Аннотация: 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.