would not have our bureau-

cracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this body

must not engross all the occupations which form

and cultivate the faculties required for the govern-

ment of mankind.

To determine the point at which evils, so for-

204 APPLICATIONS.

midable to human freedom and advancement,

begin, or rather at which they begin to predomi-

nate over the benefits attending the collective

application of the force of society, under its re-

cognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles

which stand in the way of its well-being; to

secure as much of the advantages of centralized

power and intelligence, as can be had witliout turn-

ing into governmental channels too great a propor-

tion of the general activity - is one of the most dif-

ficult and complicated questions in the art of

government. It is, in a great measure, a question

of detail, in which many and various considera-

tions must be kept in view, and no absolute rule

can be laid down. But I believe that the practical

principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be

kept in view, the standard by which to test all

arrangements intended for overcoming the diffi-

culty, may be conveyed in these words : the

greatest dissemination of power consistent with

efficiency ; but the greatest possible centralization

of information, and diffusion of it from the centre.

Thus, in municipal administration, there would be,

as in the New England States, a very minute divi-

sion among separate officers, chosen by the locali-

ties, of all business which is not better left to the

persons directly interested ; but besides this, there

would be, in each department of local affairs,

a central superintendence, forming a branch of the

APPLICATIONS. 205

general government. The organ of this superin-

tendence would concentrate, as in a focus, the

variety of information and experience derived

from the conduct of that branch of public business

in all the localities, from everything analogous

which is done in foreign countries, and from the

general principles of political science. This cen-

tral organ should have a right to know all that is

done, and its special duty should be that of

making the knowledge acquired in one place

available for others. Emancipated from the petty

prejudices and narrow views of a locality by its

elevated position and comprehensive sphere of

observation, its advice would naturally carry much

authority ; but its actual power, as a permanent

institution, should, I conceive, be limited to com-

pelling the local officers to obey the laws laid

down for their guidance. In all things not pro-

vided for by general rules, those officers should be

left to their own judgment, under responsibility

to their constituents. For the violation of rules,

they should be responsible to law, and the rules

themselves should be laid down by the legislature ;

the central administrative authority only watching

over their execution, and if they were not properly

carried into effect, appealing, according to the

nature of the case, to the tribunals to enforce the

law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the func-

tionaries who had not executed it accordinof to its

206 APPLICATIONS.

spirit. Such, in its general conception, is the

central superintendence which the Poor Law Board

is intended to exercise ever the administrators of

the Poor Rate throughout the country. Whatever

powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were

right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the

cure of rooted habits of maladministration in mat-

ters deeply affecting not the localities merely, but

the whole community ; since no locality has a moral

right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of

pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other locali-

ties, and impairing the moral and physical condi-

tion of the whole labouring community. The

powers of administrative coercion and subordinate

legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board (but

which, owing to the state of opinion on the

subject, are very scantily exercised by them),

though perfectly justifiable in a case of first-rate

national interest, would be wholly out of place

in the superintendence of interests purely local.

But a central organ of information and instruc-

tion for all the localities, would be equally valuable

in all departments of administration. A govern-

ment cannot have too much of the kind of

activity which does not impede, but aids and

stimulates, individual exertion and development.

The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth

the activity and powers of individuals and bodies,

it substitutes its own activity for theirs ; when,

APPLICATIONS. 207

instead of informing, advising, and, upon occa-

sion, denouncing, it makes them work in fetters,

or bids them stand aside and does their work in-

stead of them. The worth of a State, in the long

run, is the worth of the individuals composing it ;

and a State which postpones the interests of their

mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of

administrative skill, or of that semblance of it

which practice gives, in the details of business ; a

State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may

be more docile instruments in its hands even for

beneficial purposes - will find that with small men

no great thing can really be accomplished ; and

that the perfection of machinery to which it has

sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it

nothing, for want of the vital power which, in

order that the machine might work more smoothly,

it has preferred to banish.

THE E2^D.

LONDON ;

SA^tLI, AND EDWARDS, PEINTKES, CHANDOS-STKEET,

COVBNT GARDEN.

7/.200i.OS*iOOf&5

;Cl"^

%w

m

or:; ■ c

^

;^

E^i

∙^'^^

(^ CSfc^'

■~<:s.<^(^

' ^3B^^

>

\ ' ^a^x

, c^^

^y-'.^s:(.

_<^ ' ^^fej^

^ ^^

C,c^(.

^'^.

CO'

C C V

c,S C(' ┬!<∙:

-

-C r.j.

^VCXC. OC-.

■:

:C<".-

c;:<_.i, c^tf:

c:

tL('c

^<

<^"X< ecc

C<1

^■

fi^ACCSr

CC

C^

^5^'

co-vicca:

<"L

^C~

. CC<(

V.OC

":

c.

<: c

'■'' V C'XC

■cc:

^

c ct

■^ - ■ C Cvft.^

C<-.,

':"-'-: -^

■'<.'

OS

^"'

r' .r ,- ,

t",c<' ' c d^

oS

CT '

f^rvrccoC" .

'C'

y-'c c<:. .

<3&

ci''

' CCC c

<3wJl'

^

" <. < i:

<^

^j^'

<:<.

"^^ ->-<::. <;_c

<^

^<;

^ ■ c

V v..,,<^^^

1 1

;^-<

^ , ■ ∙ '^

x" ,ccc

.c

L <

^' ^

V Vii'- V.' : C C<

c <^