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 3 1924 073 630 745 
 
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 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
The original of tiiis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://archive.org/details/cu31924073630745 
 
ON LIBERTY 
 
 ''■2W% 
 
 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
% I 
 
The grand, leading pnnciple, towards which every argumeni 
 infolded in these pages directly convergesi is the absolute and 
 essential importance of human development in its richest dive.- 
 lity.— WiLHBLJi VOK HuUBOiiDTi S^htri and DuUa q/' Govtm 
 ntr4. 
 
'pO the beloved and deplored memory ol 
 her who was the inspirer, and in part the 
 author, of all that is best in my writings — 
 the friend and wife whose exalted sense of 
 truth and right was my strongest incitement, 
 and whose approbation was my chief reward 
 — I dedicate this volume. Like all that J 
 have written for many years, it belongs a? 
 much to her as to me; but the work as U 
 stands has had, in a very insufficient degree; 
 the inestimable advantage of her revision 
 some of the most important portions having 
 been reserved for a more careful reexamina- 
 tion, which they are now never destined to 
 receive. Were I but capable of interpreting 
 to the world one half the great thoughts and 
 noble feelings which are buried in her grave, 
 I should be the medium of a greater benefit 
 to it, than is ever likely to arise from any- 
 thing that I can write, unprompted and un- 
 assisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 rial 
 
 IWTnOOnCTORY .... 9 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 OP THE LIBEIITT OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION S9 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 ^ OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE aLEMENTB 
 
 OF WELL-BEING 100 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY 
 
 OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 183 
 
 CHAPTER T. 
 irPUCATIONS 166 
 
ON LIBERT! 
 
ON LIBERTY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUOTORT. 
 
 ^PHE subject of this Essay is not the so 
 -»- called Liberty of the Will, so nnfortunateh 
 opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philo- 
 sophical Necessity ; but Civil, or Social Lib- 
 erty : the nature and limits of the power which 
 can be legitimately exercised by society over 
 the individual. A. question seldom stated, and 
 hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but 
 which profoundly influences the practical con- 
 troversies of the age by its latent presence, and 
 is likely soon to make itself recognized as the 
 vital question of the future. It is so far from 
 being new, that, in a certain sense, it has di- 
 vided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, 
 but in the stage of progress into which the 
 more civilized portions of the species have 
 now entered, it presents itself under new con- 
 ditions, and requires a different and more fun- 
 damental treatment. 
 
 The struggle between Liberty and Author- 
 ity is the most conspicuous feature in the por- 
 tions of history with which we are earliest 
 
10 ON LIBEKT\. 
 
 !amiliar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome 
 and England. But in old times this contesi 
 was between subjects, or some classes of sub- 
 jects, and the government. By liberty, was 
 meant protection against the tyranny of the 
 political rulers. The rulers were conceived 
 (except in some of the popular governments 
 of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic po- 
 sition to the people whom they ruled. They 
 consisted of a governing One, or a governing 
 tribe or caste, who derived their authority from 
 inheritance or conquest ; who, at all events, did 
 not hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and 
 whose supremacy men did not venture, per- 
 ha])s did not desire, to contest, whatever pre- 
 cautions might be taken against its oppres- 
 sive exercise. Their power was regarded as 
 lecessary, but also as highly dangerous ; as 
 a weapon which they would attempt to use 
 against their subjects, no less than against ex- 
 ternal enemies. To prevent the weaker mem- 
 bers of the community from being preyed upon 
 by innumerable vultures, it was needful that 
 there should be an animal of prey stronger 
 llian the rest, commissioned to keep them 
 down. But as the king of the vultures would 
 be no less bent upon preying on the Hock than 
 any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable 
 to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against 
 his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of 
 patriots, was to set limits to I he power which 
 the ruler should be sufl'ered to exercise ovei 
 
ON LIBEETY. 11 
 
 4ie community ; and this limitation was whal 
 they meant by liberty. It was attempted in 
 two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition 
 of certain immunities, called political liberties 
 or rights, which it was to be regarded as a 
 bleach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and 
 which, if he did infringe, sfecific resistance^ or 
 general rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A 
 second, and generally a later expedient, was 
 the establishment of constitutional checks ; by 
 which the consent of the community, or of a 
 body of some sort supposed to represent ita 
 interests, was made a necessary condition to 
 some of the more important acts of the gov- 
 erning power. To the first of these modes of 
 limitation, the ruling power, in most European 
 countries, was compelled, more or less, fo sub- 
 mit. It was not so with the second ; and to 
 attain this, or when already in some degree 
 possessed, to attain it more completely, be- 
 came everywhere the principal object of the 
 lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind 
 were content to combat one enemy by an 
 other, and to be ruled by a master, on condi- 
 tion of being guaranteed more or less effica- 
 ciously against his tyranny, they did not carry 
 their aspirations beyond this point. 
 
 A time, however, came, in the progress of 
 human affairs, when men ceased to think it a 
 necessity of nature that their governors should 
 be an indf))fin1fiit power, opposed in interest 
 to themselves. It appeared to tlicm much bet' 
 
12 ON UBICBTY. 
 
 ter that the various magistrates of the StaU 
 should be their tenants or delegates, revoca- 
 ble at their pleasure. In that way alone, it 
 seemed, could they have complete security that 
 the powers of government would never be 
 abused to their disadvantage. By degrees, 
 this new demand for elective and temporary 
 rulers became the prominent object of the ex- 
 ertions of the popular party, wherever any such 
 party existed ; and superseded, to a considera- 
 ble extent, the previous efforts to limit the 
 power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded 
 for making the ruling power emanate from the 
 periodical choice of the ruled, some persons 
 began to think that too much importance had 
 been attached to the limitation of the power 
 itself. That (it might seem) was a resource 
 against rulers whose interests were habitually 
 opposed to those of the people. What was 
 now wanted was, that the rulers should be 
 identified with the people ; that their interest 
 and will should be the interest and will of the 
 nation. The nation did not need to be pro- 
 tected against its own will. There was no 
 fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the 
 rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly 
 removable by it, and it could afford to trust 
 them with power of which it could itself dic- 
 tate the use to be made. Their power was 
 but the nation's own power, concentrated, and 
 in a form convenient for exercise. This mode 
 sf thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was 
 
ON LIBERTY. 
 
 1^ 
 
 common among the last generation of Euro^ 
 pean liberalism, in the Continental section of 
 ^hich, it still apparently predominates. Those 
 who admit any limit to what a government 
 may do, except in the case of such govern- 
 ments as they think ought not to exist, stand 
 out as brilliant exceptions among the political 
 thinkers of the Continent. A similar tone of 
 sentiment might by this time have been preva- 
 lent in our own country, if the circumstances 
 which for a time encouraged it had continued 
 unaltered. 
 
 But, in political and philosophical theories, 
 as well as in persons, success discloses faults 
 and infirmities which failure might have con- 
 cealed from observation. The notion, that the 
 people have no need to limit their power over 
 themselves, might seem axiomatic, when pop- 
 ular government was a thing only dreamed 
 about, or read of as having existed at some 
 distant period of the past. Neither was that 
 notion necessarily disturbed by such temporary 
 aberrations as those of the French Revolution, 
 the worsti of which were the work of an usurp- 
 ing few, and which, in any case, belonged, not 
 to the permanent working of popular institu- 
 tions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak 
 against monarchical and aristocratic despot- 
 ism. In time, however, a democratic republic 
 came to occupy a large portion of the earth's 
 surface, and made itself felt as one of the 
 most powerful members of the community of 
 
14 ON LIBllKTY. 
 
 nations; and elective and responsible goveii. 
 ment became subject to the observations and 
 criticisms which virait upon a great existing 
 fact. It was now perceived that such phrases 
 as "self-government," and "the power of the 
 people over themselves," do not express the 
 true state of the case. The " people " who 
 exercise the power, are not always the same 
 people with those over whom it is exercised , 
 and the " self-government " spoken of, is not 
 the government of each by himself, but of each 
 by all the rest. The \yill of the people, more- 
 over, practically means, the will of the most 
 numerous or the most active part of the peo- 
 ple ; the majority, or those who succeed in 
 making themselves accepted as the majority : 
 the people, consequently, may desire to oppress 
 a part of their number ; and precautions are as 
 much needed against this, as against any other 
 abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, 
 of the power of government over individuals, 
 loses none of its importance when the holders 
 of power are regularly accountable to the com- 
 munity, that is, to the strongest party therein. 
 This view of things, recommending itself 
 equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to 
 the inclination of those important classes in 
 European society to whose real or supposed 
 interests democracy is adverse, has had no dif- 
 ficulty in establishing itself; and in political 
 speculations " the tyranny of the majority " is 
 now generally included among the evils against 
 ivhich society renuirefi to be on its guard. 
 
ON LIBBRTT. 18 
 
 Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the ma- 
 jority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in 
 dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of 
 the public authorities. But reflecting personT" 
 perceived that when society is itself the tyrant 
 — society collectively, over the separate indi- 
 viduals who compose it — its means of tyran- 
 nizing are not restricted to the acts which it 
 may do by the hands of its political function- 
 aries. Society can and does execute its own 
 mandates : and if it issues wrong mandates 
 instead of right, or any mandates at all in 
 things with which it ought not to meddle, it 
 practises a social tyranny more formidable than 
 many kinds of political oppression, si nee, though 
 not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, 
 it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating 
 much more Jeeply into the details of life, and 
 enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, 
 against the tyranny of the magistrate is not 
 enough ; there needs protection also against th¥~ 
 tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling;^ 
 against the tendency of society to impose, by 
 other means than civil penalties, its own ideas 
 aiid practices as rules of conduct on those who 
 dissent from them ; to fetter the development, 
 and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any 
 individuality not in harmony -vith its ways, and 
 compel all characters to fashion themselves 
 upon the model of its own. There is a limit 
 to the legitimate interference of collective opin- 
 ion with individual independence ; and to find 
 
16 ON I-IBBETY. 
 
 that limit, and maintain it against encroack 
 ment, is as indispensable to a good condition 
 of human affairs, as protection against political 
 despotism. 
 
 But though this proposition is not likely tc 
 be contested in general terms, the practical 
 question, where to place the limit — how to 
 make the fitting adjustment between individ 
 ual independence and social control — is a sub- 
 ject on which nearly everything remains to ba 
 
 "^one. All that makes existence valuable to 
 any one, depends on the enforcement of re- 
 straints upon the actions of other people. 
 
 "SoTne rules of conduct, therefore, must be 
 imposed, by law in the first place, and by 
 opinion on many things which are not fit 
 subjects for the operation of law. What these 
 rules should be, is the principal question in 
 human affairs ; but if we except a few of the 
 most obvious cases, it is one of those which 
 least progress has been made in resolving. No 
 two ages, and scarcely any two countries, have 
 decided it alike ; and the decision of one age 
 or country is a wonder to. another. Yet the 
 people of any given age and country no more 
 suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a 
 subject on which mankind had always been 
 
 —agreed. The rules which obtain among them- 
 selves appear to them self-evident and self-jus- 
 tifying. This all but universal illusion is one 
 of the examples of the magical influence of 
 custom, which is not only, as the proverb says 
 
ON LtBESTT. 11 
 
 a second nature, but is continually mistaken 
 for the first. The eflFect of custom, in prevent- 
 ing any misgiving respecting the rules of con- 
 duct which mankind impose on one another, is 
 all the more complete because the subject is 
 one on which it is not generally considered ne- 
 cessary that reasons should be given, either by 
 one person to others, or by each to himself. Peo- 
 ple are accustomed to believe, and have been 
 encouraged in the belief by some who aspire 
 to the character of philosophers, that their feel- 
 ings, on subjects of this nature, are better than 
 reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The 
 practical principle which guides them to their 
 opinions on the regulation of human conduct, 
 is the feeling in each person's mind that every- 
 body should be required to act as he, and those 
 with whom he sympathizes, would like them to 
 act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself 
 that his standard of judgment is his own liking ; 
 but an opinion on a point of conduct, not sup- 
 ported by reasons, can only count as one person's 
 preference ; and if the reasons, vi^hen given, are a 
 mere appeal to a similar preference felt by other 
 people, it is still only many people's liking in- 
 stead of one. To an ordinary man, however, 
 his own preference, thus supported, is not only 
 a perfectly satisfactory reason, but the only one 
 he generally has for any of his notions of mo- 
 rality, taste, or propriety, which are not express- 
 ly written in his religious creed ; and his chief 
 guide in the interpretation even of that. Men's 
 
IS ON LlDliJtTY. 
 
 opinioi.s, accordingly, on what is laudable o. 
 b.jiineable, are affected by all the multifarious 
 causes which influence their wishes in regard 
 to the conduct of others, and which are as nu- 
 merous as those which determine their wishes 
 on any other subject Sometimes their reason 
 — at other times their prejudices or supersti- 
 tions : often their social affections, not seldom 
 ilieir antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, 
 their arrogance or contemptuousness : but 
 most commonly, their desires or fears for them- 
 selves — their legitimate or illegitimate self-in- 
 terest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, 
 a large portion of the morality of the country 
 emanates from its class interests, and its feel- 
 ings of class superiority. The morality be- 
 tween Spartans and Helots, between planters 
 and negroes, between princes and subjects, be- 
 tween nobles and roturiers, between men and 
 women, has been for the most part the creation 
 of these class interests and feelings : and the 
 sentiments thus generated, react in turn upon 
 the moral feelings of the members of the as- 
 cendant class, in their relations among them- 
 selves. Where, on the oth<^r hand, a ciass, for- 
 merly ascendant, has lost its ascendency, or 
 where its ascendency is unpopular, the prevail- 
 ing moral sentiments frequently bear the im- 
 press of an impatient dislike of superiority 
 Another grand determining principle of the 
 rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance 
 vvhi(;li linve been enforced by law or opinion, hai 
 
ON LIBKllTT. 19 
 
 been (.he servility of mankind towards the sup 
 posed preferences or aversions of their tempr 
 ral masters, or of their gods. This Bcrviiitj 
 though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy ; it 
 gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of 
 abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and 
 heretics. Among so many baser influences, 
 the general and obvious interests of society 
 have of course had a share, and a large one, in 
 the direction of the moral sentiments : less, 
 however, as a matter of reason, and on their 
 own account, than as a consequence of the 
 sympathies and antipathies which grew out of 
 them : and sympathies and antipathies which 
 had little or nothing to do with the interests of 
 society, have made themselves felt in the estab- 
 lishment of moralities with quite as great force 
 The likings and dislikings of society, or 
 of some powerful portion of it, are thus the 
 main thing which has practically determined 
 the rules laid down for general observance, un- 
 der the penalties of law or opinion. And in 
 general^ those who have been in advance of 
 society in thought and feeling, have left this 
 condition of things unassailed in principle, 
 however they may have come into conflict 
 with it in some of its details. They havo 
 occupied themselves rather in inquiring what 
 things society ought to like or dislike, than in 
 questioning whether its likings or dislikings 
 should be a law to individuals. They pre. 
 ferred endeavoring to alter the feelings of man 
 
20 ON UBEBTY. 
 
 kind on the particular points on which thej 
 were themselves heretical, rather than make 
 common cause in defence of freedom, with 
 heretics generally. The only case in which 
 the higher ground has been taken on principle 
 and maintained with consistency, by any bul 
 an individual here and there, is that of relig- 
 ious belief: a case instructive in many ways, 
 and not least so as forming a most striking 
 instance of the fallibility of what is called the 
 moral sense: for the odium theologicum, in a 
 sincere bigot, is one of the most unequivocal 
 cases of moral feeling. Those who first broke 
 the yoke of what called itself the Universal 
 Church, were in general as little willing to 
 permit difference of religious opinion as that 
 church itself. But when the heat of the con- 
 flict was over, without giving a complete vic- 
 tory to any party, and each church or sect wau 
 reduced to limit its hopes to retaining posses- 
 sion of the ground it already occupied ; mi- 
 norities, seeing that they had no chance of 
 becoming majorities, were under the necessity 
 of pleading to those whom they could not con- 
 vert, for permission to differ. It is accordingly; 
 on this battle-field, almost solely, that the righti 
 of the individual against society have been as- 
 serted on broad grounds of principle, and the 
 claim of society to exercise authority over 
 dissentients openly controverted. The grea< 
 writers to whom the world owes what relig 
 ious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted 
 
ON LIBERTT. "ii 
 
 freedom of conscience as an indefeasible rif^ht, 
 and denied absolutely that a human beirg ia 
 accountable to others for his religious bslief 
 Yet so natural to mankind is intoleran ;e in 
 whatever they really care about, that reli jiou« 
 freedom has hardly anywhere been practically 
 realized, except where religious indifTerence, 
 which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by 
 theological quarrels, has added its weight to 
 the scale. In the minds of almost all reMgioua 
 persons, even In the most tolerant countries, 
 the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit 
 reserves. One person will bear with disseni 
 in matters of church government, but not of 
 dogma ; another can tolerate everybody, short 
 of a Papist or an Unitarian ; another, every 
 one who believes in revealed religion ; a few 
 extend their charity a little further, but stop 
 at the belief in a God and in a future state. 
 Wherever the sentiment of the majority is stiL 
 genuine and intense, it is found to have abatea 
 little of its claim to be obeyed. 
 
 In England, from the peculiar circumstances 
 oi' our political history, though the yoke of opin- 
 ion is perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter, 
 than in most other countries of Europe; and 
 there is considerable jealousy of direct interfer- 
 ence, by the legislative or the executive power 
 with private conduct; not so much from any 
 just regard for the independence of the indi- 
 vidual, as from the still subsisting habit of 
 "ooking on the government as representing an 
 
2^ ON tICEItTT. 
 
 opposite interest to the public. The majoritj 
 have not yet leavnt to feel the power of the 
 government their power, cjr its opinions theii 
 opinions. When they do so, individual libertj 
 will probably be as much exposed to invasion 
 from the government, as it already is from pub- 
 lic opinion. But, as yet, there is a consider- 
 able amount of feeling ready to be called forth 
 against any attempt of the law to control indi 
 viduals in things in which they have not hith- 
 erto been accustomed to be controlled by it ; 
 and this with very little discrimination as tn 
 whether the matter is, or is not, within the 
 legitimate sphere of legal control ; insomuch 
 that the feeling, highly salutary on the w hole, 
 is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well 
 grounded in the particular instances of iti; appli- 
 cation. There is, in fact, no recognized principle 
 by which the propriety or impropriety of govern- 
 ment interference is customarily tested. People 
 decide according to their personal preferences. 
 Some, whenever they see any good to be done, 
 or evil to be remedied, would willingly insti- 
 gate the government to undertake the busi- 
 ness ; while others prefer to bear almost any 
 amount of social evil, rather than add one to 
 the departments of human interests amena- 
 ble to governmental control. And men range 
 themselves on one or the other side in any par- 
 ticular case, according to this general direction 
 of their sentiments ; or according to the degree 
 01 interest which they feel in the particulai 
 
rtiing which it is proposed that the goveinnien< 
 should do ; or according to the belief they en- 
 tertain that the government would, or would 
 not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very 
 rarely on account of any opinion to which they 
 consistently adhere, as to what things are fit t<! 
 be done by a government. And it seems tc 
 me that, in consequence of this absence of rnlfl 
 or principle, one side is at present as often 
 wrong as the other ; the interference of gov- 
 ernment is, with about equal frequency, im- 
 properly invoked and improperly condemned. 
 The object of this Essay is to assert one 
 very simple principle, as entitled to govern 
 absolutely the dealings of society with the 
 individual in the way of compulsion and con- 
 trol, whether the means used be phy.sical force 
 in the form of legal penalties, or the moral 
 coercion of public opinion. That principle is, 
 that the sole end for which mankind are war- 
 ranted, individually or collectively, in interfer- 
 ing with the liberty of action of any of their 
 number, is self-protection. That the only pur- 
 pose for which power can be rightfully exer- 
 dsed over any member of a civilized commu- 
 nity, against his will, is to prevent harm to 
 others. His own good, either physical or moral, 
 18 not a sufficient warrant. He cannot right- 
 fully be compelled to do or forbear because it 
 will be better for him to do so, because it wiU 
 make him happier, because, in the opinions of 
 jtliers, to do so would be wise, or even right 
 
24 ON LIBEETT. 
 
 These are good reasons for remonstrating will 
 him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him 
 or entreating him, but not for compelling him, oi 
 visiting him with any evil, in case he do other 
 wise. To justify that, the conduct from which 
 it is desired to deter him must be calculated to 
 produce evil to some one else. The only part 
 of the conduct of any one, for which he ia 
 amenable to society, is that which concerns 
 others. In the part which merely concerns 
 himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. 
 Over himself, over his own body and mind, tha 
 individual is sovereign. 
 
 It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that 
 this doctrine is meant to apply only to human 
 beings in the maturity of their faculties. We 
 are not speaking of children, or of young per- 
 sons below the age which the law may fix as 
 that of manhood or womanhood. Those who 
 are still in a state to require being taken care 
 of by others, must be protected against their 
 own actions as well as against external injury. 
 For the same reason, we may leave out of con- 
 sideration those backward states of society In 
 which the race itself may be considered a" in 
 its nonage. The early difficulties in the way 
 of spontaneous progress are so great, that there 
 is seldom any choice of means for overcoming 
 them ; and a ruler full of the spirit of improve- 
 ment is warranted in the use of any expedients 
 that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise un- 
 attainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of 
 
ON LIBEETT. 
 
 25 
 
 government in dealing with barbarians, pro- 
 vided the end be their improvement, and the 
 means justified by actually effecting that end, 
 Liberty, as a principle, has no application to 
 any state of things anterior to the time -when 
 mankind have become capable of being ira* 
 proved by free and equal discussion. Until 
 then, there is nothing for them but implicit 
 obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if 
 they are so fortunate as to find one. But aa 
 soon as mankind have attained the capacity 
 oi being guided to their own improvement by 
 conviction or persuasion (a period long since 
 reached in aU nations with whom we need 
 here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in 
 the direct form or in that of pains and penal- 
 ties for non-compliance, is no longer admis- 
 sible as a means to their own good, and justifi- 
 able only for the security of others. 
 
 It is proper to state that I forego any ad- 
 vantage which could be derived to my argu- 
 ment from the idea of abstract right, as a thing 
 independent of utility. I regard utility as the 
 ultimate appeal on all ethical questions ; but 
 it must be utility in the largest sense, ground- 
 ed on the permanent interests of man as a 
 progressive being. Those interests, I contend, 
 authorize the subjection of individual sponta- 
 neity to external control, only in respect to 
 those actions of each, which concern the inter 
 est of other people. If any one does an act 
 hurllul to ilhcrs, there is a. primd facie case for 
 
26 0» LIBEBTIi. 
 
 ' punishing him, by law, or, where legal pena< 
 ties are not safely applicable, by general disa|> 
 ) probation. There are also many positive acta 
 for the benefit of others, which he may right- 
 I fully be compelled to perform ; such as, to give 
 evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fail 
 j share in the common defence, or in any otner 
 *! joint work necessary to the interest of the 
 society of which he enjoys the protection 
 and to perform certain acts of individual be- 
 neficence, such as saving a fellow creature's 
 life, or interposing to protect the defenceless 
 against ill-usage, things which whenever it is 
 obviously a man's duty to do, he may right- 
 fully be made responsible to society for not 
 / doing A person may cause evil to others not 
 1 only by his acfions but by his inaction, and in 
 I either case he is justly accountable to them for 
 \ the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires 
 a much more cautious exercise of compulsion 
 than the former. To make any one answer- 
 able for doing evil to others, is the rule ; tr 
 make him answerable for not preventing evil, 
 is, comparatively speaking, the exception. Yet 
 there are many cases clear enough and grave 
 enough to justify that exception. In all things 
 which regard the external relations of the indi- 
 vidual, he is de jure amenable to those whose 
 interests are concerned, and if need be, tt 
 society as their protector. There are often 
 good reasons for not holding him to the re 
 Uponsibility ; but these reasons must arise from 
 
OM LIBERTY. 21 
 
 llie special expediencies of the case : eilhei 
 because it is a kind of case in which he is ou 
 the whole likely to act better, when left to his 
 own discretion, than when controlled in any 
 way in which society have it in their power to 
 control him ; or because the attempt to exer- 
 cise control would produce other evils, greater 
 than those which it would prevent. When 
 ^uch reasons as these preclude the enforcemenl 
 of responsibility, the conscience of the agent 
 himself should step into the vacant judgment- 
 seat, and protect those interests of others which 
 have no external protection ; judging himself 
 all the more rigidly, because the case does not 
 admit of his being made accountable to the 
 judgment of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 But there is a sphere of action in which so- 
 ciety, as distinguished from the individual, has, 
 if any, only an indirect interest ; comprehend- 
 ing all that portion of a person's life and con- 
 duct which affects only himself, or, if it also 
 affects others, only with their free, voluntary, 
 and undeceived consent and participation. 
 "When I say only himself, 1 mean directly, and 
 in the first instance : for whatever affects him- 
 self, may affect others through himself; and 
 the objection which may be grounded ou this 
 contingency, will receive consideration in the 
 sequel. This, then, is the appropriate region 
 of human liberty. It comprises, first, the in- 
 ward domain of conseiousiiess ; demaivjing 
 liberty of conscience, in the most comprehen 
 
28 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 sive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; ab 
 solute freedom of opinion and sentiment oo 
 all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, 
 moral, or theological. The liberty of express- 
 ing and publishing opinions may seem to fall 
 under a different principle, since it belongs tp 
 that part of the conduct of an individual which 
 concerns other people ; but, being almost of aa 
 much importance as the liberty of thought it- 
 self, and resting in great part on the same rea- 
 sons, is practically inseparable from it. Sec- 
 ondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes 
 and pursuits ; of framing the plan of our life 
 to suit our own character ; of doing as we like, 
 subject to such consequences as may follow; 
 without impediment from our fellow-creatures, 
 so long as what we do does not harm them 
 even though they should think our conduct 
 foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this 
 liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, 
 within the same limits, of combination amoiig 
 individuals ; freedom to unite, for any purpose 
 not involving harm to others : the persons com- 
 bining being supposed to be of full age, and 
 not forced or deceived. 
 
 No society in which these liberties are not, 
 on the whole, respected, is free, whatever may 
 be its form of government ; and none is com- 
 pletely free in which they do not exist abso- 
 lute and unqualified. The only freedom which 
 deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own 
 jjood in our own way, so long as we do iio< 
 
OH LinEKTr. SJ9 
 
 attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede 
 their efforts to obtain it. Each is the propei 
 guardian of his own health, whether bodily, oi 
 mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater 
 gainers by suffering each other to live as seems 
 good to themselves, than by compeUing each 
 to live as seems good to the rest. 
 
 Though this doctrine is anything but new, 
 and, to some persons, may have the air of a 
 truism, there is no doctrine which stands more 
 directly opposed to the general tendency of 
 existing opinion and practice. Society has 
 expended fully as much effort in the attempt 
 (according to its lights) to compel people to 
 conform to its notions of personal, as of so- 
 cial excellence. The ancient commonwealths 
 thought themselves entitled to practise, and 
 the ancient philosophers countenanced, the 
 regulation of every part of private conduct by 
 public authority, on the ground that the State 
 had a deep interest in the whole bodily and 
 mental discipline of every one of its citizens 
 a mode of thinking which may have been ad- 
 missible in small republics surrounded by pow- 
 erful enemies, in constant peril of being sub- 
 verted by foreign attack or internal commo- 
 tion, and to which even a short interval of 
 relaxed energy and self-command might so 
 easily be fatal, that they could not afford to 
 wait for the salutary permanent effects of free- 
 dom. In the modern world, the gre? ter size 
 of political communities, and above all, the 
 
30 ON LIBEETT. 
 
 separation between the spiritual and tempora. 
 authority (whicli placed the direction of men'a 
 consciences in other hands than those which 
 controlled their worldly affairs), prevented so 
 great an interference by law in the details 
 of private life ; but the engines of moral re- 
 pression have been wielded more strenuously 
 against divergence from the reigning opinion 
 in self-regarding, than even in social matters 
 religion, the most powerful of the elements 
 which have entered into the formation of moral 
 feeling, having almost always been governed 
 either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking 
 control over every department of human con- 
 duct, or by the spirit of Puritanism. And 
 some of those modern reformers who have 
 placed themselves in strongest opposition to 
 the religions of the past, have been noway 
 oehind either churches or sects in their asser- 
 tion of the right of spiritual domination : M. 
 Comte, in particular, whose social system, 
 as unfolded in his TraitS de Politique Posi- 
 tive, aims at establishing (though by moral 
 more than by legal appliances) a despotism 
 of society over the individual, surpassing any- 
 thing contemplated in the political ideal of 
 the most rigid disciplinarian among the an- 
 cient philosophers. 
 
 Apart from the peculiar tenets of individua 
 thinkers, there is also in the world at large ar 
 increasing inclination to stretch unduiy the 
 Bowers of society ovei the individual, both by 
 
ON LIBERT?. 31 
 
 the force of opinion and even by that of legis" 
 lation : and as the tendency of all the changes 
 taking place in the world is to strengthen so- 
 ciety, and diminish the power of the individual, 
 this encroachment is not one of the evils which 
 tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the 
 contrary, to grow more and more formidable 
 The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers 
 or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opin- 
 ions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on 
 others, is so energetically supported by some 
 of the best and by some of the worst feelings 
 incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever 
 kept under restraijit by anything but want of 
 power ; and as the power is not declining, but 
 growing, unless a strong barrier of moral con- 
 viction can be raised against the mischief, we 
 must expect, in the present circumstances of 
 the world, to see it increase. 
 
 It will be convenient for the argument, if, 
 instead of at once entering upon the general 
 thesis, we confine ourselves in the first instance 
 to a single branch of it, on which the principle 
 Lere stated is, if not fully, yet to a certain 
 point, recognized by the current opinions. 
 This one branch is the Liberty of Thought: 
 from which it is impossible to separate the 
 cognate liberty of speaking and of writing. 
 Although these liberties, to some considerable 
 amount, form part of the political morality of 
 all countries which profess religious toleration 
 and free institutions, the grounds, both philo< 
 
32 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 sophical and practical, on which they rest, are 
 perhaps not so familiar to the general mind, 
 nor so thoroughly appreciated by many ever 
 of the leaders of opinion, as might have been 
 expected. Those grounds, when rightly under- 
 stood, are of much wider application than to 
 only one division of the subject, and a thorough 
 consideration of this part of the question will 
 be found the best introduction to the remain- 
 der. Those to whom nothing which I am 
 about to say will be new, may therefore, I 
 hope, excuse me, if on a subject which for no^v 
 three centuries has been so often discussed, ] 
 venture in one discussion more. 
 
CHAPTER IL 
 
 OF THB LIBERTY OF TnOUGHT AND MBCOSSKWl. 
 
 'I'^HE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by 
 -*- when any defence would be necessary of 
 the " liberty of the press " as one of the secu 
 rities against corrupt or tyrannical government, 
 No argument, we may suppose, can now be 
 needed, against permitting a legislature or an 
 executive, not identified in interest with the 
 people, to prescribe opinions to them, and de- 
 termine what doctrines or what arguments 
 they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of 
 the question, besides, has been so often and so 
 triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, 
 that it needs not be specially insisted on in 
 this place. Though the law of England, on 
 the subject of the press, is as servile to this 
 day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there 
 is little danger of its being actually put in 
 force against political discussion, except during 
 some temporary panic, when fear of insurrec- 
 tion drives ministers and judges from their pro. 
 pnety ; * and, speaking generally, it is not, in 
 
 • These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to giv« 
 Uiem an emphiitic contindiction, occurred the Government Prnw 
 8* 
 
34 ON LIBERTY. 
 
 coiistitutionaJ countries, to be apprehended 
 that the government, whether completely re- 
 sponsible to the people or not, will often at- 
 tempt to control the expression of opinion, 
 except when in doing so it maifes itself the 
 organ of the general intolerance of the public. 
 Let us suppose, therefore, that the. goveriimenl 
 is entirely at one with the people, and nevci 
 thinlis of exerting any power of coercion un- 
 ess in agreement with what it conceives to be 
 
 Prosecutions of 1S53. That ill-judged interference with tlie lib- 
 erty ol public discussion has not, however, induced me to alter a 
 single word in the text, nor has it at all weakened my conviction 
 that, moments of panic excepted, the era of pains and penalties 
 for political discussion has, in our own country, passed away. For,- 
 in the first place, the prosecutions were not persisted in; and, in 
 the second, they were never, properly speaking, political prosecu- 
 tions. The offence charged was not that of criticizing institutions, 
 or the acts or persons of rulers, but of circulating what was deem- 
 ed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness of Tyrannicide. 
 
 If the arguments of the present chapter are uf any validity, 
 there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, 
 as u matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it 
 may be considered. It would, therefore, be irreluvuut and out of 
 place to examine here, whether the duutllue of Tyrajiuicido du- 
 eerves that title. I .sliall content myself will) saying, that the sub- 
 ject has been at ail times one of the open questions of morals; that 
 Jie &ct of a private citizen in striking down a criminal, who, by 
 'aising himself above the law, has placed himself beyond the 
 reach of legal punishment or control, lias been accounted by whole 
 nations, and by some of the best and wisest of men, not a crime, 
 but Jill act of exalted vii'tue; and that, right or wrong, it is not of 
 tile nature of ns.sassinalion, liut of civil war. As such, I hold that 
 the instigation to it, in a spccitic case, may be a proper subject of 
 punLshmeiit, but only if an overt act lias followed, and at least t 
 probable connection can be established between the act and the in- 
 srigatio-i. Kven then, it is not a foreign government, but the Virj 
 government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defencQ 
 ean legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existeuc* 
 
ON LIBEBTt. 35 
 
 their voice. But I deny the right of the people 
 to exercise such coercion, either by themselves 
 or by their government. The power itself is 
 illegitimate. The best government has nc 
 more title to it than the worst. It is as nox 
 ious, or more noxious, when exerted in accord- 
 ance with public opinion, than when in oppo- 
 sition to it. If all mankind minus one, were 
 of one opinion, and only one person were of 
 the contrary opinion, mankind would be no 
 more justified in silencing that one person, 
 than he, if he had the power, would be justi- 
 fied in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a 
 personal possession of no value except to the 
 owner ; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment 
 of it were simply a private injury, it would 
 make some difference whether the injury was 
 inflicted only on a few persons or on many. 
 But the peculiar evil of silencing the expres- 
 sion of an opinion is, that it is robbing the 
 human race; posterity as well as the existing 
 generation ; those who dissent from the opin- 
 ion, still more than those who hold it. If the 
 opinion is right, they are deprived of the oppor* 
 tunity of exchanging error for truth ; if wrong, 
 they lose, what is almost as great a benefit 
 the clearer perception and livelier impression 
 of truth, produced by its collision with error. 
 
 It is necessary to consider separately these 
 two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct 
 branch of the argument corresponding to it 
 We can never bo sure that the opinion we are 
 
86 ON UBOBTr. 
 
 endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion ; and if 
 we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still 
 
 First : the opinion which it is attempted tc 
 suppress by authority may possibly be true 
 Those who desire to suppress it, of course 
 deny its truth ; but they are not infallible 
 They have no authority to decide the question 
 for all mankind, and exclude every other per- 
 son from the means of judging. To refuse a 
 hearing to an opinion, because they are sure 
 that it is false, is to assume that their certainty 
 is the same thing as absolute certainty. All 
 silencing of discussion is an assumption of 
 infallibility. Its condemnation may be allow- 
 ed to rest on this common argument, not the 
 worse for being common. 
 
 Unfortunately for the good sense of man- 
 Kind, the fact of their fallibility is far from 
 carrying the weight in their practical judg- 
 ment, which is always allowed to it in theory ; 
 for while every one well knows himself to be 
 fallible, few think it necessary to take any 
 precautions against their own fallibility, or 
 admit the supposition that any opinion of 
 which they feel very certain, may be one of 
 the examples of the error to which they ac- 
 knowledge themselves to be liable. Abso.uto 
 princes, or others who are accustomed to un- 
 limited diiference, usually feel this complete 
 confidence in their own opinions on nearly at 
 subjects. People more happily situated, who 
 
ON LIBEBTT. 81 
 
 sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and 
 are not wholly unused to be set right when 
 they are wrong, place the same unbounded 
 reliance only on such of their opinions as are 
 shared by all who surround them, or to whom 
 they habitually defer: for in proportion to a 
 man's want of confidence in his own solitary 
 judgment, does he usually repose, with im^ 
 plicit trust, on the infallibilty of " the world " 
 in general. And the world, to each individual, 
 means the part of it with which he comes in 
 contact; his party, his sect, his church, his 
 class of society : the man may be called, by 
 comparison, almost liberal and large-minded 
 to whom it means anything so comprehensive 
 as his own country or his own age. Nor ia 
 his faith in this collective authority at al 
 shaken by his being aware that other ages, 
 countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties 
 have thought, and even now think, the exact 
 reverse. He devolves upon his own world the 
 responsibility of being in the right against the 
 dissentient worlds of other people ; and it never 
 troubles him that mere accident has decided 
 which of these numerous worlds is the object 
 of his reliance, and that the same causes which 
 make him a Churchman in London, would 
 have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian 
 in Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself, as an'' 
 amount of argument can make it, that ages 
 are no more infallible than individuals; every 
 age having held many opinions which subsc 
 
38 ON MBKUTT. 
 
 quent agen have deemed not only false bui 
 absurd ; and it is as certain that many opin- 
 ions, now general, will be rejected by futur 
 ages, as it is that many, once general, are re- 
 jected by the present. 
 
 The objection likely to be made to this argu 
 ment, would probably take some such form as 
 the following. There is no greater assump- 
 tion of infallibility in forbidding the propaga- 
 tion of error, than in any other thing which is 
 done by public authority on its own judgment 
 and responsibility. Judgment is given to men 
 that they may use it. Because it may be used 
 erroneously, are men to be lold that tliey ough< 
 not to use it at all ? To prohibit what they 
 think pernicious, is not claiming exemption 
 from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent 
 on them, although fallible, of acting on their 
 conscientious conviction. If we were never to 
 act on our opinions, because those opinions 
 niay be wrong, we should leave all our inter- 
 ests uncared for, and all our duties unperform- 
 ed.. An objection which applies to all conduct, 
 can be no valid objection to any conduct in 
 particular. It is the duty of governments, and 
 of individuals, to form the truest opinions they 
 can; to form them carefully, and never impose 
 them upon others unless they are quite sure 
 of being right. But when they are sure (such 
 reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousnesa 
 but cowardice to shrink from acting on theii 
 opinions, and allow doclrincs which they hon 
 
estly think dangerous to the welfare of man- 
 kind, either in this life or in another, to be 
 scattered abroad without restraint, because 
 other people, in less enlightened times, have 
 persecuted opinions now believed to be true. 
 Let us take care, it may be said, not to make 
 the same mistake : but governments and na 
 tions have made mistakes in other things, 
 which are not denied to be fit subjects for the 
 exercise of authority : they have laid on bad 
 taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore 
 to lay on no taxes, and, under whatever pro- 
 vocation, make no wars? Men, and govern- 
 ments, must act to the best of their ability 
 There is no such thing as absolute certainty, 
 but there is assurance sufficient for the pur 
 poses of human life. We may, and must, 
 assume our opinion to be true for the guidance 
 of our own conduct: and it is assuming no 
 more when we forbid bad men to pervert 
 society by the propagation of opinions which 
 we regard as false and pernicious. 
 
 I answer, that it is assuming very much 
 more. There is the greatest difference be- 
 tween presuming an opinion to be true, be- 
 cause, with every opportunity for contesting 
 it, it has not been refuted, and assuming it? 
 truth for the purpose of not permitting its 
 refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting 
 and disproving our opinion, is the - ery con- 
 dition which justifies us in assuming its truth 
 for purposes of action ; and on no other term? 
 
10 OK LIBSBTT. 
 
 can a being with human facultiei! have arj 
 rational assurance of being right. 
 
 When we consider either the history of opin- 
 ion, or the ordinary conduct of human life, tc 
 what is it to be ascribed that the one and the 
 other are no worse than they are ? Not cer- 
 tainly to the inherent force of the human un- 
 derstanding; for, on any matter not self-evi- 
 dent, there are ninety-nine persons totally in- 
 capable of judging of it, for one who is capa- 
 ble ; and the capacity of the hundredth person 
 is only comparative; for the majority of the 
 eminent men of every past generation held 
 many opinions now known to be erroneous, 
 and did or approved numerous things which 
 no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that 
 there is on the whole a preponderance among 
 mankind of rational opinions and rational con 
 duct ? If there really is this preponderance — 
 which there must be, unless human affairs are, 
 and have always been, in an almost desperate 
 state — it is owing to a quality of the human 
 mind, the source of everything respectable in 
 man either as an intellectual or as a moral be- 
 ing, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He 
 is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discus- 
 sion and experience. Not by experience alone 
 There must be discussion, to show how expe 
 rience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions 
 and practices gradually yield to fact and ar- 
 gument : but '^'acts and arguments, to produce 
 any effect on the mind, must be brought before 
 
ON LIBEBTT. 41 
 
 it. Very few facts are able to tell their own 
 story, without comments to bring out theii 
 meaning. The whole strength and value, then, 
 of human judgment, depending on the one 
 property, that it can be set right when it ia 
 wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when 
 the means of setting it right are kept constantly 
 at hand. In the case of any person whose 
 judgment is really deserving of confidence, how 
 has it become so ? Because he has kept hia 
 mind open to criticism of his opinions and con- 
 duct. Because it has been his practice to lis- 
 ten to all that could be said against him ; to 
 profit by as much of it as was just, and ex- 
 pound to himself, and upon occasion to others, 
 the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because 
 he has felt, that the only way in which a hu- 
 man being can make some approach to know- 
 ing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what 
 can be said about it by persons of every va- 
 riety of opinion, and studying all modes in 
 which it can be looked at by every character 
 of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wis- 
 dom in any mode but this ; nor is it in the na- 
 ture of human intellect to become wise in any 
 other manner. The steady habit of correcting 
 and completing his own opinion by collating il 
 with those of others, so far from causing doubt 
 and hesitation in carrying it into practice, ia 
 the only stable foundation for a just reliance on 
 it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least 
 obviouf^ly, be said against him, and huvhig 
 
42 ON ISIBEBTY. 
 
 taken up his position against all gainsayen 
 knowing that he has sought for objec- 
 tions and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, 
 and has shut out no li;jht which can be UnowB 
 upon the subject from any quarter — he has a 
 right to think his judgment better than that of 
 liny person, or any multitude, who have not 
 gone through a similar process. 
 
 It is not too much to require that what the 
 wisest of mankind, those who are best entitled 
 to trust their own judgment, find necessary to 
 warrant their relying on it, should be submit- 
 ted to by that miscellaneous collection of a few 
 wise and many foolish individuals, called the 
 public. The most intolerant of churches, the 
 Roman Catholic Church, even at the canoni- 
 sation of a saint, admits, and listens patiently 
 to, a " devil's advocate." The holiest of men, 
 it appears^, cannot be admitted to posthumous 
 honors, until all that the devil could say against 
 him is known and weighed. If even the New- 
 tonian philosophy were not permitted to be 
 questioned, mankind could not feel as com- 
 plete assurance of its truth as they now do: 
 The beliefs which we have most warrant foi-, 
 have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing 
 invitation to the whole world to prove them 
 unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, 
 or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are 
 far enough from certainty stiU ; but we have 
 done the best that the existing state of human 
 reason admits of ; we have neglected nothing 
 
OH LIBBBTT. 43 
 
 that could give the truth a chance of reaching 
 us : if the lists are kept open, we may hope 
 thai if there be a better truth, it will be found 
 when the human mind is capable of receiving 
 it ; and in the mean time we may reiy on hav- 
 ing attained such approach to truth, as is pos- 
 sible in our own day. This is the amount of 
 certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this 
 tlie sole way of attaining it- 
 Strange it is, that men should admit the 
 validity of (he arguments for free discussion, 
 but object to their being " pushed to an ex- 
 treme ;" not seeing that unless the reasons are 
 good for an extreme case, they are not good 
 for any case. Strange that they should imag 
 ine that they are not assuming infallibility 
 when they acknowledge that there should be 
 free discussion on all subjects which can pos- 
 sibly be doubtful, but think that some particu 
 lar principle or doctrine should be forbidden to 
 be questioned because it is so certain, that is, 
 because they are certain that it is certain. To 
 call any proposition certain, while there is any 
 one who would deny its certainty if permitted, 
 but who is not permitted, is to assume that wc 
 ourselves, and those who agree with us, are 
 the judges of certainty, and judges without 
 hearing the other side. 
 
 In the present age — which has been de- 
 scribed as " destitute of faith, but terr'fied at 
 Bcepticism," — in which peo|)I(; feel sure, not 
 80 dluch that their opinions are true, as that 
 
14 ON LIBEKIT. 
 
 they should not know what to do without 
 them — the claims of an opinion to be pro- 
 jected from public attack are rested not so 
 much on its truth, as on its importance to so- 
 ciety. There are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, 
 to useful, not to say indispensable to well- 
 being, that it is as much the duty of govern- 
 ments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect 
 any other of the interests of society. In a 
 case of such necessity, and so directly in the 
 line of their duty, something less than infalli- 
 bility may, it is maintained, warrant, and even 
 bind, governments, to act on their own opin- 
 ion, confirmed by the general opinion of man- 
 kind. It is also often argued, and still oftener 
 thought, that none but bad men would desire 
 to weaken these salutary beliefs ; and there can 
 be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining 
 bad men, and prohibiting what only such men 
 would wish to practise. This mode of think- 
 ing makes the justification of restraints on dis- 
 cussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, 
 but of their usefulness; and flatters itself by 
 that means to escape the responsibility of claim- 
 ing to be an infallible judge of opinions. But 
 fhose who thus satisfy themselves, do not per- 
 ceive that the assumption of infallibility ia 
 merely shifted from one point to another. The 
 usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of 
 opinion : as disputable, as open to discussion 
 and requiring discussion as much, as the opin 
 on itself. There is the same need of an in 
 
ON LIBEBTT. 45 
 
 fallible judge of opinions to decide an opinion 
 to be noxious, as to decide it to be false, un 
 ess the opinion condemned has full opportu- 
 nity of defending itself. And it will not do to 
 say that the heretic may be allowed to main- 
 tain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion, 
 though forbidden to maintain its truth. The 
 truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If 
 we would know whether or not it is desirable 
 that a proposition should be believed, is it pos- 
 sible to exclude the consideration of whether 
 or not it is true ? In the opinion, not of bad 
 men, but of the best men, no belief which is 
 contrary to truth can be really useful : and can 
 you prevent such men from urging that plea, 
 when they are charged with culpability for de- 
 nying some doctrine which they are told is 
 useful, but which they believe to be false ? 
 Those who are on the side of received opin- 
 ions, never fail to take all possible advantage 
 of this plea ; you do not find them handling 
 the question of utility as if it could be com- 
 pletely abstracted from that of truth ; on the 
 contrary, it is, above all, because their doctrine 
 is " the truth," that the knowledge or the be- 
 lief of it is held to be so indispensable. There 
 can be no fair discussion of the question of 
 usefulness, when an argument so vital may be 
 3mployed on one side, but not on the other. 
 And in point of fact, when law or public feel- 
 ing do not permit the truth of an opinion t« 
 be disputed, they are just as little tolerant of a 
 
46 OK LIBEBTT. 
 
 denial of its usefulness. The utmost they al 
 low is an extenuation of its absolute necessity 
 or of the positive guilt of rejecting it. 
 
 In order more fully to illustrate tho mischief 
 oi denying a hearing to opinions because we, 
 in our own judgment, have condemned them, 
 it will be desirable to fix down the discussion 
 to a concrete case ; and I choose, by prefer- 
 ence, the cases which are least favorable to me 
 — in which the argument against freedom of 
 opinion, both on the score of truth and on that 
 of utility, is considered the strongest. Let tlie 
 opinions impugned be the belief in a God and 
 in a future state, or any of the commonly re- 
 ceived doctrines of morality. To fight tho 
 battle on such ground, gives a great advantage 
 to an unfair antagonist; since he will be sure 
 to say (and many who have no desire to be 
 unfair will say it internally), Are these the doc- 
 trines which you do not deem sufficiently cer- 
 tain to be taken under the protection of law '< 
 Is the belief in a God one of the opinions, to 
 feel sure of which, you hold to be assuming 
 infallibility ? But I must be permitted to ob- 
 serve, that it is not the feeling sure of a doc- 
 trine (be it what it may) which I call an as 
 sumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking 
 to decide that question for others, without al- 
 lowing them to hear what can be said on the 
 contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate 
 this pretension not the less, if put forth on the 
 side of my most solemn convictions. How 
 
ON LIBEETT. 47 
 
 ever positive any one's persuasion may be, no! 
 only of the falsity, but of the pernicious con- 
 sequences — not only of the pernicious conse- 
 quences, but (to adopt expressions which I al- 
 together condemn) the immorality and impiety 
 of an opinion ; yet if, in pursuance of thai 
 private judgment, though backed by the pub- 
 lic judgment of his country or his cotempora- 
 ries, he prevents the opinion from being heard 
 in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And 
 so far from the assumption being less objec- 
 tionable or less dangerous because the opinion 
 is called immoral or impious, this is the case 
 of all others in which it is most fatal. These 
 are exactly the occasions on which the men of 
 one generation commit those dreadful mistakes, 
 which excite the astonishment and horror of 
 posterity. It is among such that we find the 
 instances memorable in history, when the arm 
 of the law has been employed to root out the 
 best men and the noblest doctrines ; with de- 
 plorable success as to the men, though some 
 of the doctrines have survived to be (as if in 
 mockery) invoked, in defence of similar con- 
 duct towards those who dissent from them, oi 
 from their received interpretation. 
 
 Mankind can hardly be too often remindca, 
 that there was once a man named Socrates, be 
 tween whom and the legal authorities and pub- 
 lic opinion of his time, there took place a mem- 
 orable collision. Born in an age and country 
 abounding in individual greatness, this man 
 
18 ON UBEKTY. 
 
 has been handed down to us by those who bes^ 
 knew both him and the age, as the most vir- 
 tuous man in it ; while we know him as the 
 lead and prototype of all subsequent teachers 
 of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspi- 
 ration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism 
 of Aristotle, " i ma'eslri di color che sanno," the 
 two headsprings of ethical as of all other phi- 
 losophy. This acknowledged master of all the 
 eminent thinkers who have since lived — wnose 
 fame, still growing after more than two thou- 
 sand years, all out outweighs the whole re- 
 mainder of the names which make his native 
 city illustrious — was put to death by his 
 countrymen, after a judicial conviction, foi 
 impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying 
 the gods recognized by the State ; indeed hia 
 accuser asserted (see the " Apologia ") that he 
 believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in 
 being, by his doctrines and instructions, a 
 " corrupter of youth." Of these charges the 
 tribunal, there is every ground for believing, 
 honestly found him guilty, and condemned the 
 man who probably of all then born had de- 
 served best of mankind, to be put to death as 
 •A criminal. 
 
 To pass from this to the only other instance 
 of judicial iniquity, the mention of which, aftei 
 the condemnation of Socrates, would not bf 
 an anti-climax : the event which took place on 
 Calvary rather more than eighteen hundred 
 years ago. The man who left on the memorv 
 
OH UBEBTY. ifl 
 
 ot those who witnessed his life and conversa- 
 tion, such an impression of his moral grandeur, 
 that eighteen subsequent centuries have dono 
 homage to him as the Almighty in person, waa 
 ignominiously put to death, as what ? As a 
 blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their 
 benefactor ; they mistook him for the exact 
 contrary of what he was, and treated him an 
 that prodigy of impiety, which they themselves 
 are now held to be, for their treatment of him. 
 The feelings with which mankind now regard 
 these lamentable transactions, especially the 
 later of the two, render them extremely un 
 just in their judgment of the unhappy actors 
 These were, to all appearance, not bad men — 
 lot worse than men commonly are, but rather 
 tlie contrary ; men who possessed in a full, or 
 somewhat more than a full measure, the relig 
 ious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time 
 and people : the very kind of men who, in aU 
 times, our own included, have every chance of 
 passing through life blameless and respected. 
 The high-priest who rent his garments when 
 the words were pronounced, which, according 
 to all the ideas of his country, constituted the 
 blackest guilt, was in all probability quite as 
 sincere in his horror and indignation, as the 
 generality of respectable and pious men now 
 are in the religious and moral sentiments they 
 profess ; and most of those who now shudder 
 at his conduct, if they had lived in his time 
 and been born Jews, would have acted pre- 
 
60 OM LIBEBTT. 
 
 cisely as he did. Orthodox Christians who are 
 tempted to thinic that those who stoned to death 
 the first martyrs must have been worse men 
 than they themselves are, ought to remember 
 that one of those persecutors was Saint PauL 
 Let us add one more example, the most 
 striking of all, if the impressiveness of an 
 error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of 
 him who falls into it. If ever any one, pos- 
 sessed of power, had grounds for thinking him- 
 self the best and most enlightened among his 
 cotemporaries, it was the Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole civil- 
 ized world, he preserved through life not only 
 the most unblemished justice, but what was 
 less to be expected from his Stoical breeding, 
 the tenderest heart. The few failings which 
 are attributed to him, were all on the side of 
 indulgeiice : while his writings, the highest 
 ethical product of the ancient mind, differ 
 scarcely perceptibly, if they differ at all, from 
 the most characteristic teachings of Christ. 
 This man, a better Christian in all but the 
 dogmatic sense of the word, than almost any 
 of the ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have 
 since reigned, persecuted Christianity. Placed 
 at the summit of all the previous attainments 
 of humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, 
 and a character which led him of himself to 
 embody in his moral writings the Christian 
 ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianit) was 
 to be a good and not an evil to the world, witb 
 
OK UBBKIT. 61 
 
 i.is daties to which he was so deeply pen(3 
 trated. Existing society he knew to be in s 
 deplorable state. But such as it was, he saw 
 or thought he saw, that it was held together 
 aiul prevented from being worse, by belief and 
 reverence of the received divinities. As a rulei 
 of mankind, he deemed it his duty not to suffer 
 society to fall in pieces; and saw not how, if 
 its existing ties were removed, any others could 
 be formed which could again knit it together 
 The new religion openly aimed at dissolving 
 these ties : unless, therefore, it was his duty to 
 adopt that religion, it seemed to be his duty to 
 put it down. Inasmuch then as the theology 
 of Christianity did not appear to him true or 
 of divine origin; inasmuch as this strange his- 
 tory of a crucified God was not credible to 
 him, and a system which purported to rest en- 
 tirely upon a foundation to him so wholly un- 
 believable, could not be foreseen by him to be 
 that renovating agency which, after all abate- 
 ments, it has in fact proved to be ; the gentlest 
 and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, 
 under a solemn sense of duty, authorized the 
 persecution of Christianity. To my mind this 
 is one of the most tragical facts in all history. 
 It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the 
 Christianity of the world might have been, if 
 the Christian faith had been adopted as the 
 religion of the empire under the auspices of 
 Marcus Aurclius instead of those of Constaii* 
 tine. But it would be equally unjust to hino 
 
52 ON LIBEETY. 
 
 and falbe to truth, to deny, that no one plea 
 which can be urged for punishing anti-Chris- 
 tian teaching, was wanting to Marcus Aureliun 
 for punishing, as he did, the propagation ol 
 Christianity. No Christian more firmly be- 
 lieves that Atheism is false, and tends to the 
 dissolution of society, than Marcus Aureliua 
 l)clieved the same things of Christianity ; he 
 who, of all men then living, might have been 
 thought the most capable of appreciating it. 
 Unless any one who approves of punishment 
 for the promulgation of opinions, flatters him- 
 self that he is a wiser and better man than 
 Marcus Aurelius — more deeply versed in the 
 wisdom of his time, more elevated in his intel- 
 lect above it — more earnest in his search for 
 truth, or more single-minded in his devotion to 
 it when found ; — let him abstain from that 
 assumption of the joint infallibility of himself 
 and the multitude, which the great Antoninus 
 made with so utiforiunale a result. 
 
 Aware of the impossibility of defending the 
 use of punishment for restraining irreligious 
 opinions, by any argument which will not jus- 
 tify Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of religious 
 freedom, when hard pressed, occasionally ac- 
 cept this consequence, and say, with Dr. John- 
 eon, that the persecutors of Christianity were 
 in the right; that persecution is an ordeal 
 through which truth ought to pass, an I always 
 passes successfully, legal penalties being, in the 
 end, powerless against truth, though sometimef 
 
& 
 
 ON UBEBTt. 63 
 
 beneficially effective against mischievous errors. 
 This is a form of the argument for religiouf 
 intolerance, sufficiently remarkable not to be 
 passed without notice. 
 
 A theory which maintains that truth may 
 justifiably be persecuted because persecution 
 cannot possibly do it any harm, cannot be 
 charged with being intentionally hostile to the 
 reception of new truths ; but we cannot com- 
 mend the generosity of its dealing with the 
 persons to wliom mankind are indebted /or 
 them. To discover to the world something 
 which deeply concerns it, and of which it was 
 previously ignorant ; to prove to it that it had 
 been mistaken on some vital point of temporal 
 or spiritual interest, is as important a service as 
 a human being can render to his fellow-crea- 
 tures, and in certain cases, as in those of the 
 early Christians and of the Reformers, those 
 who think with Dr. Johnson believe it to have 
 been the most precious gift which could be be- 
 stowed on mankind. That the authors of such 
 splendid benefits should be requited by martyr- 
 dom ; that their reward should be to be dealt 
 with as the vilest of criminals, is not, upon this 
 theory, a deplorable error and misfortune, for 
 which humanity should mourn in sackcloth 
 ind ashes, but the normal and justifiable state 
 of things. The propounder of a new truth; 
 according to this doctrine, should stand, as 
 stood, in the legislation of the Locrians, the 
 proposer of a new law, with a halter round hi? 
 
64 OH UBBBIT. 
 
 neck, to be instantly tightened if the public as 
 sembly did not, on hearing his reasons, ther. 
 and there adopt his proposition. People wlic 
 defend this mode of treating benefactors, can- 
 not be supposed to set much value on the ben- 
 efit; and I believe this view of the subject is 
 mostly confined to the sort of persons who 
 think that new truths may have been desirable 
 once, but that we have had enough of them 
 now. 
 
 But, indeed, the dictum that truth always 
 triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleas- 
 ant falsehoods which men repeat after one 
 another till they pass into commonplaces, but 
 which all experience refutes. History teema 
 with instances of truth put down by persecu- 
 tion. If not suppressed forever, it may bo 
 thrown back for centuries. To speak only of 
 religious opinions : the Reformation broke onl 
 at least twenty times before Luther, and waa 
 put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down 
 Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was 
 put down. The Albigeois were put down. 
 The Vaudois were put down. The LoUarda 
 were put down. The Hussites were put down. 
 Evon after the era of Luther, wherever perse- 
 cution was persisted in, it was successful. In 
 Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire) 
 Protestanism was rooted out ; and, most likely, 
 would have been so in England, had Queen 
 Mary lived, or Queen Elizabeth died Perse- 
 cution has always succeeded, save where the 
 
ON LlBEEfr. 65 
 
 heretics were too strong a party to be effecta- 
 ally persecuted. No reasonable person can 
 doubt that Christianity might have been ex- 
 tirpated in the Roman empire. It spread, and 
 became predominant, because the perseoutiona 
 were only occasional, lasting but a short time, 
 and separated by long intervals of almost un- 
 disturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle 
 sentimentality that truth, merely, as truth, has 
 any inherent power denied to error, of prevail- 
 ing against the dungeon and the stake. Men 
 arc not more zealous for truth than they often 
 are for error, and a sufficient application of 
 legal or even of social penalties will generally 
 succeed in stopping the propagation of either. 
 The real advantage which truth has, consists 
 in this, that when an opinion is true, it may 
 »je extinguished once, twice, or many times, 
 iiut in the course of ages there will generally 
 he found persons to rediscover it, until some 
 one of its reappearances falls on a time when 
 from favorable circumstances it escapes perse- 
 cution until it has made such head as to with- 
 stand all subsequent attempts to suppress it 
 
 It will be said, that wi do not now put to 
 death t'>e introducers nl new opinions : we aie 
 not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we 
 even build sepulchres to them. It is true we 
 no longer put heretics to death ; and the 
 amount of penal infliction which modern feel- 
 ing would probably tolerate, even against the 
 most obnoxious opinions, is not sufficient to 
 
56 OM LIBEETT. 
 
 extirpate them. But let us not flatter ouruslvc! 
 that we are yet free from the stain even of lega 
 persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at least 
 for its expression, still exist by law ; and theii 
 enforcement is not, even in these times, so un- 
 exampled as to make it at all incredible that 
 they may some day be revived in full force. In 
 the year 1857, at the summer assizes of the 
 county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man,* said 
 to be of unexceptionable conduct in all rela- 
 tions of life, was sentenced to twenty-one 
 months imprisonment, for uttering, and writing 
 on a gate, some offensive words concerning 
 Christianity. Within a month of the same 
 time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two 
 separate occasions,! were rejected as jurymen, 
 and one of them grossly insulted by the judge 
 and by one of the counsel, because they hon- 
 estly declared that they had no theological be- 
 lief; and a third, a foreigner, J for the same 
 reason, was denied justice against a thief. 
 This refusal of redress took place in virtue of 
 the legal doctrine, that no person can be al- 
 lowed to give evidence in a court of justice, 
 who does not profess belief in a God (any god 
 is sufficient) and in a future state ; which is 
 equivalent to declaring such persons to be out- 
 
 * Thomas Pooloy, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In Deccmbei 
 bllowing, he receive! a free purdon from tlie Crown. 
 
 f George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857) Edward Tru»lov4 
 luly, 1857. 
 
 I Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, Augua 
 t, 1867. 
 
OK LtBEETT. 87 
 
 laws, excluded from the protection of the tri 
 bunals ; who may not only be robbed or as- 
 saulted with impunity, if no one but them- 
 selves, or persons of similar opinions, be present, 
 but any one else may be robbed or assaulted 
 with impunity, if the proof of the fact depends 
 on their evidence. The assumption on which 
 this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, 
 of a person who does not believe in a future 
 state ; a proposition which betokens much ig- 
 norance of history in those who assent to it 
 (since it is historically true that a large propor- 
 tion of infidels in all ages have been persons 
 of . distinguished integrity and honor) ; and 
 would be maintained by no one who had the 
 smallest conception how many of the persona 
 in greatest repute with the world, both for vir- 
 tues and for attainments, are weU known, at 
 least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The 
 rule, besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own 
 foundation. Under pretence that atheists must 
 be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists 
 who are willing to lie, and rejects only those 
 who brave the obloquy of publicly confessing 
 a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. 
 A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far 
 as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in 
 force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of per- 
 secution ; a persecution, too, ha^'ng the pecu- 
 liarity that the qualification for undergoing it, 
 is the being clearly proved not to deserve if. 
 The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly 
 
68 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 less insulting to believers than to infidels. Fa 
 if he who does not believe in a future state 
 necessarily lies, it follows that they who do be- 
 lieve are only prevented from lying, if prevent- 
 ed they are, by the fear of hell. We will not 
 do the authors and abettors of the rule the in- 
 jury of supposing, that the conception which 
 Hiey have formed of Christian virtue is drawn 
 from their own consciousness. 
 
 These, indeed, are but rags and remnants :>f 
 persecution, and may be thought to be not so 
 much an indication of the wish to persecute. 
 as an example of that very frequent infirmity 
 of English minds, which makes them take a 
 preposterous pleasure in the assertion of a bad 
 principle, when they are no longer bad enough 
 to desire to carry it really into practice. But 
 unhappily there is no security in the state of 
 the public mind, that the suspension of worse 
 forms of legal persecution, which has lasted 
 for about the space of a generation, will con- 
 tinue. In this age the quiet surface of routine 
 is a,s often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate 
 past evils, as to introduce new benefits. What 
 is boasted of at the present time as the revival 
 of religion, is always, in narrow and unculti- 
 vated minds, at least as much the revival of 
 bigotry j and where there is the strong perma- 
 nent leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a 
 people, which at all times abides in the middle 
 classes of this country, it needs but little to 
 provoke them into actively persecuting those 
 
OH LIBERTT. 59 
 
 fi/iiom they have never ceased to think propei 
 objects of persecution.* For it is this — it in 
 the opinions men entertain, and the feelings 
 they cherish, respecting those who disown the 
 beliefs they deem important, which makes this 
 3ountry not a place of mental freedom. For a 
 long time past, the chief mischief of the legal 
 penalties is that they strengthen the social 
 stigma. It is that stigma which is really effec 
 tive, and so effective is it, that the profession 
 of opinions which are under the ban of society 
 
 "" Ample warning may be drawn from the large inruniun of llic 
 passions of a persecutor, which mingled with the general displaj- 
 uf the worst parts of our national character on the occasion ol tb( 
 Sepoy insurrection The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from 
 the pjipit may be unworthy of notice; but the heads of the Evan- 
 gelical party have announced as their principle, for the govern- 
 ment of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools be supported 
 by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and by neces- 
 sary consequence that no public employment be given to any but 
 :eiL. or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in ■ 
 speech delivered to his constitnents on the 12th of November, 1857, 
 is reported to have said: " Toleration of their faith " (the faith of a 
 hundred millions of British subjects), " the superstition which they 
 called religion, by the British Government, had had the effect of 
 retarding the ascendency of the British name, and preventing the 
 salutary growth of Christianity. . . . Toleration was the great 
 corner-stone of the religious liberties of this country; but do not 
 let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he understood 
 it, it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship, aTtumg 
 ChjistianSj who worshipped ujjon the same Joundafion. It meant 
 wfcration of all sects and denominations of Christians who believed 
 in the one Tnediation." I desire to call attention to the fact, that n 
 man who has been deemed fit to fill a high ofBce in the gov- 
 ernment of this country, nnder a liberal Jlinistry, maintains th>. 
 doctrine that all who do not believe in the divinity of Christ an 
 beyond the pale of toleration. Who, after this imbecile display 
 can indulge the illusion that religions persecution has piisse i swat 
 never In return 7 
 
60 OH LIBEETV. 
 
 IS raucli less common in Engliind, than is, ii 
 many other countries, the avowal of those 
 which incur risk of judicial punishment. In 
 respect to all persons but those whose pecu* 
 niary circumstances make them independent 
 of the good will of other people, opinion, on 
 this subject, is as efficacious as law ; men 
 might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from 
 the means of earning their bread. Those 
 whose bread is already secured, and who de- 
 sire no favors ftom men in power, or from 
 bodies of men, or from the public, have noth- 
 ing to fear from the open avowal of any opin- 
 ons, but to be ill-thought of and ill-spoken of, 
 and this it ought not to require a very heroic 
 mould to enable them to bear. There is no 
 room for any appeal ad misericordiam in be- 
 half of such persons. But though we do not 
 now inflict so much evil on those who think 
 differently from us, as it was formerly our cus- 
 tom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as 
 much evil as ever by our treatment of them 
 Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic 
 philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and 
 spread its illumination over the whole intellec- 
 tual firmament. Christians were cast to the 
 lions, but the Christian Church grew up a 
 stately and spreading tree, overtopping the 
 older and less vigorous growths, and stifling 
 them by its shade. Our merely social intoler 
 ance, kills no one, roots out no opinions, but 
 induces men to disguise them, pr to abstaii? 
 
ON IIBBETT. 61 
 
 from any active effort for their diffuaion. Witb 
 us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gaiu 
 or even lose, ground in each decade or genera 
 tion ; they never blaze out far and wide, buf 
 continue to smoulder in the narrow circles ol 
 thinking and studious persons among whom 
 they originate, without ever lighting up the 
 general affairs of mankind with either a true 
 or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a 
 state of things very satisfactory to some 
 minds, because, without the unpleasant proc- 
 ess of fining or imprisoning anybody, it main- 
 tains all prevailing opinions outwardly undis- 
 turbed, while it does not absolutely interdict 
 the exercise of reason by dissentients afflicted 
 with the malady of thought. A convenient 
 plan for having peace in the intellectual world, 
 and keeping all things going on therein very 
 much as they do already. But the price paid 
 for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the 
 sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the hu- 
 man mind. A state of things in which a large 
 portion of the most active and inquiring intel- 
 lects find it advisable to keep the genuine prin- 
 ciples and grounds of their convictions within 
 their own breasts, and attempt, in what they 
 address to the public, to fit as much as they 
 can of their own conclusions to premises 
 which they have internally renounced, cannot 
 send forth the open, fearless characteip, and 
 logical, consistent intellects who once adorned 
 the thinking world. The sort of men who can 
 
62 OS UBEBTT. 
 
 be looked for under it, are either mere conform 
 ers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth 
 whose arguments on all great subjects are 
 meant for their hearers, and are not those 
 which have convinced themselves. Those 
 who avoid this alternative, do so by narrow- 
 ing their thonglits and interest to things which 
 can be spoken of without venturing within 
 the region of principles, that is, to small prac- 
 tical matters, which would come right of them- 
 selves, if but the minds of mankind were 
 strengthened and enlarged, and which will 
 never be made effectually right until then ; 
 while that which would strengthen and en- 
 large men's minds, free and daring specula- 
 tion on the highest subjects, is abandoned. 
 
 Those in whose eyes this reticence on the 
 part of heretics is no evil, should consider in 
 the first place, that in consequence of it there 
 is never any fair and thorough discussion of 
 heretical opinions ; and that such of them as 
 could not stand such a discussion, though they 
 may be prevented from spreading, do not dis- 
 appear. But it is not the minds of heretics 
 that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed 
 on all inquiry which does not end in the ortho- 
 dox conclusions. The greatest harm done is 
 to those who are not heretics, and whose whole 
 mental development is cramped, and their rea- 
 son cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can 
 compute what tlie world loses in the nmltitude 
 of promising intellects combined with timid 
 
ON UBERTT. 63 
 
 chaiacters, who dare not follow out any bold, 
 vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it 
 should land them in something which would 
 admit of being considered irreligious or im 
 moral? Among them we may occasionallj 
 see some man of deep conscientiousness, and 
 Bubtile and refined understanding, who spends 
 a life in sophisticating with an intellect which 
 he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources 
 of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the 
 promptings of his conscience and reason with 
 orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to 
 the end succeed in doing. No one can be a 
 great thinker who does not recognize, that as a 
 thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect 
 to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth 
 gains more even by the errors of one who, with 
 due study and preparation, thinks for himself, 
 than by the true opinions of those who only 
 hold them because they do not suffer them- 
 selves to think. Not that it is solely, or chief- 
 ly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of 
 thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as 
 much, and even more indispensable, to enable 
 average human beings to attain the mental 
 stature which they are capable of. There have 
 been, and may again be, great individual think 
 ers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. 
 But there never has been, nor ever will be, in 
 that atmosphere, an intellectually active peo- 
 ple. Where any people has made a temporary 
 approach to such a character, it has been be- 
 
64 ON UBEBTT. 
 
 cause the dread of heterodox speculation Avai 
 for a time suspended. Where there is a tacil 
 convention that principles are not to be dis- 
 puted ; where the discussion of the greatest 
 questions which can occupy humanity is con* 
 sidered to be closed, we cannot hope to find 
 that generally high scale of mental activity 
 which has made some periods of history so 
 remarisable. Never when controversy avoided 
 the subjects which are large and important 
 enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the mind of 
 a people stirred up from its foundations, and 
 the impulse given which raised even persons 
 of the most ordinary intellect to something of 
 the dignity of thinking beings. Of such we 
 have had an example in the condition of Eu- 
 rope during the times immediately following 
 the Reformation ; another, though limited to 
 the Continent and to a more cultivated class, 
 in the speculative movement of the latter half 
 of the eighteenth century ; and a third, of still 
 briefer duration, in the intellectual fermenta- 
 tion of Germany during the Goethian and 
 Fichtean period. These periods differed wide 
 ly in the particular opinions which they devel 
 oped ; but were alike in this, that during all 
 three the yoke of authority was broken. In 
 each, an old mental despotism had been thrown 
 off, and no new one had yet taken its place 
 The impulse given at these three periods has 
 made Europe what it now is. Every single 
 improvement which has taken place either in 
 
OH tIBEETr. 66 
 
 the human mind or in institutions, may bf 
 traced distinctly to one or other of them. Ap 
 pearances have for some time indicated thai 
 all three impulses are well-nigh spent ; and we 
 can expect no fresh start, until we again assert 
 our mental freedom. 
 
 Let us now pass to the second division of 
 the argument, and dismissing the supposition 
 that any of the received opinions may be false, 
 let us assume them to be true, and examine 
 into the worth of the manner in which they 
 are likely to be held, when their truth is nol 
 freely and openly canvassed. However un- 
 willingly a person who has a strong opinion 
 may admit the possibility that his opinion may 
 be false, he ought to be moved by the consid- 
 eration that however true it may be, if it is not 
 fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will 
 be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. 
 
 There is a class of persons (happily not quite 
 BO numerous as formerly) who think it enough 
 if a person assents undoubtingly to what they 
 think true, though he has no knowledge what 
 ever of the grounds of the opinion, and could 
 not make a tenable defence of it against the 
 most superficial objections Such persons, if 
 they can once get their creed taught from au- 
 thority, naturally think that no good, and some 
 harm, comes oi its being allowed to be ques- 
 tioned. Where their influence prevails, thej 
 make it nearly impossible for the received opin 
 ion to be rejected wisely and ronsiderately 
 
66 ON LIBKRI'V 
 
 tliougii it inuy atill be rcjcctea rashly and ig 
 noiaiilly ; for to shut out discussion entirely ii 
 seldom possible, and when it once gets in, be- 
 liefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give 
 way before the slightest semblance of an argu- 
 ment. Waiving, however, this possibility — 
 assuming that the true opinion abides in the 
 mind, but abides as a prejudice, a belief inde- 
 pendent of, and proof against, argument — thia 
 is not the way in which truth ought to be held 
 by a rational being. This is not knowing the 
 truth. Truth, thus held, is but one superstition 
 the more, accidentally clinging to the words 
 which enunciate a truth. 
 
 If the intellect and judgment of mankind 
 ought to be cultivated, a thing which Protes- 
 tants at least do not deny, on what can these 
 faculties be more appropriately exercised by 
 any one, than on the things which concern 
 him so much that it is considered necessary 
 for him to hold opinions on them ? If the cul- 
 tivation of the understanding consists in one 
 thing more than in another, it is surely in learn- 
 ing the grounds of one's own opinions. What- 
 ever people believe, on subjects on which it is 
 of the first importance to believe rightly, they 
 ought to be able to defend against at least the 
 common objections. But, some one may say^ 
 " Let them be tmight the grounds of their 
 opinions. It does not follow that opinions 
 must be merely parroted because they aro 
 never heard controverted. Persons who learn 
 
OH LIBEBTT. 67 
 
 geometry do not simply commit the theorems 
 to memory, but understand and learn likewise 
 the demonstrations; and it would be absurd to 
 say that they remain ignorant of the grounds 
 of geometrical truths, because they never heal 
 any one deny, and attempt to disprove them. 
 Undoubtedly : and such teaching suffices on a 
 subject like mathematics, where there is noth- 
 ing at all to be said on the wrong side of the 
 question. The peculiarity of the evidence of 
 mathematical truths is, that all the argument 
 is on one side. There are no objections, and 
 no answers to objections. But on every sub- 
 ject on which difference of opinion is possi- 
 ble, the truth depends on a balance to be 
 struck between two sets of conflicting reasons 
 Even in natural philosophy, there is always 
 some other explanation possible of the same 
 facts ; some geocentric theory instead of helio- 
 centric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen ; 
 and it has to be shown why that other theorj 
 cannot be the true one : and until this is shown 
 and until we know how it is shown, we do not 
 understand the grounds of our opinion. But 
 when we turn to subjects infinitely more com- 
 plicated, to morals, religion, politics, social re- 
 lations, and the business of life, three-fourtha 
 of the arguments for every disputed opinion 
 consist in dispelling the appearances which 
 favor some opinion different from it. The 
 greatest orator, save one, of anti(|uity, has 
 eft it on record that he always sludied his 
 
88 ON UBQUTY. 
 
 adversary's case with as great, if not with stiD 
 greater, intensity than even his own. Whai 
 Cicero practised as the means of forensic sue 
 cess, requires to be imitated by all who studj 
 any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He 
 who knows only his own side of the case, 
 knows little of that. His reasons may be good, 
 and no one may have been able to refute them. 
 But if he is equally unable to refute the rea- 
 sons on the opposite side ; if he does not sc 
 much as know what they are, he has no ground 
 for preferring either opinion. The rational po- 
 sition for him would be suspension of judg- 
 ment, and unless he contents himself with 
 that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, 
 like the generality of the world, the side to 
 which he feels most inclination. Nor is it 
 enough that he should hear the arguments of 
 adversaries from his own teachers, presented 
 as they state them, and accompanied by what 
 they offer as refutations. That is not the way 
 to do justice to the arguments, or bring them 
 into real contact with his own mind. He 
 must be able to hear them from persons who 
 actually believe them ; who defend them in 
 earnest, and do their very utmost for them. 
 He must know them in their most plausible 
 and persuasive form ; he must feel the whole 
 force of the difficulty which the true view of 
 the subject has to encounter and dispose of, 
 else he will never really possess himself of the 
 portion of truth which meets and removes thai 
 
ON LIBEET7. 69 
 
 iifficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what 
 are called educated men are in this condition 
 sven of those who can argue fluently for theii 
 opinions. Their conclusion may be true, bu< 
 it might be false for anything they know : they 
 have never thrown themselves into the mental 
 position of those who think differently from 
 them, and considered what such persons may 
 have to say ; and consequently they do not, in 
 any proper sense of the word, know the doc- 
 trine which they themselves profess. They do 
 not know those parts of it which explain and 
 justify the remainder; the considerations which 
 show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with 
 another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two 
 apparently strong reasons, one and not the 
 other ought to be preferred. All that part of 
 tlie truth which turns the scale, and decides 
 the judgment of a completely informed mind, 
 they are strangers to ; nor is it ever really 
 known, but to those who have attended equal- 
 ly and impartially to both sides, and endeav 
 ored to see the reasons of both in the strongest 
 light. So essential is this discipline to a real 
 understanding of moral and human subjects, 
 that if opponents of all important truths do 
 not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, 
 and supply them with the strongest arguments 
 which the most skilful devil's advocate can 
 conjure up. 
 
 To abate the force of these considerations, 
 an enemy of free discussion may be supposed 
 
TO ON LIBEBTY. 
 
 to say, that there is no necessity for mankino 
 in general to know and understand all that can 
 Ue said against or for their opinions by philoso- 
 [)hers and theologians. That it is not needful 
 for common men to be able to expose all the 
 misstatements or fallacies of an ingenious oj)- 
 ponent. That it is enough if there is always 
 somebody capable of answering them, so thai 
 nothing likely to mislead uninstiucted persons 
 remains unrefuted. That simple minds, hav- 
 ing been taught the obvious grounds of tli<' 
 truths inculcated on them, may trust to au- 
 thority for the rest, and being aware that they 
 have neither knowledge nor talent to resolve 
 every difficulty which can be raised, may re- 
 pose in the assurance that all those which 
 have been raised have been or can be an- 
 swered, by those who are specially trained 
 to the task. 
 
 Conceding to this view of the subject the 
 utmost that can be claimed for it by those 
 most easily satisfied with the amount of un- 
 derstanding of truth which ought to accom- 
 pany the belief of it ; even so, the argument 
 for free discussion is no way weakened. For 
 even this doctrine acknowledges that mankind 
 ought to have a rational assurance that all 
 objections have been satisfactorily answered ; 
 and how are they to be answered if that which 
 requires to be answered is not spoken ? or how 
 can the answer be known to be satisfactory, 
 if the objectors have no cpportunity of show 
 
ON LtfiEETT. 71 
 
 ipg that, it is unsatisfactory ? If not Ihe p.jb- 
 lic, at least the philosophers and theologians 
 who are to resolve the difficulties, uiust niakr 
 themselves familiar with those difficulties in 
 their most puzzling form ; and this cannot be 
 accomplished unless they are freely stated, and 
 placed in the most advantageous light which 
 they admit of. The Catholic Church has its 
 own way of dealing with this embarrassing 
 problem. It makes a broad separation be- 
 tween those who can be permitted to receive its 
 doctrines on conviction, and those who must 
 accept them on trust. Neither, indeed, are al- 
 lowed any choice as to what they will accept ; 
 but the clergy, such at least as can be fully 
 confided in, may admissibly and meritoriously 
 make themselves acquainted with the argu- 
 ments of opponents, in order to answer them, 
 and may, therefore, read heretical books ; the 
 laity, not unless by special permission, hard to 
 be obtained. This discipline recognizes a 
 knowledge of the enemy's case as beneficial 
 to the teachers, but finds means, consistent 
 with this, of denying it to the rest of the 
 world : thus giving to the elite more mental 
 culture, thougii not more mental freedom, thain 
 it allows to the mass. By this device it suc- 
 ceeds in obtaining the kind of mental supe- 
 riority which its purposes require;, for though 
 culture w^ithout freedom never made a large 
 and liberal mind, it can make a clever nisi 
 jirius advocate of a cause. But in countries 
 
72 ON LIBBBTT. 
 
 professing Protestantism, this resource is dt 
 nied ; since Protestants hold, at least in theory 
 that the responsibility for the choice of a relig- 
 ion must be borne by each for himself, and 
 cannot be thrown off upon teachers. Besides, 
 in the present state of the world, it is practi- 
 cally impossible that writings which are read 
 by the instructed can be kept firom the unin- 
 structed. If the teachers of mankind are to 
 je cognizant of all that they ought to know, 
 everything must be free to be written and pub- 
 lished without restraint. 
 
 If, however, the mischievous operation of 
 the absence of free discussion, when the re- 
 ceived opinions are true, were confined to 
 leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those 
 opinions, it might be thought that this, if an 
 intellectual, is no moral evil, and does not 
 affect the worth of the opinions, regarded in 
 their influence on the character. The fact, 
 however, is, that not only the grounds of the 
 opinion are forgotten in the absence of discus- 
 sion, but too often the meaning of the opinion 
 itself. The words which convey it, cease to 
 suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion 
 of those they were originally employed to 
 communicate. Instead of a vivid conception 
 and a living belief, there remain only a few 
 )hrases retained by rote ; or, if any part, the 
 shell and husk only of the meaning is retained 
 the finer essence being lost. The great chaptei 
 in human history which this fact occupies and 
 
ON r.IBERTT.. 73 
 
 fil.s, cannot be too earnestly studied and medi' 
 tated on. 
 
 It is illustrated in the experience of almosl 
 all ethical doctrines and religious creeds. They 
 arc all full of meaning and vitality to those 
 who originate them, and to the direct disciples 
 of the originators. Their meaning continues 
 to be felt in undiminished strength, and is per- 
 haps brought out into even fuller conscious- 
 ness, so long as the struggle lasts to give the 
 doctrine or creed an ascendency over other 
 creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes 
 the general opinion, or its progress stops ; i*; 
 keeps possession of the ground it has gained 
 but ceases to spread further. When either of 
 these results has become apparent, controversy 
 on the subject flags, and gradually dies away. 
 The doctrine has taken its place, if not as a 
 received opinion, as one of the admitted sects 
 or divisions of opinion : those who hold it have 
 generally inherited, not adopted it ; and con- 
 version from one of these doctrines to another, 
 being now an exceptional fact, occupies little 
 place in the thoughts of their professors. In- 
 stead of being, as at first, constantly on tb« 
 alert either to defend themselves against the 
 world, or to bring the world over to them, they 
 have subsided into acquiescence, and neither 
 listen, when they can help it, to arguments 
 against their creed, nor trouble dissentients 
 (if there be such) with arguments in its favor 
 From this time may usually be dated the '|e- 
 4 
 
74 ON LIBEKTY. 
 
 cline in the living power of the doctrine. We 
 often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting 
 the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of' 
 believers a lively apprehension of the truth 
 which they nominally recognize, so that it 
 may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real 
 mastery over the conduct. No such difficulty 
 is complained of while the creed is still fighting 
 for its existence : even the weaker combatants 
 then know and feel what they are fighting for, 
 and the difference between it and other doc- 
 trines ; and in that period of every creed's ex- 
 istence, not a few persons may be found, who 
 have realized its fundamental principles in aii 
 the forms of thought, have weighed and con- 
 sidered them iu all their important bearings, 
 and have experienced the full effect on the 
 character, which belief in that creed ought to 
 produce in a mind thoroughly imbued with it. 
 But when it has come to be an hereditary 
 creed, and to be received passively, not active- 
 ly — when the mind is no longer compelled, in 
 the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital 
 powers on the questions which its belief pre- 
 sents to it, there is a progressive tendency to 
 forget all of the belief except the formulari«!s, 
 or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if 
 accepting it on trust dispensed with the neces- 
 sity of realizing it in consciousness, or testing 
 it by personal experience ; until it almost 
 ceases to connect itself at all witii the innei 
 life of the human being. Then are seen the 
 
ON LTBEETT. 1o 
 
 lasea, so frequent in this age of the world as 
 almost to form the majority, in which the creed 
 remains as it were outside the mind, encrust- 
 ing and petrifying it against all other in- 
 fluences addressed to the higher parts of oul 
 nature ; manifesting its power by not suffer- 
 ing any fresh and living conviction to get in, 
 but itself doing nothing for the mind or heart, 
 except standing sentinel over them to keep 
 them vacant. 
 
 To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fit- 
 ted to make the deepest impression upon the 
 mind may remain in it as dead beliefs, with- 
 out being ever realized in the imagination, tlu3 
 feelings, or the understanding, is exemplified 
 by the manner in which the majority of be- 
 lievers hold the doctrines of Christianity. By 
 Christianity I here mean what is accounteti 
 sucli by all churches and sects — the maxima 
 and precepts contained in the New Testament 
 These are considered sacred, and accepted as 
 laws, by all professing Christians. Yet it is 
 scarcely too much to say that not one Chris- 
 tian in a thousand guides or tests his individ- 
 ual conduct by reference to those laws. The 
 standard to which he does refer it, is the cus- 
 tom of his nation, his class, or his religious 
 profession. He has thus, on the one hand, a 
 collection of ethical maxims, which he believes 
 to have been vouchsafed to him by infallible 
 wisdom as rules for his govcMiiiicnt; and on 
 the other, a set of cvcry-dsiy judgments and 
 
76 ON umsu'ry. 
 
 practices, which go a certain length with some 
 of those maxims, not so great a length with 
 others, stand in direct opposition to some, and 
 are, on the whole, a compromise between the 
 Christian creed and the interests and sugges- 
 tions of worldly life. To the first of these 
 standards he gives his homage ; to the other 
 his real allegiance. All Christians believe that 
 the blessed are the poor and humble, and those 
 who are ill-used jby the world ; that it is easier 
 for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
 heaven ; that they should judge not, lest they 
 be judged ; that they should swear not at all - 
 that they should love their neighbor as tiiem- 
 selves ; that if one take their cloak, they should 
 give him their coat also ; that they should take 
 no thought for the morrow ; that if they would 
 be perfect, they should sell all that they have 
 and give it to the poor. They are not insin- 
 cere when they say that they believe these 
 things. They do believe them, as people be- 
 lieve what they have always heard lauded and 
 never discussed. But in the sense of that liv- 
 ing belief which regulates conduct, they be-" 
 lieve these doctrines just up to the point to 
 which it is usual to act upon them. The doc- 
 trines in their integrity are serviceable to pelt 
 adversaries with ; and it is understood that they 
 are to be put forward (when possible) as the 
 reasons for whatever people do that they think 
 laudable. But any one who reminded theia 
 
ON LIBKKTT. 77 
 
 that the maxims require an infinity of tilings 
 whicii tliey never even think of doing, would 
 gain nothing but to be classed among those 
 very unpopular characters who affect to be bet- 
 ter than other people. The doctrines have no 
 hold on ordinary believers — are not a power 
 in their minds. They have an habitual respect 
 for the sound of them, but no feeling which 
 spreads firom the words to the things signified, 
 and forces the mind to take tkem in, and makr 
 them conform to the formula. Whenever con- 
 duct is concerned, they look round for Mr. A 
 and B to direct them how far to go in obeying 
 Christ. 
 
 Now we may be well assured that the case 
 was not thus, but far otherwise, with the early 
 Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity 
 never would have expanded from an obscure 
 sect of the despised Hebrews into the religion 
 of the Roman empire. When their enemies 
 said, " See how these Christians love one an- 
 other " (a remark not likely to be made by any- 
 body now), they assuredly had a much livelier 
 feeling of the meaning of their creed than they 
 have ever had since. And to this cause, prob- 
 ably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity now 
 makes so little progress in extending its do- 
 main, and after eighteen centuries, is still near- 
 ly confined to Europeans and the descendants 
 of Europeans. Even with the strictlj- religious, 
 who are much in earnest about their doctrines, 
 and atfnch a greater amount of meaning to 
 
78 ON LIBERTT. 
 
 iiiuny of tliciii Uiau people in gciicial, ii colu 
 inonly happens that the part which is thui 
 comparatively active in their minds is thai 
 which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some 
 Buch person much nearer in character to them- 
 selves. The sayings of Christ coexist pas- 
 lively in their minds, producing hardly any 
 effect beyond what is caused by mere listen- 
 ng to words so amiable and bland. There, 
 are many reasons, doubtless, why doctrinesi 
 which are the badge of a sect retain more of 
 their vitality than those common to all recog- 
 nized sects, and why more pains are taken by 
 teachers to keep their meaning ali\e; but one 
 reason certainly is, that the peculiar doctrines 
 are more questioned, and have to be oftenei 
 d(!fended against open gainsayers. Both teach- 
 ers rind learners go to sleep at their post, as 
 soon as there is no enemy in the field. 
 
 The same thing holds true, generally speak- 
 ing, of all traditional doctrines — those of pru- 
 dence and knowledge of life, as well as of 
 morals or religion. All languages and litera- 
 tures are full of general observations on life, 
 l)oth as to what it is, and how to conduct one- 
 self in it; observations which everybody knows, 
 which everybody repeats, or hears with acqui- 
 escence, which are received as truisms, yet of 
 which most people first truly learn the mean- 
 ing, when experience, generally of a painful 
 kind, has made it a reality to them. How 
 often, when smarting under .some unforcseer 
 
ON LIBEETT. 79 
 
 misfortune or disappointtrent, acxis si peraor 
 call to mind some pvoverb or common saying 
 familiar to him all his life, the meaning of 
 which, if he had ever before felt it as lie does 
 now, would have saved him from the calamity 
 There are indeed reasons for this, other thac 
 the absence of discussion : there are many 
 'roths of which the full meaning cannot be real 
 ized, until personal experience has brought it 
 home. But much more of the meaning even 
 of these would have been understood, and what 
 was understood would have been far more deep- 
 ly impressed on the mind, if the man had been 
 accustomed to hear it argued pro and con by 
 people who did understand it The fatal ten- 
 dency of mankind to leave off thinking about 
 a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the 
 cause of half their errors. A cotemporary au- 
 thor has well spoken of " the deep slumber of 
 a decided opinion." 
 
 But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence 
 of unanimity an indispensable condition of 
 true knowledge? Is it necessary that some 
 part of mankind should persist in error, to en- 
 able any to realize the truth ? Does i belief 
 cease to be real and vital as soon as it is gen- 
 erally received — and is a propo« 'tion never 
 thoroughly understood and felt unless some 
 doubt of it remains ? As soon as mankind 
 have unanimously accepted a fruih, does the 
 truth perish within them ? The highest aim 
 and best result of improved intelligence, it has 
 
so ON LIBISETY. 
 
 hitherto been thought, is to unite maiiiiim 
 more and more in the acknowledgment of aL 
 important truths : and does the intelligence 
 only last as long as it has not achieved its 
 object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by 
 the very completeness of the victory ? 
 
 I affirm no such thing. As maiildnd im< 
 prove, the number of doctrines which are no 
 longer disputed or doubted will be constantlj 
 on the increase : and the well-being of man- 
 kind may almost be measured by the number 
 and gravity of the truths which have reached 
 the point of being uncontested. The cessa- 
 tion, on one question after another, of serious 
 controversy, is one of the necessary incidents 
 of the consolidation of opinion ; a consolida- 
 tion as salutary in the case of true opinions, as 
 it is dangerous and noxious when the opinions 
 are erroneous. But though this gradual nar- 
 rowing of the bounds of diversity of opinion 
 is necessary in both senses of the term, being 
 at once inevitable and indispensable, we are 
 not therefore obliged to conclude that all its 
 consequences must be beneficial. The loss of 
 80 important an aid to the intelligent and liv- 
 ing apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by 
 the necessity of explaining it to, or dufeiKling 
 it against, opponents, though not sufficient to 
 outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the 
 benefit of its universal recognition. Where 
 this advantage can no longer be had, I confess 
 I should like to see the teachers of mankind 
 
ON LIBEETT. 81 
 
 endeavoring to provide a substitute jFor it ; 
 some contrivance for making tlie difficulties 
 of the question as present to the leainer's con- 
 sciousness, as if they were pressed upon liini 
 by a dissentient champion, eager for his con- 
 vcrsioTi. 
 
 But instead of seelcing contrivances for this 
 purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. 
 The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently ex- 
 emplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a 
 contrivance of this description. They were 
 essentially a negative discussion of the great 
 questions of philosophy and life, directed with 
 consummate skill to the purpose of convincing 
 any one who had mcrelj' adopted tlie common- 
 places of received opinion, that he did not un- 
 derstand the subject — that he as yet attached 
 no definite meaning to the doctrines he pro- 
 fessed ; in order that, becon)ing aware of his 
 ignorance, he might be put in the way to at- 
 tain a stable belief, resting on a clear appre- 
 hension both of the meaning of doctrines and 
 of their evidence. The school disputations of 
 the Middle Ages had a somewhat similar object. 
 They were intended to make sure that the pu- 
 pil understood his own opinion, and (by neces- 
 sary correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and 
 could enforce the grounds of the one and con- 
 fute those of the other. These last-mentioned 
 contests had indeed the incurab'e defect, that 
 the premises appealed to were takf n from au 
 thority, not from reason ; and, as a d'scipliiie 
 
82 OM LIBBBTT. 
 
 to the mindj they were in every respect inferioi 
 to the powerful dialectics wiiich formed the 
 intellects of the " Socratici viri : " but the 
 modern mind owes far more to both than it 
 is generally willing to admit, and the present 
 modes of education contain nothing which in 
 the smallest degree supplies the place either of 
 the one or of the other. A person who derives 
 all his instruction from teachers or books, even 
 if he escape the besetting temptation of con- 
 tenting himself with cram, is under no compul- 
 sion to hear both sides ; accordingly it is far 
 from a frequent accomplishment, even among 
 •^hinkers, to know both sides ; and the weakest 
 part of what everybody says in defence of his 
 opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antag- 
 onists. It is the fashion of the present time to 
 disparage negative logic — that which points 
 out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, 
 without establishing positive truths. Such 
 negative criticism would indeed be poor enough 
 as an ultimate result ; but as a means to at- 
 taining any positive knowledge or conviction 
 worthy the name, it cannot be valued too 
 highly ; a id until people are again systemati- 
 cally trained to it, there will be few great think- 
 'jrs, afid a low general average of intellect, in 
 any but the mathematical and physical depart- 
 ments of speculation. On any other subject 
 no one's opinions deserve the name of knowl- 
 edge, except so far as he has either had forced 
 upon him by others, or gone through of him 
 
ON LIBEBTy. 83 
 
 eelf, the same mental process which would 
 have been required of him in carrying on an 
 active controversy with opponents. That, 
 Iherefore, which when absent, it is so indis- 
 ptMtsabio, but so diflFicnlt, to create, how worse 
 liian absurd is it to forego, when spontaneously 
 offering itself! If there are any persons who 
 contest a received opinion, or who will do so 
 if law or opinion will let them, let us thank 
 them for it, open our minds to listen to them, 
 and rejoice that there is some one to do for us 
 what we otherwise ought, if we have any re- 
 gard for either the certainty or tlie vitality of 
 our convictions, to do with much greater labor 
 for ourselves. 
 
 It still remains to speak of one of the prin- 
 ■jipal causes which make diversity of opinion 
 advantageous, and will continue to do so untL 
 mankind shall have entered a stage of intel« 
 lectual advancement which at present seems 
 at an incalculable distance. We have hitherto 
 considered only two possibilities : that the re- 
 ceived opinion may be false, and some other 
 opinion, consequently, true ; or that, the re- 
 ceived opinion being true, a conflict with the 
 opposite error is essential to a clear apprehen- 
 sion and deep feeling of its truth. But there 
 is a commoner case than either of these ; when 
 the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one 
 true and the other false, share the Iruih between 
 them; and the nonconforming opinion ^s need 
 
84 ON LIBERTY. 
 
 lid to supply the remainder of the truth, ot 
 which the received doctiine embodies only a 
 part. Popular opinions, on subjects not pal- 
 pable to sense, are often true, but seldom oi 
 never the whole truth. They are a part of the 
 truth ; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller 
 part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined 
 from the truths by which they ought to be ac- 
 companied and limited. Heretical opinions, 
 on the other hand, are generally some of these 
 suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the 
 bonds which kept them down, and either seek- 
 ing reconciliation with the truth contained in 
 the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, 
 and setting themselves up, with similar exclu- 
 siveness, as the whole truth. The latter case 
 is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human 
 mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, 
 and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, 
 even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the 
 truth usually sets while another rises. Even 
 progress, which ought to superadd, for the most 
 part only substitutes one partial and incom- 
 plete truth for another; improvement consist- 
 ing chiefly in this, that the new fragment of 
 truth is more wanted, more adapted to the 
 needs of the time, than that which it displaces. 
 Such being the partial character of prevailing 
 opinions, even when resting on a true founda- 
 tion ; every opinion which embodies somewha' 
 of the portion of truth which the common 
 opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, 
 
ON LIBESTT. 86 
 
 with whatever amount of error and confusion 
 that truth may be blended. No sober judge 
 of human aflaira will feel bound to be indig- 
 nant because those who force on our notice 
 truths which we should otherwise have over- 
 looked, overlook some of those which we see. 
 Rather, he will think that so long as popular 
 truth is one-sided, it is more desirable than 
 otherwise that unpopular truth should have 
 one-sided asserters too ; such being usually the 
 most energetic, and the most likely to compel 
 reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom 
 which they proclaim as if it were the whole. 
 
 Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly 
 all the instructed, and all those of the unin- 
 Btructed who were led by them, were lost in 
 admiration of what is called civilization, and 
 of the marvels of modern science, literature, 
 and philosophy, and while greatly overrating 
 the amount of unlikeness between the men of 
 modern and those of ancient times, indulged 
 the belief that the whole of the difference was 
 in their own favor ; with what a salutary shock 
 did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like 
 bombshells in the midst, dislocating the com- 
 pact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its 
 elements to recombine in a better form and 
 with additional ingredients. Not that the cur- 
 rent opinions were on the whole fiirther from 
 the truth than Rousseau's were; on the con- 
 trary, they were nearer to it; they contained 
 more of positive truth, and very much less of 
 
86 ON LIBEBXr. 
 
 error. Nevtutheletss there lay in Rousscaa's 
 doctrine, and has floated down the stream of 
 opinion along with it, a considerable amount 
 of exactly those truths which the popular opin- 
 ion wanted ; and these are the deposit which 
 was left behind when the flood subsided. The 
 superior worth of simplicity of life, the ener- 
 vating and demoralizing effect of the tram- 
 mels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are 
 ideas which have never been entirely absent 
 from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote ; 
 and they will in time produce their due effect, 
 though at present needing to be asserted as 
 much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for 
 words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted 
 their power. 
 
 In politics, again, it ib almost a common- 
 place, that a party of order or stability, and a 
 party of progress or reform, are both necessary 
 elements of a healthy state of political life; 
 until the one or the other shall have so en- 
 larged its mental grasp as to be a party equally 
 of order and of progress, knowing and distin- 
 guishing what is fit to be preserved from what 
 ought to be swept away. Each of these modes 
 of thinking derives its utility from the deficien- 
 cies of the other ; but it is in a great measure 
 the opposition of the other that keeps each 
 within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless 
 opinions favorable to democracy and to aristoc 
 racy, to property and to equality, to coopera- 
 tion and to competitirn, to luxury and to ab- 
 
ON r^lBRBTir. 87 
 
 Btinence, io sodality and individuality, to lib- 
 erty and discipline, and all the other standing 
 antagonisms of practical life, are expressed 
 with equal freedom, and enforced and defended 
 with equal talent and energy, there is no chance 
 of both elements obtaining their due ; one scale 
 is sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, 
 in the great practical concerns of life, is so 
 much a question of the reconciling and com- 
 bining of opposites, that very few have minds 
 sudicicntly capacious and iinpartial to make 
 the adjustment with an approach to correct- 
 ness, and it has to be made by the rough proc- 
 ess of a struggle between combatants fighting 
 under hostile banners. On any of the great 
 open questions just enumerated, if either of 
 the two opinions has a better claim than the 
 other, not merely to be tolerated, but to be 
 encouraged and countenanced, it is the one 
 which happens at the particular time and 
 place to be in a minority. That is the opinion 
 which, for the time being, represents the ne- 
 glected interests, the side of human well-being 
 which is in danger of obtaining less than its 
 share. I am aware that there is not, in this 
 country, any intolerance of differences of opin- 
 ion on most of these topics. They are ad- 
 duced to show, by admitted and multiplied 
 examples, the universality of the fact, that 
 only through diversity of opinion is there, in 
 the existing state of human in'ellect, a chance 
 of fair play to all sides of the truth. Wher 
 
88 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 there are persons to be found, wno form an 
 exception to the apparent unanimity of the 
 world on any subject, even if the world is iu 
 the right, it is always probable that dissenfients 
 have something worth hearing to say for them- 
 selves, and that truth would lose something by 
 their silence. 
 
 It may be objected, " But some received prin- 
 ciples, especially on the highest and most vital 
 subjects, are more than half-truths. The Chris- 
 tian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on 
 that subject, and if any one teaches a morality 
 which varies from it, he is wholly in error." 
 As this is of all cases the most important in 
 practice, none can be fitter to test the general 
 maxim. But before pronouncing what Chris- 
 tian morality is or is not, it would be desirable 
 to decide what is meant by Christian morality. 
 If it means the morality of the New Testa- 
 ment, I wonder that any one who derives his 
 knowledge of this from the book itself, can 
 suppose that it was announced, or intended, aa 
 a complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel 
 always refers to a preexisting morality, and 
 confines its precepts to the particulars in which 
 that morality was to be corrected, or superseded 
 by a wider and higher ; expressing itself, more- 
 over, in terms most general, often impossible 
 to be interpreted literally, and possessing rath 
 it the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence 
 than the precision of legislation. To extract 
 from it a body of ethical doctrine, has nevei 
 
ON LIBKETr. 89 
 
 i)eeii possible without eking it out from the 
 Old Testament, that is, from a system elabo 
 rate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, 
 and intended only for a barbarous people. St. 
 Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode 
 of interpreting the doctrine and filling up 
 the scheme of his Master, equally assumes 
 a prei-xisting morality, namely, that of the 
 Greeks and Romans ; and his advice to Chris< 
 tians is in a great measure a system of accom- 
 modation to that; even to the extent of giving 
 an apparent sanction to slavery. What ii 
 called Christian, but should rather be termeo 
 theological, morality, was not the work of 
 Christ or the Apostles, but is of much latei 
 origin, having been gradually built up by the 
 Catholic Church of the first five centuries, and 
 though not implicitly adopted by moderns and 
 Protestants, has been much less modified by 
 them than might have been expected. For the 
 most part, indeed, they have contented them- 
 selves with cutting off the additions which had 
 been made to it in the Middle Ages, each sect 
 supplying the place by fresh additions, adapt- 
 ed to its own character and tendencies. That 
 mankind owe a great debt to this morality, and 
 to its early teachers, I should be the last person 
 to deny ; but I do not scruple to say of it, that 
 it is, in many important points, incomplete and 
 one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, 
 not sanctioned by it, had contributed io the 
 formation of European life and character, Im- 
 
UO ON LTBERTY. 
 
 man afTaira would have been in a worse con- 
 dition than they now are. Christian moralitj 
 (so called) las all the characters of a reaction 
 it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. 
 Its ideal is negative rather than positive ; pas- 
 sive rather than active ; Innocence rather than 
 Nobleness ; Abstinence from Evil, rather than 
 energetic Pursuit of Good : in its precepts (aa 
 has been well said) " thou shalt not " predomi- 
 nates unduly over "thou shalt." In its hor- 
 ror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, 
 which has been gradually compromised away 
 into one of legality. It holds out the hope of 
 heaven and the threat of hell, as the. appointed 
 and appropriate motives to a virtuous life : in 
 this falling far below the best of the ancients, 
 and doing what lies in it to give to human 
 morality an essentially selfish character, by dis- 
 connecting each man's feelings of duty from 
 the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so 
 far as a self-interested inducement is offered to 
 him for consulting them. It is essentially a doc- 
 trine of passive obedience ; it inculcates sub- 
 mission to all authorities found established ; 
 who indeed are not to be actively obeyed 
 when they command what religion forbids, but 
 who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled 
 against, for any amount of wrong to ourselves. 
 And while, in the morality of the best Pagan 
 nations, duty to th ^ State holds even a dispro- 
 portionate place, infringing on the just liberty 
 of the individual ; in purely Christian ethics 
 
OS UBBBTT. 91 
 
 hat grand department of duty is scarcely no- 
 ticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, 
 not the New Testament, that we read the 
 miixim — "A ruler who appoints any man to 
 an office, when there is in his dominions an 
 other man better qualified for it, sins agains( 
 God and against the State." What little recog- 
 nition the idea of obligation to the public ob- 
 tains in modern morality, is derived from Greek 
 and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even 
 in the morality of private life, whatever exists 
 of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dig- 
 nity, even the sense of honor, is derived from 
 the purely human, not the religious part of oui 
 education, and never could have grown out of 
 a standard of ethics in which the only worth, 
 professedly recognized, is that of obedience. 
 
 I am as far as any one from pretending that 
 these defects are necessarily inherent in the 
 Christian ethics, in every manner in which it 
 can be conceived, or that the many requisites 
 of a complete moral doctrine which it does not 
 contain, do not admit of being reconciled with 
 it Far less would I insinuate this of the doc- 
 trines and precepts of Christ himself. I be- 
 lieve that the sayings of Christ are all, that I 
 can see any evidence of their having been in- 
 tended to be ; that they are irreconcilable with 
 nothing which a comprehensive morality re- 
 quires ; that everything which is excellent in 
 ethics may be brought within them, with no 
 greater violence to their language than hap 
 
92 ON LIBEUTY. 
 
 been done to it by all who have attempted to 
 deduce from lh(;m any practical system of con- 
 duct whatever. But it is quite consistent with 
 this, to believe that they contain, and were 
 meant to contain, only a paii of the truth ; 
 that many essential elements of the highest 
 morality are among the things which are nol 
 provided for, nor intended to l)e provided for 
 in the recorded deliverances of the Founder 
 of Christianity, and which have been entirely 
 thrown aside in the system of ethics erected 
 on the basis of those deliverances by the Chris- 
 tian Church. And this being so, I think it a 
 great error to persist in attempting to find in 
 the Christian doctrine that complete rule for 
 our guidance, which its author intended it to 
 sanction and enforce, but only partially to pro- 
 vide. I believe, too, that this narrow theory 
 is becoming a grave practical evil, detracting 
 greatly from the value of the moral training 
 and instruction, which so many well-meaning 
 persons are now at length exerting themselves 
 to promote. I much fear that by attempting 
 to form the mind and feelings on an exclu- 
 sively religious type, and discarding those sec- 
 ular standards (as for want of a better name 
 they may be called) which heretofore coexisted 
 with and supplemented the Christian ethics, 
 receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into 
 it some of theirs, there will result, and is eve6 
 now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of 
 character, which, submit itself as it may to 
 
ON LIBBBTT. 93 
 
 what it deems the Supreme Will, is incapa- 
 ble of rising to or sympathizing in the concep 
 tion of Supreme Goodness. I believe thai 
 other ethics than any which can be evolverJ 
 from exclusively Christian sources, must exip 
 side by side with Christian ethics to produce 
 the moral regeneration of mankind ; and that 
 the Christian system is no exception to the 
 rule, that in an imperfect state of the human 
 mind, the interests of truth require a diversity 
 of opinions. It is not necessary that in ceas- 
 ing to ignore the moral truths not contained 
 in Christianity, men should ignore any of 
 those which it does contain. Such prejudice, 
 or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether an 
 evil ; but it is one from which we cannot hope 
 to be always exempt, and must be regarded 
 as the price paid for an inestimable good. The 
 exclusive pretension made by a part of the 
 truth to be the whole, must and ought to be 
 protested against, and if a reactionary impulse 
 should make the protestors unjust in their 
 turn, this one-sidedness, like the other, may be 
 lamented, but must be tolerated. If Chris- 
 tians would tpach infidels to be just to Chris- 
 tianity, they should themselves be just to in 
 fidelity. It can do truth no service to b/ink 
 the fact, known to all who have the most or- 
 dinary acquaintance with literary history, that 
 a large portion of the noblest and most valu- 
 able moral teaching has been the work, not 
 
94 ON UBBBTT. 
 
 only of men who did not know, but of men 
 who knew and rejected, the Christian faith. 
 
 I do not pretend that the most unlimited 
 use of the freedom of enunciating all possible 
 opinions would put an end to the evils of relig- 
 ous or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth 
 which men of narrow capacity are in earnest 
 about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and 
 in many ways even acted on, as if no other 
 truth existed in the world, or at all events 
 none that could limit or qualify the first. I 
 acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions 
 to become sectarian is not cured by the freest 
 discussion, but is often heightened and exacer- 
 bated thereby ; the truth which ought to have 
 been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the 
 more violently because proclaimed by persons 
 regarded as opponents. But it is not on the 
 impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and 
 more disinterested by-stander, that this collision 
 of opinions works its salutary eflcct. Not the 
 violent conflict between parts of the truth, but 
 the quiet suppression of half of it, is the for- 
 midable evil : there is always hope when peo 
 pie are forced to listen to both sides; it is 
 when they attend only to one that errors har- 
 den into prejudices, and truth itself ceases tc 
 'lave the effect of truth, by being exaggerated 
 into falsehood. And since there are few men- 
 tal attributes more rare than that judicial fac- 
 ulty which can sit in intelligent judgment be 
 tween two sides of a question, of which onl} 
 
ON LtBEETY. 9& 
 
 one is represented by an advocate before it. 
 truth lias no chance but in proportion as every 
 side of it, every opinion which embodies any 
 fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, 
 but is so advocated as to be listened to. 
 
 We have now recognized the necessity to 
 the meutal well-being of mankind (on which 
 all their other well-being depends) of freedom 
 of opinion, and freedom of the expression of 
 opinion, on four distinct grounds ; which we 
 will now briefly recapitulate. 
 
 First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, 
 that opinion may, for aught we can certainly 
 know, be true. To deny this is to assume our 
 own infallibility. 
 
 Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an 
 error, it may, and very commonly does, contain 
 a portion of truth ; and since the general or 
 prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely oi 
 never the whole truth, it is only by the col 
 lision of adverse opinions that the remaindei 
 of the truth has any chance of being supplied. 
 
 Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not 
 only true, but the whole truth ; unless it is suf- 
 fered to be, and actually is, vigorously and 
 earnestly contested, it will, by most of those 
 who receive it, be held in the manner of a 
 prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling 
 of its rational grounds. And not only this, 
 but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine it- 
 self will be in danger of being lost, {)r en- 
 feebled, and deprived of its vital effect on tha 
 
96 ON LIBBBTT. 
 
 character and conduct : the dogma becoming a 
 mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, 
 but cumbering the ground, and preventing the 
 growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, 
 from reason or personal experience. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of freedom of 
 opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those 
 who say, that the free expression of all opin- 
 ions should be permitted, on condition that 
 the manner be temperate, and do not pass the 
 bounds of fair discussion. Much might be 
 said on the impossibility of fixing where theae 
 supposed bounds are to be placed ; for if the 
 test be offence to those whose opinion is at- 
 tacked, I think experience testifies that this 
 offpnce is given whenever the attack is telling 
 and powerful, and that every opponent who 
 pushes them hard, and whom they find it dif- 
 ficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows 
 any strong feeling on the subject, un intem- 
 perate opponent. But this, though an impor- 
 tant consideration in a practical point of view, 
 merges in a more fundamental objection. Un- 
 doubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, 
 even though it be a true one, may be very ob- 
 jectionable, and may justly incur severe cen- 
 sure. But the principal offences of the kind 
 are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by 
 accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to con 
 viction. The gravest of them is, to argue so- 
 phistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to 
 misstate the elements of the case, or misrepre< 
 
OH LIBBBTT. 91 
 
 sent the opposite opinion. But all tliis, even 
 to the most aggravated degree, is so continu- 
 ally done in perfect good faith, by persons whc 
 are not considered, and in many other respects 
 may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or 
 incompetent, that it is rarely possible on ade- 
 quate grounds conscientiously to stamp the 
 misrepresentation as morally culpable ; and 
 slill less could law presume to interfere with 
 this kind of controversial misconduct. With 
 regard to what is commonly meant by intem- 
 perate discnsaion, namely, invective, sarcasm, 
 personality, and the like, the denunciation of 
 these weapons would deserve more sympathy 
 if it were ever proposed to interdict them 
 equally to both sides ; but it is only desired 
 to restrain the employment of them against the 
 prevailing opinion : against the unprevailing 
 they may not only be used without general 
 disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him 
 who uses them the praise of honest zeal and 
 righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief 
 arises from their use, is greatest when they are 
 employed against the comparatively defence- 
 less ; and whatever unfair advantage can be 
 derived by any opinion from this mode of as- 
 serting it, accrues almost exclusively to re- 
 ceived opinions. The worst oflFence of this 
 kind which can be committed by a polemic, 
 is to stigmatize ihose wlio hold the contrary 
 opinion as bad and immoral men. To cal- 
 umny of this sort, those who hold any unpop- 
 
yS ON LIBERTY. 
 
 ular opiiiiuii are peculiarly exposjcd, becauai 
 they luo ill general few and uninfluential, and 
 nobody but themselves feels much interest in 
 Aeeing justice done them ; but this weapon is, 
 from the nature of the case, denied to those 
 who attack a prevailing opinion : they can nei- 
 tlier use it with safety to themselves, nor, if 
 they could, would it do anything but recoil on 
 their own cause. In general, opinions contrary 
 to those commonly received can only obtain a 
 hearing by studied moderation of language; 
 and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessa- 
 ry offence, from which they hardly ever deviate 
 even in a slight degree without losing ground : 
 while unmeasured vituperation employed on 
 the side of the prevailing opinion, really does 
 deter people from professing contrary opinions, 
 and from listening to those who profess them. 
 For the interest, therefore, of truth and jus- 
 tice, it is far more important to restrain this 
 eiii|)loyment of vituperative language than the 
 other; and, for example, if it were necessary 
 to choose, there would be much more need to 
 discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than 
 on religion. It is, however, obvious that law 
 and authority have no business with restrain- 
 ing either, wiiiie opinion ought, in every in- 
 stil nee, to determine its verdict by the circum- 
 stances of the individual case ; condemning 
 every one, on whichever side of the argument 
 he places himself, in whose mode of advocacj 
 either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry 
 
OS UBEETY. 99 
 
 or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves ' 
 but not inferring these vices from the side 
 which a person takes, though it be the con- 
 traiy side of the question to our own : and 
 giving merited honor to every one, whatever 
 opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see 
 and honesty io state what his opponents and 
 their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing 
 to their discredit, keeping nothing back which 
 tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. 
 This is the real morality of public discussion ; 
 and if often violated, I am happy to think that 
 there are many controversialists who to a great 
 extent observe it, and a still greater numbei 
 trim conscientiously strive towards it. 
 
CHAPTER m. 
 
 or Dn>iTn>UAi.iirr, as on£ of iius elbmbnts oi wku>- 
 
 BBINQ 
 
 n UCH being the reasons which make it iin 
 ^ perative that human beings should be free 
 to form opinions, and to express their opinions 
 without reserve ; and such the baneful conse- 
 quences to the intellectual, and through that to 
 the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is 
 either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibi- 
 tion ; let us next examine v/hether the same 
 reasons do not require that men should be free 
 to act upon their opinions — to carry these out 
 in their lives, without hindrance, either physical 
 or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it 
 is at their own risk and peril. This last pro- 
 viso is of course indispensable. No one pre- 
 tends that actions should be as free as opinions. 
 On the contrary, even opinions lose their im- 
 munity, when the circumstances in which they 
 are expressed arc such as to constitute their 
 expression a positive instigation to some mis- 
 chievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers 
 are starvers of the poor, or that private prop, 
 erty is robbery, ought to be unmolested when 
 simj)ly circulated through the press, but may 
 
ON LIBERTT. lOl 
 
 justly incur punishment when delivered orally 
 to an excited mob assembled before the house 
 of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among 
 Ihe same mob in the form of a placard. Acts 
 of whatever kind, which, without justifiable 
 cause, do harm to others, may be, and in thr 
 more important cases absolutely require to be, 
 controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, 
 when needful, by this active interference of 
 mankind. The liberty of the individual must( 
 be thus far limited ; he must not make himself \ 
 a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains 
 from molesting others in what concerns them, 
 and merely acts according to his own inclina- 
 tion and judgment in things which concern 
 himself, the same reasons which show that 
 opinion should be free, prove also that he 
 should be allowed, without molestation, to 
 carry his opinions into practice at his own 
 cost. That mankind are not infallible ; that 
 their truths, for the most part, are only half- 
 truths ; that unity of opinion, unless resulting 
 from the fullest and freest comparison of op- 
 posite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity 
 not an evil, but a good, until mankind are 
 much more capable than at present of recog- 
 nizing all sides of the truth, are principles ap- 
 plicable to men's modes of action, not less than 
 to their opinions. As it is useful that while 
 mankind are imperfect there should be different 
 opinions, so is it that there should be different 
 experiments of living ; that free scope should 
 
lOS ON I.ltiKlJTV 
 
 l)e giyen to varieties of character, short of in 
 jury to others ; and that the worth of differeni 
 modes of life should be proved practically-j 
 when any one thinks fit to try them. It is de- 
 sirable, in short, that in things which do not 
 primarily concern others, individuality should 
 assert itself. Where, not the person's own 
 character, but the triiditions or customs of other 
 people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting 
 one of the principal ingredients of human hap- 
 piness, and quite the chief ingredient of indi- 
 vidual and social progress. 
 
 In maintaining this principle, the greatest 
 difficulty to be encountered does not lie in the 
 appreciation of means towards an acknowl- 
 edged end, but in the indifference of persons in 
 general to the end itself. If it were felt that 
 the free development of individuality is one of 
 the leading essentials of well-being ; that it is 
 not only a coordinate element with all that is 
 designated by the terms civilization, instruc- 
 tion, education, culture, but is itself a neces- 
 sary part and condition of all those things; 
 there would be no danger that liberty should 
 be undervalued, and the adjustment of the 
 boundaries between it and social control would 
 present no extraordinary difficulty. But the 
 evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly 
 recognized by the common modes of thinking 
 as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any 
 regard on its own account. The majority, be 
 ing satisfied with the ways of mankind as thej 
 
ON LaSSTT. 
 
 103 
 
 now are (for it is they who make them what 
 they are), cannot comprehend why those ways 
 should hot be good enough for everybody ; ana 
 what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the 
 ideal of the majority of moral and social re- 
 formers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, 
 as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious ob- 
 struction to the general acceptance of what 
 these reformers, in their own judgment, think 
 would be best for mankind. Few persons, out 
 of Germany, even comprehend the meaning of 
 the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
 so eminent both as a savant and as a politi- 
 cian, made the text of a treatise — that " the 
 end of man, or that which is proscribed by the 
 eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and 
 not suggested by vague and transient desires, 
 is the highest and most harmonious develop- 
 ment of his powers to a complete and consist- 
 ent whole ;" that, therefore, the object " towards 
 which every human being must ceaselessly 
 direct his efforts, and on which especially those 
 who design to influence their fellow-men must 
 ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of 
 power and development;" that for this there 
 are two requisites, " freedom, and a variety of 
 situations ; " and that from the union of these 
 arise " individual vigor and manifold diversity,"' 
 which combine themselves in " originality." * 
 
 Little, however, as people are accustomed 
 to a doctrine like that of Von Humboldt, and 
 
 • 77ie Sphere ami Duties of Government, from the German til 
 llaron Willi'ilm von Humboldt, pp- 11-13. 
 
104 ON LIBKEXV. 
 
 surprising as it may be to them to finJ sc 
 high a value attached to individuality, the 
 question, one must nevertheless think, can 
 only be one of degree. No one's idea of ex- 
 cellence in conduct is that people should do 
 absolutely nothing but copy one another. No 
 one would assert that people ought not U 
 put into their mode of life, and into the con- 
 duct of their concerns, any impress whatever 
 of their own judgment, or of their own indi- 
 vidual character. On the other hand, it would 
 be absurd to pretend that people ought to 
 live as if nothing whatever had been known 
 iu the world before they came into it ; as if 
 experience had as yet done nothing towards 
 showing that one mode of existence, or of 
 conduct, is preferable to another. Nobody 
 denies that people should be so taught and 
 trained in youth, as to know and benefit by 
 the ascertained results of human experiepce. 
 But it is the privilege and proper condition 
 of a human being, arrived at the maturity of 
 his faculties, to use and interpret experience 
 in his own way. It is for him to find out 
 what Dart of recorded experience is proper- 
 ly applicable to his own circumstances and 
 character. The traditions and customs of oth- 
 er people are, to a certain extent, evidence of 
 what their experience has taught them; pre- 
 sumptive evidence, and as such, have a claim 
 to his deference; but, in the first place, theii 
 experience may be too narrow j or they ina) 
 
ON LIBBBir. 
 
 lOfi 
 
 not have interpreted it rightly. Secondly, theil 
 interpretation of experience may be cxirrect 
 bat unsuitable to him. Customs are made foi 
 customary circumstances, and customary char" 
 acters : and his circumstances or his charactei 
 may be uncustomary. Thirdly, though the 
 customs be both good as customs, and suitable 
 to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as 
 custom, does not educate or develop in him 
 any of the qualities which are the distinctive 
 endowment of a human being. The human 
 faculties of perception, judgment, discrimina 
 tive feeling, mental activity, and even mora) 
 preference, are exercised only in making a 
 choice. He who does anything because it is 
 the custom, makes no choice. He gains no 
 practice either in discerning or in desiring what 
 is best. The mental and moral, like the mus- 
 cular powers, are improved only by being used. 
 The faculties are called into no exercise by do- 
 ing a thing merely because others do it, no more 
 than by believing a thing only because others 
 believe it. If the grounds of an opinion are 
 not conclusive to the person's own reason, his 
 reason cannot be strengthened, but is likely to 
 be weakened by his adopting it : and if the in- 
 ducements to an act are not such as arc con- 
 sentaneous to his own feelings and charactei 
 (where affection, or the rights of others are not 
 concerned), it is so much done towards render* 
 ing iiis feelings and cliaracter inert and torpid, 
 inslcad of active and energetic. 
 
106 ON UUUUTY. 
 
 H(! who lets the world, or his owii poriioi 
 of it, choose his plan of life fur him, has no iicec 
 1)1' any other faculty than the ape-like one of 
 miitalion. He who chooses his plan for him- 
 self, employs dA his faculties. He must use 
 'tbservation to see, reasoning and judgment tc 
 foresee, activity to gather materials for decis- 
 ion, discrimination to decide, and when he ha:- 
 decided, firmness and self-control to hold to 
 his deliberate decision. And these qualities 
 he requires and exercises exactly in proportion 
 as the part of his conduct which he determines 
 according to his own judgment and feelings is 
 a large one. It is possible that he might be 
 guided in some good path, and Icept out of 
 harm's way, without any of these things. But 
 what will be his comparative worth as a human 
 being? It really is of importance, not only 
 what men do, but also what manner of men 
 they are that do it. Among the works of man, 
 which human life is rightly employed in per- 
 fecting and beautifying, the first in importance 
 surely is man himself. Supposing it were pos- 
 sible to get houses built, corn grown, battles 
 fought, causes tried, and even churches erected 
 and prayers said, by machinery — by automa- 
 tons in human form -— it would be a consider- 
 able loss to exchange for these automatona 
 even the men and women who at present in- 
 habit the more civilized parts of the world, and 
 who assuredly are but starved specimens of 
 whal nature ca i and will produce. Humai' 
 
ON LIBERTT. 107 
 
 nature is not a machine to bt built after a 
 model, and set to do exactly the work pre* 
 scribed for it, but a tree, which requires to 
 grow and develop itself m all sides, accord- 
 ing to the tendency of the inward forces which 
 make it a living thing. 
 
 It will probably be conceded that it is de 
 sirable people should exercise their under- 
 standings, and that an intelligent following 
 of custom, or even occasionally an intelligent 
 deviation from custom, is better than a blind 
 .ind simply mechanical adhesion to it. To a 
 certain extent it is admitted, that our under 
 standing should be our own : but there is not 
 the same willingness to admit that our desires 
 and impulses should be our own likewise ; or 
 that to possess impulses of our own, and of 
 any strength, is anything but a peril and a 
 snare. Yet desires and impulses are as much 
 a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and 
 restraints : and strong impulses are only peril- 
 ous when not properly balanced ; when one 
 set of aims and inclinations is developed into 
 strength, while others, which ought to coexist 
 with them, remain weak and inactive. It is 
 not because men's desires are strong that they 
 act ill ; it is because their conscienqes are 
 ^'eak. There is no natural connection be- 
 tween strong impulses and a weak conscience. 
 The natural connection is the other way. To 
 pay that one person's desirr:^ iuid feelings are 
 etuingcr and more various than those of an 
 
108 ON LIBEBTY, 
 
 other, is mersly to say that he has more of tht 
 raw material of human nature, and is theie- 
 fore capable, perhaps of more evil, but cer- 
 Uinly of more good. Strong impulses are bu* 
 another name for energy. Energy may he 
 turned to bad uses ; but more good may al- 
 ways be made of an energetic nature, liian of 
 an indolent and impassive one. Those who 
 have most natural feeling, are always thosp 
 whose cultivated feelings may be made the 
 strongest. The same strong susceptibilities 
 which make the personal impulses vivid and 
 powerful, are also the source from whence are 
 generated the most passionate love of virtue, 
 and the sternest self-control. It is through the 
 cultivation of these, that society both does its 
 duty and protects its interests : not by reject- 
 ing the stuff of which heroes are made, because 
 it knows not how to make them. A person 
 whose desires and impulses are his own — are 
 the expression of his own nature, as it has been 
 developed and modified by his own culture — 
 is said to have a character. One whose de- 
 sires and impulses are not his own, has no 
 character, no more than a steam-engine has a 
 character. If, in addition to being his own, 
 his impulses are strong, and are under the 
 government of a strong will, he has an ener- 
 getic character. Whoever thinks that individ 
 nality of desires and impulses should not bti 
 encouraged to unfold itself, must maintaio 
 that society has no need of strong nature? 
 
ON LIBEBTT. 109 
 
 — ip not the better for coiitaiiiiiig many prr 
 sons who have much character — and that a 
 high general average of energy is not desira- 
 ble. 
 
 In some early states of society, these forces 
 might be, and were, too much ahead of the 
 power which society then possessed of disci- 
 plining and controlling them. There has been 
 a time when the element of spontaneity and 
 individuality was in excess, and the social 
 principle had a hard struggle with it. The 
 difficulty then was, to induce men of strong 
 bodies or minds to pay obedience to any 
 rules which required them to control their im- 
 pulses. To overcome this difficulty, law and 
 discipline, like the Popes struggling against the 
 Emperors, asserted a power over the whole 
 man, claiming to control all his life in order to 
 control his character — which society had not 
 found any other sufficient means of binding. 
 But society has now fairly got the better of 
 individuality ; and the danger which threatens 
 human nature is not the excess, but the defi- 
 ciency, of personal impulses and preferences. 
 Things are vastly changed, since the passions 
 of those who were strong by station or by per- 
 sonal endowment were in a state of habitual 
 rebellion against laws and ordinances, and re- 
 quired to be rigorously chained up to ei\able 
 ^he persons within their reach to enjoy any 
 particle of security. In oui times, from the 
 highest class of sociely down to the lowest 
 
110 ON LIBKBIT. 
 
 every one lives as under the eye of a hoslik 
 and dreaded censorship. Not only in what 
 concerns others, but in what concerns only 
 themselves, the individual, or the family, dc 
 not ask themselves — what do I prefer ? or, 
 what would suit my character and disposition ? 
 or, what would allow the best and highest in 
 me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and 
 thrive ? They ask themselves, what is suitable 
 to my position ? what is usually done by per- 
 sons of my station and pecuniary circum- 
 stances ? or (worse still) what is usually done 
 by persons of a station and circumstances 
 superior to mine ? I do not mean that they 
 choose what is customary, in preference to 
 what suits their own inclination. It does not 
 occur to them to have any inclination, except 
 for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is 
 bowed to the yoke : even in what people do for 
 pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought 
 of ; they like in crowds ; they exercise choice 
 only among things commonly done : peculiarity 
 of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned 
 etjually with crimes : until by dint of not fol- 
 lowing their own nature, they have no nature 
 to follow : their human capacities are withered 
 and starved : they become incapable of any 
 strong wishes or native pleasures, and are gen 
 erally without either opinions or feelings of 
 home growth, or properly their own. Now is 
 (his, or is it not, the desirable condition of hu 
 man nature? 
 
ON LIBERir. Ill 
 
 It is SO, on the Calvinistic theory. Acconl 
 ing to that, the one great offence of man io 
 Self-will. All the good of which humanity is 
 capable, is comprised in Obedience. You have 
 no choice ; thus you must do, and no other- 
 wise : " whatever is not a duty is a sin." Hu- 
 man nature being radically corrupt, there is no 
 redemption for any one until human nature is 
 killed within him. To one holding this theory 
 of life, crushing out any of the human faculties, 
 capacities, and susceptibilities, is no evil : man 
 needs no capacity, but that of sunrendering 
 himself to the will of God : and if he uses any 
 of his faculties for any other purpose but to do 
 that supposed will more eflectually, he is better 
 without them. That is the theory of Calvin- 
 ism ; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by 
 many who do not consider themselves Calvin- 
 ists ; the mitigation consisting in giving a less 
 ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of 
 God ; asserting it to be bis will that mankind 
 should gratify some of their inclinations ; of 
 course not in the manner they themselves prefer, 
 but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way 
 prescribed to them by authority ; and, therefore, 
 by the necessary conditions of the case, the 
 same for all. 
 
 In some such insidious form there is at pres- 
 sent a strong tendency to this narrow theory 
 of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type 
 of human character which it patronizes. Manj 
 persons, no doubt, sincerely think that ! uman 
 
112 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 beings thus cramped and dwaifid, are as then 
 Maker designed them to be ; just as many have 
 thought that trees are a much finer thing when 
 clipped into pollards, or cut out into figures of 
 animals, than as nature made them. But if it 
 be any part of religion to believe that man was 
 made by a good Being, it is more consistent 
 with that faith to believe, that this Being gave 
 all human faculties that they might be culti- 
 vated and unfolded, not rooted out and con- 
 sumed, and that he takes delight in every 
 nearer approach made by his creatures to the 
 ideal conception embodied in them, every in- 
 crease in any of their capabilities of compre- 
 hension, of action, or of enjoyment. There is 
 a different type of human excellence from the 
 Calvinistic ; a conception of humanity as hav- 
 ing its nature bestowed on it for other purposes 
 than merely to be abnegated. " Pagan self- 
 assertion " is one of the elements of human 
 worth, as well as " Christian self-denial." ' 
 There is a Greek ideal of self-development, 
 which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self- 
 government blends with, but does not super- 
 sede. It may be better to be a John Knox 
 than an Alcibiades, but it is belter to be a 
 Pericles than either ; nor would a Pericles, if 
 we had one in these days, be without anything 
 good which belonged to John Knox. 
 
 It is not by wearing down into uniformity 
 all that is individual in themselves, but by cuJ 
 
 * Sterling' e £»av>- 
 
ON LIBEKTT. (13 
 
 (ivating it and calling it forth, within the limitf 
 imposed by the rights and interests of others, 
 that human beings become a noble and beauti- 
 ful object of contemplation ; and as the works 
 partake the character of those who do them, 
 by the same process human life also becomes 
 rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing mora 
 abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevat- 
 ing feelings, and strengthening the tie which 
 binds every individual to the race, by making 
 tlie race infinitely better worth belonging to 
 In proportion to the development of his indi- 
 viduality, each person becomes more valuable 
 to himself, and is therefore capable of being 
 more valuable to others. There is a greater 
 fulness of life about his own existence, and 
 when there is more life in the units there is 
 more in the mass which is composed of them. 
 A.S much compression as is necessary to pre- 
 vent the stronger specimens of human nature 
 from encroaching on the rights of others, can- 
 not be dispensed with ; but for this there is 
 ample compensation even in the point of view 
 of human development. The means of devel 
 opment which the individual loses by being 
 prevented from gratifying his inclinations to 
 the injury of others, are chiefly obtained at the 
 3xpense of the development of other people 
 And even to himself there is a full equ.valeni 
 in the better development of the social part ol 
 his nature, rendered possible by the restraini 
 pat upon the selfish part. To be held to rigid 
 
114 ON UBEETT. 
 
 rules of jastice for the sake of others, devel 
 ops the feelings and capacities which have 
 the good of others for their object. But to be 
 restrained in things not affecting their good, by 
 their mere displeasure, developes nothing valu« 
 able, except such force of character as may 
 unfold itself in resisting the restraint. If ac- 
 quiesced in, it dulls and blunts the whole 
 nature. To give any fair play to the nature 
 of each, it is essential that different persons 
 should be allowed to lead different lives. In 
 proportion as this latitude has been exercised 
 in any age, has that age been noteworthy to 
 posterity. Even despotism does not produce 
 its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists 
 under it; and whatever crushes individuality 
 is despotism, by whatever name it may be 
 called, and whether it professes to be enforc- 
 ing the will of God or the injunctions of 
 men. 
 
 Having said that Individuality is the same 
 tiling with development, and that it is only the 
 cultivation of individuality which produces, oi 
 can produce, well-developed human beings, 1 
 might here close the argument : for what more 
 or better can be said of any condition of hu 
 man affairs, than that it brings human beingb 
 themselves nearer to the best thing they can 
 be? or what worse can be said of any ob- 
 struction to good, than that it prevents this? 
 Doubtless, however, these considerations will 
 not suffice to convince those who most neeti 
 
0» ttSBtlTT. 116 
 
 convincing; and it is necessary further lc 
 show, that these developed human beings are 
 of some use to the undeveloped — to point out 
 to those who do not desire liberty, and would 
 not avail themselves of it, that they may be in 
 some intelligible manner rewarded for allow- 
 ing other people to make use of it without 
 hindiance. 
 
 In the first place, then, I would suggest that 
 they might possibly learn something from 
 them. It will not be denied by anybody, that 
 originality is a valuable element in human 
 affairs. There is always need of persons not 
 only to discover new truths, and point out 
 wtien what were once truths are true no longer, 
 but also to commence new practices, and set 
 the example of more enlightened conduct, and 
 better taste and sense in human life. This 
 cannot well be gainsaid by anybody who does 
 not believe that the world has already attained 
 perfection in all its ways and practices. It is 
 true that this benefit is not capable of being 
 rendered by everybody alike : there are but few 
 persons, in comparison with the whole of man- 
 kind, whose experiments, if adopted by others, 
 would be likely to be any improvement on 
 established practice. But these few are tha 
 salt of the earth; without them, human life 
 would become a stagnant pool. Not only is 
 it they who introduce good things which did 
 not before exist; it is they who keep the life 
 ■'Ji those which already existed. If there wera 
 
116 ON LIBBBTT. 
 
 nothing new to be done, would human Intel 
 Icct cease to be necessary? Would it be a 
 reason why those who do the old things should 
 forget why they are done, and do them like 
 cattle, not like human beings 1 There is onlj 
 too great a tendency in the best beliefs and 
 practices to degenerate into the mechanical; 
 and unless there were a succession of persons 
 whose ever-recurring originality prevents the 
 grounds of those beliefs and practices from be- 
 coming merely traditional, such dead matter 
 would not resist the smallest shock from any- 
 thing really alive, and there would be no rea- 
 son why civilization should not die out, as in 
 the Byzantine Empire. Persons of genius, it 
 '3 true, are, and are always likely to be, a small 
 minority; but in order to have them, it is 
 necessary to preserve the soil in which they 
 grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an 
 atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, 
 ex vi lermini, more individual ihan any other 
 people — less capable, consequently, of fitting 
 themselves, without hurtful compression, into 
 any of the small number of moulds which 
 society provides in order to save its members 
 the trouble of forming their own character. U 
 from timidity they consent to be forced into 
 one of these moulds, and to let all that part 
 of themselves which cannot expand under the 
 pressure remain unexpanded, society will be 
 little the better for their genius. If they are 
 of a strong character, and break their fetters 
 
OK UBKBIT. 117 
 
 tbey become a mark for the society which has 
 not succeeded in reducing them to common- 
 place, to point at with solemn warning as 
 " wild," " erratic," and the like ; much as if 
 one should complain of the Niagara river for 
 not flowing smoothly between its banks like a 
 Dutch canal. 
 
 I insist thus emphatically on the importance 
 of genius, and the necessity of allowing it to 
 unfold itself freely both in thought and in 
 practice, being well aware that no one will 
 deny the position in theory, but knowing also 
 that almost every one, in reality, is totally in- 
 diflerent to it. People think genius a fine 
 thing if it enables a man to write an exciting 
 poem, or paint a picture. But in its true 
 sense, that of originality in thought and ac- 
 tion, though no one says that it is not a thing 
 to be admired, nearly all, at heart, think that 
 they can do very well without it. Unhappily 
 this is too natural to be wondered at. Origi- 
 nality is the one thing which unoriginal minds 
 cannot feel the use of. They cannot see what 
 it is to do for them : how should they ? If 
 they could see what it would do for them, it 
 would not be originality. The first service 
 which originality has to render them, is that 
 of opening their eyes : which being once fully 
 done, they would have a chance of being them- 
 selves original. Meanwhile, recollecting that 
 nothing was ever yet done which some one 
 wa.s not the first to do, and that all good thingsi 
 
118 ON LIBEEIT. 
 
 wliich exist are the fruita of originality, Ic 
 them be modotst enough to believe that there 
 is something still left for it to accomplish, anc 
 assure themselves that they are more in need 
 of originality, the less they are conscious of 
 the want. 
 
 In sober truth, whatever homage may be 
 professed, or even paid, to real or supposed 
 mental superiority, the general tendency of 
 things throughout the world is to render me- 
 diocrity the ascendant power among mankind. 
 In ancient history, in the Middle Ages, and in 
 a diminishing degree through the long transi- 
 tion from feudality to the present time, the in- 
 dividual was a power in himself; and if he 
 had either great talents or a high social posi- 
 tion, he was a considerable power. At present 
 individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics 
 it is almost a triviality to say that public opin- 
 ion now rules the world. The only power de- 
 serving the name is that of masses, and of gov- 
 ernments while they make themselves the organ 
 of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This 
 is as true in the moral and social relations of 
 private life as in public transactions. Those 
 whose opinions go by the name of public opin 
 ion, are not always the same sort of public : ir 
 America, they are the whole white population 
 in England, chiefly the middle class. But they 
 are always a mass, that is to say, collective m& 
 diocrity. And what is a still greater novelty, 
 the mass di not now take their opinions from 
 
ON LIBERTT. 119 
 
 dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible 
 leaders, or from boolcs. Their thinking is done 
 for them by men much like themselves, address- 
 ing them or spealcing in their name, on the spur 
 of the moment, through the newspapers. I am 
 not complaining of all this. I do not assert 
 that anything better is compatible, as a gen- 
 eral rule, with the present low state of the 
 human mind. But that does not hinder the 
 government of mediocrity from being medio- 
 cre government. No government by a democ- 
 racy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its 
 political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and 
 tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could 
 rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the 
 sovereign Many have let themselves be guided 
 (which in their best times they always have 
 done) by the counsels and influence of a more 
 highly gifted and instructed One or Few. The 
 initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and 
 must come from individuals ; generally at first 
 from some one individual. The honor and 
 glory of the average man is that he is capable 
 of following that initiative ; that he can re- 
 spond internally to wise and noble things, and 
 be led to them with his eyes open. I am not 
 countenancing the sort of " hero-worship " 
 which applauds the strong man of genius for 
 forcibly seizing on the government of the 
 world and making it do his bidding in spite 
 of itself. All he can claim is, freedom to point 
 nut the way. The power of compelling others 
 
120 ON LIBEETT. 
 
 into it, is not only inconsistent with the free 
 dom and development of all the rest, but cor- 
 rupting to the strong man himself. It doea 
 seem, however, that when the opinions ot 
 masses of merely average men are every- 
 wliere becc-me or becoming the dominant 
 power, the counterpoise and corrective to 
 that tendency would be, the more and more 
 pronounced individuality of those who stand 
 on the higher eminences of thought. It is in 
 .hese circumstances most especially, that ex- 
 septional individuals, instead of being deter- 
 ed, should be encouraged in acting different- 
 ly from the mass. In other times there was 
 no advantage in their doing so, unless they 
 acted not only differently, but better. In this 
 age the mere example of non-conformity, the 
 mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is it« 
 self a service. Precisely because the tyranny of 
 opinion is such as to malie eccentricity a re- 
 proach, it ia desirable, in order to break through 
 that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. 
 Eccentricity has always abounded when and 
 where strength of character has abounded; 
 and the amount of eccentricity in a society 
 has generally been proportional to the amount 
 jf genius, mental vigor, and moral courage 
 which it contained. That so few now dare 
 to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the 
 time. 
 
 I have said that it is important to give thn 
 freest scope possible to uncustomary things, ir 
 
ON LIBERTY. 
 
 121 
 
 order that it may in time appear which of these 
 are fit to be converted into customs. But inde- 
 pendence of action, and disregard of custom 
 ire not solely deserving of encouragement for 
 tlie chance they afford that better modes of 
 action, and customs more worthy of general 
 adoption, may be struck out; nor is it only 
 persons of decided mental superiority who have 
 a just claim to carry on their lives in their own 
 w^ay. There is no reason that all human exist- 
 ences should be constructed on some one, oi 
 some small number of patterns. K a person 
 possesses any tolerable amount of common 
 sense and experience, his own mode of laying 
 out his existence is the best, not because it is 
 the best in itself, but because it is his own 
 mode. Human beings are not like sheep ; and 
 even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A 
 man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit 
 him, unless they are either made to his meas- 
 ure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose 
 from : and is it easier to fit him with a life than 
 with a coat, or are human beings more like 
 'Mie another in their whole physical and spirit- 
 aal conformation than in the shape of their 
 feet ? If it were only that people have diver- 
 Bities of taste, that is reason enough for not at- 
 tempting to shape them all after one model 
 But different persons also require different con- 
 ditions for their spiritual development ; and can 
 no more exist healthily in the same moral, than 
 all the variety of plants can in the same physi 
 6 
 
122 ON MKER1T. 
 
 cai, atmosphere and climate. The same thiiig« 
 which are helps to one person towards the cul- 
 tivation of his higher nature, are hindrancea 
 to another. The same mode of life is a healthy 
 excitement to one, keeping all his faculties of 
 action and enjoyment in their best order, while 
 to another it is a distracting burden, which sus- 
 pends or crushes all internal life. Such are the 
 differences among human beings in their sources 
 of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and 
 the operation on them of different physical and 
 moral agencies, that unless there is a corre- 
 sponding diversity in their modes of life, they 
 neither obtain their fair share of happiness, 
 nor grow up to the mental, moral, and ajsthetic 
 stature of which their nature is capable. Why 
 then should tolerance, as far as the public sen- 
 timent is concerned, extend only to tastes and 
 modes of life which extort acquiescence by the 
 multitude of their adherents ? Nowhere (ex- 
 cept in some monastic institutions) is diversity 
 of taste entirely unrecognized ; a person may 
 without blame, either like or dislike rowing, or 
 smoking, or music, or athletic exercises, or 
 chess, or cards, c: study, because both those 
 who like each of these things, and those who 
 dislike them, are too numerous to be put down. 
 But the man, and still more the woman, who 
 can be accused either of doing " what nobody 
 docs," or of not doing " what everybody does,'- 
 is the subject of as much depreciatory remark 
 as if he or she bad committed some grave 
 
ON LIBEKTT. 123 
 
 moral delinquency. Persons require to possess 
 a title, or some otlier badge of rank, or thfl 
 consideration of people of rank, to be able tc 
 indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing as 
 they like without detriment to their estimation. 
 To indulge somewhat, I repeat: for whoever 
 allow themselves much of that indulgence, in- 
 cur the risk of something worse than disparag- 
 ing speeches — they are in peril of a commis- 
 sion de lunatico, and of having their property 
 taken from them and given to their rela- 
 tions.' 
 
 * There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort 
 Df evidence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially 
 declared unfit for the management of his affairs; and after his 
 death, his disposal of his property can be set aside, if there ia 
 enough of it to pay tlie expenses of litigation — which are charged 
 on the property itself. All the minute details of his daily life are 
 pried into, and whatever is found which, seen tliroiigh the medium 
 of the perceiving and describing faculties of the lowest of the low, 
 bears an appearance unlike absolute commonplace, is laid before 
 the jury as evidence of insanity, and often with success; the ju- 
 rors being little, if nt all, less vulgar and ignorant than the wit- 
 nesses; while the judges, with that extraordinary want of knowl- 
 edge of human nature and life which continually astonishes us in 
 English laivyers, often help to mislead them. These trials speak 
 volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion among the vulgai 
 with regard to human liberty. So far from setting any value on 
 individuality — so far from respecting the rights of each individual 
 to act, in things indifferent, as seems good to his own judgment 
 and inclinations, judges and juries cannot even conceive that a 
 person in a state at sanity can desire such freedom. In farmer 
 days, when it was proposed to bum atheists, charitable people 
 used to suggest putting them in a madhouse instead: it would 
 }e nothing surprising now-a-days were we to see this done, and 
 Jie doers applauding themselves, because, instead of persecuting 
 for religion, they had adopted so liumane and Christian a mode of 
 treating tlicse unfortunates, not without a silent satisfaction at tliev 
 ^v'ng thereby iblaincd their deserts. 
 
124 OS LIBERTY. 
 
 There is one characteristic of the present di 
 rection of public opinion, peculiarly calculatec 
 to make it intolerant of any marked deraonstra 
 tion of individuality. The general average of 
 mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but 
 also moderate in inclinations : they have no 
 tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them 
 to do anything unusual, and they consequently 
 do not understand those who have, and class 
 all such with the wild and intemperate whom 
 they are accustomed to look down upon. 
 Now, in addition to this fact which is general, 
 we have only to suppose that a strong move- 
 ment has set in towards the improvement of 
 morals, and it is evident what we have to ex- 
 pect. In these days such a movement has set 
 in ; much has actually been effected in the way 
 of increased regularity of conduct, and discour 
 agement of excesses; and there is a philan- 
 thropic spirit abroad, for the exercise of whi jh 
 there is no more inviting field than the moral 
 and prudential improvement of our follow- 
 creatures. These tendencies of the times 
 cause the public to be more disposed than 
 at most former periods to prescribe general 
 rules of conduct, and endeavor to make every 
 one conform to the approved standard. And 
 that standard, express or tacit, is to desire 
 nothing strongly. Its ideal of character is to 
 be without any marked character ; to maim by 
 compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every 
 part of human nature which stands out promi- 
 
ON LTBERTT. 12t 
 
 nently, and tentls to make the person mark 
 edly dissimilar in outline to commonplace 
 humanity. 
 
 As is usually the case with ideals which ex- 
 clude one half of what is desirable, the present 
 standard of approbation produces only an in- 
 ferior imitation of the other half. Instead of 
 great energies guided by vigorous reason, and 
 strong feelings strongly controlled by a con- 
 scientious will, its result is weak feelings and 
 weak energies, which therefore can be kept 
 in outward conformity to rule without any 
 strength either of will or of reason. Already 
 energetic characters on any large scale are 
 becoming merely traditional. There is now 
 scarcely any outlet for energy in this country 
 except business. The energy expended in that 
 may still be regarded as considerable. What 
 little is left from that employment, is expended 
 on some hobby ; which may be a useful, even 
 a philanthropic hobby, but is always some one 
 thing, and generally a thing of small dimen- 
 sions. The greatness of England is now aU 
 oollective : individually small, we only appeal 
 capable of anything great by our habit of com- 
 bining ; and with this our moral and religious 
 philanthropists are perfectly contented. But it 
 was men of another stamp than this that made 
 England what it has been ; and men of an- 
 other stamp will be needed to prevent its de- 
 cline. 
 
 The despotism of custom is everywhere th» 
 
126 ON LIBERTT. 
 
 standing hindrance to human advancement 
 being in unceasing antagonism to that dispo- 
 sition to aim at something better than cus- 
 tomary, which is called, according to circum- 
 stances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress 
 or improvement. The spirit of improvement 
 is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim 
 at forcing improvements on an unwilling peo- 
 ple ; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it re- 
 sists such attempts, may ally itself locally and 
 temporarily with the oppon'ints of improve 
 ment;. but the only unfailing and permanent 
 source of improvement is liberty, since by it 
 there are as many possible independent centres 
 of improvement as there are individuals. The 
 progressive principle, however, in either shape, 
 whether as the love of liberty or of improve- 
 ment, is antagonistic to the sway of Custom, 
 involving at least emancipation firom that yoke; 
 and the contest between the two constitutes the 
 chief interest of the history of mankind. The 
 greater part of the world has, properly speak- 
 ing, no history, because the despotism of Cus- 
 tom is complete. This is the case over the 
 whole East. Custom is there, in all things, 
 the final appeal ; justice and right mean con- 
 formity to custom ; the argument of custom no 
 one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with pow- 
 er, thinks of resisting. And we see the result. 
 Those nations must once have had originality; 
 they did not start out of the ground populous, 
 'cttered, and versed in many of the arts of life 
 
ON LIBERTY. 121 
 
 ihey made themselves all this, and were then 
 the greatest and most powerful nations in the 
 world. What are they now ? The subjects o! 
 dependents of tribes whose forefathers wan 
 dcred in the forests when theirs had magnifi 
 cent palaces and gorgeous temples, but ovei 
 whom custom exercised only a divided rule with 
 liberty and progress. A people, it appears, may 
 be progressive for a certain length of time, and 
 then stop : when does it stop ? When it ceases 
 o possess individuality. If a similar change 
 should befall the nations of Europe, it will not 
 be in exactly the same shape : the despotism 
 of custom with which these nations are threat- 
 ened is not precisely stationariness. It pro- 
 scribes singularity, but it does not preclude 
 change, provided ail change together. We 
 have discarded the fixed costumes of our fore- 
 fathers ; every one must still dress like other 
 people, but the fashion may change' once or 
 twice a year. We thus take care that when 
 there is change, it shall be for change's sake, 
 and not from any idea of beauty or conven- 
 ience ; for tlic same idea of beauty or con- 
 venience would not strike all the world at the 
 same moment, and be simultaneously thrown 
 aside by all at another moment. But we are 
 progressive as well as changeable: we continu- 
 ally make new inventions in mechanical things, 
 and keep them until they are again superseded 
 by better; we are eager for improvement in 
 politics, in education, even in morals, tiiougt 
 
128 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 ill this last our idea of improvement chieflj 
 t;onsists in persuading or forcing other people 
 to be as good as ourselves. It is not progress 
 that we object to ; on the contrary, we flattei 
 ourselves that we are the most progressive peo- 
 ple who ever lived. It is individuality that we 
 War against : we should think we had done 
 wonders if we had made ourselves all alike ; 
 forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to 
 another is generally the first thing which drawa 
 tlie attention of either to the imperfection of 
 his own type, and the superiority of another, 
 or the possibility, by combining the advantages 
 of both, of producing something better than 
 either. We have a warning example in China 
 — a nation of much talent, and, in some re- 
 spects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good 
 fortune of having been provided at an early 
 period with a particularly good set of customs, 
 the work, in some measure, of men to whom 
 even the most enlightened European must ac- 
 cord, under certain limitations, the title of sages 
 and philosophers. They are remarkable, too, 
 in the excellence of their apparatus for im 
 pressing, as far as possible, the best wisdom 
 they possess upon every mind in the commu- 
 nity, and securing that those who have appro- 
 priated most of it shall occupy the posts of 
 honor and power. Surely the people who did 
 this have discovered the secret of human pro- 
 gressiveness, and must have kept themselves 
 steadily at the head of the movement of the 
 
ON LIBEBTT. 129 
 
 world. On the contrary, they have become 
 stationary — have remained so lor thousands 
 of years ; and if they are ever to be farther im- 
 proved, it must be by foreigners. They have 
 succeeded beyond all hope in what English 
 philanthropists are so industriously working a1 
 — in making a people all alike, all governing 
 their thoughts and conduct by the same max- 
 ims and rules ; and these are the fruits. The 
 modern rSgime of public opinion is, in an un- 
 organized form, what the Chinese educational 
 and political systems are in an organized ; and 
 unless individuality shall be able successfully 
 to assert itself against this yoke, Europe, not- 
 withstanding its noble antecedents and its pro- 
 fessed Christianity, will tend to become another 
 China. 
 
 What is it that has hitherto preserved Eu- 
 rope from this lot ? What has made the Eu- 
 ropean family of nations an improving, instead 
 of a stationary portion of mankind ? Not any 
 superior excellence in them, which when it 
 exists, exists as the effect, not as tne cause ; 
 but their remarkable diversity of character and 
 culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been 
 extremely unlike one another: they have struck 
 out a great variety of paths, each leading to 
 something valuable; and although at every 
 period those who travelled in different paths 
 have been intolerant of one another, and eaci" 
 would have thought it an excellent thing if alj 
 the rest could have been compelled to tiave. 
 
lyO ON LIJIKIJTV. 
 
 his road, their attempts to thwart each other*» 
 development have rarely had any permaneni 
 Buccess, and each has in time endured to re< 
 ceive the good which the others have offered. 
 Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted 
 to this plurality of paths for its progressive and 
 many-sided development. But it already be- 
 gins to possess this benefit in a considerably 
 less degree. It is decidedly advancing towards 
 the Chinese ideal of making all people alike. 
 M. de Tocqueville, in his last important work, 
 remarks bow much more the Frenchmen of 
 the present day resemble one another, than did 
 those even of the last generation. The same 
 remark might be made of Englishmen in a fur 
 greater degree. In a passage already quoted 
 from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out 
 two things as necessary conditions of human 
 development, because necessary to render peo- 
 ple unlike one another; namely, fieedom, and 
 variety of situations. The second of these two 
 conditions is in this country every day dimin- 
 ishing. The circumstances which surround 
 different classes and individuals, and shape 
 their characters, are daily becoming more as- 
 similated. Formerly, different ranks, different 
 neigiiborhoods, different trades and professions 
 lived in what might be called different worlds 
 at present, to a great degree in the same 
 Comparatively speaking, they now read the 
 ;sam(i things, listen to the same things, see 
 the same things, go to (he same places, have 
 
ON LIBEETI. 131 
 
 their hopes and fears directed to the same ob- 
 jects, have the same rights and liberties, and 
 the same means of asserting them. Great as 
 are the differences of position which remain, 
 they are nothing to those which have ceased. 
 And the assimilation is still proceeding. All 
 the political changes of the age promote it, 
 since they all tend to raise the low and to 
 lower the high. Every extension of education 
 promotes it, because education brings people 
 under common influences, and gives them 
 access to the general stock of facts and 
 sentiments. Improvements in the means of 
 communication promote it, by bringing the 
 inhabitants of distant places into personal con- 
 tact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes 
 of residence between one place and another. 
 The increase of commerce and manufactures 
 promotes it, by diffusing more widely the ad- 
 vantages of easy circumstances, and opening 
 all objects of ambition, even the highest, to 
 general competition, whereby the desire of 
 rising becomes no longer the character of a 
 particular class, but of all classes. A more 
 powerful agency than even all these, in bring- 
 ing about a general similarity among mankind, 
 is the complete establishment, in this and other 
 free countries, of the ascendency of public opin- 
 ion in the State. As the various social enin- 
 ences which enabled persons entrenched on 
 (hem to disregard the opinion of the multitude, 
 gradually become levelled ; as tiic very idea of 
 
132 ON UBEBTT. 
 
 resisting Itie will of the public, when it is posv 
 tively Ifnown tiiat tiiey iiave a will, disappears 
 more and more from the minds of practical 
 politicians ; there ceases to be any social sup- 
 port for non-conformity — any substantive 
 power in society, which, itself opposed to the 
 ascendancy of numbers, is interested in taking 
 under its protection opinions and tendencies at 
 variance with those of the public. 
 
 The combination of all these causes forms so 
 great a mass of influences hostile to Individu- 
 ality, that it is not easy to see how it can 
 stand its ground. It will do so with increas- 
 ing diiSculty, unless the intelligent part of the 
 public can be made to feel its value — to see 
 that it is good there should be differences, even 
 though not for the better, even though, as it 
 may appear to them, some should be for the 
 worse. If the claims of Individuality are ever 
 to be asserted, the time is now, while much is 
 fltill wanting to complete the enforced assimi 
 ktion. It is only in the earlier stages that any 
 stand can be successfully made against the en- 
 croachment. The demand that all other people 
 shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds 
 on. If resistance waits till life is reduced near- 
 ly to one uniform type, all deviations from that 
 type will come to be considered impious, im- 
 moral, even monstrous and contrary to nature 
 Mankind speedily become unable to conceive 
 diversity, when they have been for some tiiuf 
 unaccustomed to see it. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 at CBB LIMITS TO THB AUTHORITT OF SOCIETY OTKR TBI 
 INDIVIDCAL. 
 
 "XTTHAT, th«!n, is the rightful limit to the 
 ' ' sovereignty of the individual over him- 
 self? Where does the authority of society 
 begin? How much of human life should be 
 assigned to individuality, and how much to 
 society ? 
 
 Each will receive its proper share, if each 
 has that which more particularly concerns it. 
 To individuality should belong the part of life 
 in which it is chiefly the individual that is 
 interested ; to society, the part which chiefly 
 interests society. 
 
 Though society is not founded on a con- 
 tract, and though no good purpose is answered 
 by inventing a contract in order to deduce 
 social obligations from it, every one who re- 
 ceives the protection of society owes a return 
 for the benefit, and the fact of living in society 
 renders it indispensable that each should be 
 bound to observe a certain line of conduct tow* 
 ards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in 
 not injuring the interests of ' one another; o! 
 r.'il her certain interests, which, either bv exprcsf 
 
134: ON LIBEETT. 
 
 legal piovision or by tacit understanding, ough 
 10 be considered as rights ; and secondly, ir. 
 each person's bearing his share (to be fixed on 
 some equitable principle) of the labors and sac- 
 rifices incurred for defending the society or its 
 members from injury and mokstation. These 
 conditions society is justified in enforcing, at 
 all costs to those who endeavor to withhold 
 fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do, 
 The acts of an individual may be hurtful to 
 others, or wanting in due consideration foi 
 their welfare, without going the length of vio- 
 lating any of their constituted rights. The 
 offender may then i)e justly punished by opin- 
 ion, though not by law. As soon as any part 
 of a person's conduct affects prejudicially 
 the interests of others, society has jurisdiction 
 over it, and the question whether the general 
 welfare will or will not be promoted by inter- 
 fering with it, becomes open to discussion. 
 Hut tiierc is no room for entertaining any such 
 (|aestion wlion a person's conduct affects the 
 interests of no persons besides himself, oi 
 needs not affect them unless they like (all the 
 persons concerned being of full age, and the 
 ordinary amount of understanding). In all 
 Buch cases there should be perfect freedom, 
 legal and social, to do the action and stand 
 the consequences. 
 
 It would be a great misunderstanding of 
 this doctrine, to suppose that it is one of self 
 ish indifference, which pretends that human 
 
out LlSEteTT. 136 
 
 beings have no business with each ether's con 
 duct in life, and that they should not concerr 
 themselves about the well-doing or well-being 
 of one another, unless their own interest is in- 
 volved. Instead of any diminution, there is 
 need of a great increase of disinterested exer- 
 tion to promote the good of others. But dis- 
 interested benevolence can find other instru- 
 ments to persuade people to their good, than 
 whips and scourges, either of the literal or the 
 metaphorical sort. I am the last person to 
 undervalue the self-regarding virtues ; they are 
 only second in importance, if even second, to 
 the social. It is equally the business of educa- 
 tion to cultivate both. But even education 
 works by conviction and persuasion as well as 
 by compulsion, and it is by the former only 
 that, when the period of education is past, the 
 self- regarding virtues should be inculcated 
 Human beings owe to each other help to dis- 
 tinguish the better from the worse, and encour- 
 agement to choose the former and avoid the 
 latter. They should be forever stimulating 
 each other to increased exercise of their higher 
 faculties, and increased direction of their feel- 
 ings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, 
 elevating instead of degrading, objects and 
 contemplations. But neither one person, nor 
 any number of persons, is warranted in saying 
 to another human creature of ripe years, tha< 
 he stiall not do with his life for his own ben- 
 efit what he chooses to do with t. He is the 
 
I3(> ON Liauwn. 
 
 person most interested in his own well-being 
 the interest which any other person, except ii 
 cases of strong personal attachment, can have 
 in it, is trifling, compared with that which he 
 himself has ; the interest which society has in 
 him individually (except as to his conduct to 
 others) is fractional, and altogether indirect: 
 while, with respect to his own feelings and cir- 
 cumstances, the most ordinary man or woman 
 has means of knowledge immeasurably sur- 
 passing those that can be possessed by any 
 one else. The interference of society to over- 
 rule his judgment and purposes in what only 
 regards himself, must be grounded on general 
 presumptions; which may be altogether wrong, 
 and even if right, are as likely as not to be 
 misapplied to individual cases, by persons no 
 better acquainted with the circumstances of 
 such cases than those are who look at them 
 merely from without. In this department, 
 therefore, of human afi'airs, Individuality ha^ 
 its proper field of action. In the conduct of 
 human beings towards one another, it is neces- 
 sary that general rules should for the most 
 part be observed, in order that people may 
 know what they have to expect ; but in each 
 person's own concerns, his individual sponta- 
 neity is entitled to free exercise. Considera' 
 tions to aid his judgment, exhortations to 
 strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even 
 obtruded on him, by others ; but he, himself, in 
 the final judge. All errors which he is likei\ 
 
ON LIBERTY. 137 
 
 lu commit against advice and warning, aie fai 
 outweighed by the evil of allowing others tc 
 constrain him to what they deem his good. 
 
 I do not mean that the feelings witli which 
 a person is regarded by others, ought not to be 
 in any way affected by his self-regarding quali- 
 ties or deficiencies. This is neither possible 
 nor desirable. If he is eminent in any of the 
 qualities which conduce to his own good, he 
 is, so far, a proper object of admiration. He 
 is so much the nearer to the ideal perfection 
 of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in 
 those qualities, a sentiment the opposite of ad- 
 miration will follow. There is a degres of 
 folly, and a degree of what may be called 
 (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) 
 lowness or depra ation of taste, which, though 
 it cannot justify doing harm to the person 
 who manifests it, renders him necessarily and 
 projjerly a subject of distaste, or, in extreme 
 tases, even of contempt: a person could not 
 have the opposite qualities in due strength 
 without entertaining these feelings. Though 
 doing no wrong to any one, a person may so 
 act as to compel us to j'Jdge him, and feel to 
 him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior 
 order : and since this judgment and feeling 
 are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it 
 is doing him a service to warn him of i^ before- 
 hand, as of any other disagreeable consequence 
 to which he exposes himself. It would be well, 
 indeed, if this good office were much rrore 
 
138 ON LIREUTV. 
 
 freely rendered than the common notions ol 
 politeness at present permit, and if one person 
 could honestly point out to another that he 
 thinks him in fault, without being considered 
 unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, 
 also, in various ways, to act upon our uii'avor- 
 able opinion of any one, not to the oppression 
 of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. 
 Wo are not bound, for example, to seek his 
 Hociety ; we have a right to avoid it (though 
 not to parade the avoidance), for we have a 
 right to choose the society most acceptable to 
 us. We have a right, and it may be our duty 
 to caution others against him, if we think his 
 example or conversation likely to have a per- 
 nicious eflect on those with whom he asso- 
 ciates. We may give others a preference ovei 
 him in optional good offices, except those 
 which tend to his improvement. In these 
 various modes a person may suffer very severe 
 penalties at the hands of others, for faults 
 which directly concern only himself; but he 
 suffers these penalties only in so far as they 
 are the natural, and, as it were, the spontane- 
 ou'S consequences of the faults themselves, not 
 because they are purposely inflicted on him foi 
 the sake of punishment. A person who shows 
 rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit — who cannot 
 live within moderate means — who cannot 
 restrain himself frorri hurtful indulgences — 
 who pursues animal pleasures at the expense 
 of those of feeling and inlellect — must expec* 
 
ON LIBERTY. 139 
 
 to be lowered in the opinion of others, a d to 
 have a less share of their favorable sentiments, 
 but of this he has no right to complain, unless 
 he has merited their favor by special excellence 
 in his social relations, and has thus established 
 a ^itle to their good offices, which is not af- 
 fected by his demerits towards himself. 
 
 What I contend for is, that the inconven- 
 iences which are strictly inseparable from the 
 unfavorable judgment of others, are the only 
 ones to which a person should ever be subject 
 ed fo' that portion of his conduct and charactei 
 which concerns his own good, but which does 
 not affect the interests of others in their rela- 
 tions with him. Acts injurious to others re- 
 quire a totally different treatment. Encroach- 
 ment on their rights ; infliction on them of any 
 loss or damage not justified by his own rights; 
 falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them ; 
 unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over 
 them ; even selfish abstinence from defending 
 them against injury — these are fit objects of 
 moral reprobation, and, in grave cases, of mora! 
 retribution and punishment. And not only 
 these acts, but the dispositions which lead to 
 them, are properly immoral, and fit subjects of 
 disapprobation which may rise to abhorrenct. 
 Cruelty of disposition ; malice and ill-nature , 
 that most anti-social and odious of all pas- 
 sions, envy; dissimulation and insincerity; 
 irascibility on insufficient c-aii^c, and res<^nt 
 mcnt disproportioned to the provocation ; tlie 
 
140 ON LIBEETT. 
 
 love of domineering over others; the desire to 
 engross more than one's share of advantages 
 (the Tr\€ov€iia of the Greeks) ; the pride which 
 derives gratification from the abasement of 
 others ; the egotism which thinks self and its 
 concerns more important than everything else, 
 and decides all doubtful questions in his own 
 favor; — these are moral vices, and consti- 
 tute a bad and odious moral character : unlike 
 the self-regarding faults previously mentioned, 
 which are not properly immoralities, and to 
 whatever pitch they may be caiTied, do not 
 constitute wickedness. They may be proofs 
 of any amount of folly, or want of personal 
 dignity and self-respect ; but they are only a 
 subject of moral reprobation when they in- 
 volve a breach of duty to others, for whose 
 sake the individual is bound to have care for 
 himself. What are called duties to ourselves 
 are not socially obligatory, unless circumstances 
 render them at the same time duties to others. 
 The term duty to oneself, when it means any- 
 thing more than prudence, means self-respect 
 or self-development ; and for none of these is 
 any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, 
 because for none of them is it for the good of 
 mankind that he be held accountable to them. 
 The distinction between the loss of consider- 
 dtion which a person may rightly incur by de- 
 fict of prudence or of personal dignity, and 
 I lie reprobation which is due to him for an 
 offence against the rights of others, is not a 
 
ON LIBICRTT. 141 
 
 merely nominal distinction. It maken a vast 
 dilTerence both in our feelings and in our con- 
 duct towards him, whether he displeases us in 
 things in which we think we have a right to 
 control him, or in things in which we kno^ 
 that we have not. If he displeases us, we may 
 express our distaste, and we may stand aloof 
 from a person as well as from a thing that dis- 
 pleases us ; but we shall not therefore feel 
 called on to make his life uncomfortable. We 
 shall reflect that he already bears, or will bear, 
 the whole penalty of his error ; if he spoils his 
 life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that 
 reason, desire to spoil it still further : instead 
 of wishing to punish him, we shall rather en- 
 deavor to alleviate his punishment, by showing 
 him how he may avoid or cure the evils his 
 conduct tends to bring upon him. He may be 
 to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but 
 not of anger or resentment ; we shall not treat 
 him like an enemy of society : the worst we 
 shall think ourselves justified in doing is leav- 
 ing him to himself, if we do not interfere be- 
 nevolently by showing interest or concern for 
 him. It is far otherwise if he has infiringed 
 the rules necessary for the protection of his fel- 
 low-creatures, individually or collectively. The 
 evil consequences of his acts do not then fall 
 on himself, but on others ; and society, as the 
 protector of all its members, must retaliate on 
 him ; must inflict pain on him for the express 
 purpose of punishment, and must take care 
 
142 ON LIBKKTT. 
 
 ihat it be sufiicicnily severe. In the one case 
 he is an offender at our bar, and we are culled 
 on not only to sit in judgment on liira, but, ir 
 one shape or another, to execute our own sen 
 tence : in the other case, it is not our part tc 
 Inflict any suffering on him, except what may 
 Incidentally follow from our using the same 
 liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, 
 which we allow to him in his. 
 
 The distinction here pointed out between 
 the part of a person's life which concerns only 
 himself, and that which concerns others, many 
 persons will refuse to admit. How (it may be 
 asked) can any part of the conduct of a mem- 
 ber of society be a matter of indifference to 
 the other members ? No person is an entirely 
 isolated being ; it is impossible for a person to 
 do anything seriously or permanently hurtful 
 to himself, without mischief reaching at least 
 to his near connections, and often far beyond 
 them. If he injures his property, he does harm 
 to those who directly or indirectly derived sup- 
 port from it, and usually diminishes, by a 
 greater or less amount, the general resources of 
 live community. If he deteriorates his bodily 
 jr mental faculties, he not only brings evil 
 upon all who depended on him for any portion 
 of their happiness, but disqualifies himself for 
 rendering the services which he owes to hia 
 fellow-creatures generally ; perhaps becomes a 
 Burden on their affection or benevolence ; an J 
 If such conduct were very frequent, hardly any 
 
ON LIBEETF. 143 
 
 offence that is committed would dctifii,(. more 
 from the general sum of good. Finally, if by 
 his vices or follies a person does no direct harm 
 to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) 
 injurious by his example ; and ought to be 
 compelled to control himself, for the sake of 
 those whom the sight or knowledge of his con- 
 duct might corrupt or mislead. 
 
 And even (it will be added) if the conse- 
 ((uences of misconduct could be confined to 
 tlic vicious or thouglitlcss individual, ought 
 society to abandon to their own guidance those 
 who are manifestly unfit for it ? If protection 
 against themselves is confessedly due to chil- 
 dren and persons under age, is not societj 
 equally bound to afford it to persons of mature 
 years who are equally incapable of self-govern- 
 ment ? If gambling, or drunkenness, or incon- 
 tinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as in- 
 jurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance 
 to improvement, as many or most of the acts 
 prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should 
 not law, so far as is consistent with practica- 
 bility and social convenience, endeavor to re- 
 press these also ? And as a supplement to the 
 unavoidable imperfections of law, ought not 
 opinion at least to organize a powerful police 
 ae;ainst these vices, and visit rigidly with social 
 penalties those who are known to practise 
 them ? There is no question here (it may be 
 said) about restricting individuality, or imped- 
 ing the trial of new and original experiment* 
 
1 44 ON LIBHUTY. 
 
 in living. The only things it ia sought to pre- 
 vent are things which have been tried and con- 
 jemned from the beginning of the world unti. 
 now; things which experience has shown not to 
 be useful or suitable to any person's individual- 
 ity. There must be some length of time and 
 amount of experience, after which a moral or 
 prudential truth may be regarded as established 
 and it is merely desired to prevent generation af- 
 ter generation from falling over the same preci- 
 pice which has been fatal to their predecessors. 
 I fully admit that the mischief which a per- 
 son does to himself, may seriously affect, both 
 through their sympathies and their interests, 
 those nearly connected with him, and in a mi- 
 nor degree, society at large. When, by con- 
 duct of this sort, a person is led to violate a 
 distinct and assignable obligation to any other 
 person or persons, the case is taken out of the 
 self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to 
 moral disapprobation in the proper sense of 
 the term. If, for example, a man, through in- 
 temperance or extravagance, becomes unable to 
 pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral 
 responsibility of a family, becomes from the 
 same cause incapable of supporting or edu- 
 cating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and 
 might be justly punished ; but it is for the 
 breach of duty to his family or creditors, nol 
 for the extravagance. If the resources which 
 ought to have been devoted to them, had been 
 diverted from them for the most prudent in 
 
ON I,IBB,ETT. 14:5 
 
 vestment, the moral culpability would have 
 been the same. George Barnwell murdered 
 his uncle to get money for his mistress, but if 
 he had done it to set himself up in business, 
 he would equally have been hanged. Again, 
 in the frequent case of a man who causes grief 
 to his family by addiction to bad habits, he 
 deserves reproach for his nnkindness or ingrat- 
 itude; but so he may for cultivating habits 
 not in themselves vicious, if they are painful 
 to those with whom he passes his life, or who 
 from personal ties are dependent on him for 
 their comfort. Whoever fails in the consider- 
 ation generally due to the interests and feel- 
 ings of others, not being compelled by some 
 more imperative duty, or justified by allowable 
 self-preference, is a subject of moral disappro- 
 bation for that failure, but not for the cause of 
 it, nor for the errors, merely personal to him- 
 self, which may have remotely led to it. In 
 like manner, when a person disables himself, 
 by conduct purely self-regarding, from the per- 
 formance of some definite duty incumbent on 
 him to the public, he is guilty of a social of- 
 fence. No person ought to be punished sim 
 ply for being drunk ; but a soldier or a police- 
 man shoulil be punished for being drunk on 
 duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite 
 damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to 
 an individual or to the public, the case is taken 
 out of tiie province of liberty, and placed in 
 that of morality or law. 
 7 
 
146 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 But with regard to the merely contingent 
 or, as it may be called, constructive injury 
 which a person causes to society, by conduct 
 which neither violates any specific duty to the 
 public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any 
 assignable individual except himself; the in- 
 convenience is one which society can afford to 
 bear, for the sake of the greater good of human 
 freedom. If grown persons are to be punished 
 for not taking proper care of themselves, I 
 would rather it were for their own sake, than 
 under pretence of preventing them from im- 
 pairing their capacity of rendering to society 
 benefits which society does not pretend it has 
 a right to exact. But I cannot consent to ar- 
 gue the point as if society had no means of 
 bringing its weaker members up to its ordi- 
 nary standard of rational conduct, except wait- 
 ing till they do something irrational, and then 
 punishing them, legally or morally, for it, So- 
 ciety has had absolute power over them during 
 all the early portion of their existence ; it ha.s 
 had the whole period of childhood and nonage 
 In which to try whether it could make them 
 uapable of rational conduct in life. The ex- 
 isting generation is master both of the train- 
 ing and the entire circumstances of the gener- 
 ation to come; it cannot indeed make Ihem 
 perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so 
 lamentably deficient in goodness and wisdom j 
 and its best efforts are not always, in individ- 
 ual cases, its most successfuJ ones ; but it is 
 
ON LlBEtttlr. HI 
 
 perfectly well able to make the rising genera 
 tion, as a whole, as good as, and a little bet 
 ter than, itself. If society lets any consider- 
 able number of its members grow up mere 
 children, incapable of being acted on by ra- 
 tional consideration of distant motives, so- 
 ciety has itself to blame for the consequences. 
 Armed not only with all the powers of educa- 
 tion, but with the ascendency which the au- 
 Ihority of a received opinion always exercises 
 over the minds who are least fitted to judge 
 for themselves ; and aided by the natvral pen- 
 alties which cannot be prevented from falling 
 on those who incur the distaste or the con 
 tempt of those who know them ; let not so- 
 ciety pretend that it needs, besidcvS all this, tiie 
 power to issue commands and enforce obedi 
 ence in the personal concerns of individuals, 
 in which, on all principles of justice and pol- 
 icy, the decision ought to rest with those who 
 are to abide the consequences. Nor is there 
 anything which tends more to discredit and 
 frustrate the better means of influencing con- 
 duct, than a resort to the worse. If there be 
 among those whom it is attempted to coerce 
 into prudence or temperance, any of the mate- 
 rial of which vigorous and independent charac- 
 ters are made, they will infallibly rebel agains* 
 the yoke. No such person will ever feel that 
 others have a right to control him in his con- 
 corns, such as they have to prevent him from 
 injuring them in theirs ; and it easily comes tc 
 
i48 ON UBEETr. 
 
 be 3onsidered a mark of spirit and courage to 
 fly in the face of such usurped authority, ana 
 do with ostentation the exact opposite of what 
 it enjoins ; as in the fashion of grossness which 
 succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to the 
 fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans 
 With respect to what is said of the necessity 
 of protecting society from the bad example set 
 lo others by the vicious or the self-indulgent; 
 it is true that bad example may have a perni- 
 cious effect, especially the example of doing 
 wrong to others with impunity to the wrong- 
 doer. But we are now speaking of conduct 
 which, while it does no wrong to others, is 
 supposed to do great harm to the agent him- 
 self: and I do not see how those who believe 
 this, can think otherwise than that the exam- 
 ple, on the whole, must be more salutary than 
 hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it 
 displays also the painful or degrading conse- 
 quences which, if the conduct is justly cen- 
 sured, must be supposed to be in all or most 
 cases attendant on it. 
 
 But the strongest of all the arguments 
 against the interference of the public with 
 purely personal conduct, is that when it does 
 interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrong- 
 ly, and in the wrong place. On questions of 
 social morality, of duty to others, the opinion 
 of the public, that is, of an overruling ma- 
 jority, though often wrong, is likely to be still 
 oftener right ; because on such questions they 
 
ON LiBEfinr. 149 
 
 are only required to judge of their own inter- 
 ests ; of the manner in which some mode of 
 conduct, if allowed to be practised, would 
 affect themselves. But the opinion of a sim- 
 ilar majority, imposed as a law on the minor- 
 ity, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is 
 quite as likely to be wrong as right ; for in 
 these cases public opinion means, at the best, 
 some people's opinion of what is good or bad 
 for other people ; while very often it does not 
 even mean that ; the public, with the most per- 
 fect indifference, passing over the pleasure or 
 convenience of those whose conduct they cen- 
 sure, and considering only their own prefer- 
 ence. There are many who consider as an 
 injury to themselves any conduct which they 
 have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage 
 to their feelings ; as a religious bigot, when 
 charged with disregarding the religious feel- 
 ings of others, has been known to retort that 
 they disregard his feelings, by persisting in 
 their abominable worship or creed. But there 
 is no parity between the feeling of a pe^5on 
 for his own opinion, and the feeling of another 
 who is offended at his holding it; no more 
 than between the desire of a thief to take a 
 purse, and the desire of the right owner to 
 keep it. And a person's taste is as much his 
 own peculiar concern as his opinion or his 
 purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an 
 ideal public, which leaves the freedom and 
 choice of individuals in all uncertain irt^itera 
 
15(> ON MBEKTT. 
 
 undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain 
 lioiu modes of conduct which universal expeii- 
 eiice has condemned. But where has there been 
 seen a public which set any such limit to its cen- 
 sorship ? or when does the public trouble itself 
 about universal experience ? In its interferen- 
 ces with personal conduct it is seldom thinking 
 of anything but the enormity of acting or feel- 
 ing differently from itself; and this standard of 
 judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to man- 
 liind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, 
 by nine tenths of ail moralists and speculative 
 writers. These teach that things are right be- 
 cause they are right ; because we feel them to 
 be so. They tell us to search in our own minds 
 and hearts for laws of conduct binding on our- 
 selves and on all others. What can the poor 
 public do but apply these instructions, and 
 make their own personal feelings of good and 
 evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, 
 obligatory on all the world ? 
 
 The evil here pointed out is not one which 
 exists only in theory ; and it may perhaps 
 be expected that I should specify the in- 
 stances in which the public of this age and 
 country improperly invests its own preferences 
 with the character of moral laws. I am not 
 writing an essay on the aberrations of existing 
 moral feeling. That is too weighty a subject 
 to be discussed parenthetically, and by way of 
 illustration. Yet examples are neces.sary, to 
 show that the principle I maintain is of ser' 
 
ON LIBERTT. 151 
 
 JUS and practical moment, and that I am nol 
 endeavoring to erect a barrier against imagin 
 ary evils. And it is not difficult to show, by 
 abundant instances, that to extend the bounds 
 of what may be called moral police, until i< 
 encroaches on the most unquestionably legiti- 
 mate liberty of the individual, is one of the 
 most universal of all human propensities. 
 
 As a first instance, consider the antipathies 
 which men cherish on no better grounds than 
 that persons whose religious opinions are dif- 
 ferent from theirs, do not practise their relig- 
 ious observances, especially their religious ab- 
 stinences. To cite a rather trivial example, 
 nothing in the creed or practice of Christians 
 does more to envenom the hatred of Mahome- 
 dans against them, than the fact of their eat- 
 ing pork. There are few acts which Christians 
 and Europeans regard with more unaffected 
 disgust, than Mussulmans regard this partic- 
 ular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the 
 first place, an offence against their religion ; 
 but this circumstance by no means explains 
 either the degree or the kind of their repug- 
 nance ; for wine also is forbidden by their 
 religion, and to partake of it is by all Mussul- 
 mans accounted wrong, but not disgusting. 
 Their aversion to the flesh of the "unclean 
 beast" is, on the contrary, of that peculiai 
 character, resembling an instinctive antipathy 
 which the idea of uncleanness, when once H 
 Ihorouglily sinks into the feelings, seems a' 
 
lo2 ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 ways to excite even in those whose persona 
 habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly 
 anfl of which the sentiment of religious im- 
 purity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a remark- 
 able example. Suppose now that in a people, 
 of whom the majority were Mussulmans, that 
 niajority should insist upon not permitting 
 pork to be eaten within the limits of the coun- 
 try. This would be nothing new in Mahome- 
 dan countries.* Would it be a legitimate ex- 
 ercise of the moral authority of public opinion? 
 and if not, why not ? The practice is really 
 revolting to such a public. They also sincerely 
 think that it is forbidden and abhorred by the 
 Deity. Neither could the prohibition be cen- 
 sured as religious persecution. It might be re- 
 ligious in its origin, but it would not be per- 
 secution for religion, since nobody's religion 
 makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tena- 
 ble ground of condemnation would be, that 
 with the personal tastes and self-reganling 
 concerns of individuals the public has no busi- 
 ness to interfere, 
 
 * The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point. 
 When this industrious and entci-prising tribe, tlie descendants of 
 the Persian fire-worshippers, Oyiiig from tlicir native country be- 
 fore tlie Caliplis, arrived in Western India, llicy were admilled to 
 toleration by the Hiniloo sovereigns, on condition of not eating 
 beef. Wlien tliose regions afterwards fell under the dominion of 
 Maliomedan conquerors, the Parsees obtained tiom them a con- 
 tinuanee of indulgence, on condition of refraining from pork. 
 Wbat was at first obedience to authority became a second na 
 ture, and the Parsees to this day abstain both from beef and pork 
 Though not required by their religion, the double aL stinence hat 
 nad time to grow into a custom of their tribe; ind ci etom, in th( 
 Saat, is a religion. 
 
ON LIBEKTT. 163 
 
 To como somewhat nearer home : the major 
 ity of Spaniards consider it a gross impiety, 
 offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme 
 Beiiig, to worship him in any other manner than 
 Ihe Roman Catholic ; and no other public wor* 
 ship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of 
 all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy 
 as noi only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, 
 gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think 
 of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the 
 attempt to enforce them against non-Catho- 
 lics ? Yet, if mankind are justified in inter- 
 fering with each other's liberty in things which 
 do not concern the interests of others, on whai 
 principle is it possible consistently to exclude 
 these cases ? or who can blame people for de- 
 siring to suppress what they regard as a scan- 
 dal in the sight of God and man ? No stronger 
 yase can be shown for prohibiting anything 
 which is regarded as a personal immorality, 
 than is made out for suppressing these prac- 
 tices in the eyes of those who regard them as 
 impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt 
 the logic of persecutors, and to way that we 
 may persecute others because we are right, 
 ■ind that they must not persecute us because 
 they are wrong, we must beware of admitting 
 a principle of which we should resent as a gross 
 injustice the application to ourselves. 
 
 The preceding instances may be objected to, 
 although unreasonably, as drawn from contin- 
 gencies impossible among us: opinion, in tlii« 
 
 a* 
 
IS* ON LIBERTY. 
 
 country, not being likely to enforce abslinenct 
 from meats, or to interfere with people for wor- 
 shipping, and for either marrying or not marry- 
 ing, according to their creed or inclination 
 The next example, however, shall be taken 
 from an interference with liberty which we 
 have by no means passed all danger of. 
 Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently 
 powerful, as in New England, and in Great 
 Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, 
 they have endeavored, with considerable suc- 
 cess, to put down all public, and nearly all 
 private, amusements : especially music, danc- 
 ing, public games, or other assemblages for 
 purposes of diversion, and the theatre. There 
 are still in this country large bodies of persona 
 Dy whose notions of morality and religion these 
 recreatioris are condemned ; and those persons 
 belonging chiefly to the middle class, who are 
 the ascendant power in the present social and 
 political condition of the kingdom, it is by no 
 means impossible that persons of these senti- 
 'nents may at some time or other command a 
 majority in Parliament. How will the remain 
 ing portion of the community like to have the 
 amusements that shall be permitted to them 
 regulated by the religious and moral scnti- 
 ments of the stricter Calvinists and Method- 
 ists 1 Would they not, with considerable 
 peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious 
 members of society to mind their own busi- 
 ness ? This is precisely what should be said 
 
ON LIBEUTT. 
 
 15g 
 
 to every government and every pullic, whc 
 nave the pretension that no person shall enjoy 
 any pleasure which they think wrong. But if 
 the principle of the pretension be admitted, nc 
 one can reasonably object to its being acted on 
 in the sense of the majority, or other prepon- 
 derating power in the country ; and all persons 
 must be ready to conform to the idea of a 
 Christian commonwealth, as understood by the 
 early settlers in New England, if a religious 
 profession similar to theirs should ever succeed 
 in regaining its lost ground, as religions sup 
 posed to be declining have so often been known 
 to do. 
 
 To imagine another contingency, perhaps 
 more likely to be realized than the one last 
 mentioned. There is confessedly a strong ten- 
 dency in the modern world towards a demo- 
 cratic constitution of society, accompanied ot 
 not by popular political institutions. It is af- 
 firmed that in the country where this tendency 
 is most completely realized — where both so- 
 ciety and the government are most democratic 
 — the United States — the feeling of the ma- 
 jority, to whom any appearance of a more 
 showy or costly style of living than they can 
 hope to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tol- 
 erably efTectual sumptuary law, and ^hat in 
 many parts of the Union it is really difficult 
 for a person possessing a very large income, to 
 find any mode of spending it, which will not 
 incur popular disapprobation. Though such 
 
!56 ON LiBicRxr. 
 
 statements as these are doubtless much exag 
 gerated as a repiesentation of existing facts, 
 the state of things they describe is not only a 
 conceivable and possible, but a probable result 
 of democratic feeling, combined with the no- 
 tion that the public has a right to a veto on 
 the manner in which individuals shall spend 
 their incomes. We have only further to sup- 
 pose a considerable diffusion of Socialist opin- 
 ions, and it may become infamous in the eyes 
 of the majority to possess more property than 
 some very email amount, or any income not 
 earned by manual labor. Opinions similar in 
 principle to these, already prevail widely among 
 the artisan class, and weigh oppressively on 
 those who are amenable to the opinion chiefly 
 of that class, namely, its own members. It ia 
 known that the bad workmen who form the 
 majority of the operatives in many branches 
 af industry, are decidedly of opinion that bad 
 workmen ought to receive the same wages as 
 good, and that no one ought to be allowed, 
 through piecework or otherwise, to earn by 
 superior skill or industry more than others can 
 without it. And they employ a moral police, 
 which occasionally becomes a physical one, to 
 deter skilful workmen from receiving, and em- 
 ployers from giving, a larger remuneration foi 
 a more useful service. If the public have anj 
 jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see 
 that these people are in fault, or that any indi- 
 ridual's particular public can be blamed for a» 
 
ON LIBEKTT. 167 
 
 BertiVig the same authority over nis individual 
 conduct, which the general public asserts ovei 
 people in general. 
 
 But, without dwelling upon supposititious 
 cases, there are, in our own day, gross usurpa- 
 tions upon the liberty of private life actually 
 practised, and still greater ones threatened with 
 some expectation of success, and opinions pro- 
 posed which assert an unlimited right in the 
 public not only to prohibit by law everything 
 which it thinlts wrong, but in order to get at 
 what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number 
 of things which it admits to be innocent. 
 
 Under the name of preventing intemperance, 
 the people of one English colony, and of 
 nearly half the United States, have been inter- 
 dicted by law from making any use whatever 
 of fermented drinks, except for medical pur- 
 poses: for prohibition of their sale is in fact, 
 as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. 
 And though the impracticability of executing 
 the law has caused its repeal in several of the 
 States which had adopted it, including the one 
 from which it derives its name, an attempt has 
 notwithstanding been commenced, and is pros- 
 ecuted with considerable zeal by many of the 
 professed philanthropists, to agitate for a simi- 
 lar law in this country. The association, or 
 " Alliance " as it terms itself, which has been 
 formed for this purpose, has acquired some 
 notoriety through the publicity given to a cor« 
 respondence between its Secretary and one of 
 
158 ON LIBBETT. 
 
 the very few English public men who hold thai 
 a politician's opinions ought to be founded or 
 principles. Lord Stanley's share in this cor- 
 respondence is calculated to strengthen the 
 hopes already built on him, by those who know 
 how rare such qualities as are manifested in 
 some of hiri public appearances, unhappily are 
 among those who figure in political life. The 
 organ of the Alliance, who would "deeply 
 deplore the recognition of any principle which 
 could be wrested to justify bigotry and perse- 
 cution," undertakes to point out the " broad 
 and impassable barrier" which divides such 
 principles from those of the association. " All 
 matters relating to thought, opinion, con- 
 science, appear to me," he says, " to be with- 
 out the sphere of legislation ; all pertaining to 
 social act, habit, relation, subject only to a dis- 
 cretionary power vested in the State itself, and 
 not in the individual, to be within it." No 
 nention is made of a third class, dilTerent from 
 either of these, viz., acts and habits which are 
 not social, but individual; although it is to 
 this class, surely, that the act of drinking fer- 
 mented liquors belongs. Selling fermented 
 liquors, however, is trading, and trading is a 
 social act. But the infringement complained 
 of is not on the liberty of the seller, but on 
 that of the buyer and consumer; since the 
 State might just as well forbid him to drink 
 wine, as purposely make it impossible for him 
 to obtain it. The Secretary, however, says, " 1 
 
ON LIBERTT. 159 
 
 claim, as a citizen, a right to legislate when 
 ever my social rights are i&vaded by the social 
 act of another." And now for the definition 
 of these " social rights." " If anything invades 
 my social rights, certainly the traffic in strong 
 drink does. It destroys my primary right of 
 security, by constantly creating and stimulating 
 social disorder. It invades my right of equal- 
 ity, by deriving a profit from the creation of a 
 misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my 
 right to free moral and intcjllcctual develop- 
 ment, by surrounding my path with dangers, 
 and by weakening and demoralizing society, 
 from which I have a right to claim mutual aid 
 and intercourse." A theory of " social rights," 
 the like of which probably never before found 
 its way into distinct language — being nothing 
 short of this — that it is the absolute social 
 right of every individual, that every other in- 
 dividual shall act in every respect exactly as 
 he ought ; that who >oever fails thereof in the 
 smallest particular, violates my social right, 
 and entitles me to demand from the legislature 
 the removal of the grievance. So monstrous 
 a principle is far more dangerous than any 
 single interference with lib3rty; there is no 
 violation of liberty which it would not justify ; 
 it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatr 
 ever, except perhaps to that of holding opin- 
 ions in secret, without ever disclosing them 
 for the moment an opinion which I consider 
 noxious, passes any one's lips, it i'vades aU 
 
160 ON LIBKUTr. 
 
 the "social rights" attributed to mc by the 
 Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind 
 a vested interest in each other's moral, intel- 
 lectual, and even physical perfection, to be de- 
 fined by each claimant according to his own 
 standard. 
 
 Another important example of illegitimate 
 interference with the rightful liberty of the in- 
 dividual, not simply threatened, but long since 
 carried into triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian 
 legislation. Without doubt, abstinence on one 
 day in the week, so far as the exigencies of 
 life permit, from the usual daily occupation, 
 though in no respect religiously binding on 
 any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom. 
 And inasmuch as this custom cannot be ob- 
 served without a general consent to that effect 
 among the industrious classes, therefore, in so 
 far as some persons by working may impose 
 the same necessity on others, it may be allow- 
 able and right that the law should guarantee 
 to each, the observance by others of the cus- 
 tom, by suspending the greater operations of 
 industry on a particular day. But this justi- 
 fication, grounded on the direct interest which 
 others have in each individual's observance of 
 the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen 
 occupations in which a person may think fit 
 to employ his leisure ; nor does it hold good, 
 in the smallest degree, for legal restrict' ons on 
 amusements. It is true that the amusement 
 of some is the day's work of others ; but the 
 
ON LIBEETT. 161 
 
 p.cdsurc, not to say the useful recreat.on, ol 
 many, is worth the labor of a few, provitlet 
 the occupation is freely chosen, and can h( 
 freely resigned. The operatives are perfectl) 
 right in thhilrng that if all worked on Sunday 
 seven days' work would have to be given foi 
 six days' wages : but so long as the great mass 
 of employments are suspended, the small num- 
 ber who for the enjoyment of others must still 
 work, obtain a proportional increase of earn- 
 ings; and they are not obliged to follow those 
 occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolu- 
 ment. If a further remedy is sought, it might 
 be found in the establishment by custom of a 
 holiday on some other day of the week for 
 those particular classes of persons. The only 
 ground, therefore, on which restrictions on 
 Sunday amusements can be defended, must be 
 that they are religiously wrong; a motive of 
 legislation which never can be too earnestly 
 protested against. " Deorum injnrisB Diis 
 cursB." It remains to be proved that society 
 or any of its officers holds a commission from 
 on high to avenge any supposed offence to 
 Omnipotence, which is not also a wrong to our 
 fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one 
 man's duty that another should be religious, 
 was the foundation of all the religious perse- 
 cutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, 
 would fully justify them. Though the feeling 
 which breaks out in the repeated attempts to 
 »ttop railway travelling on Sunc'ay, in the re 
 
102 ON LiaiiETY. 
 
 Bistance to the opening ot Museunit, and tht 
 like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors 
 the state of mind indicated by it is fundamen- 
 tally the same. It is a determination not to 
 tolerate others in doing what is permitted by 
 their religion, because it is not permitted by 
 the persecutor's religion. It is a belief that 
 God not only abominates the act of the mis- 
 believer, but will not hold us guiltless if wt 
 leave him unmolested. 
 
 I cannot refrain from adding to these ex- 
 amples of the little account commonly made 
 of human liberty, the language of downright 
 persecution which breaks out from the press 
 of this country, whenever it feels called on to 
 notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mor- 
 monism. Much might be said on the unex- 
 pected and instructive fact, that an alleged 
 new revelation, and a religion founded on it, 
 the product of palpable imposture, not even 
 supported by the prestige of extraordinary 
 qualities in its founder, is believed by hun- 
 dreds of thousands, and has been made the 
 foundation of a society, in the age of news- 
 papers, railways, and the electric telegraph. 
 What here concerns us is, that this religion, 
 like other and better religions, has its martys ; 
 that its prophet and founder was, for his teach- 
 ing, put to death by a mob ; that others of its 
 adherents lost their lives by the same lawless 
 violence ; that they were forcibly expelled, ir. 
 
 body, from the country in which they firs/ 
 
on LtUEETT. 163 
 
 grew up ; vhile, now that they havo beeo 
 chased intd a solitary recess in the midst of a 
 desert, many in this country openly declslre 
 that it would be right (only that it is not con- 
 venient) to send an expedition against tbcm 
 and compel them by force to coniform to the 
 opinions of other people. The article of the 
 Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provo- 
 cative to the antipa,thy which thus breaks 
 through the ordinary restraints of religious 
 tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy ; which, 
 though permitted to Mahomedans, and Hin- 
 doos, and Chinese, seems tr excite unquench- 
 able animosity when practised by persons who 
 speak English, and profess to be a kind of 
 Christians. No one has a deeper disapproba- 
 tion than I have of this Mormon institution ; 
 both for other reasons, and because, far from 
 being in any way countenanced by the prin- 
 ciple of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that 
 principle, being a mere riveting of the chains 
 of one half of the community, and an emanci- 
 |>ation of the other from reciprocity of obliga-' 
 tion towards them. Still, it must be remem- 
 bered that this relation is as much voluntary 
 on the part of the women concerned in it, and 
 who may be deemed the sufferers by it, as is 
 the case with any other form of the marriage 
 institution ; and however surprising this fact 
 may appear, it has its explanation in the com- 
 mon ideas and customs of the world, which 
 teaching women to think marriage the or.e 
 
164 ON LroEBTT. 
 
 thing needfu., make it intelligible that inanj 
 a woman should prefer being one of severa 
 wives, to not being a wife at all. Other coun- 
 tries are not asked to recognize such unions, 
 or release any portion of their inhabitants from 
 their own laws on the score of Mormonite 
 opinions. But when the dissentients have 
 conceded to the hostile sentiments of others, 
 far more than could justly be demanded \ 
 when they have left the countries to which 
 their doctrines were unacceptable, and estab 
 lished themselves in a remote corner of the 
 earth, which they have been the first to render 
 habitable to human beings; it is difficult to 
 see on what principles but those of tyranny 
 they can be prevented from living there under 
 what laws they please, provided they commit 
 no aggression on other nations, and allow per- 
 fect freedom of departure to those who are 
 dissatisfied with their ways. A recent writer, 
 in some respects of considerable merit, pro- 
 poses (to use his own words,) not a crusade, 
 but a civilizade, against this polygamous com- 
 munity, to put an end to what seems to him a 
 retrograde step in civilization. It also appears 
 so to me, but I am not aware that any com- 
 munity has a right to force another to be civ- 
 ilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad law 
 do not invoke assistance from other commu- 
 nities, I cannot admit that persons entirely 
 unconnected with them ought to step in and 
 require that a condition of things with wbicL 
 
OH UBBETS-. 165 
 
 all who are directly interested appear to be 
 salisfied, should be put an end to because it 
 is a scandal to persons some thousands of 
 miles distant, who have no part or concern in 
 it. Let them send missionaries, if they" please, 
 to preach against it; and let them, by any 
 fair means (of wliich silencing the teachers is 
 not one,) oppose the progress of similar doc- 
 trines among their own people. If civilization 
 has got the better of barbarism when bar- 
 barism had the world to itself, it is too much 
 to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after 
 having been fairly got under, should revive 
 and conquer civilization. A civilization that 
 can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy 
 must first have become so degenerate, that 
 neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor 
 anybody else, has the capacity, or will take 
 the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, 
 the sooner such a cizilization receives notice 
 to quit, the better. It can only go on from 
 bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated 
 (like the Western Empire) by energetic bar- 
 bariana. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 AVPLI0ATI0N8. 
 
 '^pHE principles asserted in these pages muH( 
 »- be more generally admitted as the basis foi 
 discussion of details, before a consistent appli- 
 cation of them to all the various departments 
 of government and morals can be attempted 
 with any prospect of advantage. The few ob- 
 servations I propose to make on questions of 
 detail, are designed to illustrate the principles, 
 rather than to follow them out to their conse- 
 quences. I offer, not so much applications, as 
 si/ecimens of application ; which may serve to 
 bring into greater clearness the meaning and 
 limits of the two maxims which together form 
 the entire doctrine of this Essay, and to assist 
 the judgment in holding the balance between 
 them, in the cases where it appears doubtful 
 which of them is applicable to the case. 
 
 The maxims are, first, that the individual ia 
 not accountable to society for his actions, in so 
 far as these concern the interests of no person 
 but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, 
 and avoidance by other people, if thought ne- 
 cessary by them for their own good, are the 
 only measures by which society can justifiablv 
 
ON ttBBETY. 167 
 
 express its dislike or disapprobation of his cou 
 duct. Secondly, that for such actions as arp 
 prejudicial to the interests of others, the indi- 
 vidual is accountable, and may be subjected 
 cither to social or to legal punishments, if so- 
 ciety is of opinion that the one or the other is 
 requisite for its protection. 
 
 In the first place, it must by no means be 
 supposed, because damage, or probability of 
 damage, to the interests of others, can alone 
 justify the interference of society, that there- 
 fore it always docs justify such interference. 
 In many cases, an individual, in pursuing a 
 legitimate object, necessarily and therefore le- 
 gitimately causes pain or loss to others, or 
 intercepts a good which they had a reasonable 
 hope of obtaining. Such oppositions of inter- 
 est between individuals often arise from bad 
 social institutions, but are unavoidable while 
 those institutions last; and some would be 
 unavoidable under any institutions. "Whoever 
 succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a 
 competitive examination ; whoever is preferred 
 to another in any contest for an object which 
 both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of oth- 
 ers, from their wasted exertion and their disap- 
 pointment. But it is, by common admission, 
 better tot the general interest of mankind, that 
 persons should pursue their objects undeterred 
 by this sort of consequences. In other words, 
 society admits no tight, either legal or moral, in 
 the disappointed competitors, to immunity from 
 
168 ON LIBEIJTT. 
 
 this kind of suffering ; and feels called on to in 
 terfere, only wiien means of success have beer 
 employed which it is contrary to the general 
 interest to permit — namely, fraud or treachery, 
 and force. 
 
 Again, trade is a social act. Whoever un- 
 dertakes to sell any description of goods to the 
 public, does what affects the interest of other 
 persons, and of society in general ; and thus 
 his conduct, in principle, comes within the ju- 
 risdiction of society : accordingly, it was once 
 held to be the duty of governments, in all cases 
 which were considered of (importance, to fix 
 prices, and regulate the processes of manu- 
 facture. But it is now recognized, though not 
 till after a long struggle, that both the cheap- 
 ness and the good quality of commodities are 
 moat effectually provided for by leaving the 
 producers and sellers perfectly free, under the 
 sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for 
 supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the 
 so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which rests 
 oa grounds different from, though equally solid 
 with, the principle of individual liberty asserted 
 in this Essay. Restrictions on trade, or on 
 production for purposes of trade, are indeed 
 restraints ; and all restraint, qud restraint, is an 
 evil : but the restraints in question affect only 
 that part of conduct which society is competent 
 to restrain, and are wrong solely because they 
 do not really produce the results which it is de- 
 Bired to produce by them. As the principle of 
 
ON UBBKTT. 169 
 
 individual liberty h not involved in the d«xj' 
 Irine of Free Trade, so neither is it in most of 
 the questions which arise respecting the limits 
 of that doctrine : as for example, what amount 
 of public control is admijjsiblc for tlic preven- 
 tion of fraud by adulteration ; how far sanitary 
 precautions, or arrangements to protect work- 
 people employed in dangerous occupations, 
 should be enforced on employers. Such ques- 
 tions involve considerations of liberty, only in 
 BO far as leaving people to themselves is always 
 better, ceeteris paribus, than controlling them : 
 but that they may be legitimately controlled 
 for these ends, is in principle undeniable. On 
 the other hand, there are questions relating to 
 interference with trade, which are essentiallv 
 questions of liberty ; such as the Maine LaW| 
 already touched upon ; the prohibition of the 
 importation of opium into China ; the restric- 
 tion of the sale of poisons ; all cases, in short, 
 where the object of the interference is to make 
 it impossible or -difficult to obtain a particular 
 commodity. These interferences are objection 
 able, not as infringements on the liberty of the 
 producer or seller, but on that of the buyer. 
 
 One of these examples, that of the sale of 
 poisons, opens a new question ; the proper 
 limits of what may be called the functions of 
 police ; how far liberty may legitimately be in- 
 vaded for the prevention of crime, or of acci- 
 dent. It is one of the undisputed functions of 
 government to take precautions against crimr 
 8 
 
170 ON LIBEliTY. 
 
 before it has been committed, as well as to de 
 tect and punish it afterwards. The preventive 
 lunction of government, however, is far more 
 liable to be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, 
 than the punitory function ; for there is hardly 
 any part of the legitimate freedom of action 
 of a human being which would not admit of 
 being represented, and fairly too, as increasing 
 the facilities for sonic form or other of delin- 
 quency. Nevertheless, if a public authority, or 
 even a private person, sees any one evidently 
 preparing to commit a crime, they are not 
 bound to look on inactive until the crime is 
 committed, but may interfere to prevent it. If 
 poisons were never bought or used for any pur- 
 pose except the commission of murder, it would 
 be right to prohibit their manufacture and sale 
 They may, however, be wanted not only foi 
 innocent but for useful purposes, and restric- 
 tions cannot be imposed in the one case with- 
 out operating in the other. Again, it is a 
 proper office of public authority to guard 
 against accidents. If either a public officer 
 or any one else saw a person attempting to 
 ( ross a bridge which had been ascertained to 
 be unsa:e, and there were no time to warn bin; 
 of his danger, they might seize him and turn 
 him back without any real infringement of hia 
 liberty ; for liberty consists in doing what on(i 
 desires, and he does not desire to fall into the 
 river. Nevertheless, when there is not a cer- 
 tainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one 
 
ON LIBERTY. lYl 
 
 but the person himself can judge of t'ne suffi 
 ciency of the motive which may prompt him 
 to incur the risk : in this case, therefore, (unles? 
 he is a child, or delirious, or in some state of 
 excitement or absorption incompatible with the 
 full use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, I 
 conceive, to be only warned of the danger ; not 
 forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it 
 Similar considerations, applied to such a quep 
 tion as the sale of poisons, may enable us to 
 decide which among the possible modes of reg- 
 ulation are or are not contrary to principle 
 Such a precaution, for example, as that of la* 
 belling the drug with some word expressive of 
 its dangerous character, may be enforced with- 
 out violation of liberty : the buyer cannot wish 
 not to know that the thing he possesses has 
 poisonous qualities. But to require in all cases 
 the certificate of a medical practitioner, would 
 make it sometimes impossible, always expen- 
 sive, to obtain the article for legitimate uses. 
 The only mode apparent to me, in which diffi 
 culties may be thrown in the way of crime 
 committed through this means, without any 
 infringement, worth taking into account, upon 
 the liberty of those who desire the poisonous 
 substance for other purposes, consists in pro- 
 viding what, in the apt language of Benthara, 
 is called "preappointed evidence." This pro- 
 vision is familiar to every one in the case of 
 contracts. It is usual and right that the law, 
 when a contract is entered into, should require 
 
172 ON LIBEKTY. 
 
 as the condition of its enforcing performance 
 that certain formalities should be observed, 
 such as signatures, attestation of witnesses, 
 and the like, in order that in case of subse- 
 quent dispute, there may be evidence to prove 
 that the contract was really entered into, and 
 that there was nothing in the circumstances to 
 render it legally invalid : the effect being, to 
 throw great obstacles in the way of fictitious 
 contracts, or contracts made in circumstances 
 which, if known, would destroy their validity. 
 Precautions of a similar nature might be en< 
 forced in the sale of articles adapted to be in< 
 struments of crime. The seller, for example, 
 might be required to enter in a register the ex- 
 act time of the transaction, the name and ad- 
 dress of the buyer, the precise quality and 
 quantity sold ; to ask the purpose for which it 
 was wanted, and record the answer he received. 
 When there was no medical prescription, the 
 presence of some third person might be re- 
 quired, to bring home the fact to the purchaser, 
 in case there should afterwards be reason to 
 believe that the article had been applied to 
 criminal purposes. Such regulations would in 
 general be no material impediment to obtain- 
 ing the article, but a very considerable one to 
 making an improper use of it without deteo- 
 tion. 
 
 The right inherent in society, to ward off 
 crimes against itself by antecedent precautions, 
 suggests the obvious limitations to the maxim 
 
ON LiniCRTY. 
 
 l73 
 
 that purely self-regarding miaconduct cannot 
 properly be meddled with in the way of pre- 
 vention or punishment. Drunkenness, for ex- 
 ample, in ordinary cases, is not a fit subject 
 for legislative interference ; but I should deem 
 it perfectly legitimate that a person, who had 
 once been convicted of any act of violence to 
 others under the influence of drink, should be 
 placed under a special legal restriction, per 
 Bonal to himself; that if he were afterwards 
 found drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, 
 and that if when in that state he committed 
 another offence, the punishment to which he 
 would be liable for that other offence should 
 be increased in severity. The making himself 
 drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites 
 to do harm to others, is a crime against others. 
 So, again, idleness, except in a person receiv- 
 ing support from the public, or except when it 
 constitutes a breach of contract, cannot with- 
 out tyranny be made a subject of legal punish- 
 ment ; but if either from idleness or from any 
 other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform 
 his legal duties to others, as for instance to 
 support his children, it is no tyranny to force 
 him to fulfil that obligation, by compulsory 
 tabor, if no other means are available. 
 
 Again, there are many acts which, being 
 directly injurious only to the agents them- 
 selves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but 
 which, if done publicly, are a violation of good 
 manners, and coming thus within the categoiy 
 
174 ON i.inr.uTT. 
 
 of odiiiiccB ugaiiibl olliL'i-y, may rigliH'iilly 1m. 
 |)roliibiled. Of Una kind uru oli'ciicod against 
 decency; on which it is unnecessary to dwell, 
 the rather as they are only connected indirectlj 
 with oar subject, the objection to publicity be. 
 ing equally strong in the case of niany actions 
 not in themselves con jemnable, nor supposed 
 CO be so. 
 
 There is another question to which an an- 
 swer must be found, consistent with the prin- 
 ciples which have been laid down. In cases 
 of personal conduct supposed to be blameable, 
 but which respect for liberty precludes society 
 from preventing or punishing, because the evil 
 directly resulting falls wholly on the agent; 
 what the agent is free to do, ought other per- 
 sons to be equally free to counsel or instigate ? 
 This question is not free from difficulty. The 
 case of a person who solicits another to do an 
 act, is not strictly a case of self-rega-ding con- 
 duct. To give advice or offer inducements to 
 any one, is a social act, and may therefore, 
 like actions in general which affect others, be 
 supposed amenable to social control. But a 
 little reflection corrects the first impression, by 
 showing that if the case is not strictly within 
 the definition of individual liberty, yet the 
 reasons on which the principle of individual 
 liberty is grounded, are applicable to it. li 
 people must be allowed, in whatever concerns 
 only themselves, to act as seems best to them 
 selves at their own peril, they must equally be 
 
ON LIBERTr. 17S 
 
 free to consult with one another about what is 
 fit to be so done; to exchange opinions, and 
 give and receive suggestions. Whatever it is 
 permitted to do, it must be p«rmitted to atl- 
 vise to do. The question is doubtful, only 
 when the instigator derives a personal benefit 
 from his advice ; when he makes it his occu- 
 pation, for subsistence or pecuniary gain, to 
 promote what society and the State considei 
 to be an evil. Then, indeed, a new element 
 ol complication is introduced ; namely, the ex- 
 istence of classes of persons with an interest 
 opposed to what is considered as the public 
 weal, and whose mode of living is grounded 
 on the counteraction of it. Ought this to be 
 interfered with, or not ? Fornication, for ex- 
 ample, must be tolerated, and so must gam- 
 bling ; but should a person be free to be a 
 pimp, or to keep a gambling-house? The 
 case is one of those which lie on the exaci 
 boundary line between two principles, and ii 
 is not at once apparent to which of the two it 
 properly belongs. There are arguments on 
 both sides. On the side of toleration it may 
 be said, that the fact of following anything as 
 an occupation, and living or profiting by the 
 practice of it, cannot make that criminal which 
 would otherwise be admissible ; that the act 
 should either be consistently permitted or con- 
 sistently prohibited; that if the principles which 
 we have hitherto d'^fended are true, society has 
 no business, as society, to decide 3 iiy tiling tc 
 
176 ON LIBEKTY. 
 
 be wrong which concerns only I lie individual 
 that it cannot go beyond dissuasion, and thai 
 one person should be as free to persuade, aa 
 another to dissuade. In opposition to this it 
 rnay be contended, that although the public, 
 or the State, are not warranted in authorita- 
 tively deciding, for purposes of repression oi 
 punishment, that such or such conduct affect* 
 ing only the interests of the individual is good 
 or bad, they are fully justified in assuming, if 
 they regard it as bad, that its being so or not 
 's at least a disputable question : That, this 
 being supposed, they cannot be acting wrong- 
 ly in endeavoring to exclude the influence of 
 solicitations which are not disinterested, of 
 instigators who cannot possibly be impartial 
 — who have a direct personal interest on one 
 side, and that side the one which the State 
 believes to be wrong, and who confessedly pro- 
 mote it -for personal objects only. There can 
 surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost, no 
 sacrifice of good, by so ordering matters that 
 persons shall make their election, either wisely 
 or foolishly, on their own prompting, as free as 
 possible from the arts of persons who stimu- 
 late their inclinations for interested purposes 
 of their own. Thus (it may be said) though 
 the statutes respecting unlawful games are 
 utterly indefensible — though all persons should 
 be free to gamble in their own or each other's 
 houses, or in any place of meeting estaolished 
 by their own subscriptions, and open only to 
 
ON LIBEETr. 177 
 
 the members and their visitors — yet public 
 gambling-houses should not be permitted. It 
 is true that the prohibition is never effectual, 
 and that whatever amount of tyrannical power 
 is given to the police, gambling-houses can al- 
 ways be maintained under other pretences 
 but they may be compelled to conduct their 
 operations with a certain degree of secrecy 
 and mystery, so that nobody knowb anything 
 about them but those who seek them; and 
 more than this, society ought not to aim at. 
 There is considerable force in these arguments. 
 I will not venture to decide whether they are 
 sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of pun- 
 ishing the accessary, when the principal is 
 (and must be) allowed to go free ; of fining or 
 imprisoning the procurer, but not the forni- 
 cator, the gambling-house keeper, but not the 
 gambler. Still less ought the common opera- 
 tions of buying and selling to be interfered 
 with on analogous grounds. Aluost every 
 article which is bought and soid may used in 
 excess, and the sellers have a pe.juniary in- 
 terest in encouraging that excess ; but no argu- 
 ment can be founded on this, in favor, for in- 
 stance, of the Maine Law ; because the clast 
 of dealers in strong drinks, though inter; sted 
 in their abuse, are indispensably required for 
 the sake of their legitimate use. The interest 
 however, of these dealers in promoting intem- 
 perance is a real evil, and justifies the Stale in 
 imposing restrictions and requiring guaranteer, 
 
178 OM LIBEKTT. 
 
 which but for thai justification would be ia- 
 fringements of legitimate liberty. 
 
 A further question is, whether the State^ 
 while it permits, should nevertheless indirectlj 
 discourage conduct which it deems contrary to 
 the best interests of the agent; whether, for 
 example, it should take measures to render the 
 means of drunkenness more costly, or add to 
 the difficulty of procuring them, by limiting 
 the number of the places of sale. On this as 
 on most other practical questions, many distinc- 
 tions require to be made. To tax stimulants for 
 the sole purpose of making them more difficult 
 to be obtained, is a measure differing only in 
 degree from their entire prohibition ; and would 
 be justifiable only if that were justifiable. 
 Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those 
 whose means do not come up to the augmented 
 price ; and to those who do, it is a penalty laid 
 on them for gratifying a particular taste. Their 
 choice of pleasures, and their mode of expend- 
 ing their income, after satisfying their legal and 
 moral obligations to the State and to intlivid 
 uals, are their own concern, and mutst rest with 
 their own judgment. These considerations 
 may seem at first sight to condemn the selec- 
 tion of stimulants as special subjects of taxation 
 lor purposes of revenue. But it must be re- 
 membered that taxation for fiscal purposes ia 
 absolutely inevitable ; that in most countries 
 it is necessary that a considerable part ot thai 
 taxation should be indirec*^; that the State, 
 
0« LIBEETT. 1Y9 
 
 therefore, cannot help imposing penaltieu, whi ,h 
 to sonie persons may be prohibitory, on tl o use 
 of some articles of consumption. It is hence 
 tho duty of the State to consider, in the impo- 
 sition of taxes, what commodities the consum- 
 eis can best spare ; and a fortiori, to select ii 
 jncference those of which it deems the use, be 
 yond a very moderate quantity, to be positively 
 injurious. Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, 
 up to the point which produces the largest 
 amount of revenue (supposina; that the State 
 I'.eeds all the revenue which it yields) is not 
 only admissible, but to be approved of. 
 
 The question of making the sale of these 
 commodities a more or less exclusive privilege, 
 must be answered differently, according to the 
 purposes to which the restriction is intended 
 to be subservient. All places of public resort 
 require the rcstiaint of a police, and places of 
 this kind peculiarly, because offences against 
 society are especially apt to originate there. It 
 is, therefore, fit to confine the power of selling 
 these commodities (at least for consumption 
 on the spot) to persons of known or vouched- 
 for lespectability of conduct ; to make such 
 reirulations respecting hours of opening and 
 closing as may be requisite for public surveil- 
 lance, and to withdraw the license if brea lies 
 of the peace repeatedly tali;e place through the 
 conni\ ance or iiicapacity of the keeper of the 
 house, of if it becomes a rendezvous for con- 
 Bocting and preparing offences against the law 
 
180 ON LIBEETr. 
 
 Any further restriction I do not conceive to 
 be, in principle, justifiable. Tlie limitation ia 
 number, for instance, of beer and spirit-housea, 
 for the express purpose of rendering them, more 
 difficult of access, and diminishing the occa- 
 sions of temptation, not only exposes all to 
 an inconvenience because there are some by 
 whom the facility would be abused, but ia 
 suited only to a state of society in which the 
 laboring classes are avowedly treated as chil- 
 dren or savages, and placed under an educa- 
 tion of restraint, to fit them for future admis- 
 sion to the privileges of freedom. This is not 
 the principle on which the laboring classes are 
 professedly governed in any free country ; and 
 no person who sets due value on freedom will 
 give his adhesion to their being so governed, 
 unless after all efforts have been exhausted to 
 educate them for freedom and govern them as 
 freemen, and it has been definitively proved 
 that they can only be governed as children. 
 The bare statement of the alternative shows 
 the absurdity of supposing that such efforts 
 have been made in any case which needs be 
 considered here. It ia only because the insti- 
 tutions of this country are a mass of incon- 
 sistencies, that things find admittance into out 
 practice which belong to the system of des- 
 potic, or what is called paternal, government^ 
 while the general freedom of our institutions 
 precludes the exercise of the amount of con 
 
ON LIBBETr. 181 
 
 tTol necessary to tender the restraint of an) 
 real efficacy as a moral education. 
 
 It was pointed out in an early part of this 
 Essay, that the liberty of the individual, in 
 things wherein the individual is alone con- 
 cerned, implies a corresponding liberty in any 
 nambet of individuals to regulate by mutual 
 agreement such things as regard them jointly, 
 and regard no persons but themselves. This 
 question presejts no difficulty, so long as the 
 will of all the persons implicated remains un- 
 altered ; but since that will may change, it is 
 often necessary, even in things in which they 
 alone are concerned, that they should enter into 
 engagements with one another ; and when tliey 
 do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those en- 
 gagements should be kept. Yet in the laws 
 probably, of every country, this general rule 
 has some exceptions. Not only persons are 
 not held to engagements which violate the 
 rights of third parties, but it is sometimes con- 
 sidered a sufficient reason for releasing them 
 from an engagement, that it is injurious to 
 themselves. In this and most other civilized 
 countries, for example, an engagement by 
 which a person should sell himself, or allow 
 liimself to be sold, as a slave, would be null 
 and void ; neither enforced by law nor by opin- 
 ion. The ground for thus limiting hie power 
 of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, 
 is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this ex- 
 treme case. The reason for not interfering 
 
182 ON MBBBTl. 
 
 anless for the sake of others, with a person i 
 voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty 
 His voluntary choice is evidence that what he 
 BO chooses is desirable, or at the least endur- 
 able, to hina, and his good is on the whole best 
 provided for by allowing him to take his own 
 means of pursuing it. But by selling himself 
 for a slave, he abdicates his liberty ; he fore- 
 goes any future use of it, beyond that single 
 act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the 
 very purpose which is the justification of ai 
 lowing him to dispose of himself. He is no 
 longer free ; but is thenceforth in a position 
 which has no longer the presumption in its 
 favor, that would be afforded by his voluntarily 
 remaining in it. The principle of freedom 
 cannot require that he should be free not to be 
 free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alien- 
 ate his freedom. These reasons, the force of 
 which is so conspicuous in this peculiar case, 
 are evidently of far wider application ; yet a 
 limit is everywhere set to them by the necessi- 
 ties of life, which continually require, not in- 
 deed that we should resign our freedom, but 
 that we should consent to this and the other 
 limitation of it. The principle, however, 
 which demands uncontrolled freedom of ac- 
 tion in all that concerns only the agents them* 
 selves, requires that those who have become 
 bound to one another, in things which concern 
 no third party, should be able to re\ease one 
 another from the engagement : and even with 
 
ON LIBEttTT. 183 
 
 out such voluntary release, tncre are perhaps 
 no contracts or engagements, except those thai 
 relate to money or money's worth, of which one 
 can ventuie to say that there ought to be no 
 liberty whatever of retractation. Baron Wil- 
 helm von Humboldt, in the excellent Essay 
 from which I have already quoted, states it as 
 liis conviction, that engagements which involve 
 personal relations or services, should never be 
 legally binding beyond a limited duration of 
 time ; and that the most important of these 
 engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity 
 that its objects are frustrated unless the feel- 
 ings of both the parties are in harmony with 
 it, should require nothing more than the de- 
 clared will of either party to dissolve it. This 
 subject is too important, and too complicated, 
 to be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch 
 on it only so far as is necessary for purposes of 
 illustration. If the conciseness and generality 
 of Baron Humboldt's dissertation had not ob- 
 liged him in this instance to content himself 
 with enunciating his conclusion without dis- 
 cussing the premises, he would doubtless have 
 recognized that the question cannot be decided 
 on grounds so simple as those to which be con- 
 fines himself. When a person, either by ex- 
 press promise or by conduct, has encouraged 
 another to rely upon his continuing to act in a 
 certain way — to build expectations and calcu- 
 lations, and stake any part of his plan of life 
 upon that su|)position, a nev- eerie ' of moral 
 
184 ON LIBKBTT. 
 
 obligations arises on his part towards that pei 
 son, wliich may possibly be overruled, but can 
 not be ignored. And again, if the relatior 
 between two contracting parties has been fol- 
 lowed by consequences to others ; if it has 
 placed third parties in any peculiar position, 
 or, as in the case of marriage, has even called 
 third parties into existence, obligations arise on 
 the part of both the contracting parties towards 
 those third persons, the fulfilment of which, or 
 at all events the mode of fulfilment, must be 
 greatly affected by the continuance or disrup- 
 tion of the relation between the original par- 
 ties to the coi<tract. It does not follow, nor 
 can I admit, that these obligations extend to 
 requiring the fulfilment of the contract at all 
 costs to the happiness of the reluctant party ; 
 but they are a necessary element in the ques- 
 tion ; and even if, as Von Humboldt main- 
 tains, they ought to make no difference in the 
 legal freedom of the parties to release them- 
 selves from the engagement (and I also hold 
 that they ought not to make much difference), 
 '^bey necessarily make a great difference in the 
 moral freedom. A person is bound to take ah 
 these circumstances into account, before resolv- 
 ing on a step which may affect such important 
 interests of others ; and if he does not allow 
 proper weight to those interests, he is morally 
 responsible for the wrong. I have made thes« 
 obvious remarks for the better illustration of 
 the general principle of liberty, and not be> 
 
ON LinKRTT. 186 
 
 cause they are at all needed ot the paiticulaf 
 question, which, on the contrary, is usuallj 
 discussed as if the interest of children was 
 everything, and that of grown persons noth- 
 ing. 
 
 I have already observed that, owing to the 
 absence of any recognized general principles, 
 liberty is often granted where it should be 
 withheld, as well as withheld where it should 
 be granted ; and one of the cases in which, in 
 the modern European world, the sentiment of 
 liberty is the strongest, is a case where, in my 
 view, it is altogether misplaced. A person 
 should be free to do as he likes in his own con- 
 cerns ; but he ought not to be free to do as he 
 likes in acting for another under the pretext 
 that the affairs of another are his own affairs. 
 The State, while it respects the liberty of each 
 in what specially regards himself, is bound to 
 maintain a vigilant control over his exercise 
 of any power which it allows him to possess 
 over others. This obligation is almost entirely 
 disregarded in the case of the family relations, 
 a case, in its direct influence on human happi- 
 ness, more important than all others taken to- 
 gether. The almost despotic power of hus- 
 bands over wives needs not be enlarged upon 
 here, because nothing more is needed for the 
 complete removal of the evil, than that wives 
 should have the same rights, and should rctive 
 the protection of law in the same manner, aa 
 all other persons ; and because, o: this subject, 
 
186 ON LIBERTT. 
 
 the defenders of established injustice do no 
 avail themselves of Ihe plea of liberty, bul 
 stand forth openly as the clmnipiozis of power. 
 It is in the case of children, that misapplied 
 notions of liberty are a real obstacle to the ful- 
 filment by the State of its duties. One would 
 almost think that a man's children were sup- 
 posed to be literally, and not metaphorically, a 
 part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the 
 smallest interference of law with his absolute 
 and exclusive control over them ; more jealous 
 than of almost any interference with his own 
 freedom of action : so much less do the gen- 
 erality of mankind value liberty than power. 
 Consider, for example, the case of education. 
 Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the 
 State should require and compel the educa- 
 tion, up to a certain standard, of every human 
 being who is born its citizen ? Yet who is 
 there that is not afraid to recognize and assert 
 this truth ? Hardly any one indeed will deny 
 that it is one of the most sacred duties of the 
 parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the 
 father), after summoning a human being into 
 the world, to give to that being an educalion 
 fitting him to perform his part well in life to- 
 wards others and towards himself. But while 
 this is unanimously declared to be the father's 
 duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will 
 bear to hear of obliging him to perform it, ln> 
 stead of his being required to make any exer 
 tioii or sacrifice for securing educati'^n to th« 
 
ON LIBEKTT. 181 
 
 uhild, it is left tb his choice to accept t oi no< 
 when it is provided gratis ! It still remaina 
 uti recognized, that to bring a child into exipt- 
 ence without a fair prospect of being able, no* 
 only to provide food for its body, but instruc- 
 tion and training for its mind, is a moral crime, 
 both against the Unfortunate offspring and 
 against society; and that if the parent does 
 not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see 
 it fulfilled at the charge, as far as possible, of 
 the parent. 
 
 Were the duty of enforcing universal educa- 
 tion once admitted, there would be an end to 
 the difficulties about what the State should 
 teach, and how it should teach, which now 
 convert the subject into a mere battle-field foi 
 sects and parties, causing the time and labor 
 which should have been spent in educating, to 
 be wasted in quarrelling about education. K 
 the government would make up its mind to 
 require for every child a good education, it 
 might save itself the trouble of providing one, 
 it might leave to parents to obtain the educa- 
 tion where and how they pleased, and content 
 itself with helping to pay the school fees of the 
 poorer classes of children, and defraying the 
 entire school expenses of those who have no 
 one else to pay for them. The objections 
 which are urged with reason against State 
 education, do not apply to the enforcement of 
 education by the State, but to the State's tak 
 ing upon itself to direct that education : whicb 
 
188 ON LIBEBTr. 
 
 is a totally different thing. That the whole m 
 any large part of the education of the people 
 should be in State hands, I go as far as any 
 one in deprecating. All that has been said of 
 the importance of individuality of character, 
 and diversity in opinions and modes of con- 
 duct, involves, as of the same unspeakable im- 
 portance, diversity of education. A general 
 State education is a mere contrivance foi 
 moulding people to be exactly like one an- 
 other: and as the mould in which it casta 
 them is that which pleases the predominant 
 power in the government, whether this be a 
 monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the 
 majority of the existing generation, in propor- 
 tion as it is efficient and successful, it estab- 
 lishes a despotism over the mind, leading by 
 natural tendency to one over the body. An 
 education established and controlled by the 
 State, should only exist, if it exist at all, as 
 one among many competing experiments, car- 
 ried on for the purpose of example and stimu 
 ius, to keep the others up to a certain standard 
 of excellence. Unless, indeed, when -society in 
 general is in so backward a state that it could 
 not or would not provide for itself any proper 
 institutions of education, unless the govern 
 mcnt undertook the task ; then, indeed, the 
 government may, as the less of two great evils, 
 take upon itself the business of schools and 
 universities, as it may that of joint-stock com- 
 panies, when private enterprise, in a shape fit 
 
ON uiticurv. ISft 
 
 led for undertaking great works of induslry 
 does not exist in the country. But in general, 
 if the country contains a sufficient number of 
 persons qualified to provide education undei 
 government auspices, the same persons would 
 be able and willing to give an equally good 
 education on the voluntary principle, under 
 the assurance of remuneration afforded by a 
 law rendering education compulsory, combined 
 with State aid to those unable to defray the 
 expense. 
 
 The instrument for enforcing the law could 
 be no other than public examinations, extend- 
 ing to all children, and beginning at an early 
 age. An age might be fixed at which every 
 child must be examined, to ascertain if he (or 
 she) is able to read. If a child proves unablci 
 the father, unless he has some sufficient ground 
 of excuse, might be subjected to a moderate 
 fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by his 
 labor, and the child might be put to school at 
 his expense. Once in every year the examina- 
 tion should be renewed, with a gradually ex- 
 tending range of subjects, so as to make the 
 universal acquisition, and what is more, reten- 
 tion, of a certain minimum of general knowl- 
 edge, virtually compulsory. Beyond that min- 
 imum, there should be voluntary examinations 
 on all subjects, at which all who come up to 
 a certain standard of proficiency might claim 
 a certificate. To prevent the State from exer- 
 cising through these arrangctnents, an impropfci 
 
I1>0 ON MBKllTY. 
 
 influence over opinion, the kiiowleilgc reijuired 
 for passing an examination (beyond the merely 
 instrumental parts of knowledge, such as lan- 
 guages and their use) should, even in the high 
 er class of examinations, be confined to facta 
 and positive science exclusively. The exami- 
 nations on religion, politics, or other disputed 
 topics, should not turn on the truth or false- 
 hood of opinions, but on the matter of fact 
 that such and such an opinion is held, on 
 such grounds, by such authors, or schools, oi 
 churches. Under this system, the rising gen- 
 eration would be no worse off in regard lo all 
 disputed truths, than they are at present ; they 
 would be brought up either churchmen or dis- 
 senters as they now are, the State merely tak 
 ing care that they should be instructed church- 
 men, or instructed dissenters. There would 
 be nothing to hinder them from being taught 
 religion, if their parents chose, at the same 
 schools where they were taught other things. 
 A.11 attempts by the State to bias the conclu- 
 sions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are 
 evil ; but it may very properly offer to ascer- 
 tain and certify that a person possesses the 
 knowledge, requisite to make his conclusions, 
 on any given subject, worth attending to. A 
 student of philosophy would be the better for 
 being able to stand an examination both in 
 Locke and in Kant, whichever of the two he 
 takes up with, or even if with neither : and 
 there is no reaawable objection to examining 
 
ON LIBERTY. 191 
 
 an atheist in the evidences of Christianity, pro- 
 vided he is not required to profess a belief in 
 thetn. The examinations, however, in the* 
 higher branches of knowledge should, I con- 
 ceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giv- 
 ing too dangerous a power to governments, 
 were they allowed to exclude any one from 
 professions, even from the profession of teach- 
 er, for alleged deficiency of qualifications : and 
 I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that de- 
 grees, or other public certificates of scientific 
 or professional acquirements, should be given 
 to all who present themselves for examination, 
 and stand the test ; but that such certificates 
 snould confer no advantage over competitors, 
 other than the weight which may be attached 
 to their testimony by public opinion. 
 
 It is not in the matter of education only 
 Ihat misplaced notions of liberty prevent moral 
 obligations on the part of parents from being 
 recognized, and legal obligations from being 
 imposed, where there are the strongest grounds 
 for the former always, and in many cases for 
 the latter also. The fact itself, of causing the 
 existence of a human being, is one of the most 
 responsible actions in the range of human life. 
 To undertake this responsibility — to bestow a 
 life which may be either a curse or a blessmg 
 — unless the being on whom it is to be be- 
 stowed will have at east the ordinary chances 
 of a desirable existence, is a crime against tna'. 
 being. And in a country either over-peopled 
 
lya ON LIBISBTT. 
 
 or threatened with being so, to produce cinl 
 tlren, beyond a very small number, with the 
 effect of reducing the reward of labor by tbeii 
 competition, is a serious offence against all 
 who live by the remuneration of their labor. 
 The laws which, in many countries on the 
 Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties 
 can show that they have the means of sup- 
 porting a family, do not exceed the legitimate 
 powers of the State : and whether such laws 
 be expedient or not (a question mainly depen 
 dent on local circumstances and feelings), they 
 are not objectionable as violations of liberty. 
 Such laws are interferences of the State to pro- 
 hibit a mischievous act — an act injurious to 
 others, which ought to be a subject of reproba- 
 tion, and social stigma, eyen when it is not 
 deemed expedient to superadd legal punish- 
 ment. Yet the current ideas of liberty, which 
 bend so easily to real infringements of the 
 freedom of the individual, in things which 
 concern only himself, would repel the attempt 
 to put any restraint upon his inclinations when 
 the consequence of their indulgence is a life, 
 or lives, of wretchedness and depravity to the 
 offspring, with manifold evils to those suffi- 
 ciently within reach to be in any way affected 
 by their actions. When we compare the 
 strange respect of mankind for liberty, with 
 their strange want of respect for it, we might 
 imagine that a man had an indispensable 
 right to do harm to others, and no right a' 
 
ON LIBERTY. 193 
 
 all to please himself without giving pain tc 
 any one. 
 
 I have reserved for the last place a large class 
 of questions respecting the limits of govern- 
 ment interference, which, though closely con- 
 nected with the subject of this Essay, do not. 
 in strictness, belong to it. These are cases iu 
 which the reasons against interference do not 
 turn upon the principle of liberty : the question 
 is not about restraining the actions of individ- 
 uals, but about helping them : it is asked 
 whether the government should do, or cause to 
 be done, something fol: their benefit, instead of 
 leaving it to be done by themselves, individu- 
 ally, or in voluntEiry combination. 
 
 The objections to government interference, 
 when it is not such as to involve infiingement 
 of liberty, may be of three kinds. 
 
 The first is, when the thing to be done is 
 likely to be better done by individuals than by 
 the government. Speaking generally, there is 
 no one so fit to conduct any business, or to de- 
 termine how or by whom it shall be conducted, 
 as those who are personally interested in it. 
 This principle condemns the interferences, once 
 so common, of the legislature, or the officers of 
 government, with the ordinary processes of in- 
 dustry. But this part of the subject has been 
 sufficiently enlarged upon by political econo- 
 mists, and is not particularly related to the 
 pnnciples of this Essay. 
 
 The second objection is more nearly allied tr 
 
lUl ON LIBEBTT. 
 
 our subject. In many cuucs, iliough individu 
 als may not do the particular thing so well, oc 
 the average, as the officers of government, it is 
 nevertheless desirable that it should be done by 
 them, rather than by the government, as a 
 means to their own mental education — a mode 
 of strengthening their active faculties, exercis- 
 ing their judgment, and giving them a familiar 
 knowledge of the subjects with which they are 
 thus left to deal. This is a principal, though 
 not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (in 
 cases not political) ; of firee and popular local 
 and municipal institutions ; of the conduct of 
 industrial and philanthropic enterprises by vol- 
 untary associations. These are not questions 
 of liberty, and are connected with that subject 
 only by remote tendencies ; but they are ques- 
 tions of development. It belongs to a different 
 occasion from the present to dwell on these 
 things as parts of national education ; as being, 
 in truth, the peculiar training of a citi;3en, the 
 practical part of the political education of a 
 free people, taking them out of the narrow cir- 
 cle of personal and family selfishness, and ac- 
 customing them to the comprehension of joint 
 interests, the management of joint concerns — - 
 habituating them to act from public or semi- 
 public motives, and guide their conduct by 
 aims which unite instead of isolating them 
 from one another. Without these habits and 
 powers, a free constitution can neither be 
 worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by £h« 
 
01* LisaftTt. lOfi 
 
 too-often transitory nature of political freedoro 
 in counfries where it does not rest upon a suffi- 
 cient basis of .ocal liberties. The managemen; 
 of purely local business by the localities, and 
 of the great enterprises of industry by the 
 union of those who voluntarily supply the pe- 
 cuniary means, is further recommended by all 
 the advantages which hive been set forth in 
 this Essay as belonging to individuality of de- 
 velopment, and diversity of modes of action. 
 Government operations tend to be everywhere 
 alike. With individuals and voluntary asso- 
 ciations, on the contrary, there are varied ex- 
 periments, and endless diversity of experience. 
 What the State can usefully do, is to make 
 itself a central depository, and active circulator 
 and diffuser, of the experience resulting from 
 many trials. Its business is to enable each ex- 
 perimentalist to benefit by the experiments of 
 others, instead of tolerating no experiments but 
 its own. 
 
 The third, and most cogent reason for re- 
 stricting the interference of government, is the 
 great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. 
 Every function superadded to those already ex- 
 ercised by the government, causes its influence 
 over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, 
 ani converts, more and more, the active and 
 awbitious part of the public into hangers-on 
 of the government, or of some party which 
 ■ii?iis at becoming the govnrnmen'; II the 
 roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance 
 
lyt) ON UBKETX. 
 
 oliices, the gi'eat joint-stock companies, tii( 
 universities, and the public charities, were aL 
 erf them branches of the government; if, ic 
 addition, the municipal corporations and local 
 boards, with all that now devolves on them, be- 
 came departments of the central administration 
 if the employes of all these different enterprises 
 were appointed and paid by the government, 
 and looked to the government for every rise in 
 life ; not all the freedom of the press and popu- 
 lar constitution of the legislature would make 
 this or any other country &ee otherwise than 
 in name. And the evil would be greater, the 
 more efficiently and scientifically the adminis- 
 trative machinery was constructed — the more 
 skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best 
 qualified hands and heads with which to work 
 it. In England it has of late been proposed 
 that all the members of the civil service of 
 government should be selected by competitive 
 examination, to obtain for those employmenti 
 the most intelligent and instructed persons pro 
 curable ; and much has been said and writtei 
 for and against this proposal. One of tht 
 arguments most insisted on by its opponents 
 is that the occupation of a permanent official 
 servant of the State does not hold out suffic- 
 ient prospects of emolument and importance to 
 attract the highest talents, which will always 
 be able to find a more inviting career in the 
 professions, or in the sendee of companies and 
 pther public bodies. One would not have beer 
 
ON LIBERTT. 191 
 
 surprised if this argument had been used bj 
 the friends of the proposition, as an answer to 
 its principal difficulty. Coming from the op- 
 poiients it is strange enough. What is urged 
 as an objection is the safety-valve of the pro- 
 posed systerri. If indeed all the high talent of 
 the country could be drawn into the service of 
 the government, a proposal tending to bring 
 about that result might well inspire uneasiness. 
 If every part of the business of society which re- 
 quired organized concert, or large and comprc 
 hensive views, were in the hands of the govern- 
 ment, and if government offices were univer- 
 sally filled by the ablest men, all the enlarged 
 culture and practised intelligence in the country, 
 except the purely speculative, would be concen- 
 trated in a numerous bureaucracy, to whom 
 alone the rest of the community would look 
 for all things : the multitude for direction and 
 dictation in all they had to do ; the able an-l 
 aspiring for personal advancement. To be ad- 
 mitted into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and 
 when admitted, to rise therein, would be the 
 sole objects of ambitiori. Under this r<Sgime, 
 not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for 
 want of practical experience, to criticize oi 
 check the mode of operation of the bureau- 
 cracy, but even if the accidents of despotic oi 
 the natural working of popular institutions oc- 
 casionally raise to the summit a ruler or rulers 
 of reforming inclinations, no reform can Iw 
 effected ixhich is contrary to the interest «f 
 
198 ON UBEKxy. 
 
 the bureaucracy. Such is the melancholy coli 
 dition of the Russian empire, as is shown ii 
 the accounts of those who have had sufficien 
 opportunity of observation. The Czar himself 
 is powerless against the bureaucratic body ; he 
 can send any one of them to Siberia, but he 
 cannot govern without them, or against theii 
 will. On every decree of his they have a tacit 
 veto, by merely refraining from carrying it into 
 effect. In countries of more advanced civiliza- 
 tion and of a more insurrectionary spirit, the 
 public, accustomed to expect everything to be 
 done for them by the State, or at least to do 
 nothing for themselves without asking from 
 the State not only leave to do it, but even 
 how it is to be done, naturally hold the State 
 responsible for all evil which befalls them, 
 and when the evil exceeds their amount oi 
 patience, they rise against the government and 
 make what is called a revolution ; whereupon 
 somebody else, with or without legitimate au 
 thority from the nation, vaults into the seat, 
 issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and every- 
 thing goes on much as it did before ; the bu- 
 reaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else 
 being capable of taking their place. 
 
 A very different spectacle is exhibited among 
 a people accustomed to transact their own busi- 
 ness. In France, a large part of the people 
 having been engaged in military service, many 
 of whom have held at least the rank of nrn- 
 commissioned officers, there are in every pop 
 
ON LTBEETT. 
 
 199 
 
 alar insurreotioii several persons compe ent to 
 take the -lead, and improvise some tolerable 
 plan of action. What the French are in mili- 
 tary affairs, the Americans are in every kind 
 of civil business; let them be left without a 
 government, every body of Americans is able 
 to improvise one, and to carry on that or any 
 other public business with a sufficient amouni 
 of intelligence, order, and decision. This i'"- 
 what every free people ought to be : and a 
 people capable of this is certain to be free ; it 
 will never let itself be enslaved by any man oi 
 body of men because these are able to seize 
 and pull the reins of the central administration. 
 No bureaucracy can hope to make such a peo- 
 ple as this do or undergo anything that they 
 do not like. But where everything is done 
 through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the 
 bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all. 
 The constitution of such countries is an organ- 
 ization of the experience and practical ability 
 of the nation, into a disciplined body for the 
 purpose of governing the rest ; and the more 
 perfect that organization is in itself, the more 
 successful in drawing to itself and educating 
 for itself the persons of greatest capacity from 
 all ranks of the community, the more complete 
 is the bondage of all, the members of the bu- 
 reaucracy included. For the governors are as 
 ttiuch the slaves of their organization and dis- 
 cipline, as the governed are of the governors. 
 A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and 
 
200 ON LIBURTY. 
 
 cre.iture of a desj)otism as the humblest culti 
 vator. An individual Jesuit is to the utmost 
 degree of abasement the slave of his order 
 though the order itself exists for the collective 
 power and importance of its members. 
 
 It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the ab- 
 sorption of all the principal ability of the coun- 
 try into the governing body is fatal, sooner oi 
 later, to the mental activity and progressivenesa 
 of the body itself. Banded together as they 
 are — working a system which, like all sys- 
 tems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure 
 by fixed rules — the official body are under the 
 constant temptation of sinking into indolent 
 routine, or, if they now and then desert that 
 raill-horse round, of rushing into some half- 
 examined crudity which has struck the fancy 
 of some leading member of the corps : and the 
 sole check to these closely allied, though seem- 
 ingly opposite, tendencies, the only stimulus 
 which can keep the ability of the body itself 
 up to, a high standard, is liability to the watch- 
 ful criticism of equal ability outside the body. 
 It is indispensable, therefore, that the meana 
 should exist, independently of the government, 
 of forming such ability, and furnishing it with 
 tne opportunities and experience necessary for 
 a correct judgment of great practical affairs. 
 If we would possess permanently a skilful and 
 efficient body of functionaries — above all, a 
 body able to originate and willing lo adopt 
 improvements ; if we would not iiav( our bu 
 
ON LIBERTY. 201 
 
 leaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this 
 body must not engross all the occupations 
 which form and cultivate the faculties required 
 for the government of mankind. 
 
 To determine the point at which evils, so for- 
 midable to human freedom and advancement 
 begin, or rather at which they begin to predo- 
 minate over the benefits attending the collec- 
 tive application of the force of society, undei 
 its recognized chiefs, for the removal of the 
 obstacles which stand in the way of its well- 
 being, to secure as much of the advantages 
 of centralized power and intelligence, as can 
 be had without turning into governmental 
 channels too great a proportion of the gen- 
 eral activity, is one of the most difficult and 
 complicated questions in the art of govern- 
 ment. It is, in a great measure, a question of 
 detail, in which many and various considera- 
 tions must be kept in view, and no absolute 
 rule can be laid down. But I believe that the 
 practical principle in which safety resides, the 
 ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which 
 to test all arrangements intended for overcom- 
 ing the difficulty, may be conveyed in these 
 words : the greatest dissemination of power 
 consistent with efficiency; but the greatest 
 possible centralization of information, and 
 diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in 
 rimnicipal administration, there would be, aa 
 in the New England States, a very minute 
 division among separate officers, chosen by the 
 
202 ON LIBEKTY. 
 
 localities, of all businusH wliiuh is mil heito: 
 left to the persons directly interested ; but bo 
 sides this, there would be, in each departmeni 
 of local affairs, a central superintendence, form- 
 ing a branch of the general government. Ths 
 organ of this superintendence would concen- 
 trate, as in a focus, the variety of information 
 and experience derived from the conduct of thai 
 branch of public business in all the localities, 
 from everything analogous which is done in 
 foreign countries, and from the general princi- 
 ples of political science. This central organ 
 should have a right to know all that is done, 
 and its special duty should be that of making 
 the knowledge acquired in one place available 
 for others. Emancipated from the petty prej- 
 udices and narrow views of a locality by its 
 elevated position and comprehensive sphere of 
 observation, its advice would naturally carry 
 much authority ; but its actual power, as a per- 
 manent institution, should, I conceive, be limit- 
 ed to compelling the local officers to obey the 
 laws laid down for their guidance. In all 
 things not provided for by general rules, those 
 officers should be left to their own judgment, 
 under responsibility to their constituents. Foi 
 the violation of rules, they should be responsi 
 ble to law, and the rules themselves should be 
 laid down by the legislature ; the central ad- 
 ministrative authority only watching over their 
 execution, and if they were not properly carried 
 into effect, appealing, according to tho natujf 
 
ON LIBERTT. 203 
 
 if the case, to the tribunal to enforce the law 
 or to the constituencies to dismiss the function' 
 aries who had not executed it according to its 
 spirit. Such, in its general conception, is the 
 central superintendence which the Poor Law 
 Board is intended to exercise over the adminis- 
 trators of the Poor Rate throughout the coun- 
 try. Whatever powers the Board exercises 
 beyond this limit, were right and necessary in 
 that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits 
 of mal-administration in matters deeply affect- 
 ing not the localities merely, but the whole 
 community; since no locality has a moral 
 right to make itself by mismanagement a nest 
 of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other 
 localities, and impairing the moral and physical 
 condition of the whole laboring community. 
 The powers of administrative coercion and 
 subordinate legislation possessed by the Poor 
 Law Board (but which, owing to the state of 
 opinion on the subject, are very scantily exer- 
 cised by them), though perfectly justifiable in 
 a case of a first-rate national interest, would 
 be wholly out of place in the superintendence 
 of interests purely local. But a central organ of 
 information and instruction for all the localities, 
 would be equally valuable in all departments 
 of administration. A government cannot have 
 too much of the kind of activity which does 
 not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual 
 exertion and development. The mischief be 
 gins when, instead of calling forth the activitj 
 
204 OH UBEETY. 
 
 and powers of individuals and bodies, it sub. 
 stitutes its own activity for tlieirs ; wlien, in 
 Kiead of informing, advising, and, upon ouca* 
 slon, denouncing, it makes them work in fetters, 
 or bids them stand aside and does their worL 
 instead of them. The worth of a State, in th* 
 long run, is the worth of the individuals com 
 posing it ; and a State which postpones th« 
 interests ol' their mental expansion and eleva 
 tion, to a little more of administrative skill, oi 
 that semblance of it which practice gives, ii 
 the details of business ; a State which dwarfs 
 its men, in order that they may be more docile 
 instruments in its hands even for beneficial 
 purposes, will find that with small men no 
 great thing can really be accomplished ; and 
 that the perfection of machinery to which it 
 has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail 
 it nothing, for want of the vital power which, 
 in order that the machine might wrork morr* 
 fimoothly, it has orefeired to banish. 
 
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