On Liberty.
By John Stuart Mill.
With an Introduction by W. L. Courtney, LL.D.
The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.
London and Felling-on-Tyne
New York and Melbourne
_To 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 insufficient 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 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._
INTRODUCTION.
I.
John Stuart Mill was born on 20th May 1806. He was a delicate child, and
the extraordinary education designed by his father was not calculated to
develop and improve his physical powers. "I never was a boy," he says;
"never played cricket." His exercise was taken in the form of walks with
his father, during which the elder Mill lectured his son and examined
him on his work. It is idle to speculate on the possible results of a
different treatment. Mill remained delicate throughout his life, but was
endowed with that intense mental energy which is so often combined with
physical weakness. His youth was sacrificed to an idea; he was designed
by his father to carry on his work; the individuality of the boy was
unimportant. A visit to the south of France at the age of fourteen, in
company with the family of General Sir Samuel Bentham, was not without
its influence. It was a glimpse of another atmosphere, though the
studious habits of his home life were maintained. Moreover, he derived
from it his interest in foreign politics, which remained one of his
characteristics to the end of his life. In 1823 he was appointed junior
clerk in the Examiners' Office at the India House.
Mill's first essays were written in the _Traveller_ about a year before
he entered the India House. From that time forward his literary work was
uninterrupted save by attacks of illness. His industry was stupendous.
He wrote articles on an infinite variety of subjects, political,
metaphysical, philosophic, religious, poetical. He discovered Tennyson
for his generation, he influenced the writing of Carlyle's _French
Revolution_ as well as its success. And all the while he was engaged in
studying and preparing for his more ambitious works, while he rose step
by step at the India Office. His _Essays on Unsettled Questions in
Political Economy_ were written in 1831, although they did not appear
until thirteen years later. His _System of Logic_, the design of which
was even then fashioning itself in his brain, took thirteen years to
complete, and was actually published before the _Political Economy_. In
1844 appeared the article on Michelet, which its author anticipated
would cause some discussion, but which did not create the sensation he
expected. Next year there were the "Claims of Labour" and "Guizot," and
in 1847 his articles on Irish affairs in the _Morning Chronicle_. These
years were very much influenced by his friendship and correspondence
with Comte, a curious comradeship between men of such different
temperament. In 1848 Mill published his _Political Economy_, to which he
had given his serious study since the completion of his _Logic_. His
articles and reviews, though they involved a good deal of work--as, for
instance, the re-perusal of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ in the
original before reviewing Grote's _Greece_--were recreation to the
student. The year 1856 saw him head of the Examiners' Office in the
India House, and another two years brought the end of his official work,
owing to the transfer of India to the Crown. In the same year his wife
died. _Liberty_ was published shortly after, as well as the _Thoughts on
Parliamentary Reform_, and no year passed without Mill making important
contributions on the political, philosophical, and ethical questions of
the day.
Seven years after the death of his wife, Mill was invited to contest
Westminster. His feeling on the conduct of elections made him refuse to
take any personal action in the matter, and he gave the frankest
expression to his political views, but nevertheless he was elected by a
large majority. He was not a conventional success in the House; as a
speaker he lacked magnetism. But his influence was widely felt. "For the
sake of the House of Commons at large," said Mr. Gladstone, "I rejoiced
in his advent and deplored his disappearance. He did us all good." After
only three years in Parliament, he was defeated at the next General
Election by Mr. W. H. Smith. He retired to Avignon, to the pleasant
little house where the happiest years of his life had been spent in the
companionship of his wife, and continued his disinterested labours. He
completed his edition of his father's _Analysis of the Mind_, and also
produced, in addition to less important work, _The Subjection of Women_,
in which he had the active co-operation of his step-daughter. A book on
Socialism was under consideration, but, like an earlier study of
Sociology, it never was written. He died in 1873, his last years being
spent peacefully in the pleasant society of his step-daughter, from
whose tender care and earnest intellectual sympathy he caught maybe a
far-off reflection of the light which had irradiated his spiritual life.
II.
The circumstances under which John Stuart Mill wrote his _Liberty_ are
largely connected with the influence which Mrs. Taylor wielded over his
career. The dedication is well known. It contains the most extraordinary
panegyric on a woman that any philosopher has ever penned. "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." It is easy for the ordinary worldly cynicism to curl a
sceptical lip over sentences like these. There may be exaggeration of
sentiment, the necessary and inevitable reaction of a man who was
trained according to the "dry light" of so unimpressionable a man as
James Mill, the father; but the passage quoted is not the only one in
which John Stuart Mill proclaims his unhesitating belief in the
intellectual influence of his wife. The treatise on _Liberty_ was
written especially under her authority and encouragement, but there are
many earlier references to the power which she exercised over his mind.
Mill was introduced to her as early as 1831, at a dinner-party at Mr.
Taylor's house, where were present, amongst others, Roebuck, W. J. Fox,
and Miss Harriet Martineau. The acquaintance rapidly ripened into
intimacy and the intimacy into friendship, and Mill was never weary of
expatiating on all the advantages of so singular a relationship. In some
of the presentation copies of his work on _Political Economy_, he wrote
the following dedication:--"To Mrs. John Taylor, who, of all persons
known to the author, is the most highly qualified either to originate or
to appreciate speculation on social advancement, this work is with the
highest respect and esteem dedicated." An article on the enfranchisement
of women was made the occasion for another encomium. We shall hardly be
wrong in attributing a much later book, _The Subjection of Women_,
published in 1869, to the influence wielded by Mrs. Taylor. Finally, the
pages of the _Autobiography_ ring with the dithyrambic praise of his
"almost infallible counsellor."
The facts of this remarkable intimacy can easily be stated. The
deductions are more difficult. There is no question that Mill's
infatuation was the cause of considerable trouble to his acquaintances
and friends. His father openly taxed him with being in love with another
man's wife. Roebuck, Mrs. Grote, Mrs. Austin, Miss Harriet Martineau
were amongst those who suffered because they made some allusion to a
forbidden subject. Mrs. Taylor lived with her daughter in a lodging in
the country; but in 1851 her husband died, and then Mill made her his
wife. Opinions were widely divergent as to her merits; but every one
agreed that up to the time of her death, in 1858, Mill was wholly lost
to his friends. George Mill, one of Mill's younger brothers, gave it as
his opinion that she was a clever and remarkable woman, but "nothing
like what John took her to be." Carlyle, in his reminiscences, described
her with ambiguous epithets. She was "vivid," "iridescent," "pale and
passionate and sad-looking, a living-romance heroine of the royalist
volition and questionable destiny." It is not possible to make much of a
judgment like this, but we get on more certain ground when we discover
that Mrs. Carlyle said on one occasion that "she is thought to be
dangerous," and that Carlyle added that she was worse than dangerous,
she was patronising. The occasion when Mill and his wife were brought
into close contact with the Carlyles is well known. The manuscript of
the first volume of the _French Revolution_ had been lent to Mill, and
was accidentally burnt by Mrs. Mill's servant. Mill and his wife drove
up to Carlyle's door, the wife speechless, the husband so full of
conversation that he detained Carlyle with desperate attempts at
loquacity for two hours. But Dr. Garnett tells us, in his _Life of
Carlyle_, that Mill made a substantial reparation for the calamity for
which he was responsible by inducing the aggrieved author to accept half
of the £200 which he offered. Mrs. Mill, as I have said, died in 1858,
after seven years of happy companionship with her husband, and was
buried at Avignon. The inscription which Mill wrote for her grave is too
characteristic to be omitted:--"Her great and loving heart, her noble
soul, her clear, powerful, original, and comprehensive intellect, made
her the guide and support, the instructor in wisdom and the example in
goodness, as she was the sole earthly delight of those who had the
happiness to belong to her. As earnest for all public good as she was
generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been
felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will be in
those still to come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects like
hers, this earth would already become the hoped-for Heaven." These lines
prove the intensity of Mill's feeling, which is not afraid of abundant
verbiage; but they also prove that he could not imagine what the effect
would be on others, and, as Grote said, only Mill's reputation could
survive these and similar displays.
Every one will judge for himself of this romantic episode in Mill's
career, according to such experience as he may possess of the
philosophic mind and of the value of these curious but not infrequent
relationships. It may have been a piece of infatuation, or, if we prefer
to say so, it may have been the most gracious and the most human page in
Mill's career. Mrs. Mill may have flattered her husband's vanity by
echoing his opinions, or she may have indeed been an Egeria, full of
inspiration and intellectual helpfulness. What usually happens in these
cases,--although the philosopher himself, through his belief in the
equality of the sexes, was debarred from thinking so,--is the extremely
valuable action and reaction of two different classes and orders of
mind. To any one whose thoughts have been occupied with the sphere of
abstract speculation, the lively and vivid presentment of concrete fact
comes as a delightful and agreeable shock. The instinct of the woman
often enables her not only to apprehend but to illustrate a truth for
which she would be totally unable to give the adequate philosophic
reasoning. On the other hand, the man, with the more careful logical
methods and the slow processes of formal reasoning, is apt to suppose
that the happy intuition which leaps to the conclusion is really based
on the intellectual processes of which he is conscious in his own case.
Thus both parties to the happy contract are equally pleased. The
abstract truth gets the concrete illustration; the concrete illustration
finds its proper foundation in a series of abstract inquiries. Perhaps
Carlyle's epithets of "iridescent" and "vivid" refer incidentally to
Mrs. Mill's quick perceptiveness, and thus throw a useful light on the
mutual advantages of the common work of husband and wife. But it savours
almost of impertinence even to attempt to lift the veil on a mystery
like this. It is enough to say, perhaps, that however much we may
deplore the exaggeration of Mill's references to his wife, we recognise
that, for whatever reason, the pair lived an ideally happy life.
It still, however, remains to estimate the extent to which Mrs. Taylor,
both before and after her marriage with Mill, made actual contributions
to his thoughts and his public work. Here I may be perhaps permitted to
avail myself of what I have already written in a previous work.[1] Mill
gives us abundant help in this matter in the _Autobiography_. When first
he knew her, his thoughts were turning to the subject of Logic. But his
published work on the subject owed nothing to her, he tells us, in its
doctrines. It was Mill's custom to write the whole of a book so as to
get his general scheme complete, and then laboriously to re-write it in
order to perfect the phrases and the composition. Doubtless Mrs. Taylor
was of considerable help to him as a critic of style. But to be a critic
of doctrine she was hardly qualified. Mill has made some clear
admissions on this point. "The only actual revolution which has ever
taken place in my modes of thinking was already complete,"[2] he says,
before her influence became paramount. There is a curiously humble
estimate of his own powers (to which Dr. Bain has called attention),
which reads at first sight as if it contradicted this. "During the
greater part of my literary life I have performed the office in relation
to her, which, from a rather early period, I had considered as the most
useful part that I was qualified to take in the domain of thought, that
of an interpreter of original thinkers, and mediator between them and
the public." So far it would seem that Mill had sat at the feet of his
oracle; but observe the highly remarkable exception which is made in the
following sentence:--"For I had always a humble opinion of my own powers
as an original thinker, _except in abstract science (logic, metaphysics,
and the theoretic principles of political economy and politics.)_"[3] If
Mill then was an original thinker in logic, metaphysics, and the science
of economy and politics, it is clear that he had not learnt these from
her lips. And to most men logic and metaphysics may be safely taken as
forming a domain in which originality of thought, if it can be honestly
professed, is a sufficient title of distinction.
Mrs. Taylor's assistance in the _Political Economy_ is confined to
certain definite points. The purely scientific part was, we are assured,
not learnt from her. "But it was chiefly her influence which gave to the
book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of political economy that had any pretensions to be
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which
those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in
making the proper distinction between the laws of the production of
wealth, which are real laws of Nature, dependent on the properties of
objects, and the modes of its distribution, which, subject to certain
conditions, depend on human will.... _I had indeed partially learnt this
view of things from the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of
St. Simonians_; but it was made a living principle, pervading and
animating the book, by my wife's promptings."[4] The part which is
italicised is noticeable. Here, as elsewhere, Mill thinks out the matter
by himself; the concrete form of the thoughts is suggested or prompted
by the wife. Apart from this "general tone," Mill tells us that there
was a specific contribution. "The chapter which has had a greater
influence on opinion than all the rest, that on the Probable Future of
the Labouring Classes, is entirely due to her. In the first draft of the
book that chapter did not exist. She pointed out the need of such a
chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book without it; she was
the cause of my writing it." From this it would appear that she gave
Mill that tendency to Socialism which, while it lends a progressive
spirit to his speculations on politics, at the same time does not
manifestly accord with his earlier advocacy of peasant proprietorships.
Nor, again, is it, on the face of it, consistent with those doctrines of
individual liberty which, aided by the intellectual companionship of his
wife, he propounded in a later work. The ideal of individual freedom is
not the ideal of Socialism, just as that invocation of governmental aid
to which the Socialist resorts is not consistent with the theory of
_laisser-faire_. Yet _Liberty_ was planned by Mill and his wife in
concert. Perhaps a slight visionariness of speculation was no less the
attribute of Mrs. Mill than an absence of rigid logical principles. Be
this as it may, she undoubtedly checked the half-recognised leanings of
her husband in the direction of Coleridge and Carlyle. Whether this was
an instance of her steadying influence,[5] or whether it added one more
unassimilated element to Mill's diverse intellectual sustenance, may be
wisely left an open question. We cannot, however, be wrong in
attributing to her the parentage of one book of Mill, _The Subjection of
Women_. It is true that Mill had before learnt that men and women ought
to be equal in legal, political, social, and domestic relations. This
was a point on which he had already fallen foul of his father's essay on
_Government_. But Mrs. Taylor had actually written on this very point,
and the warmth and fervour of Mill's denunciations of women's servitude
were unmistakably caught from his wife's view of the practical
disabilities entailed by the feminine position.
III.
_Liberty_ was published in 1859, when the nineteenth century was half
over, but in its general spirit and in some of its special tendencies
the little tract belongs rather to the standpoint of the eighteenth
century than to that which saw its birth. In many of his speculations
John Stuart Mill forms a sort of connecting link between the doctrines
of the earlier English empirical school and those which we associate
with the name of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In his _Logic_, for instance, he
represents an advance on the theories of Hume, and yet does not see how
profoundly the victories of Science modify the conclusions of the
earlier thinker. Similarly, in his _Political Economy_, he desires to
improve and to enlarge upon Ricardo, and yet does not advance so far as
the modifications of political economy by Sociology, indicated by some
later--and especially German--speculations on the subject. In the tract
on _Liberty_, Mill is advocating the rights of the individual as against
Society at the very opening of an era that was rapidly coming to the
conclusion that the individual had no absolute rights against Society.
The eighteenth century view is that individuals existed first, each with
their own special claims and responsibilities; that they deliberately
formed a Social State, either by a contract or otherwise; and that then
finally they limited their own action out of regard for the interests of
the social organism thus arbitrarily produced. This is hardly the view
of the nineteenth century. It is possible that logically the individual
is prior to the State; historically and in the order of Nature, the
State is prior to the individual. In other words, such rights as every
single personality possesses in a modern world do not belong to him by
an original ordinance of Nature, but are slowly acquired in the growth
and development of the social state. It is not the truth that individual
liberties were forfeited by some deliberate act when men made themselves
into a Commonwealth. It is more true to say, as Aristotle said long ago,
that man is naturally a political animal, that he lived under strict
social laws as a mere item, almost a nonentity, as compared with the
Order, Society, or Community to which he belonged, and that such
privileges as he subsequently acquired have been obtained in virtue of
his growing importance as a member of a growing organisation. But if
this is even approximately true, it seriously restricts that liberty of
the individual for which Mill pleads. The individual has no chance,
because he has no rights, against the social organism. Society can
punish him for acts or even opinions which are anti-social in character.
His virtue lies in recognising the intimate communion with his fellows.
His sphere of activity is bounded by the common interest. Just as it is
an absurd and exploded theory that all men are originally equal, so it
is an ancient and false doctrine to protest that a man has an individual
liberty to live and think as he chooses in any spirit of antagonism to
that larger body of which he forms an insignificant part.
Nowadays this view of Society and of its development, which we largely
owe to the _Philosophie Positive_ of M. Auguste Comte, is so familiar
and possibly so damaging to the individual initiative, that it becomes
necessary to advance and proclaim the truth which resides in an opposite
theory. All progress, as we are aware, depends on the joint process of
integration and differentiation; synthesis, analysis, and then a larger
synthesis seem to form the law of development. If it ever comes to pass
that Society is tyrannical in its restrictions of the individual, if, as
for instance in some forms of Socialism, based on deceptive analogies of
Nature's dealings, the type is everything and the individual nothing, it
must be confidently urged in answer that the fuller life of the future
depends on the manifold activities, even though they may be
antagonistic, of the individual. In England, at all events, we know that
government in all its different forms, whether as King, or as a caste
of nobles, or as an oligarchical plutocracy, or even as trades unions,
is so dwarfing in its action that, for the sake of the future, the
individual must revolt. Just as our former point of view limited the
value of Mill's treatise on _Liberty_, so these considerations tend to
show its eternal importance. The omnipotence of Society means a dead
level of uniformity. The claim of the individual to be heard, to say
what he likes, to do what he likes, to live as he likes, is absolutely
necessary, not only for the variety of elements without which life is
poor, but also for the hope of a future age. So long as individual
initiative and effort are recognised as a vital element in English
history, so long will Mill's _Liberty_, which he confesses was based on
a suggestion derived from Von Humboldt, remain as an indispensable
contribution to the speculations, and also to the health and sanity, of
the world.
What his wife really was to Mill, we shall, perhaps, never know. But
that she was an actual and vivid force, which roused the latent
enthusiasm of his nature, we have abundant evidence. And when she died
at Avignon, though his friends may have regained an almost estranged
companionship, Mill was, personally, the poorer. Into the sorrow of that
bereavement we cannot enter: we have no right or power to draw the veil.
It is enough to quote the simple words, so eloquent of an unspoken
grief--"I can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest
manner, what that loss was and is. But because I know that she would
have wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left,
and to work for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be
derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory."
W. L. COURTNEY.
LONDON, _July 5th, 1901_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Life of John Stuart Mill_, chapter vi. (Walter Scott.)
[2] _Autobiography_, p. 190.
[3] _Ibid._, p. 242.
[4] _Autobiography_, pp. 246, 247.
[5] Cf. an instructive page in the _Autobiography_, p. 252.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER II.
OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 28
CHAPTER III.
OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS
OF WELL-BEING 103
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY
OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 140
CHAPTER V.
APPLICATIONS 177
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 of
Government_.
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
Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the
power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the
individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in
general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical
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
civilised portions of the species have now entered, it presents 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 history with which we are earliest familiar,
particularly in that of Greece, Rome, 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 governments 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 inheritance
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 dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against
their subjects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent the
weaker members 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 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 expedient, 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 completely,
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
independent 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 previous 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 tyrannising over itself. Let the
rulers be effectually responsible 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 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 apparently 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 prevalent 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 infirmities 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 temporary aberrations as those of the French
Revolution, the worst of which were the work of a usurping few, and
which, in any case, belonged, not to the permanent working of popular
institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak against
monarchical and aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic
republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and made
itself felt as one of the most powerful members 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 _part_ of the people; the majority,
or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority: the
people, consequently, _may_ 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 importance when the holders of power
are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest
party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the
intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important
classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests
democracy is adverse, has had no 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 collectively, over the separate
individuals who compose it--its means of tyrannising are not restricted
to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political 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 itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the
magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the
tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of
society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas
and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to
fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the 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 everything remains to be done. All
that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement 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 principal 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 which obtain among
themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but
universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of
custom, which is not only, as the proverb 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
accustomed 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
sympathises, 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 supported 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
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 interpretation even of that.
Men's opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, 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 seldom their anti-social ones, their envy or
jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their
desires or fears for themselves--their legitimate or illegitimate
self-interest. Wherever 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 sentiments
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 its ascendancy, or
where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments
frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority.
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 establishment 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 feeling have left this condition of things unassailed in
principle, however they may have come into conflict 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
endeavouring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points
on which they were themselves heretical, 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 belief: 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
limit 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 accordingly on this
battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the individual against
society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim
of society to exercise authority over dissentients, openly controverted.
The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it
possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible
right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others
for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in
whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly
anywhere been practically realised, 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 a 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. Wherever
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 perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter,
than in most other countries of Europe; and there is considerable
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 invasion from the
government, as it already is from public opinion. 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 accustomed 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 application. 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 government
to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount
of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human
interests 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 government. 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 interference of government
is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly
condemned.
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 penalties, or the moral coercion
of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That
the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilised 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 concerns himself, his
independence is, of right, absolute. 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 protected
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 spontaneous 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 obedience 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 persuasion (a period long since reached in
all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion,
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 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, authorise the subjection of individual 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 _primâ facie_ case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal
penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. 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 defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is
obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully 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 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
exception. 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
because 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 would 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 protection; judging himself all the
more rigidly, because the case does not admit of his being made
accountable 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, 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; liberty 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 individual
which concerns other people; but, being almost 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, subject to such
consequences as may follow: without impediment from our
fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though
they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from
this liberty of each individual, 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 unqualified. 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 practice.
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 philosophers countenanced, the
regulation of every part of private 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 foreign attack or internal
commotion, 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 freedom. In the modern world,
the greater size of political communities, and above all, the separation
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 interference 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 formation 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 themselves 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 _Traité 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
philosophers.
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 encroachment is not one of the evils which
tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and
more formidable. The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as
fellow-citizens to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule
of conduct on others, is so energetically 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 is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of
moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in
the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.
It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead 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, recognised 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 discussion more.