1	<ONLINE MODERN HISTORY REVIEW>		November 1993
     2	
     3	
     4	                 ON LIBERTY
     5	
     6	               		......John Stuart Mill
     7	
     8			=================================
     9	
    10	CHAPTER I
    11	INTRODUCTORY
    12	
    13	  THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty
    14	of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the mis-
    15	named doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil,
    16	or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which
    17	can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.
    18	A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in gen-
    19	eral terms, but which profoundly influences the practical
    20	controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely
    21	soon to make itself recognized as the vital question of the
    22	future. It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense,
    23	it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but
    24	in the stage of progress into which the more civilized por-
    25	tions of the species have now entered, it presents itself
    26	under new conditions, and requires a different and more fun-
    27	damental treatment.
    28	
    29	  The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most
    30	conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which
    31	we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome,
    32	and England. But in old times this contest was between
    33	subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government.
    34	By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the
    35	political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some
    36	of the popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily
    37	antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled. They
    38	consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe or caste,
    39	who derived their authority from inheritance or conquest;
    40	who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the gov-
    41	erned, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps
    42	did not desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be
    43	taken against its oppressive exercise. Their power was re-
    44	garded as necessary, but also as highly dangerous; as a
    45	weapon which they would attempt to use against their sub-
    46	jects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent
    47	the weaker members of the community from being preyed
    48	upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there
    49	should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commis-
    50	sioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures
    51	would be no less bent upon preying upon the flock than any
    52	of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a per-
    53	petual attitude of defence against his beak and claws. The
    54	aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power
    55	which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the
    56	community; and this limitation was what they meant by
    57	liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining
    58	a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties
    59	or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty
    60	in the ruler to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific
    61	resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A
    62	second, and generally a later expedient, was the establish-
    63	ment of constitutional checks; by which the consent of the
    64	community, or of a body of some sort supposed to represent
    65	its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the
    66	more important acts of the governing power. To the first
    67	of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most
    68	European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit.
    69	It was not so with the second; and to attain this, or when
    70	already in some degree possessed, to attain it more com-
    71	pletely, became everywhere the principal object of the lovers
    72	of liberty. And so long as mankind were content to combat
    73	one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a master, on con-
    74	dition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against
    75	his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this
    76	point.
    77	
    78	  A time, however, came in the progress of human affairs,
    79	when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their
    80	governors should be an independent power, opposed in in-
    81	terest to themselves. It appeared to them much better that
    82	the various magistrates of the State should be their tenants
    83	or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way alone,
    84	it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers
    85	of government would never be abused to their disadvan-
    86	tage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and tem-
    87	porary rulers became the prominent object of the exertions
    88	of the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and
    89	superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to
    90	limit the power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for
    91	making the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice
    92	of the ruled, some persons began to think that too much im-
    93	portance had been attached to the limitation of the power
    94	itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers
    95	whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the peo-
    96	ple. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be
    97	identified with the people; that their interest and will should
    98	be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not
    99	need to be protected against its own will. There was no
   100	fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the rulers be ef-
   101	fectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it
   102	could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself
   103	dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's
   104	own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for ex-
   105	ercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling,
   106	was common among the last generation of European liberal-
   107	ism, in the Continental section of which, it still apparently
   108	predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a gov-
   109	ernment may do, except in the case of such governments
   110	as they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant ex-
   111	ceptions among the political thinkers of the Continent. A
   112	similar tone of sentiment might by this time have been
   113	prevalent in our own country, if the circumstances which
   114	for a time encouraged it had continued unaltered.
   115	
   116	  But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in
   117	persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure
   118	might have concealed from observation. The notion, that
   119	the people have no need to limit their power over themselves,
   120	might seem axiomatic, when popular government was a thing
   121	only dreamed about, or read of as having existed at some
   122	distant period of the past. Neither was that notion neces-
   123	sarily disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those of
   124	the French Revolution, the worst of which were the work
   125	of an usurping few, and which, in any case, belonged, not
   126	to the permanent working of popular institutions, but to a
   127	sudden and convulsive outbreak against monarchical and
   128	aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic
   129	republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's sur-
   130	face, and made itself felt as one of the most powerful mem-
   131	bers of the community of nations; and elective and respon-
   132	sible government became subject to the observations and
   133	criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was
   134	now perceived that such phrases as "self-government," and
   135	"the power of the people over themselves," do not express
   136	the true state of the case. The "people" who exercise the
   137	power, are not always the same people with those over whom
   138	it is exercised, and the "self-government" spoken of, is not
   139	the government of each by himself, but of each by all the
   140	rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means,
   141	the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the
   142	people; the majority, or those who succeed in making them-
   143	selves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently,
   144	may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precau-
   145	tions are as much needed against this, as against any other
   146	abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of
   147	government over individuals, loses none of its importance
   148	when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the
   149	community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view
   150	of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence
   151	of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes
   152	in European society to whose real or supposed interests de-
   153	mocracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself;
   154	and in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority"
   155	is now generally included among the evils against which
   156	society requires to be on its guard.
   157	
   158	  Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at
   159	first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operat-
   160	ing through the acts of the public authorities. But reflect-
   161	ing persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant
   162	--society collectively, over the separate individuals who
   163	compose it--its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the
   164	acts which it may do by the hands of its political function-
   165	aries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and
   166	if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any man-
   167	dates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it
   168	practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds
   169	of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by
   170	such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, pen-
   171	etrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslav-
   172	ing the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny
   173	of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also
   174	against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling;
   175	against the tendency of society to impose, by other means
   176	than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of
   177	conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the de-
   178	velopment, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any in-
   179	dividuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all
   180	characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its
   181	own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of col-
   182	lective opinion with individual independence; and to find
   183	that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as in-
   184	dispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protec-
   185	tion against political despotism.
   186	
   187	  But though this proposition is not likely to be contested
   188	in general terms, the practical question, where to place the
   189	limit--how to make the fitting adjustment between individ-
   190	ual independence and social control--is a subject on which
   191	nearly everything remains to be done. All that makes exist-
   192	ence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of
   193	restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of
   194	conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first
   195	place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit sub-
   196	jects for the operation of law. What these rules should be,
   197	is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except
   198	a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which
   199	least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages,
   200	and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and
   201	the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another.
   202	Yet the people of any given age and country no more sus-
   203	pect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject on which
   204	mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain
   205	among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-
   206	justifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the
   207	examples of the magical influence of custom, which is not only,
   208	as the proverb says a second nature, but is continually mis-
   209	taken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing any
   210	misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind
   211	impose on one another, is all the more complete because the
   212	subJect is one on which it is not generally considered neces-
   213	sary that reasons should be given, either by one person to
   214	others, or by each to himself. People are accustomed to believe
   215	and have been encouraged in the belief by some who aspire
   216	to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on sub-
   217	jects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render
   218	reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides
   219	them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct,
   220	is the feeling in each person's mind that everybody should
   221	be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes,
   222	would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to
   223	himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but
   224	an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons,
   225	can only count as one person's preference; and if the reasons,
   226	when given, are a mere appeal to a similar preference felt
   227	by other people, it is still only many people's liking instead
   228	of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own preference,
   229	thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason,
   230	but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of
   231	morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written
   232	in his religious creed; and his chief guide in the inter-
   233	pretation even of that. Men's opinions, accordingly, on what
   234	is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifari-
   235	ous causes which influence their wishes in regard to the
   236	conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those
   237	which determine their wishes on any other subject. Some-
   238	times their reason--at other times their prejudices or super-
   239	stitions: often their social affections, not seldom their anti-
   240	social ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or con-
   241	temptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears
   242	for themselves--their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest.
   243	Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of
   244	the morality of the country emanates from its class interests,
   245	and its feelings of class superiority. The morality between
   246	Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between
   247	princes and subjects, between nobles and roturiers, between
   248	men and women, has been for the most part the creation of
   249	these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus
   250	generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the mem-
   251	bers of the ascendant class, in their relations among them-
   252	selves. Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly as-
   253	cendant, has lost its ascendency, or where its ascendency is
   254	unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear
   255	the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another
   256	grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both
   257	in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or
   258	opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the sup-
   259	posed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters,
   260	or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is
   261	not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments
   262	of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics.
   263	Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious
   264	interests of society have of course had a share, and a large
   265	one, in the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however,
   266	as a matter of reason, and on their own account, than as a
   267	consequence of the sympathies and antipathies which grew
   268	out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which had
   269	little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have
   270	made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with
   271	quite as great force.
   272	
   273	  The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful
   274	portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically
   275	determined the rules laid down for general observance, un-
   276	der the penalties of law or opinion. And in general, those
   277	who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling,
   278	have left this condition of things unassailed in principle,
   279	however they may have come into conflict with it in some of
   280	its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring
   281	what things society ought to like or dislike, than in question-
   282	ing whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to in-
   283	dividuals. They preferred endeavouring to alter the feelings
   284	of mankind on the particular points on which they were
   285	themselves heretical, rather than make common cause in
   286	defence of freedom, with heretics generally. The only case
   287	in which the higher ground has been taken on principle and
   288	maintained with consistency, by any but an individual here
   289	and there, is that of religious belief: a case instructive in
   290	many ways, and not least so as forming a most striking in-
   291	stance of the fallibility of what is called the moral sense:
   292	for the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of the
   293	most unequivocal cases of moral feeling. Those who first
   294	broke the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church,
   295	were in general as little willing to permit difference of relig-
   296	ious opinion as that church itself. But when the heat of
   297	the conflict was over, without giving a complete victory to
   298	any party, and each church or sect was reduced to limit its
   299	hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already oc-
   300	cupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of be-
   301	coming majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to
   302	those whom they could not convert, for permission to
   303	differ. It is accordingly on this battle-field, almost solely,
   304	that the rights of the individual against society have been as-
   305	serted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim of
   306	society to exercise authority over dissentients openly con-
   307	troverted. The great writers to whom the world owes what
   308	religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom
   309	of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely
   310	that a human being is accountable to others for his relig-
   311	ious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in what-
   312	ever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly
   313	anywhere been practically realized, except where religious
   314	indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by
   315	theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.
   316	In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the most
   317	tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with
   318	tacit reserves. One person will bear with dissent in matters
   319	of church government, but not of dogma; another can
   320	tolerate everybody, short of a Papist or an Unitarian; an-
   321	other, every one who believes in revealed religion; a few
   322	extend their charity a little further, but stop at the belief
   323	in a God and in a future state. Wherever the sentiment of
   324	the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have
   325	abated little of its claim to be obeyed.
   326	
   327	  In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our
   328	political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps
   329	heavier, that of law is lighter, than in most other countries
   330	of Europe; and there is considerable jealousy of direct in-
   331	terference, by the legislative or the executive power with
   332	private conduct; not so much from any just regard for the
   333	independence of the individual, as from the still subsisting
   334	habit of looking on the government as representing an op-
   335	posite interest to the public. The majority have not yet
   336	learnt to feel the power of the government their power, or
   337	its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual
   338	liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from
   339	the government, as it already is from public opinion. But,
   340	as yet, there is a considerable amount of feeling ready to be
   341	called forth against any attempt of the law to control indi-
   342	viduals in things in which they have not hitherto been ac-
   343	customed to be controlled by it; and this with very little
   344	discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within
   345	the legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the
   346	feeling, highly salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as
   347	often misplaced as well grounded in the particular instances
   348	of its application.
   349	
   350	  There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the
   351	propriety or impropriety of government interference is cus-
   352	tomarily tested. People decide according to their personal
   353	preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be done,
   354	or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the govern-
   355	ment to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear
   356	almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to
   357	the departments of human interests amenable to govern-
   358	mental control. And men range themselves on one or the
   359	other side in any particular case, according to this general
   360	direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree
   361	of interest which they feel in the particular thing which it is
   362	proposed that the government should do; or according to
   363	the belief they entertain that the government would, or
   364	would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very rarely
   365	on account of any opinion to which they consistently ad-
   366	here, as to what things are fit to be done by a government.
   367	And it seems to me that, in consequence of this absence of
   368	rule or principle, one side is at present as often wrong as
   369	the other; the interference of government is, with about
   370	equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly con-
   371	demned.
   372	
   373	  The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple
   374	principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of
   375	society with the individual in the way of compulsion and
   376	control, whether the means used be physical force in the
   377	form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public
   378	opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which man-
   379	kind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfer-
   380	ing with the liberty of action of any of their number, is
   381	self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can
   382	be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized com-
   383	munity, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His
   384	own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient war-
   385	rant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear
   386	because it will be better for him to do so, because it will
   387	make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do
   388	so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons
   389	for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or per-
   390	suading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him,
   391	or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To
   392	justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter
   393	him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else.
   394	The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is
   395	amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the
   396	part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of
   397	right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind,
   398	the individual is sovereign.
   399	
   400	  It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine
   401	is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of
   402	their faculties. We are not speaking of children, or of
   403	young persons below the age which the law may fix as that
   404	of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a state
   405	to require being taken care of by others, must be protected
   406	against their own actions as well as against external in-
   407	jury. For the same reason, we may leave out of considera-
   408	tion those backward states of society in which the race
   409	itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early diffi-
   410	culties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that
   411	there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them;
   412	and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted
   413	in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, per-
   414	haps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate
   415	mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided
   416	the end be their improvement, and the means justified by
   417	actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no
   418	application to any state of things anterior to the time when
   419	mankind have become capable of being improved by free
   420	and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them
   421	but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if
   422	they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as man-
   423	kind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own
   424	improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long
   425	since reached in all nations with whom we need here con-
   426	cern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in
   427	that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer
   428	admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only
   429	for the security of others.
   430	
   431	  It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which
   432	could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract
   433	right as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as
   434	the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be
   435	utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent
   436	interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I
   437	contend, authorize the subjection of individual spontaneity
   438	to external control, only in respect to those actions of each,
   439	which concern the interest of other people. If any one
   440	does an act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for
   441	punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not
   442	safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There are also
   443	many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may
   444	rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evi-
   445	dence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the
   446	common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to
   447	the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection;
   448	and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such
   449	as saving a fellow-creature's life, or interposing to protect
   450	the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it
   451	is obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made
   452	responsible to society for not doing. A person may cause
   453	evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction,
   454	and in neither case he is justly accountable to them for the
   455	injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much more
   456	cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make
   457	any one answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to
   458	make him answerable for not preventing evil, is, com-
   459	paratively speaking, the exception. Yet there are many
   460	cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that ex-
   461	ception. In all things which regard the external relations
   462	of the individual, he is de jure amenable to those whose
   463	interests are concerned, and if need be, to society as their
   464	protector. There are often good reasons for not holding
   465	him to the responsibility; but these reasons must arise from
   466	the special expediencies of the case: either because it is a
   467	kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act better,
   468	when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in
   469	any way in which society have it in their power to control
   470	him; or because the attempt to exercise control would pro-
   471	duce other evils, greater than those which it would prevent.
   472	When such reasons as these preclude the enforcement of
   473	responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself should
   474	step into the vacant judgment-seat, and protect those inter-
   475	ests of others which have no external protection; judging
   476	himself all the more rigidly, because the case does not admit
   477	of his being made accountable to the judgment of his fellow-
   478	creatures.
   479	
   480	  But there is a sphere of action in which society, as dis-
   481	tinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect
   482	interest; comprehending all that portion of a person's life
   483	and conduct which affects only himself, or, if it also affects
   484	others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived con-
   485	sent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean
   486	directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects him-
   487	self, may affect others through himself; and the objection
   488	which may be grounded on this contingency, will receive
   489	consideration in the sequel. This, then, is the appropriate
   490	region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward do-
   491	main of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in
   492	the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feel-
   493	ing; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all
   494	subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theo-
   495	logical. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions
   496	may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs
   497	to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns
   498	other people; but, being almost of as much importance as
   499	the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the
   500	same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly,
   501	the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of
   502	framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of
   503	doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may fol-
   504	low; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long
   505	as what we do does not harm them even though they should
   506	think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly,
   507	from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty,
   508	within the same limits, of combination among individuals;
   509	freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to
   510	others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full
   511	age, and not forced or deceived.
   512	
   513	  No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole,
   514	respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government;
   515	and none is completely free in which they do not exist abso-
   516	lute and unqualified. The only freedom which deserves the
   517	name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so
   518	long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
   519	impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guard-
   520	ian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spirit-
   521	ual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other
   522	to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each
   523	to live as seems good to the rest.
   524	
   525	  Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to some
   526	persons, may have the air of a truism, there is no doctrine
   527	which stands more directly opposed to the general tendency
   528	of existing opinion and practice. Society has expended
   529	fully as much effort in the attempt (according to its lights)
   530	to compel people to conform to its notions of personal, as
   531	of social excellence. The ancient commonwealths thought
   532	themselves entitled to practise, and the ancient philosophers
   533	countenanced, the regulation of every part of private con-
   534	duct by public authority, on the ground that the State had
   535	a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental discipline of
   536	every one of its citizens, a mode of thinking which may
   537	have been admissible in small republics surrounded by pow-
   538	erful enemies, in constant peril of being subverted by
   539	foreign attack or internal commotion, and to which even a
   540	short interval of relaxed energy and self-command might so
   541	easily be fatal, that they could not afford to wait for the salu-
   542	tary permanent effects of freedom. In the modern world, the
   543	greater size of political communities, and above all, the
   544	separation between the spiritual and temporal authority
   545	(which placed the direction of men's consciences in other
   546	hands than those which controlled their worldly affairs),
   547	prevented so great an interference by law in the details of
   548	private life; but the engines of moral repression have been
   549	wielded more strenuously against divergence from the
   550	reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even in social mat-
   551	ters; religion, the most powerful of the elements which have
   552	entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost
   553	always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy,
   554	seeking control over every department of human conduct,
   555	or by the spirit of Puritanism. And some of those modern
   556	reformers who have placed themselves in strongest opposi-
   557	tion to the religions of the past, have been noway behind
   558	either churches or sects in their assertion of the right of
   559	spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose social
   560	system, as unfolded in his Traite de Politique Positive, aims
   561	at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appli-
   562	ances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing
   563	anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most
   564	rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.
   565	
   566	  Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers,
   567	there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination
   568	to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual,
   569	both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation:
   570	and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the
   571	world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of
   572	the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils
   573	which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary,
   574	to grow more and more formidable. The disposition of
   575	mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose
   576	their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on
   577	others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and
   578	by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that
   579	it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of
   580	power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, un-
   581	less a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised
   582	against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circum-
   583	stances of the world, to see it increase.
   584	
   585	  It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at
   586	once entering upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves
   587	in the first instance to a single branch of it, on which the
   588	principle here stated is, if not fully, yet to a certain point,
   589	recognized by the current opinions. This one branch is the
   590	Liberty of Thought: from which it is impossible to separate
   591	the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing. Although
   592	these liberties, to some considerable amount, form part of
   593	the political morality of all countries which profess re-
   594	ligious toleration and free institutions, the grounds, both
   595	philosophical and practical, on which they rest, are perhaps
   596	not so familiar to the general mind, nor so thoroughly ap-
   597	preciated by many even of the leaders of opinion, as might
   598	have been expected. Those grounds, when rightly under-
   599	stood, are of much wider application than to only one
   600	division of the subject, and a thorough consideration of this
   601	part of the question will be found the best introduction to
   602	the remainder. Those to whom nothing which I am about
   603	to say will be new, may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if on
   604	a subject which for now three centuries has been so often
   605	discussed, I venture on one discussion more.
   606	
   607	
   608	CHAPTER II
   609	OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
   610	
   611	  THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any
   612	defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the
   613	press" as one of the securities against corrupt or
   614	tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can
   615	now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an ex-
   616	ecutive, not identified in interest with the people, to pre-
   617	scribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or
   618	what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect
   619	of the question, besides, has been so often and so trium-
   620	phantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be
   621	specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of Eng-
   622	land, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day
   623	as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of
   624	its being actually put in force against political discussion,
   625	except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrec-
   626	tion drives ministers and judges from their propriety;[1]
   627	and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries,
   628	to be apprehended that the government, whether completely
   629	responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to con-
   630	trol the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it
   631	makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the
   632	public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is
   633	entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exert-
   634	ing any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it
   635	conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the
   636	people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or
   637	by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The
   638	best government has no more title to it than the worst. It
   639	is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance
   640	with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all
   641	mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one per-
   642	son were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no
   643	more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he
   644	had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
   645	Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except
   646	to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it
   647	were simply a private injury, it would make some difference
   648	whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons
   649	or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expres-
   650	sion of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race;
   651	posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dis-
   652	sent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
   653	If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity
   654	of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what
   655	is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier
   656	impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
   657	
   658	  It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses,
   659	each of which has a distinct branch of the argument cor-
   660	responding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we
   661	are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were
   662	sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
   663	
   664	  First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by
   665	authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to sup-
   666	press it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible.
   667	They have no authority to decide the question for all man-
   668	kind, and exclude every other person from the means of
   669	judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they
   670	are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty
   671	is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of
   672	discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation
   673	may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the
   674	worse for being common.
   675	
   676	  Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact
   677	of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their
   678	practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory;
   679	for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few
   680	think it necessary to take any precautions against their own
   681	fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion of
   682	which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of
   683	the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.
   684	Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited
   685	deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own
   686	opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situ-
   687	ated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are
   688	not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong,
   689	place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their
   690	opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to
   691	whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's
   692	want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he
   693	usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of
   694	"the world" in general. And the world, to each individual,
   695	means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his
   696	party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man
   697	may be called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-
   698	minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his
   699	own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this col-
   700	lective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other
   701	ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have
   702	thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He de-
   703	volves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the
   704	right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it
   705	never troubles him that mere accident has decided which
   706	of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and
   707	that the same causes which make him a Churchman in Lon-
   708	don, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in
   709	Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself as any amount of argu-
   710	ment can make it, that ages are no more infallible than in-
   711	dividuals; every age having held many opinions which subse-
   712	quent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is
   713	as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected
   714	by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected
   715	by the present.
   716	
   717	  The objection likely to be made to this argument, would
   718	probably take some such form as the following. There is
   719	no greater assumption of infallibility in forbidding the
   720	propagation of error, than in any other thing which is
   721	done by public authority on its own judgment and responsi-
   722	bility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Be-
   723	cause it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that
   724	they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think
   725	pernicious, is not claiming exemption from error, but ful-
   726	filling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of act-
   727	ing on their conscientious conviction. If we were never
   728	to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong,
   729	we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our
   730	duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all
   731	conduct can be no valid objection to any conduct in par-
   732	ticular.
   733	
   734	  It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to
   735	form the truest opinions they can; to form them care-
   736	fully, and never impose them upon others unless they are
   737	quite sure of being right. But when they are sure (such
   738	reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice
   739	to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines
   740	which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of man-
   741	kind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered abroad
   742	without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened
   743	times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true.
   744	Let us take care, it may be said, not to make the same mis-
   745	take: but governments and nations have made mistakes in
   746	other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for the
   747	exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made
   748	unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and,
   749	under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and
   750	governments, must act to the best of their ability. There
   751	is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance
   752	sufficient for the purposes of human life. We may, and
   753	must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our
   754	own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid
   755	bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions
   756	which we regard as false and pernicious.
   757	
   758	  I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is
   759	the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be
   760	true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it
   761	has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose
   762	of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of con-
   763	tradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition
   764	which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of
   765	action; and on no other terms can a being with human
   766	faculties have any rational assurance of being right.
   767	
   768	  When we consider either the history of opinion, or the
   769	ordinary conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed
   770	that the one and the other are no worse than they are? Not
   771	certainly to the inherent force of the human understanding;
   772	for, on any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine per-
   773	sons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is capable;
   774	and the capacity of the hundredth person is only compara-
   775	tive; for the majority of the eminent men of every past
   776	generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous,
   777	and did or approved numerous things which no one will now
   778	justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a pre-
   779	ponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational
   780	conduct? If there really is this preponderance--which there
   781	must be, unless human affairs are, and have always been,
   782	in an almost desperate state--it is owing to a quality of the
   783	human mind, the source of everything respectable in man,
   784	either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that
   785	his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his
   786	mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience
   787	alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is
   788	to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually
   789	yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to pro-
   790	duce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it.
   791	Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without
   792	comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength
   793	and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one
   794	property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance
   795	can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right
   796	are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person
   797	whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has
   798	it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criti-
   799	cism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his
   800	practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to
   801	profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself,
   802	and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was falla-
   803	cious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a
   804	human being can make some approach to knowing the whole
   805	of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by per-
   806	sons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in
   807	which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No
   808	wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this;
   809	nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in
   810	any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and
   811	completing his own opinion by collating it with those of
   812	others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying
   813	it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just
   814	reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least
   815	obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his
   816	position against all gainsayers knowing that he has sought
   817	for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them,
   818	and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the
   819	subject from any quarter--he has a right to think his judg-
   820	ment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who
   821	have not gone through a similar process.
   822	
   823	  It is not too much to require that what the wisest of
   824	mankind, those who are best entitled to trust their own judg-
   825	ment, find necessary to warrant their relying on it, should
   826	be submitted to by that miscellaneous collection of a few
   827	wise and many foolish individuals, called the public. The
   828	most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church,
   829	even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens
   830	patiently to, a "devil's advocate." The holiest of men, it
   831	appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all
   832	that the devil could say against him is known and weighed.
   833	If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be
   834	questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance
   835	of its truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have
   836	most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a stand-
   837	ing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.
   838	If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the at-
   839	tempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we
   840	have done the best that the existing state of human reason
   841	admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the
   842	truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we
   843	may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found
   844	when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in
   845	the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach
   846	to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount
   847	of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the
   848	sole way of attaining it.
   849	
   850	  Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the
   851	arguments for free discussion, but object to their being
   852	"pushed to an extreme;" not seeing that unless the rea-
   853	sons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for
   854	any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are
   855	not assuming infallibility when they acknowledge that there
   856	should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly
   857	be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doc-
   858	trine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is
   859	so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain.
   860	To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who
   861	would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not per-
   862	mitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree
   863	with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without
   864	hearing the other side.
   865	
   866	  In the present age--which has been described as "destitute
   867	of faith, but terrified at scepticism,"--in which people feel
   868	sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they
   869	should not know what to do without them--the claims of an
   870	opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not
   871	so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. There
   872	are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so useful, not to say indis-
   873	pensable to well-being, that it is as much the duty of govern-
   874	ments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any other of the
   875	interests of society. In a case of such necessity, and so
   876	directly in the line of their duty, something less than in-
   877	fallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and even bind,
   878	governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the
   879	general opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and
   880	still oftener thought, that none but bad men would desire
   881	to weaken these salutary beliefs; and there can be nothing
   882	wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibiting
   883	what only such men would wish to practise. This mode of
   884	thinking makes the justification of restraints on discussion
   885	not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their
   886	usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the
   887	responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opin-
   888	ions. But those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive
   889	that the assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from
   890	one point to another. The usefulness of an opinion is
   891	itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to dis-
   892	cussion and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion
   893	itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge of
   894	opinions to decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it
   895	to be false, unless the opinion condemned has full oppor-
   896	tunity of defending itself. And it will not do to say that the
   897	heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility or harmless-
   898	ness of his opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth.
   899	The truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would
   900	know whether or not it is desirable that a proposition should
   901	be believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of
   902	whether or not it is true? In the opinion, not of bad men,
   903	but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can
   904	be really useful: and can you prevent such men from urging
   905	that plea, when they are charged with culpability for denying
   906	some doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they
   907	believe to be false? Those who are on the side of received
   908	opinions, never fail to take all possible advantage of this
   909	plea; you do not find them handling the question of utility
   910	as if it could be completely abstracted from that of truth:
   911	on the contrary, it is, above all, because their doctrine is
   912	"the truth," that the knowledge or the belief of it is held
   913	to be so indispensable. There can be no fair discussion
   914	of the question of usefulness, when an argument so vital
   915	may be employed on one side, but not on the other. And
   916	in point of fact, when law or public feeling do not permit
   917	the truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are just as little
   918	tolerant of a denial of its usefulness. The utmost they
   919	allow is an extenuation of its absolute necessity or of the
   920	positive guilt of rejecting it.
   921	
   922	  In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of denying
   923	a hearing to opinions because we, in our own judgment,
   924	have condemned them, it will be desirable to fix down the
   925	discussion to a concrete case; and I choose, by preference,
   926	the cases which are least favourable to me--in which the
   927	argument against freedom of opinion, both on the score of
   928	truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let
   929	the opinions impugned be the belief in a God and in a future
   930	state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality.
   931	To fight the battle on such ground, gives a great advantage
   932	to an unfair antagonist; since he will be sure to say (and
   933	many who have no desire to be unfair will say it internally),
   934	Are these the doctrines which you do not deem sufficiently
   935	certain to be taken under the protection of law? Is the
   936	belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure of which,
   937	you hold to be assuming infallibility? But I must be per-
   938	mitted to observe, that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine
   939	(be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infalli-
   940	bility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for
   941	others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on
   942	the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pre-
   943	tension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most
   944	solemn convictions. However positive any one's persuasion
   945	may be, not only of the falsity, but of the pernicious conse-
   946	quences--not only of the pernicious consequences, but (to
   947	adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the im-
   948	morality and impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of
   949	that private judgment, though backed by the public judg-
   950	ment of his country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the
   951	opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infalli-
   952	bility. And so far from the assumption being less objec-
   953	tionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called
   954	immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which
   955	it is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which
   956	the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes
   957	which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity. It
   958	is among such that we find the instances memorable in his-
   959	tory, when the arm of the law has been employed to root
   960	out the best men and the noblest doctrines; with deplorable
   961	success as to the men, though some of the doctrines have
   962	survived to be (as if in mockery) invoked, in defence of
   963	similar conduct towards those who dissent from them, or
   964	from their received interpretation.
   965	
   966	  Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was
   967	once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal
   968	authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place
   969	a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abound-
   970	ing in individual greatness, this man has been handed down
   971	to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the
   972	most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head
   973	and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the
   974	source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the
   975	judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, "i maestri di color che
   976	sanno," the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philos-
   977	ophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers
   978	who have since lived--whose fame, still growing after
   979	more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole
   980	remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious
   981	--was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial con-
   982	viction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying
   983	the gods recognized by the State; indeed his accuser asserted
   984	(see the "Apologia") that he believed in no gods at all.
   985	Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a
   986	"corrupter of youth." Of these charges the tribunal, there
   987	is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty,
   988	and condemned the man who probably of all then born had
   989	deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal.
   990	
   991	  To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial
   992	iniquity, the mention of which, after the condemnation of
   993	Socrates, would not be an anti-climax: the event which took
   994	place on Calvary rather more than eighteen hundred years
   995	ago. The man who left on the memory of those who wit-
   996	nessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his
   997	moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have
   998	done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was igno-
   999	miniously put to death, as what? As a blasphemer. Men
  1000	did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook him
  1001	for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as
  1002	that prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held
  1003	to be, for their treatment of him. The feelings with which
  1004	mankind now regard these lamentable transactions, especially
  1005	the latter of the two, render them extremely unjust in their
  1006	judgment of the unhappy actors. These were, to all ap-
  1007	pearance, not bad men--not worse than men most commonly
  1008	are, but rather the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or
  1009	somewhat more than a full measure, the religious, moral,
  1010	and patriotic feelings of their time and people: the very
  1011	kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have every
  1012	chance of passing through life blameless and respected.
  1013	The high-priest who rent his garments when the words were
  1014	pronounced, which, according to all the ideas of his country,
  1015	constituted the blackest guilt, was in all probability quite as
  1016	sincere in his horror and indignation, as the generality of
  1017	respectable and pious men now are in the religious and moral
  1018	sentiments they profess; and most of those who now shudder
  1019	at his conduct, if they had lived in his time and been born
  1020	Jews, would have acted precisely as he did. Orthodox
  1021	Christians who are tempted to think that those who stoned
  1022	to death the first martyrs must have been worse men than
  1023	they themselves are, ought to remember that one of those per-
  1024	secutors was Saint Paul.
  1025	
  1026	  Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if
  1027	the impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom
  1028	and virtue of him who falls into it. If ever any one, pos-
  1029	sessed of power, had grounds for thinking himself the best
  1030	and most enlightened among his cotemporaries, it was the
  1031	Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole
  1032	civilized world, he preserved through life not only the most
  1033	unblemished justice, but what was less to be expected from
  1034	his Stoical breeding, the tenderest heart. The few failings
  1035	which are attributed to him, were all on the side of in-
  1036	dulgence: while his writings, the highest ethical product
  1037	of the ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they
  1038	differ at all, from the most characteristic teachings of Christ.
  1039	This man, a better Christian in all but the dogmatic sense
  1040	of the word, than almost any of the ostensibly Christian
  1041	sovereigns who have since reigned, persecuted Christianity.
  1042	Placed at the summit of all the previous attainments of
  1043	humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, and a character
  1044	which led him of himself to embody in his moral writings the
  1045	Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianity was
  1046	to be a good and not an evil to the world, with his duties
  1047	to which he was so deeply penetrated. Existing society he
  1048	knew to be in a deplorable state. But such as it was, he
  1049	saw or thought he saw, that it was held together and pre-
  1050	vented from being worse, by belief and reverence of the
  1051	received divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it
  1052	his duty not to suffer society to fall in pieces; and saw not
  1053	how, if its existing ties were removed, any others could be
  1054	formed which could again knit it together. The new re-
  1055	ligion openly aimed at dissolving these ties: unless, there-
  1056	fore, it was his duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to be
  1057	his duty to put it down. Inasmuch then as the theology of
  1058	Christianity did not appear to him true or of divine origin;
  1059	inasmuch as this strange history of a crucified God was not
  1060	credible to him, and a system which purported to rest en-
  1061	tirely upon a foundation to him so wholly unbelievable,
  1062	could not be foreseen by him to be that renovating agency
  1063	which, after all abatements, it has in fact proved to be; the
  1064	gentlest and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under
  1065	a solemn sense of duty, authorized the persecution of Chris-
  1066	tianity. To my mind this is one of the most tragical facts
  1067	in all history. It is a bitter thought, how different a thing
  1068	the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Chris-
  1069	tian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire
  1070	under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of
  1071	Constantine. But it would be equally unjust to him and
  1072	false to truth, to deny, that no one plea which can be urged
  1073	for punishing anti-Christian teaching, was wanting to Mar-
  1074	cus Aurelius for punishing, as he did, the propagation of
  1075	Christianity. No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism
  1076	is false, and tends to the dissolution of society, than Marcus
  1077	Aurelius believed the same things of Christianity; he who,
  1078	of all men then living, might have been thought the most
  1079	capable of appreciating it. Unless any one who approves
  1080	of punishment for the promulgation of opinions, flatters
  1081	himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus
  1082	Aurelius--more deeply versed in the wisdom of his time,
  1083	more elevated in his intellect above it--more earnest in his
  1084	search for truth, or more single-minded in his devotion to
  1085	it when found;--let him abstain from that assumption of
  1086	the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude, which
  1087	the great Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result.
  1088	
  1089	  Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of pun-
  1090	ishment for restraining irreligious opinions, by any argument
  1091	which will not justify Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of
  1092	religious freedom, when hard pressed, occasionally accept
  1093	this consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson, that the per-
  1094	secutors of Christianity were in the right; that persecution
  1095	is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and always
  1096	passes successfully, legal penalties being, in the end, power-
  1097	less against truth, though sometimes beneficially effective
  1098	against mischievous errors. This is a form of the argument
  1099	for religious intolerance, sufficiently remarkable not to be
  1100	passed without notice.
  1101	
  1102	  A theory which maintains that truth may justifiably be
  1103	persecuted because persecution cannot possibly do it any
  1104	harm, cannot be charged with being intentionally hostile to
  1105	the reception of new truths; but we cannot commend the
  1106	generosity of its dealing with the persons to whom man-
  1107	kind are indebted for them. To discover to the world some-
  1108	thing which deeply concerns it, and of which it was pre-
  1109	viously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken
  1110	on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as
  1111	important a service as a human being can render to his
  1112	fellow-creatures, and in certain cases, as in those of the
  1113	early Christians and of the Reformers, those who think
  1114	with Dr. Johnson believe it to have been the most precious
  1115	gift which could be bestowed on mankind. That the authors
  1116	of such splendid benefits should be requited by martyrdom;
  1117	that their reward should be to be dealt with as the vilest of
  1118	criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error and
  1119	misfortune, for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth
  1120	and ashes, but the normal and justifiable state of things.
  1121	The propounder of a new truth, according to this doctrine,
  1122	should stand, as stood, in the legislation of the Locrians,
  1123	the proposer of a new law, with a halter round his neck,
  1124	to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did not, on
  1125	hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition.
  1126	People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, can
  1127	not be supposed to set much value on the benefit; and I
  1128	believe this view of the subject is mostly confined to the
  1129	sort of persons who think that new truths may have been
  1130	desirable once, but that we have had enough of them now.
  1131	
  1132	  But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs
  1133	over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which
  1134	men repeat after one another till they pass into common-
  1135	places, but which all experience refutes. History teems with
  1136	instances of truth put down by persecution. If not sup-
  1137	pressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To
  1138	speak only of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out
  1139	at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down.
  1140	Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put
  1141	down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were
  1142	put down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards
  1143	were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even
  1144	after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was per-
  1145	sisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders,
  1146	the Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out; and,
  1147	most likely, would have been so in England, had Queen Mary
  1148	lived, or Queen Elizabeth died. Persecution has always
  1149	succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party
  1150	to be effectually persecuted. No reasonable person can
  1151	doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the
  1152	Roman empire. It spread, and became predominant, be-
  1153	cause the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a
  1154	short time, and separated by long intervals of almost un-
  1155	disturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality
  1156	that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied
  1157	to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.
  1158	Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for
  1159	error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social
  1160	penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation
  1161	of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in
  1162	this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished
  1163	once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there
  1164	will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some
  1165	one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favour-
  1166	able circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made
  1167	such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to sup-
  1168	press it.
  1169	
  1170	  It will be said, that we do not now put to death the intro-
  1171	ducers of new opinions: we are not like our fathers who
  1172	slew the prophets, we even build sepulchres to them. It is
  1173	true we no longer put heretics to death; and the amount of
  1174	penal infliction which modern feeling would probably tol-
  1175	erate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not
  1176	sufficient to extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves
  1177	that we are yet free from the stain even of legal persecu-
  1178	tion. Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression,
  1179	still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these
  1180	times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they
  1181	may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857,
  1182	at the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfor-
  1183	tunate man,[2] said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all
  1184	relations of life, was sentenced to twenty-one months impris-
  1185	onment, for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive
  1186	words concerning Christianity. Within a month of the
  1187	same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate
  1188	occasions,[3] were rejected as jurymen, and one of them
  1189	grossly insulted by the judge and one of the counsel, be-
  1190	cause they honestly declared that they had no theological
  1191	belief; and a third, a foreigner,[4] for the same reason, was
  1192	denied justice against a thief. This refusal of redress took
  1193	place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can be
  1194	allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not
  1195	profess belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future
  1196	state; which is equivalent to declaring such persons to be
  1197	outlaws, excluded from the protection of the tribunals; who
  1198	may not only be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if no one
  1199	but themselves, or persons of similar opinions, be present,
  1200	but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity,
  1201	if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The as-
  1202	sumption on which this is grounded, is that the oath is
  1203	worthless, of a person who does not believe in a future
  1204	state; a proposition which betokens much ignorance of his-
  1205	tory in those who assent to it (since it is historically true
  1206	that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been per-
  1207	sons of distinguished integrity and honor); and would be
  1208	maintained by no one who had the smallest conception how
  1209	many of the persons in greatest repute with the world, both
  1210	for virtues and for attainments, are well known, at least to
  1211	their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is sui-
  1212	cidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence that
  1213	atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists
  1214	who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the
  1215	obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than
  1216	affirm a falsehood. A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity
  1217	so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force
  1218	only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution; a persecu-
  1219	tion, too, having the peculiarity that the qualification for
  1220	undergoing it is the being clearly proved not to deserve it.
  1221	The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less insulting
  1222	to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not believe
  1223	in a future state necessarily lies, it follows that they who do
  1224	believe are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are,
  1225	by the fear of hell. We will not do the authors and abettors
  1226	of the rule the injury of supposing, that the conception
  1227	which they have formed of Christian virtue is drawn from
  1228	their own consciousness.
  1229	
  1230	  These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution,
  1231	and may be thought to be not so much an indication of the
  1232	wish to persecute, as an example of that very frequent in-
  1233	firmity of English minds, which makes them take a prepos-
  1234	terous pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle, when they
  1235	are no longer bad enough to desire to carry it really into
  1236	practice. But unhappily there is no security in the state
  1237	of the public mind, that the suspension of worse forms of
  1238	legal persecution, which has lasted for about the space of
  1239	a generation, will continue. In this age the quiet surface
  1240	of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate past
  1241	evils, as to introduce new benefits. What is boasted of at
  1242	the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in
  1243	narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival
  1244	of bigotry; and where there is the strongest permanent
  1245	leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people, which at
  1246	all times abides in the middle classes of this country, it needs
  1247	but little to provoke them into actively persecuting those
  1248	whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of per-
  1249	secution.[5] For it is this--it is the opinions men entertain,
  1250	and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown
  1251	the beliefs they deem important, which makes this country
  1252	not a place of mental freedom. For a long time past, the
  1253	chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen
  1254	the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really effective,
  1255	and so effective is it, that the profession of opinions which
  1256	are under the ban of society is much less common in Eng-
  1257	land, than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those
  1258	which incur risk of judicial punishment. In respect to all
  1259	persons but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them
  1260	independent of the good will of other people, opinion, on
  1261	this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be
  1262	imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their
  1263	bread. Those whose bread is already secured, and who
  1264	desire no favors from men in power, or from bodies
  1265	of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear from the
  1266	open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and ill-
  1267	spoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic
  1268	mould to enable them to bear. There is no room for any
  1269	appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons. But
  1270	though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who
  1271	think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to
  1272	do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever
  1273	by our treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but
  1274	the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and
  1275	spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firma-
  1276	ment. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian
  1277	Church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping
  1278	the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its
  1279	shade. Our merely social intolerance, kills no one, roots out
  1280	no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain
  1281	from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, hereti-
  1282	cal opinions do not perceptibly gain or even lose, ground in
  1283	each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and
  1284	wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of
  1285	thinking and studious persons among whom they originate,
  1286	without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with
  1287	either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a
  1288	state of things very satisfactory to some minds, because,
  1289	without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning any-
  1290	body, it maintains all prevailing opinions outwardly undis-
  1291	turbed, while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of
  1292	reason by dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought.
  1293	A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world,
  1294	and keeping all things going on therein very much as they
  1295	do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual
  1296	pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of
  1297	the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion
  1298	of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable
  1299	to keep the genuine principles and grounds of their convic-
  1300	tions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they
  1301	address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own
  1302	conclusions to premises which they have internally re-
  1303	nounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and
  1304	logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking
  1305	world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are
  1306	either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers
  1307	for truth whose arguments on all great subjects are meant
  1308	for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced
  1309	themselves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so by
  1310	narrowing their thoughts and interests to things which can
  1311	be spoken of without venturing within the region of princi-
  1312	ples, that is, to small practical matters, which would come
  1313	right of themselves, if but the minds of mankind were
  1314	strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made
  1315	effectually right until then; while that which would strength-
  1316	en and enlarge men's minds, free and daring speculation on
  1317	the highest subjects, is abandoned.
  1318	
  1319	  Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics
  1320	is no evil, should consider in the first place, that in conse-
  1321	quence of it there is never any fair and thorough discussion
  1322	of heretical opinions; and that such of them as could not
  1323	stand such a discussion, though they may be prevented from
  1324	spreading, do not disappear. But it is not the minds of
  1325	heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on
  1326	all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions.
  1327	The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and
  1328	whose whole mental development is cramped, and their rea-
  1329	son cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute what
  1330	the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects com-
  1331	bined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any
  1332	bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should
  1333	land them in something which would admit of being con-
  1334	sidered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occa-
  1335	sionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtile
  1336	and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticat-
  1337	ing with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts
  1338	the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the
  1339	promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy,
  1340	which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing.
  1341	No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that
  1342	as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to what-
  1343	ever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the
  1344	errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks
  1345	for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only
  1346	hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
  1347	Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers, that
  1348	freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as
  1349	much, and even more indispensable, to enable average hu-
  1350	man beings to attain the mental stature which they are capa-
  1351	ble of. There have been, and may again be, great individual
  1352	thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But
  1353	there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere,
  1354	an intellectually active people. Where any people has made
  1355	a temporary approach to such a character, it has been be-
  1356	cause the dread of heterodox speculation was for a time sus-
  1357	pended. Where there is a tacit convention that principles
  1358	are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest
  1359	questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be
  1360	closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of
  1361	mental activity which has made some periods of history so
  1362	remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects
  1363	which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm,
  1364	was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations,
  1365	and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most
  1366	ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking
  1367	beings. Of such we have had an example in the condition
  1368	of Europe during the times immediately following the Ref-
  1369	ormation; another, though limited to the Continent and to
  1370	a more cultivated class, in the speculative movement of the
  1371	latter half of the eighteenth century; and a third, of still
  1372	briefer duration, in the intellectual fermentation of Ger-
  1373	many during the Goethian and Fichtean period. These
  1374	periods differed widely in the particular opinions which they
  1375	developed; but were alike in this, that during all three the yoke
  1376	of authority was broken. In each, an old mental despotism
  1377	had been thrown off, and no new one had yet taken its place.
  1378	The impulse given at these three periods has made Europe
  1379	what it now is. Every single improvement which has taken
  1380	place either in the human mind or in institutions, may be
  1381	traced distinctly to one or other of them. Appearances have
  1382	for some time indicated that all three impulses are well-nigh
  1383	spent; and we can expect no fresh start, until we again
  1384	assert our mental freedom.
  1385	
  1386	  Let us now pass to the second division of the argument,
  1387	and dismissing the Supposition that any of the received
  1388	opinions may be false, let us assume them to be true, and
  1389	examine into the worth of the manner in which they are
  1390	likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and openly
  1391	canvassed. However unwillingly a person who has a strong
  1392	opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be
  1393	false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that how-
  1394	ever true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fear-
  1395	lessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living
  1396	truth.
  1397	
  1398	  There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous
  1399	as formerly) who think it enough if a person assents un-
  1400	doubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowl-
  1401	edge whatever of the grounds of the opinion, and could
  1402	not make a tenable defence of it against the most super-
  1403	ficial objections. Such persons, if they can once get their
  1404	creed taught from authority, naturally think that no good,
  1405	and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned.
  1406	Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly impossi-
  1407	ble for the received opinion to be rejected wisely and con-
  1408	siderately, though it may still be rejected rashly and igno-
  1409	rantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible,
  1410	and when it once gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction
  1411	are apt to give way before the slightest semblance of an
  1412	argument. Waiving, however, this possibility--assuming
  1413	that the true opinion abides in the mind, but abides as a
  1414	prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argu-
  1415	ment--this is not the way in which truth ought to be held
  1416	by a rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth,
  1417	thus held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally
  1418	clinging to the words which enunciate a truth.
  1419	
  1420	  If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cul-
  1421	tivated, a thing which Protestants at least do not deny, on
  1422	what can these faculties be more appropriately exercised by
  1423	any one, than on the things which concern him so much that
  1424	it is considered necessary for him to hold opinions on them?
  1425	If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing
  1426	more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of
  1427	one's own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on
  1428	which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they
  1429	ought to be able to defend against at least the common ob-
  1430	jections. But, some one may say, "Let them be taught the
  1431	grounds of their opinions. It does not follow that opinions
  1432	must be merely parroted because they are never heard con-
  1433	troverted. Persons who learn geometry do not simply com-
  1434	mit the theorems to memory, but understand and learn like-
  1435	wise the demonstrations; and it would be absurd to say that
  1436	they remain ignorant of the grounds of geometrical truths,
  1437	because they never hear any one deny, and attempt to dis-
  1438	prove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a
  1439	subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to be
  1440	said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of
  1441	the evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argu-
  1442	ment is on one side. There are no objections, and no
  1443	answers to objections. But on every subject on which dif-
  1444	ference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance
  1445	to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even
  1446	in natural philosophy, there is always some other explana-
  1447	tion possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory in-
  1448	stead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen;
  1449	and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the
  1450	true one: and until this is shown and until we know how it
  1451	is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion.
  1452	But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated,
  1453	to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business
  1454	of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed
  1455	opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favor
  1456	some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save
  1457	one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always
  1458	studied his adversary's case with as great, if not with still
  1459	greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised
  1460	as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by
  1461	all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth.
  1462	He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little
  1463	of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have
  1464	been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to
  1465	refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so
  1466	much as know what they are, he has no ground for pre-
  1467	ferring either opinion. The rational position for him
  1468	would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents
  1469	himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts,
  1470	like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels
  1471	most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the
  1472	arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented
  1473	as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as
  1474	refutations. This is not the way to do justice to the argu-
  1475	ments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind.
  1476	He must be able to hear them from persons who actually
  1477	believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their
  1478	very utmost for them. He must know them in their most
  1479	plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force
  1480	of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to
  1481	encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess
  1482	himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes
  1483	that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called
  1484	educated men are in this condition, even of those who can
  1485	argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be
  1486	true, but it might be false for anything they know: they
  1487	have never thrown themselves into the mental position of
  1488	those who think differently from them, and considered what
  1489	such persons may have to say; and consequently they do
  1490	not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine
  1491	which they themselves profess. They do not know those
  1492	parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the con-
  1493	siderations which show that a fact which seemingly con-
  1494	flicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two
  1495	apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to
  1496	be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the
  1497	scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed
  1498	mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but
  1499	to those who have attended equally and impartially to both
  1500	sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in the
  1501	strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real un-
  1502	derstanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents
  1503	of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable
  1504	to imagine them and supply them with the strongest
  1505	arguments which the most skilful devil's advocate can
  1506	conjure up.
  1507	
  1508	  To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy
  1509	of free discussion may be supposed to say, that there is no
  1510	necessity for mankind in general to know and understand
  1511	all that can be said against or for their opinions by philos-
  1512	ophers and theologians. That it is not needful for common
  1513	men to be able to expose all the misstatements or fallacies
  1514	of an ingenious opponent. That it is enough if there is
  1515	always somebody capable of answering them, so that nothing
  1516	likely to mislead uninstructed persons remains unrefuted.
  1517	That simple minds, having been taught the obvious grounds
  1518	of the truths inculcated on them, may trust to authority for
  1519	the rest, and being aware that they have neither knowledge
  1520	nor talent to resolve every difficulty which can be raised,
  1521	may repose in the assurance that all those which have been
  1522	raised have been or can be answered, by those who are
  1523	specially trained to the task.
  1524	
  1525	  Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can
  1526	be claimed for it by those most easily satisfied with the
  1527	amount of understanding of truth which ought to accom-
  1528	pany the belief of it; even so, the argument for free
  1529	discussion is no way weakened. For even this doctrine
  1530	acknowledges that mankind ought to have a rational assur-
  1531	ance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered;
  1532	and how are they to be answered if that which requires to
  1533	be answered is not spoken? or how can the answer be known
  1534	to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of
  1535	showing that it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at least
  1536	the philosophers and theologians who are to resolve the
  1537	difficulties, must make themselves familiar with those diffi-
  1538	culties in their most puzzling form; and this cannot be ac-
  1539	complished unless they are freely stated, and placed in the
  1540	most advantageous light which they admit of. The Catholic
  1541	Church has its own way of dealing with this embarrassing
  1542	problem. It makes a broad separation between those who
  1543	can be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and
  1544	those who must accept them on trust. Neither, indeed, are
  1545	allowed any choice as to what they will accept; but the
  1546	clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may ad-
  1547	missibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with
  1548	the arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and
  1549	may, therefore, read heretical books; the laity, not unless
  1550	by special permission, hard to be obtained. This discipline
  1551	recognizes a knowledge of the enemy's case as beneficial to
  1552	the teachers, but finds means, consistent with this, of deny-
  1553	ing it to the rest of the world: thus giving to the elite more
  1554	mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it
  1555	allows to the mass. By this device it succeeds in obtaining
  1556	the kind of mental superiority which its purposes require;
  1557	for though culture without freedom never made a large and
  1558	liberal mind, it can make a clever nisi prius advocate of a
  1559	cause. But in countries professing Protestantism, this re-
  1560	source is denied; since Protestants hold, at least in theory,
  1561	that the responsibility for the choice of a religion must be
  1562	borne by each for himself, and cannot be thrown off upon
  1563	teachers. Besides, in the present state of the world, it is
  1564	practically impossible that writings which are read by the in-
  1565	structed can be kept from the uninstructed. If the teachers
  1566	of mankind are to be cognizant of all that they ought to
  1567	know, everything must be free to be written and published
  1568	without restraint.
  1569	
  1570	  If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of
  1571	free discussion, when the received opinions are true, were
  1572	confined to leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those
  1573	opinions, it might be thought that this, if an intellectual, is
  1574	no moral evil, and does not affect the worth of the opinions,
  1575	regarded in their influence on the character. The fact,
  1576	however, is, that not only the grounds of the opinion are
  1577	forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the
  1578	meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it,
  1579	cease to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of
  1580	those they were originally employed to communicate. In-
  1581	stead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain
  1582	only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the
  1583	shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer
  1584	essence being lost. The great chapter in human history
  1585	which this fact occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly
  1586	studied and meditated on.
  1587	
  1588	  It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doc-
  1589	trines and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning
  1590	and vitality to those who originate them, and to the direct
  1591	disciples of the originators. Their meaning continues to
  1592	be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps brought out
  1593	into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle lasts
  1594	to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency over other
  1595	creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes the general
  1596	opinion, or its progress stops; it keeps possession of the
  1597	ground it has gained, but ceases to spread further. When
  1598	either of these results has become apparent, controversy on
  1599	the subject flags, and gradually dies away. The doctrine
  1600	has taken its place, if not as a received opinion, as one of
  1601	the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those who hold
  1602	it have generally inherited, not adopted it; and conversion
  1603	from one of these doctrines to another, being now an ex-
  1604	ceptional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their
  1605	professors. Instead of being, as at first, constantly on the
  1606	alert either to defend themselves against the world, or to
  1607	bring the world over to them, they have subsided into ac-
  1608	quiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to
  1609	arguments against their creed, nor trouble dissentients (if
  1610	there be such) with arguments in its favor. From this time
  1611	may usually be dated the decline in the living power of the
  1612	doctrine. We often hear the teachers of all creeds lament-
  1613	ing the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a
  1614	lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recog-
  1615	nize, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real
  1616	mastery over the conduct. No such difficulty is complained
  1617	of while the creed is still fighting for its existence: even the
  1618	weaker combatants then know and feel what they are fight-
  1619	ing for, and the difference between it and other doctrines;
  1620	and in that period of every creed's existence, not a few
  1621	persons may be found, who have realized its fundamental
  1622	principles in all the forms of thought, have weighed and
  1623	considered them in all their important bearings, and have
  1624	experienced the full effect on the character, which belief in
  1625	that creed ought to produce in a mind thoroughly imbued
  1626	with it. But when it has come to be an hereditary creed,
  1627	and to be received passively, not actively--when the mind
  1628	is no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to
  1629	exercise its vital powers on the questions which its belief
  1630	presents to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all
  1631	of the belief except the formularies, or to give it a dull and
  1632	torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust dispensed with the
  1633	necessity of realizing it in consciousness, or testing it by
  1634	personal experience; until it almost ceases to connect itself
  1635	at all with the inner life of the human being. Then are seen
  1636	the cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to
  1637	form the majority, in which the creed remains as it were out-
  1638	side the mind, encrusting and petrifying it against all other
  1639	influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; mani-
  1640	festing its power by not suffering any fresh and living con-
  1641	viction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the mind or
  1642	heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep them
  1643	vacant.
  1644	
  1645	  To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted to make
  1646	the deepest impression upon the mind may remain in it as
  1647	dead beliefs, without being ever realized in the imagination,
  1648	the feelings, or the understanding, is exemplified by the
  1649	manner in which the majority of believers hold the doctrines
  1650	of Christianity. By Christianity I here mean what is ac-
  1651	counted such by all churches and sects--the maxims and pre-
  1652	cepts contained in the New Testament. These are consid-
  1653	ered sacred, and accepted as laws, by all professing Chris-
  1654	tians. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one Chris-
  1655	tian in a thousand guides or tests his individual conduct by
  1656	reference to those laws. The standard to which he does re-
  1657	fer it, is the custom of his nation, his class, or his religious
  1658	profession. He has thus, on the one hand, a collection of
  1659	ethical maxims, which he believes to have been vouchsafed
  1660	to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his government; and
  1661	on the other, a set of every-day judgments and practices,
  1662	which go a certain length with some of those maxims, not
  1663	so great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to
  1664	some, and are, on the whole, a compromise between the
  1665	Christian creed and the interests and suggestions of worldly
  1666	life. To the first of these standards he gives his homage;
  1667	to the other his real allegiance. All Christians believe that
  1668	the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are ill-
  1669	used by the world; that it is easier for a camel to pass
  1670	through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
  1671	the kingdom of heaven; that they should judge not, lest they
  1672	be judged; that they should swear not at all; that they
  1673	should love their neighbor as themselves; that if one take
  1674	their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that they
  1675	should take no thought for the morrow; that if they would
  1676	be perfect, they should sell all that they have and give it to
  1677	the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they
  1678	believe these things. They do believe them, as people be-
  1679	lieve what they have always heard lauded and never dis-
  1680	cussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regu-
  1681	lates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the
  1682	point to which it is usual to act upon them. The doctrines
  1683	in their integrity are serviceable to pelt adversaries with;
  1684	and it is understood that they are to be put forward (when
  1685	possible) as the reasons for whatever people do that they
  1686	think laudable. But any one who reminded them that the
  1687	maxims require an infinity of things which they never even
  1688	think of doing would gain nothing but to be classed among
  1689	those very unpopular characters who affect to be better than
  1690	other people. The doctrines have no hold on ordinary be-
  1691	lievers--are not a power in their minds. They have an
  1692	habitual respect for the sound of them, but no feeling
  1693	which spreads from the words to the things signified, and
  1694	forces the mind to take them in, and make them conform
  1695	to the formula. Whenever conduct is concerned, they look
  1696	round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in
  1697	obeying Christ.
  1698	
  1699	  Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus,
  1700	but far otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been
  1701	thus, Christianity never would have expanded from an ob-
  1702	scure sect of the despised Hebrews into the religion of the
  1703	Roman empire. When their enemies said, "See how these
  1704	Christians love one another" (a remark not likely to be
  1705	made by anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier
  1706	feeling of the meaning of their creed than they have ever
  1707	had since. And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly owing
  1708	that Christianity now makes so little progress in extending
  1709	its domain, and after eighteen centuries, is still nearly con-
  1710	fined to Europeans and the descendants of Europeans. Even
  1711	with the strictly religious, who are much in earnest about
  1712	their doctrines, and attach a greater amount of meaning to
  1713	many of them than people in general, it commonly happens
  1714	that the part which is thus comparatively active in their
  1715	minds is that which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some
  1716	such person much nearer in character to themselves. The
  1717	sayings of Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing
  1718	hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to
  1719	words so amiable and bland. There are many reasons,
  1720	doubtless, why doctrines which are the badge of a sect retain
  1721	more of their vitality than those common to all recognized
  1722	sects, and why more pains are taken by teachers to keep
  1723	their meaning alive; but one reason certainly is, that the
  1724	peculiar doctrines are more questioned, and have to be
  1725	oftener defended against open gainsayers. Both teachers
  1726	and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is
  1727	no enemy in the field.
  1728	
  1729	  The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all tra-
  1730	ditional doctrines--those of prudence and knowledge of life,
  1731	as well as of morals or religion. All languages and litera-
  1732	tures are full of general observations on life, both as to what
  1733	it is, and how to conduct oneself in it; observations which
  1734	everybody knows, which everybody repeats, or hears with
  1735	acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of which
  1736	most people first truly learn the meaning, when experience,
  1737	generally of a painful kind, has made it a reality to them.
  1738	How often, when smarting under some unforeseen misfor-
  1739	tune or disappointment, does a person call to mind some
  1740	proverb or common saying familiar to him all his life, the
  1741	meaning of which, if he had ever before felt it as he does
  1742	now, would have saved him from the calamity. There are
  1743	indeed reasons for this, other than the absence of discussion:
  1744	there are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be
  1745	realized, until personal experience has brought it home.
  1746	But much more of the meaning even of these would have
  1747	been understood, and what was understood would have been
  1748	far more deeply impressed on the mind, if the man had been
  1749	accustomed to hear it argued pro and con by people who did
  1750	understand it. The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off
  1751	thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the
  1752	cause of half their errors. A contemporary author has well
  1753	spoken of "the deep slumber of a decided opinion."
  1754	
  1755	  But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity
  1756	an indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it neces-
  1757	sary that some part of mankind should persist in error, to
  1758	enable any to realize the truth? Does a belief cease to be
  1759	real and vital as soon as it is generally received--and is a
  1760	proposition never thoroughly understood and felt unless
  1761	some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have
  1762	unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within
  1763	them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelli-
  1764	gence, it has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more
  1765	and more in the acknowledgment of all important truths:
  1766	and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not
  1767	achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by
  1768	the very completeness of the victory?
  1769	
  1770	  I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number
  1771	of doctrines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be
  1772	constantly on the increase: and the well-being of mankind
  1773	may almost be measured by the number and gravity of the
  1774	truths which have reached the point of being uncontested.
  1775	The cessation, on one question after another, of serious con-
  1776	troversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the consolida-
  1777	tion of opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of
  1778	true opinions, as it is dangerous and noxious when the
  1779	opinions are erroneous. But though this gradual narrowing
  1780	of the bounds of diversity of opinion is necessary in both
  1781	senses of the term, being at once inevitable and indispensa-
  1782	ble, we are not therefore obliged to conclude that all its con-
  1783	sequences must be beneficial. The loss of so important an
  1784	aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as
  1785	is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to, or defending
  1786	it against, opponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is
  1787	no trifling drawback from, the benefit of its universal rec-
  1788	ognition. Where this advantage can no longer be had, I
  1789	confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind en-
  1790	deavoring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance
  1791	for making the difficulties of the question as present to the
  1792	learner's consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him
  1793	by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion.
  1794	
  1795	  But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they
  1796	have lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics,
  1797	so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were
  1798	a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a
  1799	negative discussion of the great questions of philosophy and
  1800	life, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of con-
  1801	vincing any one who had merely adopted the commonplaces
  1802	of received opinion, that he did not understand the subject
  1803	--that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doc-
  1804	trines he professed; in order that, becoming aware of his
  1805	ignorance, he might be put in the way to attain a stable
  1806	belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning
  1807	of doctrines and of their evidence. The school disputations
  1808	of the Middle Ages had a somewhat similar object. They
  1809	were intended to make sure that the pupil understood his
  1810	own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the opinion
  1811	opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of the one and
  1812	confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests
  1813	had indeed the incurable defect, that the premises appealed
  1814	to were taken from authority, not from reason; and, as a
  1815	discipline to the mind, they were in every respect inferior
  1816	to the powerful dialectics which formed the intellects of the
  1817	"Socratici viri:" but the modern mind owes far more to
  1818	both than it is generally willing to admit, and the present
  1819	modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest
  1820	degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other.
  1821	A person who derives all his instruction from teachers or
  1822	books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of con-
  1823	tenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear
  1824	both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplish-
  1825	ment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the
  1826	weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his
  1827	opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is
  1828	the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic
  1829	--that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in
  1830	practice, without establishing positive truths. Such nega-
  1831	tive criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate
  1832	result; but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge
  1833	or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too high-
  1834	ly; and until people are again systematically trained to it,
  1835	there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average
  1836	of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical de-
  1837	partments of speculation. On any other subject no one's
  1838	opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as
  1839	he has either had forced upon him by others, or gone
  1840	through of himself, the same mental process which would
  1841	have been required of him in carrying on an active contro-
  1842	versy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent,
  1843	it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse
  1844	than absurd is it to forego, when spontaneously offering it-
  1845	self! If there are any persons who contest a received
  1846	opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them,
  1847	let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them,
  1848	and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we
  1849	otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the cer-
  1850	tainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much
  1851	greater labor for ourselves.
  1852	
  1853	  It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes
  1854	which make diversity of opinion advantageous, and will con-
  1855	tinue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of
  1856	intellectual advancement which at present seems at an in-
  1857	calculable distance. We have hitherto considered only two
  1858	possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and
  1859	some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received
  1860	opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is es-
  1861	sential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth.
  1862	But there is a commoner case than either of these; when
  1863	the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the
  1864	other false, share the truth between them; and the noncon-
  1865	forming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the
  1866	truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part.
  1867	Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are
  1868	often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are
  1869	a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller
  1870	part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the
  1871	truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited.
  1872	Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are generally some
  1873	of these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the bonds
  1874	which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with
  1875	the truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting it
  1876	as enemies, and setting themselves up, with similar exclu-
  1877	siveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the
  1878	most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has al-
  1879	ways been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception.
  1880	Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth
  1881	usually sets while another rises. Even progress, which
  1882	ought to superadd, for the most part only substitutes one
  1883	partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement con-
  1884	sisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is
  1885	more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than
  1886	that which it displaces. Such being the partial character of
  1887	prevailing opinions, even when resting on a true foundation;
  1888	every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of
  1889	truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be con-
  1890	sidered precious, with whatever amount of error and con-
  1891	fusion that truth may be blended. No sober judge of human
  1892	affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those who
  1893	force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have
  1894	overlooked, overlook some of those which we see. Rather,
  1895	he will think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is
  1896	more desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should
  1897	have one-sided asserters too; such being usually the most
  1898	energetic, and the most likely to compel reluctant attention
  1899	to the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if it
  1900	were the whole.
  1901	
  1902	  Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the in-
  1903	structed, and all those of the uninstructed who were led
  1904	by them, were lost in admiration of what is called civiliza-
  1905	tion, and of the marvels of modern science, literature, and
  1906	philosophy, and while greatly overrating the amount of un-
  1907	likeness between the men of modern and those of ancient
  1908	times, indulged the belief that the whole of the difference
  1909	was in their own favor; with what a salutary shock did the
  1910	paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst,
  1911	dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and
  1912	forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with
  1913	additional ingredients. Not that the current opinions were
  1914	on the whole farther from the truth than Rousseau's were;
  1915	on the contrary, they were nearer to it; they contained more
  1916	of positive truth, and very much less of error. Nevertheless
  1917	there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and has floated down the
  1918	stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of
  1919	exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and
  1920	these are the deposit which was left behind when the flood
  1921	subsided. The superior worth of simplicity of life, the
  1922	enervating and demoralizing effect of the trammels and
  1923	hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which have never
  1924	been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau
  1925	wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect, though
  1926	at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be
  1927	asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject, have nearly
  1928	exhausted their power.
  1929	
  1930	  In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party
  1931	of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are
  1932	both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life;
  1933	until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental
  1934	grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress,
  1935	knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from
  1936	what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of
  1937	thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other;
  1938	but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that
  1939	keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless
  1940	opinions favorable to democracy and to aristocracy, to prop-
  1941	erty and to equality, to co-operation and to competition,
  1942	to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to
  1943	liberty and discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms
  1944	of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and en-
  1945	forced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is
  1946	no chance of both elements obtaining their due; one scale
  1947	is sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, in the great
  1948	practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the
  1949	reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have
  1950	minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the ad-
  1951	justment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be
  1952	made by the rough process of a struggle between com-
  1953	batants fighting under hostile banners. On any of the great
  1954	open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions
  1955	has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated,
  1956	but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which
  1957	happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority.
  1958	That is the opinion which, for the time being, represents the
  1959	neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in
  1960	danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that
  1961	there is not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of
  1962	opinion on most of these topics. They are adduced to show,
  1963	by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality of the
  1964	fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the
  1965	existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all
  1966	sides of the truth. When there are persons to be found,
  1967	who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the
  1968	world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it
  1969	is always probable that dissentients have something worth
  1970	hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose
  1971	something by their silence.
  1972	
  1973	  It may be objected, "But some received principles, espe-
  1974	cially on the highest and most vital subjects, are more than
  1975	half-truths. The Christian morality, for instance, is the
  1976	whole truth on that subject and if any one teaches a morality
  1977	which varies from it, he is wholly in error." As this is of
  1978	all cases the most important in practice, none can be fitter
  1979	to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing what
  1980	Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to de-
  1981	cide what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the
  1982	morality of the New Testament, I wonder that any one who
  1983	derives his knowledge of this from the book itself, can sup-
  1984	pose that it was announced, or intended, as a complete doc-
  1985	trine of morals. The Gospel always refers to a preexisting
  1986	morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars in which
  1987	that morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider
  1988	and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in terms most gen-
  1989	eral, often impossible to be interpreted literally, and possess-
  1990	ing rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the
  1991	precision of legislation. To extract from it a body of ethi-
  1992	cal doctrine, has never been possible without eking it out
  1993	from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate
  1994	indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only
  1995	for a barbarous people. St. Paul, a declared enemy to this
  1996	Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine and filling up the
  1997	scheme of his Master, equally assumes a preexisting moral-
  1998	ity, namely, that of the Greeks and Romans; and his
  1999	advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of ac-
  2000	commodation to that; even to the extent of giving an ap-
  2001	parent sanction to slavery. What is called Christian, but
  2002	should rather be termed theological, morality, was not the
  2003	work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later origin,
  2004	having been gradually built up by the Catholic Church of the
  2005	first five centuries, and though not implicitly adopted by mod-
  2006	erns and Protestants, has been much less modified by them
  2007	than might have been expected. For the most part, indeed,
  2008	they have contented themselves with cutting off the additions
  2009	which had been made to it in the Middle Ages, each sect
  2010	supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own
  2011	character and tendencies. That mankind owe a great debt
  2012	to this morality, and to its early teachers, I should be the
  2013	last person to deny; but I do not scruple to say of it, that
  2014	it is, in many important points, incomplete and one-sided,
  2015	and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it, had
  2016	contributed to the formation of European life and character,
  2017	human affairs would have been in a worse condition than
  2018	they now are. Christian morality (so called) has all the
  2019	characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against
  2020	Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; pas-
  2021	sive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness;
  2022	Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of
  2023	Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt
  2024	not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt." In its horror
  2025	of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been
  2026	gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds
  2027	out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the ap-
  2028	pointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this
  2029	falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what
  2030	lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish
  2031	character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of duty
  2032	from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as
  2033	a self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting
  2034	them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it
  2035	inculcates submission to all authorities found established;
  2036	who indeed are not to be actively obeyed when they com-
  2037	mand what religion forbids, but who are not to be resisted,
  2038	far less rebelled against, for any amount of wrong to our-
  2039	selves. And while, in the morality of the best Pagan na-
  2040	tions, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place,
  2041	infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely
  2042	Christian ethics that grand department of duty is scarcely
  2043	noticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New
  2044	Testament, that we read the maxim--"A ruler who appoints
  2045	any man to an office, when there is in his dominions another
  2046	man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the
  2047	State." What little recognition the idea of obligation to the
  2048	public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and
  2049	Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality
  2050	of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mind-
  2051	edness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is de-
  2052	rived from the purely human, not the religious part of our
  2053	education, and never could have grown out of a standard of
  2054	ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is
  2055	that of obedience.
  2056	
  2057	  I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects
  2058	are necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every
  2059	manner in which it can be conceived, or that the many
  2060	requisites of a complete moral doctrine which it does not
  2061	contain, do not admit of being reconciled with it. Far less
  2062	would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts of
  2063	Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all,
  2064	that I can see any evidence of their having been intended to
  2065	be; that they are irreconcilable with nothing which a com-
  2066	prehensive morality requires; that everything which is ex-
  2067	cellent in ethics may be brought within them, with no greater
  2068	violence to their language than has been done to it by all
  2069	who have attempted to deduce from them any practical sys-
  2070	tem of conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent with
  2071	this, to believe that they contain and were meant to con-
  2072	tain, only a part of the truth; that many essential elements
  2073	of the highest morality are among the things which are not
  2074	provided for, nor intended to be provided for, in the re-
  2075	corded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity, and
  2076	which have been entirely thrown aside in the system of
  2077	ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances by the
  2078	Christian Church. And this being so, I think it a great
  2079	error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian doc-
  2080	trine that complete rule for our guidance, which its author
  2081	intended it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to
  2082	provide. I believe, too, that this narrow theory is becoming
  2083	a grave practical evil, detracting greatly from the value
  2084	of the moral training and instruction, which so many well-
  2085	meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to
  2086	promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind
  2087	and feelings on an exclusively religious type, and discarding
  2088	those secular standards (as for want of a better name they
  2089	may be called) which heretofore coexisted with and sup-
  2090	plemented the Christian ethics, receiving some of its spirit,
  2091	and infusing into it some of theirs, there will result, and is
  2092	even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of character,
  2093	which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme
  2094	Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathizing in the concep-
  2095	tion of Supreme Goodness. I believe that other ethics than
  2096	any one which can be evolved from exclusively Christian
  2097	sources, must exist side by side with Christian ethics to
  2098	produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that the
  2099	Christian system is no exception to the rule that in an
  2100	imperfect state of the human mind, the interests of truth
  2101	require a diversity of opinions. It is not necessary that in
  2102	ceasing to ignore the moral truths not contained in Christi-
  2103	anity, men should ignore any of those which it does contain.
  2104	Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether an
  2105	evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always
  2106	exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an in-
  2107	estimable good. The exclusive pretension made by a part
  2108	of the truth to be the whole, must and ought to be protested
  2109	against, and if a reactionary impulse should make the pro-
  2110	testors unjust in their turn, this one-sidedness, like the other,
  2111	may be lamented, but must be tolerated. If Christians
  2112	would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they should
  2113	themselves be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service
  2114	to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary
  2115	acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of
  2116	the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the
  2117	work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who
  2118	knew and rejected, the Christian faith.
  2119	
  2120	  I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the free-
  2121	dom of enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to
  2122	the evils of religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every
  2123	truth which men of narrow capacity are in earnest about,
  2124	is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and in many ways even
  2125	acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world, or at all
  2126	events none that could limit or qualify the first. I ac-
  2127	knowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become sec-
  2128	tarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often
  2129	heightened and exacerbated thereby; the truth which ought
  2130	to have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more
  2131	violently because proclaimed by persons regarded as oppo-
  2132	nents. But it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on
  2133	the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this col-
  2134	lision of opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent
  2135	conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression
  2136	of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always hope
  2137	when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when
  2138	they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices,
  2139	and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being
  2140	exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few
  2141	mental attributes more rare than that judicial faculty which
  2142	can sit in intelligent judgment between two sides of a
  2143	question, of which only one is represented by an advocate
  2144	before it, truth has no chance but in proportion as every
  2145	side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the
  2146	truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be
  2147	listened to.
  2148	
  2149	  We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-
  2150	being of mankind (on which all their other well-being de-
  2151	pends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expres-
  2152	sion of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will
  2153	now briefly recapitulate.
  2154	
  2155	  First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion
  2156	may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this
  2157	is to assume our own infallibility.
  2158	
  2159	  Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may,
  2160	and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and
  2161	since the general or prevailing opinion on any object is
  2162	rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision
  2163	of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any
  2164	chance of being supplied.
  2165	
  2166	  Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true,
  2167	but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually
  2168	is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of
  2169	those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice,
  2170	with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
  2171	And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine
  2172	itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and
  2173	deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct:
  2174	the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious
  2175	for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the
  2176	growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or
  2177	personal experience.
  2178	
  2179	  Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is
  2180	fit to take notice of those who say, that the free expression
  2181	of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the
  2182	manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair
  2183	discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fix-
  2184	ing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the
  2185	test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think
  2186	experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the
  2187	attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who
  2188	pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer,
  2189	appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the sub-
  2190	ject, an intemperate opponent. But this, though an impor-
  2191	tant consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a
  2192	more fundamental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of
  2193	asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be
  2194	very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure.
  2195	But the principal offences of the kind are such as it
  2196	is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to
  2197	bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue
  2198	sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the
  2199	elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion.
  2200	But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so con-
  2201	tinually done in perfect good faith, by persons who are not
  2202	considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be
  2203	considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely pos-
  2204	sible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the mis-
  2205	representation as morally culpable; and still less could law
  2206	presume to interfere with this kind of controversial miscon-
  2207	duct. With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate
  2208	discussion, namely, invective, sarcasm, personality, and the
  2209	like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more
  2210	sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to
  2211	both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employ-
  2212	ment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the
  2213	unprevailing they may not only be used without general
  2214	disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses
  2215	them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation.
  2216	Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest
  2217	when they are employed against the comparatively defence-
  2218	less; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any
  2219	opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost ex-
  2220	clusively to received opinions. The worst offence of this
  2221	kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigma-
  2222	tize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and im-
  2223	moral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any
  2224	unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed, because they are
  2225	in general few and uninfluential, and nobody but them-
  2226	selves feels much interest in seeing justice done them;
  2227	but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied
  2228	to those who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither
  2229	use it with safety to themselves, nor if they could, would
  2230	it do anything but recoil on their own cause. In general,
  2231	opinions contrary to those commonly received can only ob-
  2232	tain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the
  2233	most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which
  2234	they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without
  2235	losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on
  2236	the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people
  2237	from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to
  2238	those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of
  2239	truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this
  2240	employment of vituperative language than the other; and,
  2241	for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would
  2242	be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on in-
  2243	fidelity, than on religion. It is, however, obvious that law
  2244	and authority have no business with restraining either,
  2245	while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its
  2246	verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemn-
  2247	ing every one, on whichever side of the argument he places
  2248	himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor,
  2249	or malignity, bigotry or intolerance of feeling manifest them-
  2250	selves, but not inferring these vices from the side which a
  2251	person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question
  2252	to our own; and giving merited honor to every one, whatever
  2253	opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty
  2254	to state what his opponents and their opinions really are,
  2255	exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back
  2256	which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. This
  2257	is the real morality of public discussion; and if often vio-
  2258	lated, I am happy to think that there are many controver-
  2259	sialists who to a great extent observe it, and a still greater
  2260	number who conscientiously strive towards it.
  2261	
  2262	[1] These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give them an
  2263	emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of
  2264	1858. That illjudged interference with the liberty of public discussion has
  2265	not, however, induced me to alter a single word in the text, nor has it at
  2266	all weakened my conviction that, moments of panic excepted, the era of
  2267	pains and penalties far political discussion has, in our own country, passed
  2268	away. For, in the first place, the prosecutions were not persisted in; and
  2269	in the second, they were never, properly speaking, political prosecutions.
  2270	The offence charged was not that of criticizing institutions, or the acts or
  2271	persons of rulers, but of circulating what was deemed an immoral doctrine,
  2272	the lawfulness of Tyrannicide.
  2273	
  2274	  If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought
  2275	to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of
  2276	ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.
  2277	It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to examine here, whether
  2278	the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that title. I shall content myself with
  2279	saying, that the subject has been at all times one of the open questions of
  2280	morals, that the act of a private citizen in striking down a criminal, who,
  2281	by raising himself above the law, has placed himself beyond the reach of
  2282	legal punishment or control, has been accounted by whole nations, and by
  2283	some of the best and wisest of men, not a crime, but an act of exalted
  2284	virtue and that, right or wrong, it is not of the nature of assassination
  2285	but of civil war. As such, I hold that the instigation to it, in a specific
  2286	case, may be a proper subject of punishment, but only if an overt act has
  2287	followed, and at least a probable connection can be established between the
  2288	act and the instigation. Even then it is not a foreign government, but the
  2289	very government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can
  2290	legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existence.
  2291	
  2292	[2] Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following,
  2293	he received a free pardon from the Crown.
  2294	
  2295	[3] George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857.
  2296	
  2297	[4] Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.
  2298	
  2299	[5] Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions
  2300	of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst parts
  2301	of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy insurrection. The
  2302	ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may be unworthy of
  2303	notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have announced as their
  2304	principle, for the government of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools
  2305	be supported by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and by
  2306	necessary consequence that no public employment be given to any but real
  2307	or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in a speech deliv-
  2308	ered to his constituents on the 12th of November, 1857, is reported to have
  2309	said: "Toleration of their faith" (the faith of a hundred millions of
  2310	British subjects), "the superstition which they called religion, by the
  2311	British Government, had had the effect of retarding the ascendency of
  2312	the British name, and preventing the salutary growth of Christianity....
  2313	Toleration was the great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this coun-
  2314	try; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he
  2315	understood it, it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship,
  2316	among Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation. It meant
  2317	toleration of all sects and denominations of Christians who believed in the
  2318	one mediation." I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man who has
  2319	been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this country, under
  2320	a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe in the
  2321	divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who, after this imbe-
  2322	cile display, can indulge the illusion that religious persecution has passed
  2323	away, never to return?
  2324	
  2325	
  2326	CHAPTER III
  2327	ON INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELLBEING
  2328	
  2329	  SUCH being the reasons which make it imperative that
  2330	human beings should be free to form opinions, and
  2331	to express their opinions without reserve; and such
  2332	the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through
  2333	that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty
  2334	is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition; let
  2335	us next examine whether the same reasons do not require
  2336	that men should be free to act upon their opinions--to carry
  2337	these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical
  2338	or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their
  2339	own risk and peril. This last proviso is of course indispen-
  2340	sable. No one pretends that actions should be as free as
  2341	opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their im-
  2342	munity, when the circumstances in which they are ex-
  2343	pressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive
  2344	instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-
  2345	dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property
  2346	is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated
  2347	through the press, but may justly incur punishment when
  2348	delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the
  2349	house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the
  2350	same mob in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind,
  2351	which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be,
  2352	and in the more important cases absolutely require to be,
  2353	controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful,
  2354	by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the
  2355	individual must be thus far limited; he must not make him-
  2356	self a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from
  2357	molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts
  2358	according to his own inclination and judgment in things
  2359	which concern himself, the same reasons which show that
  2360	opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed,
  2361	without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice
  2362	at his own cost. That mankind are not infallible; that their
  2363	truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity
  2364	of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest com-
  2365	parison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity
  2366	not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more ca-
  2367	pable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth,
  2368	are principles applicable to men's modes of action, not less
  2369	than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind
  2370	are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it
  2371	that there should be different experiments of living; that
  2372	free scope should be given to varieties of character, short
  2373	of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes
  2374	of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks
  2375	fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which
  2376	do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert
  2377	itself. Where, not the person's own character, but the tradi-
  2378	tions of customs of other people are the rule of conduct,
  2379	there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human
  2380	happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and
  2381	social progress.
  2382	
  2383	  In maintaining this principle, the greatest difficulty to be
  2384	encountered does not lie in the appreciation of means
  2385	towards an acknowledged end, but in the indifference of
  2386	persons in general to the end itself. If it were felt that the
  2387	free development of individuality is one of the leading es-
  2388	sentials of well-being; that it is not only a coordinate ele-
  2389	ment with all that is designated by the terms civilization,
  2390	instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part
  2391	and condition of all those things; there would be no danger
  2392	that liberty should be undervalued, and the adjustment of the
  2393	boundaries between it and social control would present no
  2394	extraordinary difficulty. But the evil is, that individual spon-
  2395	taneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of think-
  2396	ing as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard
  2397	on its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the
  2398	ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make
  2399	them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways
  2400	should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more,
  2401	spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of
  2402	moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with
  2403	jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruc-
  2404	tion to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in
  2405	their own judgment, think would be best for mankind. Few
  2406	persons, out of Germany, even comprehend the meaning of
  2407	the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both
  2408	as a savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise--
  2409	that "the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the
  2410	eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested
  2411	by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most har-
  2412	monious development of his powers to a complete and con-
  2413	sistent whole;" that, therefore, the object "towards which
  2414	every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and
  2415	on which especially those who design to influence their
  2416	fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality
  2417	of power and development;" that for this there are two
  2418	requisites, "freedom, and a variety of situations;" and
  2419	that from the union of these arise "individual vigor and
  2420	manifold diversity," which combine themselves in "origi-
  2421	nality."[1]
  2422	
  2423	  Little, however, as people are accustomed to a doctrine
  2424	like that of Von Humboldt, and surprising as it may be to
  2425	them to find so high a value attached to individuality, the
  2426	question, one must nevertheless think, can only be one of
  2427	degree. No one's idea of excellence in conduct is that people
  2428	should do absolutely nothing but copy one another. No
  2429	one would assert that people ought not to put into their
  2430	mode of life, and into the conduct of their concerns, any
  2431	impress whatever of their own judgment, or of their own
  2432	individual character. On the other hand, it would be absurd
  2433	to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever
  2434	had been known in the world before they came into it; as if
  2435	experience had as yet done nothing towards showing that
  2436	one mode of existence, or of conduct, is preferable to an-
  2437	other. Nobody denies that people should be so taught and
  2438	trained in youth, as to know and benefit by the ascertained
  2439	results of human experience. But it is the privilege and
  2440	proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity
  2441	of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own
  2442	way. It is for him to find out what part of recorded ex-
  2443	perience is properly applicable to his own circumstances and
  2444	character. The traditions and customs of other people are,
  2445	to a certain extent, evidence of what their experience has
  2446	taught them; presumptive evidence, and as such, have a
  2447	claim to this deference: but, in the first place, their experi-
  2448	ence may be too narrow; or they may not have interpreted
  2449	it rightly. Secondly, their interpretation of experience may
  2450	be correct but unsuitable to him. Customs are made for
  2451	customary circumstances, and customary characters: and
  2452	his circumstances or his character may be uncustomary.
  2453	Thirdly, though the customs be both good as customs,
  2454	and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely
  2455	as custom, does not educate or develop in him any
  2456	of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a
  2457	human being. The human faculties of perception, judg-
  2458	ment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral
  2459	preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He
  2460	who does anything because it is the custom, makes no
  2461	choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in de-
  2462	siring what is best. The mental and moral, like the mus-
  2463	cular powers, are improved only by being used. The facul-
  2464	ties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely
  2465	because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only
  2466	because others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion
  2467	are not conclusive to the person's own reason, his reason
  2468	cannot be strengthened, but is likely to be weakened by his
  2469	adopting it: and if the inducements to an act are not such
  2470	as are consentaneous to his own feelings and character
  2471	(where affection, or the rights of others are not concerned),
  2472	it is so much done towards rendering his feelings and char-
  2473	acter inert and torpid, instead of active and energetic.
  2474	
  2475	  He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose
  2476	his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty
  2477	than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his
  2478	plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use
  2479	observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, ac-
  2480	tivity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to
  2481	decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control
  2482	to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he
  2483	requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his
  2484	conduct which he determines according to his own judgment
  2485	and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be
  2486	guided in some good path, and kept out of harm's way, with-
  2487	out any of these things. But what will be his comparative
  2488	worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not
  2489	only what men do, but also what manner of men they are
  2490	that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is
  2491	rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in
  2492	importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were pos-
  2493	sible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes
  2494	tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by ma-
  2495	chinery--by automatons in human form--it would be a con-
  2496	siderable loss to exchange for these automatons even the
  2497	men and women who at present inhabit the more civilized
  2498	parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved speci-
  2499	mens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature
  2500	is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do
  2501	exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires
  2502	to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the
  2503	tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
  2504	
  2505	  It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people
  2506	should exercise their understandings, and that an intelligent
  2507	following of custom, or even occasionally an intelligent de-
  2508	viation from custom, is better than a blind and simply
  2509	mechanical adhesion to it. To a certain extent it is ad-
  2510	mitted, that our understanding should be our own: but there
  2511	is not the same willingness to admit that our desires and
  2512	impulses should be our own likewise; or that to possess im-
  2513	pulses of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a
  2514	peril and a snare. Yet desires and impulses are as much
  2515	a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints:
  2516	and strong impulses are only perilous when not properly
  2517	balanced; when one set of aims and inclinations is developed
  2518	into strength, while others, which ought to coexist with
  2519	them, remain weak and inactive. It is not because men's
  2520	desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their con-
  2521	sciences are weak. There is no natural connection between
  2522	strong impulses and a weak conscience. The natural con-
  2523	nection is the other way. To say that one person's desires
  2524	and feelings are stronger and more various than those of an-
  2525	other, is merely to say that he has more of the raw material
  2526	of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more
  2527	evil, but certainly of more good. Strong impulses are but
  2528	another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad
  2529	uses; but more good may always be made of an energetic
  2530	nature, than of an indolent and impassive one. Those who
  2531	have most natural feeling, are always those whose cultivated
  2532	feelings may be made the strongest. The same strong sus-
  2533	ceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and
  2534	powerful, are also the source from whence are generated
  2535	the most passionate love of virtue, and the sternest self-
  2536	control. It is through the cultivation of these, that society
  2537	both does its duty and protects its interests: not by rejecting
  2538	the stuff of which heroes are made, because it knows not
  2539	how to make them. A person whose desires and impulses
  2540	are his own--are the expression of his own nature, as it has
  2541	been developed and modified by his own culture--is said to
  2542	have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not
  2543	his owN, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has
  2544	a character. If, in addition to being his own, his impulses
  2545	are strong, and are under the government of a strong will,
  2546	he has an energetic character. Whoever thinks that indi-
  2547	viduality of desires and impulses should not be encouraged
  2548	to unfold itself, must maintain that society has no need of
  2549	strong natures--is not the better for containing many per-
  2550	sons who have much character--and that a high general
  2551	average of energy is not desirable.
  2552	
  2553	  In some early states of society, these forces might be,
  2554	and were, too much ahead of the power which society then
  2555	possessed of disciplining and controlling them. There has
  2556	been a time when the element of spontaneity and individu-
  2557	ality was in excess, and the social principle had a hard
  2558	struggle with it. The difficulty then was, to induce men of
  2559	strong bodies or minds to pay obedience to any rules which
  2560	required them to control their impulses. To overcome this
  2561	difficulty, law and discipline, like the Popes struggling against
  2562	the Emperors, asserted a power over the whole man, claiming
  2563	to control all his life in order to control his character--
  2564	which society had not found any other sufficient means of
  2565	binding. But society has now fairly got the better of indi-
  2566	viduality; and the danger which threatens human nature
  2567	is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and
  2568	preferences. Things are vastly changed, since the passions
  2569	of those who were strong by station or by personal en-
  2570	dowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws
  2571	and ordinances, and required to be rigorously chained up to
  2572	enable the persons within their reach to enjoy any particle
  2573	of security. In our times, from the highest class of society
  2574	down to the lowest every one lives as under the eye of a
  2575	hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns
  2576	others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual,
  2577	or the family, do not ask themselves--what do I prefer? or,
  2578	what would suit my character and disposition? or, what
  2579	would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and
  2580	enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what
  2581	is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons
  2582	of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still)
  2583	what is usually done by persons of a station and circum-
  2584	stances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose
  2585	what is customary, in preference to what suits their own
  2586	inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclina-
  2587	tion, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself
  2588	is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure,
  2589	conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds;
  2590	they exercise choice only among things commonly done:
  2591	peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned
  2592	equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their
  2593	own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human
  2594	capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable
  2595	of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally
  2596	without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or
  2597	properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable
  2598	condition of human nature?
  2599	
  2600	  It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. According to that,
  2601	the one great offence of man is Self-will. All the
  2602	good of which humanity is capable, is comprised in Obedi-
  2603	ence. You have no choice; thus you must do, and no other-
  2604	wise; "whatever is not a duty is a sin." Human nature be-
  2605	ing radically corrupt, there is no redemption for any one
  2606	until human nature is killed within him. To one holding
  2607	this theory of life, crushing out any of the human faculties,
  2608	capacities, and susceptibilities, is no evil: man needs no
  2609	capacity, but that of surrendering himself to the will of
  2610	God: and if he uses any of his faculties for any other
  2611	purpose but to do that supposed will more effectually, he is
  2612	better without them. That is the theory of Calvinism; and
  2613	it is held, in a mitigated form, by many who do not con-
  2614	sider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in
  2615	giving a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of
  2616	God; asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify
  2617	some of their inclinations; of course not in the manner
  2618	they themselves prefer, but in the way of obedience, that
  2619	is, in a way prescribed to them by authority; and, therefore,
  2620	by the necessary conditions of the case, the same for all.
  2621	
  2622	  In some such insidious form there is at present a strong
  2623	tendency to this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched
  2624	and hidebound type of human character which it patronizes.
  2625	Many persons, no doubt, sincerely think that human beings
  2626	thus cramped and dwarfed, are as their Maker designed
  2627	them to be; just as many have thought that trees are a
  2628	much finer thing when clipped into pollards, or cut out
  2629	into figures of animals, than as nature made them. But if
  2630	it be any part of religion to believe that man was made by
  2631	a good Being, it is more consistent with that faith to
  2632	believe, that this Being gave all human faculties that they
  2633	might be cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and con-
  2634	sumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer approach
  2635	made by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in
  2636	them, every increase in any of their capabilities of com-
  2637	prehension, of action, or of enjoyment. There is a different
  2638	type of human excellence from the Calvinistic; a conception
  2639	of humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for other
  2640	purposes than merely to be abnegated. "Pagan self-
  2641	assertion" is one of the elements of human worth,
  2642	as well as "Christian self-denial."[2] There is a Greek
  2643	ideal of self-development, which the Platonic and Chris-
  2644	tian ideal of self-government blends with, but does
  2645	not supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than
  2646	an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than either;
  2647	nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be without
  2648	anything good which belonged to John Knox.
  2649	
  2650	  It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is
  2651	individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling
  2652	it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests
  2653	of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful
  2654	object of contemplation; and as the works partake the char-
  2655	acter of those who do them, by the same process human
  2656	life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnish-
  2657	ing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating
  2658	feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every in-
  2659	dividual to the race, by making the race infinitely better
  2660	worth belonging to. In proportion to the development of his
  2661	individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself,
  2662	and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others.
  2663	There is a greater fulness of life about his own existence,
  2664	and when there is more life in the units there is more
  2665	in the mass which is composed of them. As much com-
  2666	pression as is necessary to prevent the stronger specimens
  2667	of human nature from encroaching on the rights of others,
  2668	cannot be dispensed with; but for this there is ample com-
  2669	pensation even in the point of view of human develop-
  2670	ment. The means of development which the individual
  2671	loses by being prevented from gratifying his inclinations
  2672	to the injury of others, are chiefly obtained at the expense
  2673	of the development of other people. And even to himself
  2674	there is a full equivalent in the better development of the
  2675	social part of his nature, rendered possible by the restraint
  2676	put upon the selfish part. To be held to rigid rules of
  2677	justice for the sake of others, develops the feelings and
  2678	capacities which have the good of others for their object.
  2679	But to be restrained in things not affecting their good, by
  2680	their mere displeasure, develops nothing valuable, except
  2681	such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting
  2682	the restraint. If acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts the
  2683	whole nature. To give any fair play to the nature of each,
  2684	it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead
  2685	different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been ex-
  2686	ercised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity.
  2687	Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long
  2688	as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes in-
  2689	dividuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called,
  2690	and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God
  2691	or the injunctions of men.
  2692	
  2693	  Having said that Individuality is the same thing with
  2694	development, and that it is only the cultivation of individ-
  2695	uality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human
  2696	beings, I might here close the argument: for what more
  2697	or better can be said of any condition of human affairs,
  2698	than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the
  2699	best thing they can be? or what worse can be said of any
  2700	obstruction to good, than that it prevents this? Doubtless,
  2701	however, these considerations will not suffice to convince
  2702	those who most need convincing; and it is necessary
  2703	further to show, that these developed human beings
  2704	are of some use to the undeveloped--to point out to
  2705	those who do not desire liberty, and would not avail them-
  2706	selves of it, that they may be in some intelligible manner
  2707	rewarded for allowing other people to make use of it with-
  2708	out hindrance.
  2709	
  2710	  In the first place, then, I would suggest that they might
  2711	possibly learn something from them. It will not be denied
  2712	by anybody, that originality is a valuable element in human
  2713	affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover
  2714	new truths, and point out when what were once truths
  2715	are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and
  2716	set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better
  2717	taste and sense in human life. This cannot well be gainsaid
  2718	by anybody who does not believe that the world has already
  2719	attained perfection in all its ways and practices. It is true
  2720	that this benefit is not capable of being rendered by every-
  2721	body alike: there are but few persons, in comparison with
  2722	the whole of mankind, whose experiments, if adopted by
  2723	others, would be likely to be any improvement on established
  2724	practice. But these few are the salt of the earth; without
  2725	them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is
  2726	it they who introduce good things which did not before
  2727	exist; it is they who keep the life in those which already
  2728	existed. If there were nothing new to be done, would
  2729	human intellect cease to be necessary? Would it be a reason
  2730	why those who do the old things should forget why they
  2731	are done, and do them like cattle, not like human beings?
  2732	There is only too great a tendency in the best beliefs and
  2733	practices to degenerate into the mechanical; and unless there
  2734	were a succession of persons whose ever-recurring origi-
  2735	nality prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices
  2736	from becoming merely traditional, such dead matter would
  2737	not resist the smallest shock from anything really alive, and
  2738	there would be no reason why civilization should not die
  2739	out, as in the Byzantine Empire. Persons of genius, it is
  2740	true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority;
  2741	but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the
  2742	soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely
  2743	in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex
  2744	vi termini, more individual than any other people--less
  2745	capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurt-
  2746	ful compression, into any of the small number of moulds
  2747	which society provides in order to save its members the
  2748	trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity
  2749	they consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to
  2750	let all that part of themselves which cannot expand under
  2751	the pressure remain unexpanded, society will be little the
  2752	better for their genius. If they are of a strong character,
  2753	and break their fetters they become a mark for the society
  2754	which has not succeeded in reducing them to common-place,
  2755	to point at with solemn warning as "wild," "erratic," and
  2756	the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara
  2757	river for not flowing smoothly between its banks like a
  2758	Dutch canal.
  2759	
  2760	  I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius,
  2761	and the necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both
  2762	in thought and in practice, being well aware that no one
  2763	will deny the position in theory, but knowing also that almost
  2764	every one, in reality, is totally indifferent to it. People
  2765	think genius a fine thing if it enables a man to write an
  2766	exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in its true sense,
  2767	that of originality in thought and action, though no one
  2768	says that it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at
  2769	heart, think they can do very well without it. Unhappily
  2770	this is too natural to be wondered at. Originality is the
  2771	one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
  2772	They cannot see what it is to do for them: how should they?
  2773	If they could see what it would do for them, it would not
  2774	be originality. The first service which originality has to
  2775	render them, is that of opening their eyes: which being
  2776	once fully done, they would have a chance of being them-
  2777	selves original. Meanwhile, recollecting that nothing was
  2778	ever yet done which some one was not the first to do, and
  2779	that all good things which exist are the fruits of originality,
  2780	let them be modest enough to believe that there is something
  2781	still left for it to accomplish, and assure themselves that
  2782	they are more in need of originality, the less they are
  2783	conscious of the want.
  2784	
  2785	  In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or
  2786	even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the gen-
  2787	eral tendency of things throughout the world is to render
  2788	mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. In ancient
  2789	history, in the Middle Ages, and in a diminishing degree
  2790	through the long transition from feudality to the present
  2791	time, the individual was a power in himself; and If he
  2792	had either great talents or a high social position, he was
  2793	a considerable power. At present individuals are lost in the
  2794	crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public
  2795	opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving
  2796	the name is that of masses, and of governments while they
  2797	make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts
  2798	of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations
  2799	of private life as in public transactions. Those whose
  2800	opinions go by the name of public opinion, are not always
  2801	the same sort of public: in America, they are the whole
  2802	white population; in England, chiefly the middle class. But
  2803	they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity.
  2804	And what is still greater novelty, the mass do not now
  2805	take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from
  2806	ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done
  2807	for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or
  2808	speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through
  2809	the newspapers. I am not complaining of all this. I do
  2810	not assert that anything better is compatible, as a general
  2811	rule, with the present low state of the human mind. But
  2812	that does not hinder the government of mediocrity from
  2813	being mediocre government. No government by a democ-
  2814	racy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts
  2815	or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it
  2816	fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in
  2817	so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be
  2818	guided (which in their best times they always have done)
  2819	by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and
  2820	instructed One or Few. The initiation of all wise or noble
  2821	things, comes and must come from individuals; generally
  2822	at first from some one individual. The honor and glory of
  2823	the average man is that he is capable of following that
  2824	initiative; that he can respond internally to wise and noble
  2825	things, and be led to them with his eyes open. I am not
  2826	countenancing the sort of "hero-worship" which applauds
  2827	the strong man of genius for forcibly seizing on the govern-
  2828	ment of the world and making it do his bidding in spite
  2829	of itself. All he can claim is, freedom to point out the way.
  2830	The power of compelling others into it, is not only incon-
  2831	sistent with the freedom and development of all the rest,
  2832	but corrupting to the strong man himself. It does seem, how-
  2833	ever, that when the opinions of masses of merely average
  2834	men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant
  2835	power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency
  2836	would be, the more and more pronounced individuality of
  2837	those who stand on the higher eminences of thought. It
  2838	Is in these circumstances most especially, that exceptional
  2839	individuals, instead of being deterred, should be encouraged
  2840	in acting differently from the mass. In other times there
  2841	was no advantage in their doing so, unless they acted not
  2842	only differently, but better. In this age the mere example
  2843	of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to
  2844	custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of
  2845	opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is
  2846	desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that
  2847	people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded
  2848	when and where strength of character has abounded; and
  2849	the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been
  2850	proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and
  2851	moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare
  2852	to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
  2853	
  2854	  I have said that it is important to give the freest scope
  2855	possible to uncustomary things, in order that it may in time
  2856	appear which of these are fit to be converted into customs.
  2857	But independence of action, and disregard of custom are not
  2858	solely deserving of encouragement for the chance they
  2859	afford that better modes of action, and customs more worthy
  2860	of general adoption, may be struck out; nor is it only per-
  2861	sons of decided mental superiority who have a just claim
  2862	to carry on their lives in their own way. There is no reason
  2863	that all human existences should be constructed on some one,
  2864	or some small number of patterns. If a person possesses
  2865	any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his
  2866	own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because
  2867	it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode. Hu-
  2868	man beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not un-
  2869	distinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair
  2870	of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his meas-
  2871	ure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is
  2872	it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are hu-
  2873	man beings more like one another in their whole physical
  2874	and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet?
  2875	If it were only that people have diversities of taste that
  2876	is reason enough for not attempting to shape them
  2877	all after one model. But different persons also require dif-
  2878	ferent conditions for their spiritual development; and can
  2879	no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the
  2880	variety of plants can in the same physical atmosphere and
  2881	climate. The same things which are helps to one person
  2882	towards the cultivation of his higher nature, are hindrances
  2883	to another. The same mode of life is a healthy excitement
  2884	to one, keeping all his faculties of action and enjoyment in
  2885	their best order, while to another it is a distracting burden,
  2886	which suspends or crushes all internal life. Such are the
  2887	differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure,
  2888	their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of
  2889	different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a
  2890	corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither
  2891	obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the
  2892	mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is
  2893	capable. Why then should tolerance, as far as the public
  2894	sentiment is concerned, extend only to tastes and modes of
  2895	life which extort acquiescence by the multitude of their ad-
  2896	herents? Nowhere (except in some monastic institutions)
  2897	is diversity of taste entirely unrecognized; a person may
  2898	without blame, either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or
  2899	music, or athletic exercises, or chess, or cards, or study, be-
  2900	cause both those who like each of these things, and those
  2901	who dislike them, are too numerous to be put down. But the
  2902	man, and still more the woman, who can be accused either
  2903	of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what every-
  2904	body does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark
  2905	as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency.
  2906	Persons require to possess a title, or some other badge of
  2907	rank, or the consideration of people of rank, to be able to
  2908	indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like with-
  2909	out detriment to their estimation. To indulge somewhat, I
  2910	repeat: for whoever allow themselves much of that in
  2911	dulgence, incur the risk of something worse than disparag-
  2912	ing speeches--they are in peril of a commission de lunatico,
  2913	and of having their property taken from them and given to
  2914	their relations.[3]
  2915	
  2916	  There is one characteristic of the present direction of
  2917	public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of
  2918	any marked demonstration of individuality. The general
  2919	average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but
  2920	also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes
  2921	strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and
  2922	they consequently do not understand those who have, and
  2923	class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are
  2924	accustomed to look down upon. Now, in addition to this
  2925	fact which is general, we have only to suppose that a strong
  2926	movement has set in towards the improvement of morals,
  2927	and it is evident what we have to expect. In these days
  2928	such a movement has set in; much has actually been effected
  2929	in the way of increased regularity of conduct, and discour-
  2930	agement of excesses; and there is a philanthropic spirit
  2931	abroad, for the exercise of which there is no more inviting
  2932	field than the moral and prudential improvement of our
  2933	fellow-creatures. These tendencies of the times cause the
  2934	public to be more disposed than at most former periods to
  2935	prescribe general rules of conduct, and endeavor to make
  2936	every one conform to the approved standard. And that
  2937	standard, express or tacit, is to desire nothing strongly. Its
  2938	ideal of character is to be without any marked character; to
  2939	maim by compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every part
  2940	of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to
  2941	make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to common-
  2942	place humanity.
  2943	
  2944	  As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one half
  2945	of what is desirable, the present standard of approbation
  2946	produces only an inferior imitation of the other half. In-
  2947	stead of great energies guided by vigorous reason, and
  2948	strong feelings strongly controlled by a conscientious will,
  2949	its result is weak feelings and weak energies, which there-
  2950	fore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any
  2951	strength either of will or of reason. Already energetic
  2952	characters on any large scale are becoming merely tradi-
  2953	tional. There is now scarcely any outlet for energy in this
  2954	country except business. The energy expended in that
  2955	may still be regarded as considerable. What little is left
  2956	from that employment, is expended on some hobby; which
  2957	may be a useful, even a philanthropic hobby, but is always
  2958	some one thing, and generally a thing of small dimensions.
  2959	The greatness of England is now all collective: individually
  2960	small, we only appear capable of anything great by our habit
  2961	of combining; and with this our moral and religious philan-
  2962	thropists are perfectly contented. But it was men of another
  2963	stamp than this that made England what it has been; and
  2964	men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline.
  2965	
  2966	  The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hin-
  2967	drance to human advancement, being in unceasing antago-
  2968	nism to that disposition to aim at something better than cus-
  2969	tomary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit
  2970	of liberty, or that of progress or improvement. The spirit
  2971	of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may
  2972	aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people; and
  2973	the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may
  2974	ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of im-
  2975	provement; but the only unfailing and permanent source of
  2976	improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possi-
  2977	ble independent centres of improvement as there are indi-
  2978	viduals. The progressive principle, however, in either shape,
  2979	whether as the love of liberty or of improvement, is antago-
  2980	nistic to the sway of Custom, involving at least emancipation
  2981	from that yoke; and the contest between the two constitutes
  2982	the chief interest of the history of mankind. The greater
  2983	part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because
  2984	the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over
  2985	the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final
  2986	appeal; Justice and right mean conformity to custom; the
  2987	argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated
  2988	with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result.
  2989	Those nations must once have had originality; they did not
  2990	start out of the ground populous, lettered, and versed in
  2991	many of the arts of life; they made themselves all this, and
  2992	were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the
  2993	world. What are they now? The subjects or dependents of
  2994	tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs
  2995	had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over
  2996	whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and
  2997	progress. A people, it appears, may be progressive for a
  2998	certain length of time, and then stop: when does it stop?
  2999	When it ceases to possess individuality. If a similar change
  3000	should befall the nations of Europe, it will not be in exactly
  3001	the same shape: the despotism of custom with which these
  3002	nations are threatened is not precisely stationariness. It
  3003	proscribes singularity, but it does not preclude change, pro-
  3004	vided all change together. We have discarded the fixed
  3005	costumes of our forefathers; every one must still dress like
  3006	other people, but the fashion may change once or twice a
  3007	year. We thus take care that when there is change, it shall
  3008	be for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty or
  3009	convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience
  3010	would not strike all the world at the same moment, and be
  3011	simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment. But
  3012	we are progressive as well as changeable: we continually
  3013	make new inventions in mechanical things, and keep them
  3014	until they are again superseded by better; we are eager for
  3015	improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though
  3016	in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in per-
  3017	suading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves.
  3018	It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flat-
  3019	ter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who
  3020	ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we
  3021	should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves
  3022	all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to
  3023	another is generally the first thing which draws the attention
  3024	of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the su-
  3025	periority of another, or the possibility, by combining the
  3026	advantages of both, of producing something better than
  3027	either. We have a warning example in China--a nation
  3028	of much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom, owing
  3029	to the rare good fortune of having been provided at an
  3030	early period with a particularly good set of customs, the
  3031	work, in some measure, of men to whom even the most en-
  3032	lightened European must accord, under certain limitations,
  3033	the title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable,
  3034	too, in the excellence of their apparatus for impressing, as
  3035	far as possible, the best wisdom they possess upon every
  3036	mind in the community, and securing that those who have
  3037	appropriated most of it shall occupy the posts of honor and
  3038	power. Surely the people who did this have discovered the
  3039	secret of human progressiveness, and must have kept them-
  3040	selves steadily at the head of the movement of the world.
  3041	On the contrary, they have become stationary--have re-
  3042	mained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to
  3043	be farther improved, it must be by foreigners. They have
  3044	succeeded beyond all hope in what English philanthropists
  3045	are so industriously working at--in making a people all alike,
  3046	all governing their thoughts and conduct by the same
  3047	maxims and rules; and these are the fruits. The modern
  3048	regime of public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what
  3049	the Chinese educational and political systems are in an or-
  3050	ganized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to
  3051	assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its
  3052	noble antecedents and its professed Christianity, will tend
  3053	to become another China.
  3054	
  3055	  What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe from this
  3056	lot? What has made the European family of nations an
  3057	improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not
  3058	any superior excellence in them, which when it exists, exists
  3059	as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity
  3060	of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have
  3061	been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a
  3062	great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable;
  3063	and although at every period those who travelled in different
  3064	paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would
  3065	have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have
  3066	been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart
  3067	each other's development have rarely had any permanent
  3068	success, and each has in time endured to receive the good
  3069	which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgment,
  3070	wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive
  3071	and many-sided development. But it already begins to pos-
  3072	sess this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is decidedly
  3073	advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people
  3074	alike. M. de Tocqueville, in his last important work, re-
  3075	marks how much more the Frenchmen of the present day
  3076	resemble one another, than did those even of the last gen-
  3077	eration. The same remark might be made of Englishmen
  3078	in a far greater degree. In a passage already quoted from
  3079	Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out two things as neces-
  3080	sary conditions of human development, because necessary to
  3081	render people unlike one another; namely, freedom, and
  3082	variety of situations. The second of these two conditions is
  3083	in this country every day diminishing. The circumstances
  3084	which surround different classes and individuals, and shape
  3085	their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. For-
  3086	merly, different ranks, different neighborhoods, different
  3087	trades and professions lived in what might be called different
  3088	worlds; at present, to a great degree, in the same. Compara-
  3089	tively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the
  3090	same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have
  3091	their hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the
  3092	same rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting
  3093	them. Great as are the differences of position which re-
  3094	main, they are nothing to those which have ceased. And
  3095	the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political changes
  3096	of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low
  3097	and to lower the high. Every extension of education pro-
  3098	motes it, because education brings people under common
  3099	influences, and gives them access to the general stock of
  3100	facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of com-
  3101	munication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant
  3102	places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of
  3103	changes of residence between one place and another. The
  3104	increase of commerce and manufactures promotes it, by
  3105	diffusing more widely the advantages of easy circumstances,
  3106	and opening all objects of ambition, even the highest, to
  3107	general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes
  3108	no longer the character of a particular class, but of all
  3109	classes. A more powerful agency than even all these, in
  3110	bringing about a general similarity among mankind, is the
  3111	complete establishment, in this and other free countries, of
  3112	the ascendancy of public opinion in the State. As the various
  3113	social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them
  3114	to disregard the opinion of the multitude, gradually became
  3115	levelled; as the very idea of resisting the will of the public,
  3116	when it is positively known that they have a will, disappears
  3117	more and more from the minds of practical politicians; there
  3118	ceases to be any social support for non-conformity--any sub-
  3119	stantive power in society, which, itself opposed to the
  3120	ascendancy of numbers, is interested in taking under its
  3121	protection opinions and tendencies at variance with those
  3122	of the public.
  3123	
  3124	  The combination of all these causes forms so great a mass
  3125	of influences hostile to Individuality, that it is not easy to see
  3126	how it can stand its ground. It will do so with increasing
  3127	difficulty, unless the intelligent part of the public can be
  3128	made to feel its value--to see that it is good there should be
  3129	differences, even though not for the better, even though,
  3130	as it may appear to them, some should be for the worse. If
  3131	the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the time
  3132	is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced
  3133	assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand
  3134	can be successfully made against the encroachment. The
  3135	demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves, grows
  3136	by what it feeds on. If resistance waits till life is reduced
  3137	nearly to one uniform type, all deviations from that type
  3138	will come to be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous
  3139	and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to
  3140	conceive diversity, when they have been for some time un-
  3141	accustomed to see it.
  3142	
  3143	
  3144	[1] The Sphere and Duties of Government, from the German of Baron
  3145	Wilhelm von Humboldt, pp. 11-13.
  3146	
  3147	[2] Sterling's Essays.
  3148	
  3149	[3] There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of evi-
  3150	dence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially declared unfit
  3151	for the management of his affairs; and after his death, his disposal of his
  3152	property can be set aside, if there is enough of it to pay the expenses of
  3153	litigation--which are charged on the property itself. All of the minute details
  3154	of his daily life are pried into, and whatever is found which, seen through
  3155	the medium of the perceiving and escribing faculties of the lowest of the
  3156	low, bears an appearance unlike absolute commonplace, is laid before the
  3157	jury as evidence of insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little,
  3158	if at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses; while the judges, with
  3159	that extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which con-
  3160	tinually astonishes us in English lawyers, often help to mislead them. These
  3161	trials speak volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion among the vulgar
  3162	with regard to human liberty. So far from setting any value on individu-
  3163	ality--so far from respecting the rights of each individual to act, in things
  3164	indifferent, as seems good to his own judgment and inclinations, judges and
  3165	juries cannot even conceive that a person in a state of sanity can desire such
  3166	freedom. In former days, when it was proposed to burn atheists, charitable
  3167	people used to suggest putting them in a madhouse instead: it would be
  3168	nothing surprising now-a-days were we to see this done, and the doers
  3169	applauding themselves, because, instead of persecuting for religion, they had
  3170	adopted so humane and Christian a mode of treating these unfortunates, not
  3171	without a silent satisfaction at their having thereby obtained their deserts.
  3172	
  3173	
  3174	CHAPTER IV
  3175	OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL
  3176	
  3177	  WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty
  3178	of the individual over himself? Where does the
  3179	authority of society begin? How much of human
  3180	life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to
  3181	society?
  3182	
  3183	  Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which
  3184	more particularly concerns it. To individuality should be-
  3185	long the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual that
  3186	is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests
  3187	society.
  3188	
  3189	  Though society is not founded on a contract, and though
  3190	no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in
  3191	order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who
  3192	receives the protection of society owes a return for the ben-
  3193	efit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable
  3194	that each should be bound to observe a certain line of con-
  3195	duct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not
  3196	injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain
  3197	interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit
  3198	understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and sec-
  3199	ondly, in each person's bearing his share (to be fixed on
  3200	some equitable principle) of the labors and sacrifices in-
  3201	curred for defending the society or its members from injury
  3202	and molestation. These conditions society is justified in
  3203	enforcing, at all costs to those who endeavor to withhold
  3204	fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of
  3205	an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due
  3206	consideration for their welfare, without going the length of
  3207	violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may
  3208	then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As
  3209	soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially
  3210	the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and
  3211	the question whether the general welfare will or will not be
  3212	promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion.
  3213	But there is no room for entertaining any such question
  3214	when a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons
  3215	besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like
  3216	(all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary
  3217	amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be
  3218	perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand
  3219	the consequences.
  3220	
  3221	  It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to
  3222	suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends
  3223	that human beings have no business with each other's con-
  3224	duct in life, and that they should not concern themselves
  3225	about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless
  3226	their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution,
  3227	there is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion
  3228	to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevo-
  3229	lence can find other instruments to persuade people to their
  3230	good, than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the
  3231	metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the
  3232	self-regarding virtues; they are only second in importance,
  3233	if even second, to the social. It is equally the business of
  3234	education to cultivate both. But even education works by
  3235	conviction and persuasion as well as by compulsion, and it is
  3236	by the former only that, when the period of education is
  3237	past, the self-regarding virtues should be inculcated. Human
  3238	beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from
  3239	the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and
  3240	avoid the latter. They should be forever stimulating each
  3241	other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and
  3242	increased direction of their feelings and aims towards wise
  3243	instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, objects
  3244	and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any num-
  3245	ber of persons, is warranted in saying to another human
  3246	creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for
  3247	his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the
  3248	person most interested in his own well-being, the interest
  3249	which any other person, except in cases of strong personal
  3250	attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that
  3251	which he himself has; the interest which society has in him
  3252	individually (except as to his conduct to others) is frac-
  3253	tional, and altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own
  3254	feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman
  3255	has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that
  3256	can be possessed by any one else. The interference of
  3257	society to overrule his judgment and purposes in what only
  3258	regards himself, must be grounded on general presumptions;
  3259	which may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as
  3260	likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases, by per-
  3261	sons no better acquainted with the circumstances of such
  3262	cases than those are who look at them merely from with-
  3263	out. In this department, therefore, of human affairs, Indi-
  3264	viduality has its proper field of action. In the conduct of
  3265	human beings towards one another, it is necessary that gen-
  3266	eral rules should for the most part be observed, in order that
  3267	people may know what they have to expect; but in each per-
  3268	son's own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to
  3269	free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhorta-
  3270	tions to strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even
  3271	obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the final
  3272	judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against advice
  3273	and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing
  3274	others to constrain him to what they deem his good.
  3275	
  3276	  I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is
  3277	regarded by others, ought not to be in any way affected by
  3278	his self-regarding qualities or deficiencies. This is neither
  3279	possible nor desirable. If he is eminent in any of the quali-
  3280	ties which conduce to his own good, he is, so far, a proper
  3281	object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the ideal
  3282	perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in
  3283	those qualities, a sentiment the opposite of admiration will
  3284	follow. There is a degree of folly, and a degree of what
  3285	may be called (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) low-
  3286	ness or depravation of taste, which, though it cannot justify
  3287	doing harm to the person who manifests it, renders him
  3288	necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in ex-
  3289	treme cases, even of contempt: a person could not have the
  3290	opposite qualities in due strength without entertaining these
  3291	feelings. Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may
  3292	so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a
  3293	fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and since this judg-
  3294	ment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to avoid,
  3295	it is doing him a service to warn him of it beforehand, as of
  3296	any other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes
  3297	himself. It would be well, indeed, if this good office were
  3298	much more freely rendered than the common notions of
  3299	politeness at present permit, and if one person could honestly
  3300	point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without
  3301	being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a
  3302	right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable
  3303	opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality,
  3304	but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example,
  3305	to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not
  3306	to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the
  3307	society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may
  3308	be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his
  3309	example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect
  3310	on those with whom he associates. We may give others a
  3311	preference over him in optional good offices, except those
  3312	which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a
  3313	person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of
  3314	others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but
  3315	he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the
  3316	natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the
  3317	faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted
  3318	on him for the sake of punishment. A person who shows
  3319	rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit--who cannot live within
  3320	moderate means--who cannot restrain himself from hurtful
  3321	indulgences--who pursues animal pleasures at the expense
  3322	of those of feeling and intellect--must expect to be lowered
  3323	in the opinion of others, and to have a less share of their
  3324	favorable sentiments, but of this he has no right to com-
  3325	plain, unless he has merited their favor by special excellence
  3326	in his social relations, and has thus established a title to
  3327	their good offices, which is not affected by his demerits
  3328	towards himself.
  3329	
  3330	  What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are
  3331	strictly inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others,
  3332	are the only ones to which a person should ever be sub-
  3333	jected for that portion of his conduct and character which
  3334	concerns his own good, but which does not affect the inter-
  3335	ests of others in their relations with him. Acts injurious to
  3336	others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment
  3337	on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage
  3338	not justified by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in deal-
  3339	ing with them; unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over
  3340	them; even selfish abstinence from defending them against
  3341	injury--these are fit objects of moral reprobation, and, in
  3342	grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment. And not
  3343	only these acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are
  3344	properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapprobation which
  3345	may rise to abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition; malice and
  3346	ill-nature; that most anti-social and odious of all passions,
  3347	envy; dissimulation and insincerity, irascibility on insuffi-
  3348	cient cause, and resentment disproportioned to the provoca-
  3349	tion; the love of domineering over others; the desire to
  3350	engross more than one's share of advantages (the [greekword]
  3351	of the Greeks); the pride which derives gratification from
  3352	the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks self and
  3353	its concerns more important than everything else, and de-
  3354	cides all doubtful questions in his own favor;--these are
  3355	moral vices, and constitute a bad and odious moral charac-
  3356	ter: unlike the self-regarding faults previously mentioned,
  3357	which are not properly immoralities, and to whatever pitch
  3358	they may be carried, do not constitute wickedness. They
  3359	may be proofs of any amount of folly, or want of personal
  3360	dignity and self-respect; but they are only a subject of
  3361	moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to
  3362	others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care
  3363	for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not
  3364	socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the
  3365	same time duties to others. The term duty to oneself, when it
  3366	means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or
  3367	self-development; and for none of these is any one account-
  3368	able to his fellow-creatures, because for none of them is it for
  3369	the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.
  3370	
  3371	  The distinction between the loss of consideration which a
  3372	person may rightly incur by defect of prudence or of per-
  3373	sonal dignity, and the reprobation which is due to him for
  3374	an offence against the rights of others, is not a merely nomi-
  3375	nal distinction. It makes a vast difference both in our feel-
  3376	ings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases
  3377	us in things in which we think we have a right to control
  3378	him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he
  3379	displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand
  3380	aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases
  3381	us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his
  3382	life uncomfortable. We shall reflect that he already bears,
  3383	or will bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he spoils his
  3384	life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire
  3385	to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him, we
  3386	shall rather endeavor to alleviate his punishment, by show-
  3387	ing him how he may avoid or cure the evils his conduct
  3388	tends to bring upon him. He may be to us an object of pity,
  3389	perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall
  3390	not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst we shall
  3391	think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself,
  3392	If we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or
  3393	concern for him. It is far otherwise if he has infringed the
  3394	rules necessary for the protection of his fellow-creatures,
  3395	individually or collectively. The evil consequences of his
  3396	acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society,
  3397	as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him;
  3398	must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punish-
  3399	ment, and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In
  3400	the one case, he is an offender at our bar, and we are called
  3401	on not only to sit in judgment on him, but, in one shape or
  3402	another, to execute our own sentence: in the other case, it
  3403	is not our part to inflict any suffering on him, except what
  3404	may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty in
  3405	the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him
  3406	in his.
  3407	
  3408	  The distinction here pointed out between the part of a
  3409	person's life which concerns only himself, and that which
  3410	concerns others, many persons will refuse to admit. How (it
  3411	may be asked) can any part of the conduct of a member of
  3412	society be a matter of indifference to the other members?
  3413	No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a
  3414	person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to
  3415	himself, without mischief reaching at least to his near con-
  3416	nections, and often far beyond them. If he injures his
  3417	property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly
  3418	derived support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater
  3419	or less amount, the general resources of the community. If
  3420	he deteriorates his bodily or mental faculties, he not only
  3421	brings evil upon all who depended on him for any portion
  3422	of their happiness, but disqualifies himself for rendering
  3423	the services which he owes to his fellow-creatures generally;
  3424	perhaps becomes a burden on their affection or benevolence;
  3425	and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly any offence
  3426	that is committed would detract more from the general sum
  3427	of good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no
  3428	direct harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said)
  3429	injurious by his example; and ought to be compelled to con-
  3430	trol himself, for the sake of those whom the sight or knowl-
  3431	edge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.
  3432	
  3433	  And even (it will be added) if the consequences of mis-
  3434	conduct could be confined to the vicious or thoughtless indi-
  3435	vidual, ought society to abandon to their own guidance those
  3436	who are manifestly unfit for it? If protection against them-
  3437	selves is confessedly due to children and persons under age,
  3438	is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of ma-
  3439	ture years who are equally incapable of self-government?
  3440	If gambling, or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or
  3441	uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a
  3442	hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts pro-
  3443	hibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far
  3444	as is consistent with practicability and social convenience, en-
  3445	deavor to repress these also? And as a supplement to the
  3446	unavoidable imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least
  3447	to organize a powerful police against these vices, and visit
  3448	rigidly with social penalties those who are known to prac-
  3449	tise them? There is no question here (it may be said) about
  3450	restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of new and
  3451	original experiments in living. The only things it is sought
  3452	to prevent are things which have been tried and condemned
  3453	from the beginning of the world until now; things which
  3454	experience has shown not to be useful or suitable to any
  3455	person's individuality. There must be some length of time
  3456	and amount of experience, after which a moral or prudential
  3457	truth may be regarded as established, and it is merely de-
  3458	sired to prevent generation after generation from falling
  3459	over the same precipice which has been fatal to their prede-
  3460	cessors.
  3461	
  3462	  I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to
  3463	himself, may seriously affect, both through their sympathies
  3464	and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in
  3465	a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this
  3466	sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obli-
  3467	gation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out
  3468	of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral
  3469	disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. If, for
  3470	example, a man, through intemperance or extravagance, be-
  3471	comes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the
  3472	moral responsibility of a family, becomes from the same
  3473	cause incapable of supporting or educating them, he is de-
  3474	servedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is
  3475	for the breach of duty to his family or creditors, not for the
  3476	extravagence. If the resources which ought to have been
  3477	devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the
  3478	most prudent investment, the moral culpability would have
  3479	been the same. George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get
  3480	money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set him-
  3481	self up in business, he would equally have been hanged.
  3482	Again, in the frequent case of a man who causes grief to
  3483	his family by addiction to bad habits, he deserves reproach
  3484	for his unkindness or ingratitude; but so he may for culti-
  3485	vating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful
  3486	to those with whom he passes his life, or who from personal
  3487	ties are dependent on him for their comfort. Whoever fails
  3488	in the consideration generally due to the interests and feel-
  3489	ings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative
  3490	duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject
  3491	of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the
  3492	cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself,
  3493	which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when
  3494	a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding,
  3495	from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on
  3496	him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No per-
  3497	son ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a sol-
  3498	dier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on
  3499	duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a
  3500	definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the
  3501	public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and
  3502	placed in that of morality or law.
  3503	
  3504	  But with regard to the merely contingent or, as it may be
  3505	called, constructive injury which a person causes to society,
  3506	by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to the
  3507	public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable indi-
  3508	vidual except himself; the inconvenience is one which so-
  3509	ciety can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good
  3510	of human freedom. If grown persons are to be punished
  3511	for not taking proper care of themselves, I would rather
  3512	it were for their own sake, than under pretence of preventing
  3513	them from impairing their capacity of rendering to society
  3514	benefits which society does not pretend it has a right to
  3515	exact. But I cannot consent to argue the point as if society
  3516	had no means of bringing its weaker members up to its ordi-
  3517	nary standard of rational conduct, except waiting till they
  3518	do something irrational, and then punishing them, legally
  3519	or morally, for it. Society has had absolute power over them
  3520	during all the early portion of their existence: it has had
  3521	the whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try
  3522	whether it could make them capable of rational conduct in
  3523	life. The existing generation is master both of the training
  3524	and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it
  3525	cannot indeed make them perfectly wise and good, because
  3526	it is itself so lamentably deficient in goodness and wisdom;
  3527	and its best efforts are not always, in individual cases, its
  3528	most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make
  3529	the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little
  3530	better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number
  3531	of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being
  3532	acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, so-
  3533	ciety has itself to blame for the consequences. Armed
  3534	not only with all the powers of education, but with the as-
  3535	cendency which the authority of a received opinion always
  3536	exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for
  3537	themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which can-
  3538	not be prevented from falling on those who incur the dis-
  3539	taste or the contempt of those who know them; let not
  3540	society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the power to
  3541	issue commands and enforce obedience in the personal con-
  3542	cerns of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice
  3543	and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are
  3544	to abide the consequences. Nor is there anything which
  3545	tends more to discredit and frustrate the better means of
  3546	influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be
  3547	among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence
  3548	or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and
  3549	independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel
  3550	against the yoke. No such person will ever feel that others
  3551	have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they have
  3552	to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily
  3553	comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in
  3554	the face of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation
  3555	the exact opposite of what it enjoins; as in the fashion of
  3556	grossness which succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to the
  3557	fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans. With respect to
  3558	what is said of the necessity of protecting society from the
  3559	bad example set to others by the vicious or the self-indulgent;
  3560	it is true that bad example may have a pernicious effect,
  3561	especially the example of doing wrong to others with im-
  3562	punity to the wrong-doer. But we are now speaking of
  3563	conduct which, while it does no wrong to others, is supposed
  3564	to do great harm to the agent himself: and I do not see how
  3565	those who believe this, can think otherwise than that the
  3566	example, on the whole, must be more salutary than hurtful,
  3567	since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also the pain-
  3568	ful or degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly
  3569	censured, must be supposed to be in all or most cases at-
  3570	tendant on it.
  3571	
  3572	  But the strongest of all the arguments against the inter-
  3573	ference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that
  3574	when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes
  3575	wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social
  3576	morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that
  3577	is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely
  3578	to be still oftener right; because on such questions they
  3579	are only required to judge of their own interests; of the
  3580	manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be
  3581	practised, would affect themselves. But the opinion of a
  3582	similar majority, imposed as a law on the minority, on ques-
  3583	tions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be
  3584	wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at
  3585	the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for
  3586	other people; while very often it does not even mean that;
  3587	the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over
  3588	the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they
  3589	censure, and considering only their own preference. There
  3590	are many who consider as an injury to themselves any con-
  3591	duct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an
  3592	outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged
  3593	with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been
  3594	known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by per-
  3595	sisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there
  3596	is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own
  3597	opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his
  3598	holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take
  3599	a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And
  3600	a person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his
  3601	opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an
  3602	ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of indi-
  3603	viduals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only re-
  3604	quires them to abstain from modes of conduct which uni-
  3605	versal experience has condemned. But where has there been
  3606	seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship?
  3607	or when does the public trouble itself about universal ex-
  3608	perience. In its interferences with personal conduct it is
  3609	seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or
  3610	feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judg-
  3611	ment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate
  3612	of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists
  3613	and speculative writers. These teach that things are right
  3614	because they are right; because we feel them to be so.
  3615	They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for
  3616	laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others.
  3617	What can the poor public do but apply these instructions,
  3618	and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if
  3619	they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the
  3620	world?
  3621	
  3622	  The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in
  3623	theory; and it may perhaps be expected that I should specify
  3624	the instances in which the public of this age and country
  3625	improperly invests its own preferences with the character
  3626	of moral laws. I am not writing an essay on the aberra-
  3627	tions of existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a sub-
  3628	ject to be discussed parenthetically, and by way of illustra-
  3629	tion. Yet examples are necessary, to show that the principle
  3630	I maintain is of serious and practical moment, and that I am
  3631	not endeavoring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils.
  3632	And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that
  3633	to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police,
  3634	until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate
  3635	liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all
  3636	human propensities.
  3637	
  3638	  As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men
  3639	cherish on no better grounds than that persons whose re-
  3640	ligious opinions are different from theirs, do not practise
  3641	their religious observances, especially their religious ab-
  3642	stinences. To cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the
  3643	creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the
  3644	hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their
  3645	eating pork. There are few acts which Christians and
  3646	Europeans regard with more unaffected disgust, than Mus-
  3647	sulmans regard this particular mode of satisfying hunger.
  3648	It is, in the first place, an offence against their religion;
  3649	but this circumstance by no means explains either the de-
  3650	gree or the kind of their repugnance; for wine also is for-
  3651	bidden by their religion, and to partake of it is by all Mus-
  3652	sulmans accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their aversion
  3653	to the flesh of the "unclean beast" is, on the contrary, of
  3654	that peculiar character, resembling an instinctive antipathy,
  3655	which the idea of uncleanness, when once it thoroughly
  3656	sinks into the feelings, seems always to excite even in those
  3657	whose personal habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly
  3658	and of which the sentiment of religious impurity, so intense
  3659	in the Hindoos, is a remarkable example. Suppose now
  3660	that in a people, of whom the majority were Mussulmans,
  3661	that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be
  3662	eaten within the limits of the country. This would be noth-
  3663	ing new in Mahomedan countries.[1] Would it be a legitimate
  3664	exercise of the moral authority of public opinion? and if
  3665	not, why not? The practice is really revolting to such a
  3666	public. They also sincerely think that it is forbidden and
  3667	abhorred by the Deity. Neither could the prohibition be
  3668	censured as religious persecution. It might be religious in
  3669	its origin, but it would not be persecution for religion, since
  3670	nobody's religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The only
  3671	tenable ground of condemnation would be, that with the
  3672	personal tastes and self-regarding concerns of individuals
  3673	the public has no business to interfere.
  3674	
  3675	  To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Span-
  3676	iards consider it a gross impiety, offensive in the highest
  3677	degree to the Supreme Being, to worship him in any other
  3678	manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other public
  3679	worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all South-
  3680	ern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irre-
  3681	ligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do
  3682	Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of
  3683	the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet,
  3684	if mankind are justified in interfering with each other's
  3685	liberty in things which do not concern the interests of
  3686	others, on what principle is it possible consistently to ex-
  3687	clude these cases? or who can blame people for desiring
  3688	to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of
  3689	God and man?
  3690	
  3691	  No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything
  3692	which is regarded as a personal immorality, than is made
  3693	out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who
  3694	regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt
  3695	the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute
  3696	others because we are right, and that they must not persecute
  3697	us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting
  3698	a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the
  3699	application to ourselves.
  3700	
  3701	  The preceding instances may be objected to, although un-
  3702	reasonably, as drawn from contingencies impossible among
  3703	us: opinion, in this country, not being likely to enforce ab-
  3704	stinence from meats, or to interfere with people for wor-
  3705	shipping, and for either marrying or not marrying, accord-
  3706	ing to their creed or inclination. The next example, however,
  3707	shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we
  3708	have by no means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puri-
  3709	tans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and
  3710	in Great Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, they have
  3711	endeavored, with considerable success, to put down all public,
  3712	and nearly all private, amusements: especially music, danc-
  3713	ing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of
  3714	diversion, and the theatre. There are still in this country
  3715	large bodies of persons by whose notions of morality and
  3716	religion these recreations are condemned; and those persons
  3717	belonging chiefly to the middle class, who are the ascendant
  3718	power in the present social and political condition of the
  3719	kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these
  3720	sentiments may at some time or other command a majority
  3721	in Parliament. How will the remaining portion of the com-
  3722	munity like to have the amusements that shall be permitted
  3723	to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments
  3724	of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not,
  3725	with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively
  3726	pious members of society to mind their own business? This
  3727	is precisely what should be said to every government and
  3728	every public, who have the pretension that no person shall
  3729	enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong. But if the prin-
  3730	ciple of the pretension be admitted, no one can reasonably
  3731	object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority, or
  3732	other preponderating power in the country; and all persons
  3733	must be ready to conform to the idea of a Christian com-
  3734	monwealth, as understood by the early settlers in New Eng-
  3735	land, if a religious profession similar to theirs should ever
  3736	succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions supposed
  3737	to be declining have so often been known to do.
  3738	
  3739	  To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to
  3740	be realized than the one last mentioned. There is confessedly
  3741	a strong tendency in the modern world towards a democratic
  3742	constitution of society, accompanied or not by popular po-
  3743	litical institutions. It is affirmed that in the country where
  3744	this tendency is most completely realized--where both so-
  3745	ciety and the government are most democratic--the United
  3746	States--the feeling of the majority, to whom any appearance
  3747	of a more showy or costly style of living than they can hope
  3748	to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual
  3749	sumptuary law, and that in many parts of the Union it is
  3750	really difficult for a person possessing a very large income,
  3751	to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular
  3752	disapprobation. Though such statements as these are doubt-
  3753	less much exaggerated as a representation of existing facts,
  3754	the state of things they describe is not only a conceivable
  3755	and possible, but a probable result of democratic feeling,
  3756	combined with the notion that the public has a right to a
  3757	veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend their
  3758	incomes. We have only further to suppose a considerable
  3759	diffusion of Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous
  3760	in the eyes of the majority to possess more property than
  3761	some very small amount, or any income not earned by
  3762	manual labor. Opinions similar in principle to these, already
  3763	prevail widely among the artisan class, and weigh oppres-
  3764	sively on those who are amenable to the opinion chiefly of
  3765	that class, namely, its own members. It is known that the
  3766	bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in
  3767	many branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that
  3768	bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good, and
  3769	that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework or other-
  3770	wise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others
  3771	can without it. And they employ a moral police, which oc-
  3772	casionally becomes a physical one, to deter skilful workmen
  3773	from receiving, and employers from giving, a larger remu-
  3774	neration for a more useful service. If the public have any
  3775	jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see that these
  3776	people are in fault, or that any individual's particular pub-
  3777	lic can be blamed for asserting the same authority over his
  3778	individual conduct, which the general public asserts over
  3779	people in general.
  3780	
  3781	  But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are,
  3782	in our own day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private
  3783	life actually practised, and still greater ones threatened with
  3784	some expectation of success, and opinions proposed which
  3785	assert an unlimited right in the public not only to prohibit
  3786	by law everything which it thinks wrong, but in order to get
  3787	at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number of things
  3788	which it admits to be innocent.
  3789	
  3790	  Under the name of preventing intemperance the people
  3791	of one English colony, and of nearly half the United States,
  3792	have been interdicted by law from making any use what-
  3793	ever of fermented drinks, except for medical purposes: for
  3794	prohibition of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to be,
  3795	prohibition of their use. And though the impracticability
  3796	of executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the
  3797	States which had adopted it, including the one from which
  3798	it derives its name, an attempt has notwithstanding been
  3799	commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by
  3800	many of the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a simi-
  3801	lar law in this country. The association, or "Alliance" as
  3802	it terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has
  3803	acquired some notoriety through the publicity given to a
  3804	correspondence between its Secretary and one of the very
  3805	few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
  3806	ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's share in
  3807	this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes
  3808	already built on him, by those who know how rare such
  3809	qualities as are manifested in some of his public appear-
  3810	ances, unhappily are among those who figure in political life.
  3811	The organ of the Alliance, who would "deeply deplore the
  3812	recognition of any principle which could be wrested to jus-
  3813	tify bigotry and persecution," undertakes to point out the
  3814	"broad and impassable barrier" which divides such princi-
  3815	ples from those of the association. "All matters relating to
  3816	thought, opinion, conscience, appear to me," he says, "to
  3817	be without the sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social
  3818	act, habit, relation, subject only to a discretionary power
  3819	vested in the State itself, and not in the individual, to be
  3820	within it." No mention is made of a third class, different
  3821	from either of these, viz., acts and habits which are not
  3822	social, but individual; although it is to this class, surely,
  3823	that the act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling
  3824	fermented liquors, however, is trading, and trading is a
  3825	social act. But the infringement complained of is not on the
  3826	liberty of the seller, but on that of the buyer and consumer;
  3827	since the State might just as well forbid him to drink wine,
  3828	as purposely make it impossible for him to obtain it. The
  3829	Secretary, however, says, "I claim, as a citizen, a right to
  3830	legislate whenever my social rights are invaded by the
  3831	social act of another." And now for the definition of these
  3832	"social rights." "If anything invades my social rights, cer-
  3833	tainly the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys my primary
  3834	right of security, by constantly creating and stimulating
  3835	social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by de-
  3836	riving a profit from the creation of a misery, I am taxed to
  3837	support. It impedes my right to free moral and intellectual
  3838	development, by surrounding my path with dangers, and by
  3839	weakening and demoralizing society, from which I have a
  3840	right to claim mutual aid and intercourse." A theory of
  3841	"social rights," the like of which probably never before
  3842	found its way into distinct language--being nothing short of
  3843	this--that it is the absolute social right of every individual,
  3844	that every other individual shall act in every respect
  3845	exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the
  3846	smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me
  3847	to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance.
  3848	So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any
  3849	single interference with liberty; there is no violation of lib-
  3850	erty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right
  3851	to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding
  3852	opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them; for the mo-
  3853	ment an opinion which I consider noxious, passes any one's
  3854	lips, it invades all the "social rights" attributed to me by
  3855	the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested
  3856	interest in each other's moral, intellectual, and even physical
  3857	perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his
  3858	own standard.
  3859	
  3860	  Another important example of illegitimate interference
  3861	with the rightful liberty of the individual, not simply threat-
  3862	ened, but long since carried into triumphant effect, is Sab-
  3863	batarian legislation. Without doubt, abstinence on one day
  3864	in the week, so far as the exigencies of life permit, from the
  3865	usual daily occupation, though in no respect religiously bind-
  3866	ing on any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom. And in-
  3867	asmuch as this custom cannot be observed without a general
  3868	consent to that effect among the industrious classes, there-
  3869	fore, in so far as some persons by working may impose the
  3870	same necessity on others, it may be allowable and right that
  3871	the law should guarantee to each, the observance by others
  3872	of the custom, by suspending the greater operations of in-
  3873	dustry on a particular day. But this justification, grounded
  3874	on the direct interest which others have in each individual's
  3875	observance of the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen
  3876	occupations in which a person may think fit to employ his
  3877	leisure; nor does it hold good, in the smallest degree, for
  3878	legal restrictions on amusements. It is true that the amuse-
  3879	ment of some is the day's work of others; but the pleasure,
  3880	not to say the useful recreation, of many, is worth the labor
  3881	of a few, provided the occupation is freely chosen, and can
  3882	be freely resigned. The operatives are perfectly right in
  3883	thinking that if all worked on Sunday, seven days' work
  3884	would have to be given for six days' wages: but so long as
  3885	the great mass of employments are suspended, the small
  3886	number who for the enjoyment of others must still work,
  3887	obtain a proportional increase of earnings; and they are
  3888	not obliged to follow those occupations, if they prefer lei-
  3889	sure to emolument. If a further remedy is sought, it might
  3890	be found in the establishment by custom of a holiday on
  3891	some other day of the week for those particular classes of
  3892	persons. The only ground, therefore, on which restrictions
  3893	on Sunday amusements can be defended, must be that they
  3894	are religiously wrong; a motive of legislation which never
  3895	can be too earnestly protested against. "Deorum injuriae
  3896	Diis curae." It remains to be proved that society or any of
  3897	its officers holds a commission from on high to avenge any
  3898	supposed offence to Omnipotence, which is not also a wrong
  3899	to our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one man's
  3900	duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of
  3901	all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and if ad-
  3902	mitted, would fully justify them. Though the feeling which
  3903	breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling
  3904	on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of Museums, and
  3905	the like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state
  3906	of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It IS a
  3907	determination not to tolerate others in doing what is per-
  3908	mitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the
  3909	persecutor's religion. It is a belief that God not only abomi-
  3910	nates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless
  3911	if we leave him unmolested.
  3912	
  3913	  I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the
  3914	little account commonly made of human liberty, the language
  3915	of downright persecution which breaks out from the press
  3916	of this country, whenever it feels called on to notice the
  3917	remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism. Much might be
  3918	said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that an alleged
  3919	new revelation, and a religion, founded on it, the product
  3920	of palpable imposture, not even supported by the prestige of
  3921	extraordinary qualities in its founder, is believed by hun-
  3922	dreds of thousands, and has been made the foundation of
  3923	a society, in the age of newspapers, railways, and the elec-
  3924	tric telegraph. What here concerns us is, that this religion,
  3925	like other and better religions, has its martyrs; that its
  3926	prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put to death by
  3927	a mob; that others of its adherents lost their lives by the
  3928	same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in
  3929	a body, from the country in which they first grew up; while,
  3930	now that they have been chased into a solitary recess in the
  3931	midst of a desert, many in this country openly declare that
  3932	it would be right (only that it is not convenient) to send an
  3933	expedition against them, and compel them by force to con-
  3934	form to the opinions of other people. The article of the
  3935	Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provocative to the
  3936	antipathy which thus breaks through the ordinary restraints
  3937	of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy; which,
  3938	though permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and
  3939	Chinese, seems to excite unquenchable animosity when prac-
  3940	tised by persons who speak English, and profess to be a kind
  3941	of Christians. No one has a deeper disapprobation than I
  3942	have of this Mormon institution; both for other reasons, and
  3943	because, far from being in any way countenanced by the
  3944	principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle,
  3945	being a mere riveting of the chains of one half of the com-
  3946	munity, and an emancipation of the other from reciprocity
  3947	of obligation towards them. Still, it must be remembered
  3948	that this relation is as much voluntary on the part of the
  3949	women concerned in it, and who may be deemed the suffer-
  3950	ers by it, as is the case with any other form of the marriage
  3951	institution; and however surprising this fact may appear, it
  3952	has its explanation in the common ideas and customs of the
  3953	world, which teaching women to think marriage the one
  3954	thing needful, make it intelligible that many a woman should
  3955	prefer being one of several wives, to not being a wife at all.
  3956	Other countries are not asked to recognize such unions, or
  3957	release any portion of their inhabitants from their own laws
  3958	on the score of Mormonite opinions. But when the dissen-
  3959	tients have conceded to the hostile sentiments of others, far
  3960	more than could justly be demanded; when they have left
  3961	the countries to which their doctrines were unacceptable,
  3962	and established themselves in a remote corner of the earth,
  3963	which they have been the first to render habitable to human
  3964	beings; it is difficult to see on what principles but those of
  3965	tyranny they can be prevented from living there under what
  3966	laws they please, provided they commit no aggression on
  3967	other nations, and allow perfect freedom of departure to
  3968	those who are dissatisfied with their ways. A recent writer,
  3969	in some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use his
  3970	own words,) not a crusade, but a civilizade, against this
  3971	polygamous community, to put an end to what seems to him
  3972	a retrograde step in civilization. It also appears so to me,
  3973	but I am not aware that any community has a right to force
  3974	another to be civilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad
  3975	law do not invoke assistance from other communities, I can-
  3976	not admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought
  3977	to step in and require that a condition of things with which
  3978	all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should
  3979	be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some
  3980	thousands of miles distant, who have no part or concern in
  3981	it. Let them send missionaries, if they please, to preach
  3982	against it; and let them, by any fair means, (of which silenc-
  3983	ing the teachers is not one,) oppose the progress of similar
  3984	doctrines among their own people. If civilization has got
  3985	the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to
  3986	itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism,
  3987	after having been fairly got under, should revive and con-
  3988	quer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to
  3989	its vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate,
  3990	that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody
  3991	else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up
  3992	for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives
  3993	notice to quit, the better. It can only go on from bad to
  3994	worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western
  3995	Empire) by energetic barbarians.
  3996	
  3997	[1] The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point. When
  3998	this industrious and enterprising tribe, the descendants of the Persian fire-
  3999	worshippers, flying from their native country before the Caliphs, arrived in
  4000	Western India, they were admitted to toleration by the Hindoo sovereigns,
  4001	on condition of not eating beef. When those regions afterwards fell under
  4002	the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors, the Parsees obtained from them a
  4003	continuance of indulgence, on condition of refraining from pork. What was
  4004	at first obedience to authority became a second nature, and the Parsees to
  4005	this day abstain both from beef and pork. Though not required by their
  4006	religion, the double abstinence has had time to grow into a custom of their
  4007	tribe; and custom, in the East, is a religion.
  4008	
  4009	
  4010	CHAPTER V
  4011	APPLICATIONS
  4012	
  4013	  THE principles asserted in these pages must be more
  4014	generally admitted as the basis for discussion of de-
  4015	tails, before a consistent application of them to all
  4016	the various departments of government and morals can be
  4017	attempted with any prospect of advantage. The few ob-
  4018	servations I propose to make on questions of detail, are
  4019	designed to illustrate the principles, rather than to follow
  4020	them out to their consequences. I offer, not so much appli-
  4021	cations, as specimens of application; which may serve to
  4022	bring into greater clearness the meaning and limits of the
  4023	two maxims which together form the entire doctrine of this
  4024	Essay and to assist the judgment in holding the balance be-
  4025	tween them, in the cases where it appears doubtful which of
  4026	them is applicable to the case.
  4027	
  4028	  The maxims are, first, that the individual is not account-
  4029	able to society for his actions, in so far as these concern
  4030	the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction,
  4031	persuasion, and avoidance by other people, if thought neces-
  4032	sary by them for their own good, are the only measures by
  4033	which society can justifiably express its dislike or disappro-
  4034	bation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as
  4035	are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is ac-
  4036	countable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal
  4037	punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the
  4038	other is requisite for its protection.
  4039	
  4040	  In the first place, it must by no means be supposed, be-
  4041	cause damage, or probability of damage, to the interests of
  4042	others, can alone justify the interference of society, that
  4043	therefore it always does justify such interference. In many
  4044	cases, an individual, in pursuing a legitimate object, neces-
  4045	sarily and therefore legitimately causes pain or loss to
  4046	others, or intercepts a good which they had a reasonable
  4047	hope of obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between
  4048	individuals often arise from bad social institutions, but are
  4049	unavoidable while those institutions last; and some would be
  4050	unavoidable under any institutions. Whoever succeeds in
  4051	an overcrowded profession, or in a competitive examination;
  4052	whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an object
  4053	which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others,
  4054	from their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But
  4055	it is, by common admission, better for the general interest
  4056	of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects unde-
  4057	terred by this sort of consequences. In other words, society
  4058	admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed
  4059	competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and
  4060	feels called on to interfere, only when means of success have
  4061	been employed which it is contrary to the general interest
  4062	to permit--namely, fraud or treachery, and force.
  4063	
  4064	  Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell
  4065	any description of goods to the public, does what affects the
  4066	interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus
  4067	his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of
  4068	society: accordingly, it was once held to be the duty of gov-
  4069	ernments, in all cases which were considered of importance,
  4070	to fix prices, and regulate the processes of manufacture.
  4071	But it is now recognized, though not till after a long
  4072	struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of
  4073	commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the
  4074	producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check
  4075	of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying themselves else-
  4076	where. This is the so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which
  4077	rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with,
  4078	the principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay.
  4079	Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of
  4080	trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, qua restraint,
  4081	is an evil: but the restraints in question affect only that part
  4082	of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are
  4083	wrong solely because they do not really produce the results
  4084	which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of
  4085	individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free
  4086	Trade so neither is it in most of the questions which arise
  4087	respecting the limits of that doctrine: as for example, what
  4088	amount of public control is admissible for the prevention of
  4089	fraud by adulteration; how far sanitary precautions, or ar-
  4090	rangements to protect work-people employed in dangerous
  4091	occupations, should be enforced on employers. Such ques-
  4092	tions involve considerations of liberty, only in so far as
  4093	leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris pari-
  4094	bus, than controlling them: but that they may be legitimately
  4095	controlled for these ends, is in principle undeniable. On the
  4096	other hand, there are questions relating to interference with
  4097	trade which are essentially questions of liberty; such as the
  4098	Maine Law, already touched upon; the prohibition of the
  4099	importation of opium into China; the restriction of the sale
  4100	of poisons; all cases, in short, where the object of the inter-
  4101	ference is to make it impossible or difficult to obtain a par-
  4102	ticular commodity. These interferences are objectionable,
  4103	not as infringements on the liberty of the producer or seller,
  4104	but on that of the buyer.
  4105	
  4106	  One of these examples, that of the sale of poisons, opens
  4107	a new question; the proper limits of what may be called the
  4108	functions of police; how far liberty may legitimately be in-
  4109	vaded for the prevention of crime, or of accident. It is one
  4110	of the undisputed functions of government to take precau-
  4111	tions against crime before it has been committed, as well as
  4112	to detect and punish it afterwards. The preventive function
  4113	of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, to
  4114	the prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function; for
  4115	there is hardly any part of the legitimate freedom of action
  4116	of a human being which would not admit of being repre-
  4117	sented, and fairly too, as increasing the facilities for some
  4118	form or other of delinquency. Nevertheless, if a public au-
  4119	thority, or even a private person, sees any one evidently pre-
  4120	paring to commit a crime, they are not bound to look on
  4121	inactive until the crime is committed, but may interfere to
  4122	prevent it. If poisons were never bought or used for any
  4123	purpose except the commission of murder, it would be right
  4124	to prohibit their manufacture and sale. They may, how-
  4125	ever, be wanted not only for innocent but for useful pur-
  4126	poses, and restrictions cannot be imposed in the one case
  4127	without operating in the other. Again, it is a proper office
  4128	of public authority to guard against accidents. If either a
  4129	public officer or any one else saw a person attempting to
  4130	cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and
  4131	there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might
  4132	seize him and turn him back without any real infringement
  4133	of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires,
  4134	and he does not desire to fall into the river. Nevertheless,
  4135	when there is not a certainty, but only a danger of mischief,
  4136	no one but the person himself can judge of the sufficiency
  4137	of the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk: in this
  4138	case, therefore, (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in some
  4139	state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full
  4140	use of the reflecting faculty,) he ought, I conceive, to be
  4141	only warned of the danger; not forcibly prevented from ex-
  4142	posing himself to it. Similar considerations, applied to such
  4143	a question as the sale of poisons, may enable us to decide
  4144	which among the possible modes of regulation are or are
  4145	not contrary to principle. Such a precaution, for example,
  4146	as that of labelling the drug with some word expressive
  4147	of its dangerous character, may be enforced without viola-
  4148	tion of liberty: the buyer cannot wish not to know that the
  4149	thing he possesses has poisonous qualities. But to require
  4150	in all cases the certificate of a medical practitioner, would
  4151	make it sometimes impossible, always expensive, to obtain
  4152	the article for legitimate uses. The only mode apparent
  4153	to me, in which difficulties may be thrown in the way of
  4154	crime committed through this means, without any infringe-
  4155	ment, worth taking into account, Upon the liberty of those
  4156	who desire the poisonous substance for other purposes, con-
  4157	sists in providing what, in the apt language of Bentham,
  4158	is called "preappointed evidence." This provision is fa-
  4159	miliar to every one in the case of contracts. It is usual
  4160	and right that the law, when a contract is entered into,
  4161	should require as the condition of its enforcing performance,
  4162	that certain formalities should be observed, such as signa-
  4163	tures, attestation of witnesses, and the like, in order that in
  4164	case of subsequent dispute, there may be evidence to prove
  4165	that the contract was really entered into, and that there
  4166	was nothing in the circumstances to render it legally invalid:
  4167	the effect being, to throw great obstacles in the way of fic-
  4168	titious contracts, or contracts made in circumstances which,
  4169	if known, would destroy their validity. Precautions of a
  4170	similar nature might be enforced in the sale of articles
  4171	adapted to be instruments of crime. The seller, for ex-
  4172	ample, might be required to enter in a register the exact
  4173	time of the transaction, the name and address of the buyer,
  4174	the precise quality and quantity sold; to ask the purpose for
  4175	which it was wanted, and record the answer he received.
  4176	When there was no medical prescription, the presence of
  4177	some third person might be required, to bring home the fact
  4178	to the purchaser, in case there should afterwards be reason
  4179	to believe that the article had been applied to criminal pur-
  4180	poses. Such regulations would in general be no material
  4181	impediment to obtaining the article, but a very considerable
  4182	one to making an improper use of it without detection.
  4183	
  4184	  The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes against
  4185	itself by antecedent precautions, suggests the obvious limita-
  4186	tions to the maxim, that purely self-regarding misconduct
  4187	cannot properly be meddled with in the way of prevention
  4188	or punishment. Drunkennesses, for example, in ordinary
  4189	cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference; but I
  4190	should deem it perfectly legitimate that a person, who had
  4191	once been convicted of any act of violence to others under
  4192	the influence of drink, should be placed under a special legal
  4193	restriction, personal to himself; that if he were afterwards
  4194	found drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, and that if
  4195	when in that state he committed another offence, the punish-
  4196	ment to which he would be liable for that other offence
  4197	should be increased in severity. The making himself drunk,
  4198	in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others,
  4199	is a crime against others. So, again, idleness, except in a
  4200	person receiving support from the public, or except when it
  4201	constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without tyranny be
  4202	made a subject of legal punishment; but if either from idle-
  4203	ness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to per-
  4204	form his legal duties to others, as for instance to support his
  4205	children, it is no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obliga-
  4206	tion, by compulsory labor, if no other means are available.
  4207	
  4208	  Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious
  4209	only to the agents themselves, ought not to be legally inter-
  4210	dicted, but which, if done publicly, are a violation of good
  4211	manners, and coming thus within the category of offences
  4212	against others, may rightfully be prohibited. Of this kind
  4213	are offences against decency; on which it is unnecessary to
  4214	dwell, the rather as they are only connected indirectly with
  4215	our subject, the objection to publicity being equally strong
  4216	in the case of many actions not in themselves condemnable,
  4217	nor supposed to be so.
  4218	
  4219	  There is another question to which an answer must be
  4220	found, consistent with the principles which have been laid
  4221	down. In cases of personal conduct supposed to be blame-
  4222	able, but which respect for liberty precludes society from
  4223	preventing or punishing, because the evil directly resulting
  4224	falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is free to do,
  4225	ought other persons to be equally free to counsel or insti-
  4226	gate? This question is not free from difficulty. The case
  4227	of a person who solicits another to do an act, is not strictly
  4228	a case of self-regarding conduct. To give advice or offer
  4229	inducements to any one, is a social act, and may therefore,
  4230	like actions in general which affect others, be supposed
  4231	amenable to social control. But a little reflection corrects
  4232	the first impression, by showing that if the case is not
  4233	strictly within the definition of individual liberty, yet the
  4234	reasons on which the principle of individual liberty is
  4235	grounded, are applicable to it. If people must be allowed, in
  4236	whatever concerns only themselves, to act as seems best to
  4237	themselves at their own peril, they must equally be free to
  4238	consult with one another about what is fit to be so done;
  4239	to exchange opinions, and give and receive suggestions.
  4240	Whatever it is permitted to do, it must be permitted to ad-
  4241	vise to do. The question is doubtful, only when the insti-
  4242	gator derives a personal benefit from his advice; when he
  4243	makes it his occupation, for subsistence, or pecuniary gain,
  4244	to promote what society and the State consider to be an evil.
  4245	Then, indeed, a new element of complication is introduced;
  4246	namely, the existence of classes of persons with an interest
  4247	opposed to what is considered as the public weal, and whose
  4248	mode of living is grounded on the counteraction of it. Ought
  4249	this to be interfered with, or not? Fornication, for example,
  4250	must be tolerated, and so must gambling; but should a per-
  4251	son be free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house? The
  4252	case is one of those which lie on the exact boundary line
  4253	between two principles, and it is not at once apparent to
  4254	which of the two it properly belongs. There are arguments
  4255	on both sides. On the side of toleration it may be said, that
  4256	the fact of following anything as an occupation, and living
  4257	or profiting by the practice of it, cannot make that criminal
  4258	which would otherwise be admissible; that the act should
  4259	either be consistently permitted or consistently prohibited;
  4260	that if the principles which we have hitherto defended are
  4261	true, society has no business, as society, to decide anything
  4262	to be wrong which concerns only the individual; that it can-
  4263	not go beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as
  4264	free to persuade, as another to dissuade. In opposition to
  4265	this it may be contended, that although the public, or the
  4266	State, are not warranted in authoritatively deciding, for pur-
  4267	poses of repression or punishment, that such or such con-
  4268	duct affecting only the interests of the individual is good or
  4269	bad, they are fully justified in assuming, if they regard it as
  4270	bad, that its being so or not is at least a disputable question:
  4271	That, this being supposed, they cannot be acting wrongly in
  4272	endeavoring to exclude the influence of solicitations which
  4273	are not disinterested, of instigators who cannot possibly be
  4274	impartial--who have a direct personal interest on one side,
  4275	and that side the one which the State believes to be wrong,
  4276	and who confessedly promote it for personal objects only.
  4277	There can surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost, no sac-
  4278	rifice of good, by so ordering matters that persons shall
  4279	make their election, either wisely or foolishly, on their own
  4280	prompting, as free as possible from the arts of persons who
  4281	stimulate their inclinations for interested purposes of their
  4282	own. Thus (it may be said) though the statutes respecting
  4283	unlawful games are utterly indefensible--though all persons
  4284	should be free to gamble in their own or each other's houses,
  4285	or in any place of meeting established by their own subscrip-
  4286	tions, and open only to the members and their visitors--yet
  4287	public gambling-houses should not be permitted. It is true
  4288	that the prohibition is never effectual, and that whatever
  4289	amount of tyrannical power is given to the police, gambling-
  4290	houses can always be maintained under other pretences; but
  4291	they may be compelled to conduct their operations with a
  4292	certain degree of secrecy and mystery, so that nobody knows
  4293	anything about them but those who seek them; and more
  4294	than this society ought not to aim at. There is considerable
  4295	force in these arguments. I will not venture to decide
  4296	whether they are sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of
  4297	punishing the accessary, when the principal is (and must be)
  4298	allowed to go free; of fining or imprisoning the procurer,
  4299	but not the fornicator, the gambling-house keeper, but not
  4300	the gambler. Still less ought the common operations of buy-
  4301	ing and selling to be interfered with on analogous grounds.
  4302	Almost every article which is bought and sold may be used
  4303	in excess, and the sellers have a pecuniary interest in en-
  4304	couraging that excess; but no argument can be founded on
  4305	this, in favor, for instance, of the Maine Law; because the
  4306	class of dealers in strong drinks, though interested in their
  4307	abuse, are indispensably required for the sake of their legiti-
  4308	mate use. The interest, however, of these dealers in promot-
  4309	ing intemperance is a real evil, and justifies the State in
  4310	imposing restrictions and requiring guarantees, which but
  4311	for that justification would be infringements of legitimate
  4312	liberty.
  4313	
  4314	  A further question is, whether the State while it permits,
  4315	should nevertheless indirectly discourage conduct which it
  4316	deems contrary to the best interests of the agent; whether,
  4317	for example, it should take measures to render the means of
  4318	drunkenness more costly, or add to the difficulty of pro-
  4319	curing them, by limiting the number of the places of sale.
  4320	On this as on most other practical questions, many distinc-
  4321	tions require to be made. To tax stimulants for the sole
  4322	purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained, is a
  4323	measure differing only in degree from their entire pro-
  4324	hibition; and would be justifiable only if that were justifia-
  4325	ble. Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose
  4326	means do not come up to the augmented price; and to those
  4327	who do, it is a penalty laid on them for gratifying a par-
  4328	ticular taste. Their choice of pleasures, and their mode of
  4329	expending their income, after satisfying their legal and
  4330	moral obligations to the State and to individuals, are their
  4331	own concern, and must rest with their own judgment. These
  4332	considerations may seem at first sight to condemn the selec-
  4333	tion of stimulants as special subjects of taxation for pur-
  4334	poses of revenue. But it must be remembered that taxation
  4335	for fiscal purposes is absolutely inevitable; that in most
  4336	countries it is necessary that a considerable part of that
  4337	taxation should be indirect; that the State, therefore, cannot
  4338	help imposing penalties, which to some persons may be pro-
  4339	hibitory, on the use of some articles of consumption. It is
  4340	hence the duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of
  4341	taxes, what commodities the consumers can best spare; and
  4342	a fortiori, to select in preference those of which it deems
  4343	the use, beyond a very moderate quantity, to be positively in-
  4344	jurious. Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, up to the point
  4345	which produces the largest amount of revenue (supposing
  4346	that the State needs all the revenue which it yields) is not
  4347	only admissible, but to be approved of.
  4348	
  4349	  The question of making the sale of these commodities a
  4350	more or less exclusive privilege, must be answered differently,
  4351	according to the purposes to which the restriction is in-
  4352	tended to be subservient. All places of public resort require
  4353	the restraint of a police, and places of this kind peculiarly,
  4354	because offences against society are especially apt to originate
  4355	there. It is, therefore, fit to confine the power of selling
  4356	these commodities (at least for consumption on the spot)
  4357	to persons of known or vouched-for respectability of con-
  4358	duct; to make such regulations respecting hours of opening
  4359	and closing as may be requisite for public surveillance, and
  4360	to withdraw the license if breaches of the peace repeatedly
  4361	take place through the connivance or incapacity of the
  4362	keeper of the house, or if it becomes a rendezvous for con-
  4363	cocting and preparing offences against the law. Any fur-
  4364	ther restriction I do not conceive to be, in principle, justi-
  4365	fiable. The limitation in number, for instance, of beer and
  4366	spirit-houses, for the express purpose of rendering them
  4367	more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions of
  4368	temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because
  4369	there are some by whom the facility would be abused, but is
  4370	suited only to a state of society in which the laboring classes
  4371	are avowedly treated as children or savages, and placed
  4372	under an education of restraint, to fit them for future ad-
  4373	mission to the privileges of freedom. This is not the prin-
  4374	ciple on which the laboring classes are professedly governed
  4375	in any free country; and no person who sets due value on free-
  4376	dom will give his adhesion to their being so governed, unless
  4377	after all efforts have been exhausted to educate them for
  4378	freedom and govern them as freemen, and it has been defini-
  4379	tively proved that they can only be governed as children.
  4380	The bare statement of the alternative shows the absurdity of
  4381	supposing that such efforts have been made in any case
  4382	which needs be considered here. It is only because the insti-
  4383	tutions of this country are a mass of inconsistencies, that
  4384	things find admittance into our practice which belong to the
  4385	system of despotic, or what is called paternal, government,
  4386	while the general freedom of our institutions precludes the
  4387	exercise of the amount of control necessary to render the
  4388	restraint of any real efficacy as a moral education.
  4389	
  4390	  It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay, that the
  4391	liberty of the individual, in things wherein the individual is
  4392	alone concerned, implies a corresponding liberty in any num-
  4393	ber of individuals to regulate by mutual agreement such things
  4394	as regard them jointly, and regard no persons but themselves.
  4395	This question presents no difficulty, so long as the will of all
  4396	the persons implicated remains unaltered; but since that will
  4397	may change, it is often necessary, even in things in which they
  4398	alone are concerned, that they should enter into engagements
  4399	with one another; and when they do, it is fit, as a general
  4400	rule, that those engagements should be kept. Yet in the laws
  4401	probably, of every country, this general rule has some excep-
  4402	tions. Not only persons are not held to engagements which
  4403	violate the rights of third parties, but it is sometimes con-
  4404	sidered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an en-
  4405	gagement, that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most
  4406	other civilized countries, for example, an engagement by
  4407	which a person should sell himself, or allow himself to be
  4408	sold, as a slave, would be null and void; neither enforced by
  4409	law nor by opinion. The ground for thus limiting his power
  4410	of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, is apparent,
  4411	and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The reason for
  4412	not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person's
  4413	voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His volun-
  4414	tary choice is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable,
  4415	or at the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole
  4416	best provided for by allowing him to take his own means of
  4417	pursuing it. But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates
  4418	his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it, beyond that
  4419	single act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the very
  4420	purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose
  4421	of himself. He is no longer free; but is thenceforth in a
  4422	position which has no longer the presumption in its favor,
  4423	that would be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in it.
  4424	The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be
  4425	free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to
  4426	alienate his freedom. These reasons, the force of which is
  4427	so conspicuous in this peculiar case, are evidently of far
  4428	wider application; yet a limit is everywhere set to them by
  4429	the necessities of life, which continually require, not indeed
  4430	that we should resign our freedom, but that we should con-
  4431	sent to this and the other limitation of it. The principle,
  4432	however, which demands uncontrolled freedom of action in
  4433	all that concerns only the agents themselves, requires that
  4434	those who have become bound to one another, in things
  4435	which concern no third party, should be able to release one
  4436	another from the engagement: and even without such volun-
  4437	tary release, there are perhaps no contracts or engagements,
  4438	except those that relate to money or money's worth, of which
  4439	one can venture to say that there ought to be no liberty what-
  4440	ever of retractation. Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, in the
  4441	excellent Essay from which I have already quoted, states it
  4442	as his conviction, that engagements which involve personal
  4443	relations or services, should never be legally binding beyond
  4444	a limited duration of time; and that the most important of
  4445	these engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity that its
  4446	objects are frustrated unless the feelings of both the parties
  4447	are in harmony with it, should require nothing more than the
  4448	declared will of either party to dissolve it. This subject is
  4449	too important, and too complicated, to be discussed in a
  4450	parenthesis, and I touch on it only so far as is necessary for
  4451	purposes of illustration. If the conciseness and generality
  4452	of Baron Humboldt's dissertation had not obliged him in this
  4453	instance to content himself with enunciating his conclusion
  4454	without discussing the premises, he would doubtless have
  4455	recognized that the question cannot be decided on grounds
  4456	so simple as those to which he confines himself. When a
  4457	person, either by express promise or by conduct, has encour-
  4458	aged another to rely upon his continuing to act in a certain
  4459	way--to build expectations and calculations, and stake any
  4460	part of his plan of life upon that supposition, a new series
  4461	of moral obligations arises on his part towards that person,
  4462	which may possibly be overruled, but can not be ignored.
  4463	And again, if the relation between two contracting parties
  4464	has been followed by consequences to others; if it has placed
  4465	third parties in any peculiar position, or, as in the case of
  4466	marriage, has even called third parties into existence, obli-
  4467	gations arise on the part of both the contracting parties
  4468	towards those third persons, the fulfilment of which, or at
  4469	all events, the mode of fulfilment, must be greatly affected
  4470	by the continuance or disruption of the relation between the
  4471	original parties to the contract. It does not follow, nor can
  4472	I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the fulfil-
  4473	ment of the contract at all costs to the happiness of the re-
  4474	luctant party; but they are a necessary element in the ques-
  4475	tion; and even if, as Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to
  4476	make no difference in the legal freedom of the parties to
  4477	release themselves from the engagement (and I also hold
  4478	that they ought not to make much difference), they neces-
  4479	sarily make a great difference in the moral freedom. A per-
  4480	son is bound to take all these circumstances into account,
  4481	before resolving on a step which may affect such important
  4482	interests of others; and if he does not allow proper weight
  4483	to those interests, he is morally responsible for the wrong.
  4484	I have made these obvious remarks for the better illustration
  4485	of the general principle of liberty, and not because they are
  4486	at all needed on the particular question, which, on the con-
  4487	trary, is usually discussed as if the interest of children was
  4488	everything, and that of grown persons nothing.
  4489	
  4490	  I have already observed that, owing to the absence of any
  4491	recognized general principles, liberty is often granted where
  4492	it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be
  4493	granted; and one of the cases in which, in the modern
  4494	European world, the sentiment of liberty is the strongest, is
  4495	a case where, in my view, it is altogether misplaced. A
  4496	person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns;
  4497	but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for
  4498	another under the pretext that the affairs of another are
  4499	his own affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty of
  4500	each in what specially regards himself, is bound to maintain
  4501	a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it
  4502	allows him to possess over others. This obligation is almost
  4503	entirely disregarded in the case of the family relations, a case,
  4504	in its direct influence on human happiness, more important
  4505	than all the others taken together. The almost despotic
  4506	power of husbands over wives needs not be enlarged upon
  4507	here, because nothing more is needed for the complete re-
  4508	moval of the evil, than that wives should have the same
  4509	rights, and should receive the protection of law in the same
  4510	manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject,
  4511	the defenders of established injustice do not avail them-
  4512	selves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the
  4513	champions of power. It is in the case of children, that mis-
  4514	applied notions of liberty are a real obstacle to the fulfilment
  4515	by the State of its duties. One would almost think that a
  4516	man's children were supposed to be literally, and not meta-
  4517	phorically, a part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the
  4518	smallest interference of law with his absolute and exclusive
  4519	control over them; more jealous than of almost any inter-
  4520	ference with his own freedom of action: so much less do the
  4521	generality of mankind value liberty than power. Consider,
  4522	for example, the case of education. Is it not almost a self-
  4523	evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the
  4524	education, up to a certain standard, of every human being
  4525	who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid
  4526	to recognize and assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed
  4527	will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the
  4528	parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the father), after
  4529	summoning a human being into the world, to give to that
  4530	being an education fitting him to perform his part well in
  4531	life towards others and towards himself. But while this is
  4532	unanimously declared to be the father's duty, scarcely any-
  4533	body, in this country, will bear to hear of obliging him to
  4534	perform it. Instead of his being required to make any ex-
  4535	ertion or sacrifice for securing education to the child, it is
  4536	left to his choice to accept it or not when it is provided
  4537	gratis! It still remains unrecognized, that to bring a child
  4538	into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only
  4539	to provide food for its body, but instruction and training
  4540	for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate
  4541	offspring and against society; and that if the parent does
  4542	not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled,
  4543	at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.
  4544	
  4545	  Were the duty of enforcing universal education once ad-
  4546	mitted, there would be an end to the difficulties about what
  4547	the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now
  4548	convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and
  4549	parties, causing the time and labor which should have been
  4550	spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about educa-
  4551	tion. If the government would make up its mind to require
  4552	for every child a good education, it might save itself the
  4553	trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain
  4554	the education where and how they pleased, and content itself
  4555	with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of
  4556	children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those
  4557	who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which
  4558	are urged with reason against State education, do not apply
  4559	to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the
  4560	State's taking upon itself to direct that education: which
  4561	is a totally different thing. That the whole or any large part
  4562	of the education of the people should be in State hands, I
  4563	go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said
  4564	of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity
  4565	in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same
  4566	unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general
  4567	State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to
  4568	be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it
  4569	casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in
  4570	the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood,
  4571	an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in
  4572	proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a
  4573	despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one
  4574	over the body. An education established and controlled by
  4575	the State, should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among
  4576	many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of
  4577	example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain
  4578	standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in gen-
  4579	eral is in so backward a state that it could not or would not
  4580	provide for itself any proper institutions of education, unless
  4581	the government undertook the task; then, indeed, the gov-
  4582	ernment may, as the less of two great evils, take upon itself
  4583	the business of schools and universities, as it may that of
  4584	joint-stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape
  4585	fitted for undertaking great works of industry does not exist
  4586	in the country. But in general, if the country contains a
  4587	sufficient number of persons qualified to provide education
  4588	under government auspices, the same persons would be able
  4589	and willing to give an equally good education on the volun-
  4590	tary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded
  4591	by a law rendering education compulsory, combined with
  4592	State aid to those unable to defray the expense.
  4593	
  4594	  The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other
  4595	than public examinations, extending to all children, and begin-
  4596	ning at an early age. An age might be fixed at which every
  4597	child must be examined, to ascertain if he (or she) is able
  4598	to read. If a child proves unable, the father, unless he
  4599	has some sufficient ground of excuse, might be subjected to a
  4600	moderate fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by his labor,
  4601	and the child might be put to school at his expense. Once in
  4602	every year the examination should be renewed, with a grad-
  4603	ually extending range of subjects, so as to make the universal
  4604	acquisition, and what is more, retention, of a certain mini-
  4605	mum of general knowledge, virtually compulsory. Beyond
  4606	that minimum, there should be voluntary examinations on
  4607	all subjects, at which all who come up to a certain standard
  4608	of proficiency might claim a certificate. To prevent the
  4609	State from exercising through these arrangements, an im-
  4610	proper influence over opinion, the knowledge required for
  4611	passing an examination (beyond the merely instrumental
  4612	parts of knowledge, such as languages and their use) should,
  4613	even in the higher class of examinations, be confined to
  4614	facts and positive science exclusively. The examinations on
  4615	religion, politics, or other disputed topics, shouLd not turn
  4616	on the truth or falsehood of opinions, but on the matter of
  4617	fact that such and such an opinion is held, on such grounds,
  4618	by such authors, or schools, or churches. Under this system,
  4619	the rising generation would be no worse off in regard to all
  4620	disputed truths, than they are at present; they would be
  4621	brought up either churchmen or dissenters as they now are,
  4622	the State merely taking care that they should be instructed
  4623	churchmen, or instructed dissenters. There would be noth-
  4624	ing to hinder them from being taught religion, if their
  4625	parents chose, at the same schools where they were taught
  4626	other things. All attempts by the State to bias the conclu-
  4627	sions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil; but it may
  4628	very properly offer to ascertain and certify that a person
  4629	possesses the knowledge requisite to make his conclusions,
  4630	on any given subject, worth attending to. A student of phi-
  4631	losophy would be the better for being able to stand an ex-
  4632	amination both in Locke and in Kant, whichever of the two
  4633	he takes up with, or even if with neither: and there is no
  4634	reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences
  4635	of Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a be-
  4636	lief in them. The examinations, however, in the higher
  4637	branches of knowledge should, I conceive, be entirely volun-
  4638	tary. It would be giving too dangerous a power to govern-
  4639	ments, were they allowed to exclude any one from profes-
  4640	sions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged
  4641	deficiency of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von
  4642	Humboldt, that degrees, or other public certificates of scien-
  4643	tific or professional acquirements, should be given to all who
  4644	present themselves for examination, and stand the test; but
  4645	that such certificates should confer no advantage over com-
  4646	petitors, other than the weight which may be attached to
  4647	their testimony by public opinion.
  4648	
  4649	  It is not in the matter of education only that misplaced
  4650	notions of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of
  4651	parents from being recognized, and legal obligations from
  4652	being imposed, where there are the strongest grounds for
  4653	the former always, and in many cases for the latter also.
  4654	The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being,
  4655	is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human
  4656	life. To undertake this responsibility--to bestow a life
  4657	which may be either a curse or a blessing--unless the being
  4658	on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary
  4659	chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that
  4660	being. And in a country either over-peopled or threatened
  4661	with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small num-
  4662	ber, with the effect of reducing the reward of labor by their
  4663	competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the
  4664	remuneration of their labor. The laws which, in many
  4665	countries on the Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties
  4666	can show that they have the means of supporting a family,
  4667	do not exceed the legitimate powers of the State: and
  4668	whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly
  4669	dependent on local circumstances and feelings), they are
  4670	not objectionable as violations of liberty. Such laws are in-
  4671	terferences of the State to prohibit a mischievous act--an
  4672	act injurious to others, which ought to be a subject of repro-
  4673	bation, and social stigma, even when it is not deemed
  4674	expedient to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current
  4675	ideas of liberty, which bend so easily to real infringements
  4676	of the freedom of the individual, in things which concern
  4677	only himself, would repel the attempt to put any restraint
  4678	upon his inclinations when the consequence of their indul-
  4679	gence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and depravity
  4680	to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently
  4681	within reach to be in any way affected by their actions.
  4682	When we compare the strange respect of mankind for lib-
  4683	erty, with their strange want of respect for it, we might
  4684	imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm
  4685	to others, and no right at all to please himself without
  4686	giving pain to any one.
  4687	
  4688	  I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions
  4689	respecting the limits of government interference, which,
  4690	though closely connected with the subject of this Essay, do
  4691	not, in strictness, belong to it. These are cases in which
  4692	the reasons against interference do not turn upon the princi-
  4693	ple of liberty: the question is not about restraining the
  4694	actions of individuals, but about helping them: it is asked
  4695	whether the government should do, or cause to be done,
  4696	something for their benefit, instead of leaving it to be done
  4697	by themselves, individually, or in voluntary combination.
  4698	
  4699	  The objections to government interference, when it is not
  4700	such as to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three
  4701	kinds.
  4702	
  4703	  The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better
  4704	done by individuals than by the government. Speaking gen-
  4705	erally, there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to
  4706	determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those
  4707	who are personally interested in it. This principle con-
  4708	demns the interferences, once so common, of the legislature,
  4709	or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes
  4710	of industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently
  4711	enlarged upon by political economists, and is not particularly
  4712	related to the principles of this Essay.
  4713	
  4714	  The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject.
  4715	In many cases, though individuals may not do the particular
  4716	thing so well, on the average, as the officers of government,
  4717	it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them,
  4718	rather than by the government, as a means to their own
  4719	mental education--a mode of strengthening their active
  4720	faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a
  4721	familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are
  4722	thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole,
  4723	recommendation of jury trial (in cases not political); of
  4724	free and popular local and municipal institutions; of the
  4725	conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by vol-
  4726	untary associations. These are not questions of liberty, and
  4727	are connected with that subject only by remote tendencies;
  4728	but they are questions of development. It belongs to a dif-
  4729	ferent occasion from the present to dwell on these things
  4730	as parts of national education; as being, in truth, the peculiar
  4731	training of a citizen, the practical part of the political edu-
  4732	cation of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle
  4733	of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them
  4734	to the comprehension of joint interests, the management of
  4735	joint concerns--habituating them to act from public or semi-
  4736	public motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite
  4737	instead of isolating them from one another. Without these
  4738	habits and powers, a free constitution can neither be worked
  4739	nor preserved, as is exemplified by the too-often transitory
  4740	nature of political freedom in countries where it does not
  4741	rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The manage-
  4742	ment of purely local business by the localities, and of the
  4743	great enterprises of industry by the union of those who
  4744	voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further recom-
  4745	mended by all the advantages which have been set forth in
  4746	this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and
  4747	diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend
  4748	to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary as-
  4749	sociations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments,
  4750	and endless diversity of experience. What the State can
  4751	usefully do, is to make itself a central depository, and active
  4752	circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many
  4753	trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to bene-
  4754	fit by the experiments of others, instead of tolerating no ex-
  4755	periments but its own.
  4756	
  4757	  The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the
  4758	interference of government, is the great evil of adding un-
  4759	necessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those
  4760	already exercised by the government, causes its influence
  4761	over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and con-
  4762	verts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the
  4763	public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party
  4764	which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the
  4765	railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock
  4766	companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all
  4767	of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the
  4768	municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now
  4769	devolves on them, became departments of the central ad-
  4770	ministration; if the employes of all these different enter-
  4771	prises were appointed and paid by the government, and
  4772	looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the
  4773	freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legis-
  4774	lature would make this or any other country free otherwise
  4775	than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more
  4776	efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery
  4777	was constructed--the more skilful the arrangements for ob-
  4778	taining the best qualified hands and heads with which to
  4779	work it. In England it has of late been proposed that all
  4780	the members of the civil service of government should be
  4781	selected by competitive examination, to obtain for those em-
  4782	ployments the most intelligent and instructed persons pro-
  4783	curable; and much has been said and written for and against
  4784	this proposal. One of the arguments most insisted on by its
  4785	opponents is that the occupation of a permanent official ser-
  4786	vant of the State does not hold out sufficient prospects of
  4787	emolument and importance to attract the highest talents,
  4788	which will always be able to find a more inviting career in
  4789	the professions, or in the service of companies and other
  4790	public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this
  4791	argument had been used by the friends of the proposition, as
  4792	an answer to its principal difficulty. Coming from the op-
  4793	ponents it is strange enough. What is urged as an objection
  4794	is the safety-valve of the proposed system. If indeed all the
  4795	high talent of the country could be drawn into the service of
  4796	the government, a proposal tending to bring about that result
  4797	might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the business
  4798	of society which required organized concert, or large and
  4799	comprehensive views, were in the hands of the government,
  4800	and if government offices were universally filled by the ablest
  4801	men, all the enlarged culture and practised intelligence in the
  4802	country, except the purely speculative, would be concen-
  4803	trated in a numerous bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest
  4804	of the community would look for all things: the multitude
  4805	for direction and dictation in all they had to do; the able
  4806	and aspiring for personal advancement. To be admitted
  4807	into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when admitted, to
  4808	rise therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under
  4809	this regime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for
  4810	want of practical experience, to criticize or check the mode
  4811	of operation of the bureaucracy, but even if the accidents
  4812	of despotic or the natural working of popular institutions oc-
  4813	casionally raise to the summit a ruler or rulers of reforming
  4814	inclinations, no reform can be effected which is contrary to
  4815	the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the melancholy
  4816	condition of the Russian empire, as is shown in the accounts
  4817	of those who have had sufficient opportunity of observa-
  4818	tion. The Czar himself is powerless against the bureaucratic
  4819	body: he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he can-
  4820	not govern without them, or against their will. On every
  4821	decree of his they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining
  4822	from carrying it into effect. In countries of more advanced
  4823	civilization and of a more insurrectionary spirit the public, ac-
  4824	customed to expect everything to be done for them by the
  4825	State, or at least to do nothing for themselves without ask-
  4826	ing from the State not only leave to do it, but even how it
  4827	is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all
  4828	evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their
  4829	amount of patience, they rise against the government and
  4830	make what is called a revolution; whereupon somebody else,
  4831	with or without legitimate authority from the nation, vaults
  4832	into the seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and every-
  4833	thing goes on much as it did before; the bureaucracy being
  4834	unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking their
  4835	place.
  4836	
  4837	  A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people
  4838	accustomed to transact their own business. In France, a
  4839	large part of the people having been engaged in military
  4840	service, many of whom have held at least the rank of non-
  4841	commissioned officers, there are in every popular insurrection
  4842	several persons competent to take the lead, and improvise
  4843	some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in mil-
  4844	itary affairs, the Americans are in every kind of civil busi-
  4845	ness; let them be left without a government, every body of
  4846	Americans is able to improvise one, and to carry on that or
  4847	any other public business with a sufficient amount of intel-
  4848	ligence, order and decision. This is what every free people
  4849	ought to be: and a people capable of this is certain to be
  4850	free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body
  4851	of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins
  4852	of the central administration. No bureaucracy can hope to
  4853	make such a people as this do or undergo anything that they
  4854	do not like. But where everything is done through the
  4855	bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really ad-
  4856	verse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries
  4857	is an organization of the experience and practical ability
  4858	of the nation, into a disciplined body for the purpose of gov-
  4859	erning the rest; and the more perfect that organization is
  4860	in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and edu-
  4861	cating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all
  4862	ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of
  4863	all, the members of the bureaucracy included. For the gov-
  4864	ernors are as much the slaves of their organization and dis-
  4865	cipline, as the governed are of the governors. A Chinese
  4866	mandarin is as much the tool and creature of a despotism
  4867	as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is to the
  4868	utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order though
  4869	the order itself exists for the collective power and impor-
  4870	tance of its members.
  4871	
  4872	  It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the
  4873	principal ability of the country into the governing body is
  4874	fatal, sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressive-
  4875	ness of the body itself. Banded together as they are--work-
  4876	ing a system which, like all systems, necessarily proceeds in
  4877	a great measure by fixed rules--the official body are under
  4878	the constant temptation of sinking into indolent routine, or,
  4879	if they now and then desert that mill-horse round, of rush-
  4880	ing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the
  4881	fancy of some leading member of the corps: and the sole
  4882	check to these closely allied, though seemingly opposite, ten-
  4883	dencies, the only stimulus which can keep the ability of the
  4884	body itself up to a high standard, is liability to the watchful
  4885	criticism of equal ability outside the body. It is indispensa-
  4886	ble, therefore, that the means should exist, independently of
  4887	the government, of forming such ability, and furnishing it
  4888	with the opportunities and experience necessary for a cor-
  4889	rect judgment of great practical affairs. If we would pos-
  4890	sess permanently a skilful and efficient body of functionaries
  4891	--above all, a body able to originate and willing to adopt
  4892	improvements; if we would not have our bureaucracy degen-
  4893	erate into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross all the
  4894	occupations which form and cultivate the faculties required
  4895	for the government of mankind.
  4896	
  4897	  To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to
  4898	human freedom and advancement begin, or rather at which
  4899	they begin to predominate over the benefits attending the
  4900	collective application of the force of society, under its recog-
  4901	nized chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand
  4902	in the way of its well-being, to secure as much of the advan-
  4903	tages of centralized power and intelligence, as can be had
  4904	without turning into governmental channels too great a pro-
  4905	portion of the general activity, is one of the most difficult
  4906	and complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in
  4907	a great measure, a question of detail, in which many and
  4908	various considerations must be kept in view, and no abso-
  4909	lute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical
  4910	principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in
  4911	view, the standard by which to test all arrangements in-
  4912	tended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in
  4913	these words: the greatest dissemination of power consistent
  4914	with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralization of
  4915	information, and diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in
  4916	municipal administration, there would be, as in the New
  4917	England States, a very minute division among separate of-
  4918	ficers, chosen by the localities, of all business which is not
  4919	better left to the persons directly interested; but besides this,
  4920	there would be, in each department of local affairs, a central
  4921	superintendence, forming a branch of the general govern-
  4922	ment. The organ of this superintendence would concentrate,
  4923	as in a focus, the variety of information and experience de-
  4924	rived from the conduct of that branch of public business in
  4925	all the localities, from everything analogous which is done
  4926	in foreign countries, and from the general principles of
  4927	political science. This central organ should have a right
  4928	to know all that is done, and its special duty should be that
  4929	of making the knowledge acquired in one place available
  4930	for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and nar-
  4931	row views of a locality by its elevated position and compre-
  4932	hensive sphere of observation, its advice would naturally
  4933	carry much authority; but its actual power, as a permanent
  4934	institution, should, I conceive, be limited to compelling the
  4935	local officers to obey the laws laid down for their guidance.
  4936	In all things not provided for by general rules, those officers
  4937	should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to
  4938	their constituents. For the violation of rules, they should be
  4939	responsible to law, and the rules themselves should be laid
  4940	down by the legislature; the central administrative authority
  4941	only watching over their execution, and if they were not
  4942	properly carried into effect, appealing, according to the nature
  4943	of the case, to the tribunal to enforce the law, or to the con-
  4944	stituencies to dismiss the functionaries who had not executed
  4945	it according to its spirit. Such, in its general conception, is
  4946	the central superintendence which the Poor Law Board is
  4947	intended to exercise over the administrators of the Poor
  4948	Rate throughout the country. Whatever powers the Board
  4949	exercises beyond this limit, were right and necessary in that
  4950	peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits of mal-adminis-
  4951	tration in matters deeply affecting not the localities merely,
  4952	but the whole community; since no locality has a moral
  4953	right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism,
  4954	necessarily overflowing into other localities, and impairing
  4955	the moral and physical condition of the whole laboring com-
  4956	munity. The powers of administrative coercion and subordi-
  4957	nate legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board (but
  4958	which, owing to the state of opinion on the subject, are very
  4959	scantily exercised by them), though perfectly justifiable in a
  4960	case of a first-rate national interest, would be wholly out of
  4961	place in the superintendence of interests purely local. But a
  4962	central organ of information and instruction for all the locali-
  4963	ties, would be equally valuable in all departments of adminis-
  4964	tration. A government cannot have too much of the kind of
  4965	activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, indi-
  4966	vidual exertion and development. The mischief begins when,
  4967	instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals
  4968	and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when,
  4969	instead of informing, advising, and upon occasion de-
  4970	nouncing, it makes them work in fetters or bids them stand
  4971	aside and does their work instead of them. The worth of a
  4972	State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals com-
  4973	posing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their
  4974	mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of adminis-
  4975	trative skill or that semblance of it which practice gives, in
  4976	the details of business; a State, which dwarfs its men, in
  4977	order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands
  4978	even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no
  4979	great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfec-
  4980	tion of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will
  4981	in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which,
  4982	in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has
  4983	preferred to banish.
  4984			===============================