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Семья Трампа - попаданцы в Постатом!!!!

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    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
  
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  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."
  
  
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  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.
  
  
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