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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will,
so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical
Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the
power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the
individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in
general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical
controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon
to make itself recognized as the vital question of the future. It is
so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided
mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but in the stage of progress
into which the more civilized portions of the species have now
entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a
different and more fundamental treatment.
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous
feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest
familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England. But in
old times this contest was between subjects, or some classes of
subjects, and the government. By liberty, was meant protection
against the tyranny of the political rulers. The rulers were
conceived (except in some of the popular governments of Greece) as in
a necessarily antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled.
They consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe or caste, who
derived their authority from inheritance or conquest; who, at all
events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and whose
supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not desire, to contest,
whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive exercise.
Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as highly dangerous;
as a weapon which they would attempt to use against their subjects,
no less than against external enemies. To prevent the weaker members
of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it
was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the
rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures
would be no less bent upon preying upon the flock than any of the
minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of
defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots,
was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to
exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant
by liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a
recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or
rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler
to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific resistance, or
general rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A second, and
generally a later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional
checks; by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some
sort supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary
condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power.
To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most
European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit. It was
not so with the second; and to attain this, or when already in some
degree possessed, to attain it more completely, became everywhere the
principal object of the lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind
were content to combat one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a
master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously
against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this
point.
A time, however, came in the progress of human affairs, when men
ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should
be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It
appeared to them much better that the various magistrates of the
State should be their tenants or delegates, revocable at their
pleasure. In that way alone, it seemed, could they have complete
security that the powers of government would never be abused to their
disadvantage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and temporary
rulers became the prominent object of the exertions of the popular
party, wherever any such party existed; and superseded, to a
considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit the power of
rulers. As the struggle proceeded for making the ruling power emanate
from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons began to think
that too much importance had been attached to the limitation of the
power itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers
whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What
was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the
people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will
of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its
own will. There was no fear of its 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
dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's own
power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise. This mode
of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last
generation of European liberalism, in the Continental section of
which, it still apparently predominates. Those who admit any limit to
what a government may do, except in the case of such governments as
they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions
among the political thinkers of the Continent. A similar tone of
sentiment might by this time have been prevalent in our own country,
if the circumstances which for a time encouraged it had continued
unaltered.
But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in
persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might
have concealed from observation. The notion, that the people have no
need to limit their power over themselves, might seem axiomatic, when
popular government was a thing only dreamed about, or read of as
having existed at some distant period of the past. Neither was that
notion necessarily disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those
of the French Revolution, the worst of which were the work of an
usurping few, and which, in any case, belonged, not to the permanent
working of popular institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive
outbreak against monarchical and aristocratic despotism. In time,
however, a democratic republic came to occupy a large portion of the
earth's surface, and made itself felt as one of the most powerful
members of the community of nations; and elective and responsible
government became subject to the observations and criticisms which
wait upon a great existing fact. It was now perceived that such
phrases as "self-government," and "the power of the people over
themselves," do not express the true state of the case. The "people"
who exercise the power, are not always the same people with those
over whom it is exercised, and the "self-government" spoken of, is
not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest.
The will of the people, moreover, practically means, the will of the
most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or
those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the
people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number;
and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other
abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government
over individuals, loses none of its importance when the holders of
power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the
strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself
equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of
those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed
interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing
itself; and in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority"
is now generally included among the evils against which society
requires to be on its guard.
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and
is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the
acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that
when society is itself the tyrant --society collectively, over the
separate individuals who compose it--its means of tyrannizing are not
restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political
functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if
it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in
things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social
tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,
since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves
fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details
of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore,
against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs
protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and
feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means
than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct
on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if
possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony
with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon
the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference
of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that
limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a
good condition of human affairs, as protection against political
despotism.
But though this proposition is not likely to be contested
in general terms, the practical question, where to place the
limit--how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control--is a subject on which
nearly everything remains to be done. All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of
restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of
conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first
place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What these rules should be,
is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except
a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which
least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages,
and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and
the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another.
Yet the people of any given age and country no more suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject on which
mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain
among themselves appear to them self-evident and selfjustifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the
examples of the magical influence of custom, which is not only,
as the proverb says a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing any
misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind
impose on one another, is all the more complete because the
subJect is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to
others, or by each to himself. People are accustomed to believe
and have been encouraged in the belief by some who aspire
to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on subjects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render
reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides
them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct,
is the feeling in each person's mind that everybody should
be required to act as he, and those with whom he 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 supported by reasons,
can only count as one person's preference; and if the reasons,
when given, are a mere appeal to a similar preference felt
by other people, it is still only many people's liking instead
of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own preference,
thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason,
but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of
morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written
in his religious creed; and his chief guide in the interpretation even of that. Men's opinions, accordingly, on what
is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the
conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those
which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason--at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears
for themselves--their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest.
Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of
the morality of the country emanates from its class interests,
and its feelings of class superiority. The morality between
Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between
princes and subjects, between nobles and roturiers, between
men and women, has been for the most part the creation of
these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus
generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves. Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendency, or where its ascendency is
unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear
the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another
grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both
in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or
opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters,
or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is
not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments
of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics.
Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious
interests of society have of course had a share, and a large
one, in the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however,
as a matter of reason, and on their own account, than as a
consequence of the sympathies and antipathies which grew
out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which had
little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have
made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with
quite as great force.
The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion
of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the
rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or
opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society in
thought and feeling, have left this condition of things unassailed in
principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some
of its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring
what things society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning
whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals.
They preferred endeavouring to alter the feelings of mankind on the
particular points on which they were themselves heretical, rather
than make common cause in defence of freedom, with heretics
generally. The only case in which the higher ground has been taken on
principle and maintained with consistency, by any but an individual
here and there, is that of religious belief: a case instructive in
many ways, and not least so as forming a most striking instance of
the fallibility of what is called the moral sense: for the odium
theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of the most unequivocal cases
of moral feeling. Those who first broke the yoke of what called
itself the Universal Church, were in general as little willing to
permit difference of religious opinion as that church itself. But
when the heat of the conflict was over, without giving a complete
victory to any party, and each church or sect was reduced to limit
its hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already occupied;
minorities, seeing that they had no chance of becoming majorities,
were under the necessity of pleading to those whom they could not
convert, for permission to differ. It is accordingly on this
battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the individual
against society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and
the claim of society to exercise authority over dissentients openly
controverted. The great writers to whom the world owes what religious
liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as
an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is
accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to
mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that
religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized,
except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace
disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.
In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the most
tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit
reserves. One person will bear with dissent in matters of church
government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate everybody, short
of a Papist or an Unitarian; another, every one who believes in
revealed religion; a few extend their charity a little further, but
stop at the belief in a God and in a future state. Wherever the
sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found
to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed.
In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our political
history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, that of law
is lighter, than in most other countries of Europe; and there is
considerable jealousy of direct interference, by the legislative or
the executive power with private conduct; not so much from any just
regard for the independence of the individual, as from the still
subsisting habit of looking on the government as representing an
opposite interest to the public. The majority have not yet learnt to
feel the power of the government their power, or its opinions their
opinions. When they do so, individual liberty will probably be as
much exposed to invasion from the government, as it already is from
public opinion. But, as yet, there is a considerable amount of
feeling ready to be called forth against any attempt of the law to
control individuals in things in which they have not hitherto been
accustomed to be controlled by it; and this with very little
discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within the
legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the feeling, highly
salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well
grounded in the particular instances of its application.
There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the propriety
or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested.
People decide according to their personal preferences. Some, whenever
they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly
instigate the government to undertake the business; while others
prefer to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one
to the departments of human interests amenable to governmental
control. And men range themselves on one or the other side in any
particular case, according to this general direction of their
sentiments; or according to the degree of interest which they feel in
the particular thing which it is proposed that the government should
do; or according to the belief they entertain that the government
would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very rarely
on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere, as to
what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me
that, in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side
is at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of
government is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and
improperly condemned.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as
entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the
individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means
used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral
coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for
which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in
interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is
self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either
physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully
be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do
so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of
others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons
for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him,
or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with
any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from
which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil
to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which
he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part
which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right,
absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is
sovereign.
It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant
to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We
are not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which
the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still
in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be
protected against their own actions as well as against external
injury. For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those
backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered
as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous
progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for
overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is
warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end,
perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of
government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their
improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.
Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things
anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being
improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing
for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they
are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind have attained
the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction
or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom
we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct
form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no
longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only
for the security of others.
It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be
derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing
independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on
all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense,
grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.
Those interests, I contend, authorize the subjection of individual
spontaneity to external control, only in respect to those actions of
each, which concern the interest of other people. If any one does an
act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for punishing him,
by law, or, where legal penalties are not safely applicable, by
general disapprobation. There are also many positive acts for the
benefit of others, which he may rightfully be compelled to perform;
such as, to give evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fair
share in the common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to
the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection; and to
perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a
fellow-creature's life, or interposing to protect the defenceless
against ill-usage, things which whenever it is obviously a man's duty
to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not
doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but
by his inaction, and in neither case he is justly accountable to them
for the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much more
cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one
answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him
answerable for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the
exception. Yet there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to
justify that exception. In all things which regard the external
relations of the individual, he is de jure amenable to those whose
interests are concerned, and if need be, to society as their
protector. There are often good reasons for not holding him to the
responsibility; but these reasons must arise from the special
expediencies of the case: either because it is a kind of case in
which he is on the whole likely to act better, when left to his own
discretion, than when controlled in any way in which society have it
in their power to control him; or because the attempt to exercise
control would produce other evils, greater than those which it would
prevent. When such reasons as these preclude the enforcement of
responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself should step into
the vacant judgment-seat, and protect those interests of others which
have no external protection; judging himself all the more rigidly,
because the case does not admit of his being made accountable to the
judgment of his fellowcreatures.
But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished
from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest;
comprehending all that portion of a person's life and conduct which
affects only himself, or, if it also affects others, only with their
free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. When I say
only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for
whatever affects himself, may affect others through himself; and the
objection which may be grounded on this contingency, will receive
consideration in the sequel. This, then, is the appropriate region of
human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of
consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most
comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom
of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative,
scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and
publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle,
since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which
concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the
liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same
reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle
requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our
life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such
consequences as may follow; without impediment from our
fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them even
though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.
Thirdly, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty,
within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to
unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons
combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or
deceived.
No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole,
respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government; and none
is completely free in which they do not exist absolute and
unqualified. The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of
pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to
deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each
is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental
or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to
live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as
seems good to the rest.
Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to some persons, may
have the air of a truism, there is no doctrine which stands more
directly opposed to the general tendency of existing opinion and
practice. Society has expended fully as much effort in the attempt
(according to its lights) to compel people to conform to its notions
of personal, as of social excellence. The ancient commonwealths
thought themselves entitled to practise, and the ancient philosophers
countenanced, the regulation of every part of private conduct by
public authority, on the ground that the State had a deep interest in
the whole bodily and mental discipline of every one of its citizens,
a mode of thinking which may have been admissible in small republics
surrounded by powerful enemies, in constant peril of being subverted
by foreign attack or internal commotion, and to which even a short
interval of relaxed energy and self-command might so easily be fatal,
that they could not afford to wait for the salutary permanent effects
of freedom. In the modern world, the greater size of political
communities, and above all, the separation between the spiritual and
temporal authority (which placed the direction of men's consciences
in other hands than those which controlled their worldly affairs),
prevented so great an interference by law in the details of private
life; but the engines of moral repression have been wielded more
strenuously against divergence from the reigning opinion in
self-regarding, than even in social matters; religion, the most
powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of
moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the
ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of
human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism. And some of those
modern reformers who have placed themselves in strongest opposition
to the religions of the past, have been noway behind either churches
or sects in their assertion of the right of spiritual domination: M.
Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Traite
de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more
than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual,
surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most
rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.
Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is
also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch
unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force
of opinion and even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of
all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society,
and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not
one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the
contrary, to grow more and more formidable. The disposition of
mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own
opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so
energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst
feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under
restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not
declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction
can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present
circumstances of the world, to see it increase.
It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at once
entering upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves in the first
instance to a single branch of it, on which the principle here stated
is, if not fully, yet to a certain point, 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
philosophical and practical, on which they rest, are perhaps not so
familiar to the general mind, nor so thoroughly appreciated by many
even of the leaders of opinion, as might have been expected. Those
grounds, when rightly understood, are of much wider application than
to only one division of the subject, and a thorough consideration of
this part of the question will be found the best introduction to the
remainder. Those to whom nothing which I am about to say will be new,
may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if on a subject which for now three
centuries has been so often discussed, I venture on one discussion
more.
CHAPTER II
OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any defence would be
necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities
against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may
suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an
executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe
opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they
shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the 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 insurrection drives ministers and
judges from their propriety;[1] and, speaking generally, it is not,
in constitutional countries, to be apprehended that the government,
whether completely responsible to the people or not, will often
attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so
it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public.
Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one
with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion
unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I
deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by
themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate.
The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as
noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public
opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one,
were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary
opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one
person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing
mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to
the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a
private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was
inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of
silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the
human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who
dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the
opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging
error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a
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 be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle
is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil
still.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority
may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny
its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to
decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person
from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because
they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is
the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is
an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to
rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their
fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical
judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every
one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take
any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the
supposition that any opinion of which they feel very certain, may be
one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves
to be liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to
unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their
own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated,
who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused
to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded
reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who
surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to
a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he
usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of "the
world" in general. And the world, to each 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 largeminded to whom it means anything so
comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in
this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other
ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought,
and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world
the responsibility of being in the right against the 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 any amount of argument can make it,
that ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having
held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false
but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general,
will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general,
are rejected by the present.
The objection likely to be made to this argument, would probably
take some such form as the following. There is no greater assumption
of infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error, than in any
other thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment and
responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it.
Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they
ought not to use it at all? To 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 may be wrong, we should leave all our
interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection
which applies to all conduct can be no valid 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 conscientiousness
but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow
doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of
mankind, 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
nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to
be fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad
taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and,
under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must
act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute
certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of
human life. We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the
guidance of our own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we
forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions
which we regard as false and pernicious.
I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest
difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with
every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and
assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the
very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes
of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties
have any rational assurance of being right.
When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary
conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and
the other are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the inherent
force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not
self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of
judging of it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the
hundredth person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent
men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be
erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now
justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance
among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If there
really is this preponderance--which there must be, unless human
affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state--it
is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything
respectable in man, either as an intellectual or as a moral being,
namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying
his mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone.
There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be
interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and
argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind,
must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own
story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole
strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one
property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be
placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept
constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is
really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has
kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because
it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against
him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself,
and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious.
Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can
make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing
what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and
studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of
mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor
is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other
manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion
by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and
hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable
foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all
that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken
up his position against all gainsayers knowing that he has sought for
objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut
out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any
quarter--he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any
person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.
It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind,
those who are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find
necessary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted 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 canonization 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
Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be questioned, mankind
could not feel as complete assurance of its truth as they now do. The
beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on,
but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.
If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt
fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the
best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have
neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us:
if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better
truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving
it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach
to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of
certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of
attaining it.
Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments
for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an
extreme;" not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme
case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should
imagine that they are not assuming infallibility when they
acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects
which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular
principle or doctrine should be 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 we 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 described as "destitute of
faith, but terrified at scepticism,"--in which people feel sure, not
so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know
what to do without them--the claims of an opinion to be protected
from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its
importance to society. There are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so
useful, not to say indispensable to well-being, that it is as much
the duty of governments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any
other of the interests of society. In a case of such necessity, and
so directly in the line of their duty, something less than
infallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and even bind,
governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the general
opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and still oftener
thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary
beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought, in
restraining bad men, and prohibiting what only such men would wish to
practise. This mode of thinking makes the justification of restraints
on discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their
usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the
responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But
those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the
assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from one point to
another. The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as
disputable, as open to discussion and requiring discussion as much,
as the opinion itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge
of opinions to decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be
false, unless the opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending
itself. And it will not do to say that the heretic may be allowed to
maintain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion, though forbidden
to maintain its truth. The truth of an opinion is part of its
utility. If we would know whether or not it is desirable that a
proposition should be believed, is it possible to exclude the
consideration of whether or not it is true? In the opinion, not of
bad men, but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth
can be really useful: and can you prevent such men from urging that
plea, when they are charged with culpability for denying some
doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they believe to be
false? Those who are on the side of received opinions, never fail to
take all possible advantage of this plea; you do not find them
handling the question of utility as if it could be completely
abstracted from that of truth: on the contrary, it is, above all,
because their doctrine is "the truth," that the knowledge or the
belief of it is held to be so indispensable. There can be no fair
discussion of the question of usefulness, when an argument so vital
may be employed on one side, but not on the other. And in point of
fact, when law or public feeling do not permit the truth of an
opinion to be disputed, they are just as little tolerant of a denial
of its usefulness. The utmost they allow is an extenuation of its
absolute necessity or of the positive guilt of rejecting it.
In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of denying a hearing
to opinions because we, in our own judgment, have condemned them, it
will be desirable to fix down the discussion to a concrete case; and
I choose, by preference, the cases which are least favourable to
me--in which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on the
score of truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest.
Let the opinions impugned be the belief in a God and in a future
state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality. To
fight the battle on such ground, gives a great 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 doctrines which
you do not deem sufficiently certain 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 observe, that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what
it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the
undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them
to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and
reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth on the side of
my most solemn convictions. However positive any one's persuasion may
be, not only of the falsity, but of the pernicious consequences--not
only of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which
I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of an opinion; yet
if, in pursuance of that private judgment, though backed by the
public judgment of his country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the
opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility.
And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less
dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is
the case of all others in which it is most fatal. These are exactly
the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those
dreadful mistakes which excite the astonishment and horror of
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 deplorable success as to the
men, though some of the doctrines have survived to be (as if in
mockery) invoked, in defence of similar conduct towards those who
dissent from them, or from their received interpretation.
Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man
named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public
opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in
an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has
been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age,
as the most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and
prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of
the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of
Aristotle, "i maestri di color che sanno," the two headsprings of
ethical as of all other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all
the eminent thinkers who have since lived--whose fame, still growing
after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole
remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious --was
put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for
impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognized by
the State; indeed his 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
deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal.
To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial iniquity,
the mention of which, after the condemnation of Socrates, would not
be an anti-climax: the event which took place on Calvary rather more
than eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of
those who witnessed his life and conversation, such an impression of
his moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have done
homage to him as the Almighty in person, was 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 as 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
latter of the two, render them extremely unjust in their judgment of
the unhappy actors. These were, to all appearance, not bad men--not
worse than men most commonly are, but rather the contrary; men who
possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full measure, the
religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and people:
the very kind of men who, in all times, our own 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 precisely as he did. Orthodox
Christians who are tempted to think that those who stoned to death
the first martyrs must have been worse men than they themselves are,
ought to remember that one of those persecutors was Saint Paul.
Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if the
impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of
him who falls into it. If ever any one, possessed of power, had
grounds for thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his
cotemporaries, it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch
of the whole civilized world, he preserved through life not only the
most unblemished justice, but what was less to be expected from his
Stoical breeding, the tenderest heart. The few failings which are
attributed to him, were all on the side of indulgence: while his
writings, the highest ethical product of the ancient 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 Christianity was to be a
good and not an evil to the world, with his duties to which he was so
deeply penetrated. Existing society he knew to be in a deplorable
state. But such as it was, he saw or thought he saw, that it was held
together and prevented from being worse, by belief and reverence of
the received divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it his duty
not to suffer society to fall in pieces; and saw not how, if its
existing ties were removed, any others could be formed which could
again knit it together. The new religion 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 history of a crucified God was not
credible to him, and a system which purported to rest entirely upon a
foundation to him so wholly unbelievable, could not be foreseen by
him to be that renovating agency which, after all abatements, it has
in fact proved to be; the gentlest and most amiable of philosophers
and rulers, under a solemn sense of duty, authorized the persecution
of 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 Aurelius instead of those of Constantine. But it would be
equally unjust to him and false to truth, to deny, that no one plea
which can be urged for punishing anti-Christian teaching, was wanting
to Marcus Aurelius for punishing, as he did, the propagation of
Christianity. No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism is
false, and tends to the dissolution of society, than Marcus Aurelius
believed the same things of Christianity; he who, of all men then
living, might have been thought the most capable of appreciating it.
Unless any one who approves of punishment for the promulgation of
opinions, flatters himself that he is a wiser and better man than
Marcus Aurelius--more deeply versed in the wisdom of his time, more
elevated in his intellect above it--more earnest in his search for
truth, or more single-minded in his devotion to it when found;--let
him abstain from that assumption of the joint infallibility of
himself and the multitude, which the great Antoninus made with so
unfortunate a result.
Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of punishment for
restraining irreligious opinions, by any argument which will not
justify Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of religious freedom, when hard
pressed, occasionally accept this consequence, and say, with Dr.
Johnson, that the persecutors of Christianity were in the right; that
persecution is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and
always passes successfully, legal penalties being, in the end,
powerless against truth, though sometimes beneficially effective
against mischievous errors. This is a form of the argument for
religious 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 commend the generosity of its dealing with the persons to
whom mankind are indebted for 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-creatures, 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 bestowed on mankind. That the authors of
such splendid benefits should be requited by martyrdom; 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 and 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 his neck, to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did
not, on hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition.
People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, can not be
supposed to set much value on the benefit; and I believe this view of
the subject is mostly confined to the sort of persons who think that
new truths may have been desirable once, but that we have had enough
of them now.
But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over
persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat
after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all
experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by
persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for
centuries. To speak only of religious opinions: the Reformation broke
out at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of
Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put
down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vaudois were put down. The
Lollards were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even after the
era of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in, it was
successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire,
Protestantism was rooted out; and, most likely, would have been so in
England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen Elizabeth died. Persecution
has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party
to be effectually persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that
Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman empire. It
spread, and became predominant, because the persecutions were only
occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated by long intervals
of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle
sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power
denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.
Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and
a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will
generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real
advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is
true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the
course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover
it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from
favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made
such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
It will be said, that we do not now put to death the introducers of
new opinions: we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we
even build sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put heretics
to death; and the amount of penal infliction which modern feeling
would probably tolerate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is
not sufficient to extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves
that we are yet free from the stain even of legal persecution.
Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by
law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled
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,[2] said to be of unexceptionable
conduct in all relations 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,[3] were
rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted by the judge
and one of the counsel, because they honestly declared that they had
no theological belief; and a third, a foreigner,[4] for the same
reason, was denied justice against a thief. This refusal of redress
took place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can be
allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not profess
belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state; which
is equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws, excluded from
the protection of the tribunals; who may not only be robbed or
assaulted with impunity, if no one but themselves, 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 ignorance of history in those who
assent to it (since it is historically true that a large proportion
of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity
and honor); and would be maintained by no one who had the smallest
conception how many of the persons in greatest repute with the world,
both for virtues and for attainments, are well known, at least to
their 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
persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity that the
qualification for undergoing it is the being clearly proved not to
deserve it. The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less
insulting to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not
believe in a future state necessarily lies, it follows that they who
do believe are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are, by
the fear of hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of the rule
the injury of supposing, that the conception which they have formed
of Christian virtue is drawn from their own consciousness.
These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution, and may be
thought to be not so much an indication of the wish to persecute, as
an 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 continue. In this age the quiet surface of routine is as 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 uncultivated minds, at least as
much the revival of bigotry; and where there is the strongest
permanent 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 whom they have
never ceased to think proper objects of persecution.[5] For it is
this--it is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they
cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they deem important,
which makes this country not a place of mental freedom. For a long
time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they
strengthen the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really
effective, and so effective is it, that the profession of opinions
which are under the ban of society is much less common in England,
than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those which incur
risk of judicial punishment. In respect to all persons but those
whose pecuniary 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
desire no favors from men in power, or from bodies of men, or from
the public, have nothing to fear from the open avowal of any
opinions, but to be ill-thought of and illspoken of, and this it
ought not to require a very heroic mould to enable them to bear.
There is no room for any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such
persons. But though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who
think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to do, it
may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of
them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose
like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole
intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the
Christian Church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping
the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade.
Our merely social intolerance, kills no one, roots out no opinions,
but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active
effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not
perceptibly gain or even lose, ground in each decade or generation;
they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the
narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom they
originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind
with either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a state
of things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without the
unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it maintains all
prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, 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 human mind. A state of things in which a large portion
of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep
the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their
own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit
as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they
have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless
characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the
thinking world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are
either mere conformers 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 narrowing their thoughts and interests to
things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of
principles, that is, to small practical matters, which would come
right of themselves, if but the minds of mankind were strengthened
and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually right until
then; while that which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds, free
and daring speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned.
Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics is no
evil, should consider in the first place, that in consequence of it
there is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical
opinions; and that such of them as could not stand such a discussion,
though they may be prevented from spreading, do not disappear. But it
is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban
placed on all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions.
The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose
whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the
fear of heresy. Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude
of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not
follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it
should land them in something which would admit of being considered
irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man
of deep conscientiousness, and subtile 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 themselves to
think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers,
that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much,
and even more indispensable, to enable average human beings to attain
the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been, and
may again be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of
mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that
atmosphere, an intellectually active people. Where any people has
made a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because
the dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where
there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed;
where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy
humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that
generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods
of history so remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects
which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the
mind of a people stirred up from its 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 Europe 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 fermentation of Germany during the
Goethian and Fichtean period. These periods differed widely in the
particular opinions which they developed; but were alike in this,
that during all three the yoke of authority was broken. In each, an
old mental despotism had been thrown off, and no new one had yet
taken its place. The impulse given at these three periods has made
Europe what it now is. Every single improvement which has taken place
either in the human mind or in institutions, may be traced distinctly
to one or other of them. Appearances have for some time indicated
that all three impulses are well-nigh spent; and we can expect no
fresh start, until we again assert our mental freedom.
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
not freely and openly canvassed. However unwillingly a person who has
a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be
false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it
may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it
will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as
formerly) who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to
what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the
grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence of it
against the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they can
once get their creed taught from authority, naturally think that no
good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned.
Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly impossible for
the received opinion to be rejected wisely and considerately, though
it may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly; for to shut out
discussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once gets in,
beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the
slightest semblance of an argument. Waiving, however, this
possibility--assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind, but
abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against,
argument--this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a
rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is
but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words
which enunciate a truth.
If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cultivated, a
thing which Protestants at least do not deny, on what can these
faculties be more appropriately exercised by any one, than on the
things which concern him so much that it is considered necessary for
him to hold opinions on them? If the cultivation of the
understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is
surely in learning the grounds of one's own opinions. Whatever people
believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to
believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the
common objections. But, some one may say, "Let them be taught the
grounds of their opinions. It does not follow that opinions must be
merely parroted because they are never heard controverted. Persons
who learn 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 hear any one deny, and attempt to disprove
them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a subject like
mathematics, where there is nothing at all to be said on the wrong
side of the question. The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical
truths is, that all the argument is on one side. There are no
objections, and no answers to objections. But on every subject on
which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a
balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even in
natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible
of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric,
some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that
other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown and
until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of
our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more
complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the
business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed
opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favor some
opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of
antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his
adversary's case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity
than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic
success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in
order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the
case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may
have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute
the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what
they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The
rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless
he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or
adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels
most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments
of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them,
and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the
way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact
with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who
actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very
utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and
persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which
the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he
will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets
and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are
called educated men are in this condition, even of those who can
argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but
it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown
themselves into the mental position of those who think differently
from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and
consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the
doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts
of it which explain and justify the remainder; the 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 the 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 equally and impartially to both sides,
and endeavored 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 say, that there is no necessity for
mankind in general to know and understand all that can be said
against or for their opinions by philosophers and theologians. That
it is not needful for common men to be able to expose all the
misstatements or fallacies of an ingenious opponent. That it is
enough if there is always somebody capable of answering them, so that
nothing likely to mislead uninstructed persons remains unrefuted.
That simple minds, having been taught the obvious grounds of the
truths inculcated on them, may trust to authority for the rest, and
being aware that they have neither knowledge nor talent to resolve
every difficulty which can be raised, may repose in the assurance
that all those which have been raised have been or can be answered,
by those who are specially trained to the task.
Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be
claimed for it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of
understanding of truth which ought to accompany the belief of it;
even so, the argument for free discussion is no way weakened. For
even this doctrine 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 opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory?
If not the public, at least the philosophers and theologians who are
to resolve the difficulties, must make 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 between those who can be permitted to receive its
doctrines on conviction, and those who must accept them on trust.
Neither, indeed, are allowed any choice as to what they will accept;
but the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may
admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the
arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may, therefore,
read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special permission,
hard to be obtained. This discipline 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, though not more mental
freedom, than it allows to the mass. By this device it succeeds in
obtaining the kind of mental superiority which its purposes require;
for though culture without freedom never made a large and liberal
mind, it can make a clever nisi prius advocate of a cause. But in
countries professing Protestantism, this resource is denied; since
Protestants hold, at least in theory, that the responsibility for the
choice of a religion must be borne by each for himself, and cannot be
thrown off upon teachers. Besides, in the present state of the world,
it is practically impossible that writings which are read by the
instructed can be kept from the uninstructed. If the teachers of
mankind are to be cognizant of all that they ought to know,
everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of free
discussion, when the received 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 discussion, but too often the
meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it, cease to
suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were
originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid conception and
a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote;
or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained,
the finer essence being lost. The great chapter in human history
which this fact occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly studied
and meditated on.
It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines
and religious creeds. They are 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 perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness,
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; it 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 conversion from one of these doctrines to another, being now
an exceptional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their
professors. Instead of being, as at first, constantly on the alert
either to defend themselves against the world, or to bring the world
over to them, they have subsided into 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 decline 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 doctrines; and in that period of every creed's existence, not a
few persons may be found, who have realized its fundamental
principles in all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered
them in 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 actively--when
the mind is no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to
exercise its vital powers on the questions which its belief presents
to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief
except the formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if
accepting it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in
consciousness, or testing it by personal experience; until it almost
ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human
being. Then are seen the cases, 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, encrusting and petrifying it against all other
influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting
its power by not suffering 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 fitted to make the
deepest impression upon the mind may remain in it as dead beliefs,
without being ever realized in the imagination, the feelings, or the
understanding, is exemplified by the manner in which the majority of
believers hold the doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I here
mean what is accounted such by all churches and sects--the maxims and
precepts contained in the New Testament. These are considered sacred,
and accepted as laws, by all professing Christians. Yet it is
scarcely too much to say that not one Christian in a thousand guides
or tests his individual conduct by reference to those laws. The
standard to which he does refer it, is the custom of his nation, his
class, or his religious profession. He has thus, on the one hand, a
collection of ethical maxims, which he believes to have been
vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his government;
and on the other, a set of every-day judgments and practices, which
go a certain length with some of those maxims, not so great a length
with others, stand in direct opposition to some, and are, on the
whole, a compromise between the Christian creed and the interests and
suggestions of worldly life. To the first of these standards he gives
his homage; to the other his real allegiance. All Christians believe
that the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are illused
by 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 themselves; that
if one take their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that
they should take no thought for the morrow; that if they would be
perfect, they should sell all that they have and give it to the poor.
They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things.
They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard
lauded and never discussed. But in the sense of that living belief
which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the
point to which it is usual to act upon them. The doctrines in their
integrity are serviceable to pelt adversaries with; and it is
understood that they are to be put forward (when possible) as the
reasons for whatever people do that they think laudable. But any one
who reminded them that the maxims require an infinity of things which
they never even think of doing would gain nothing but to be classed
among those very unpopular characters who affect to be better than
other people. The doctrines have no hold on ordinary believers--are
not a power in their minds. They have an habitual respect for the
sound of them, but no feeling which spreads from the words to the
things signified, and forces the mind to take them in, and make them
conform to the formula. Whenever conduct is concerned, they look
round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ.
Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far
otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity
never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised
Hebrews into the religion of the Roman empire. When their enemies
said, "See how these Christians love one another" (a remark not
likely to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier
feeling of the meaning of their creed than they have ever had since.
And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity
now makes so little progress in extending its domain, and after
eighteen centuries, is still nearly confined to Europeans and the
descendants of Europeans. Even with the strictly religious, who are
much in earnest about their doctrines, and attach a greater amount of
meaning to many of them than people in general, it commonly happens
that the part which is thus comparatively active in their minds is
that which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some such person much
nearer in character to themselves. The sayings of Christ coexist
passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect beyond what is
caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland. There are
many reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which are the badge of a sect
retain more of their vitality than those common to all recognized
sects, and why more pains are taken by teachers to keep their meaning
alive; but one reason certainly is, that the peculiar doctrines are
more questioned, and have to be oftener defended against open
gainsayers. Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as
soon as there is no enemy in the field.
The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all traditional
doctrines--those of prudence and knowledge of life, as well as of
morals or religion. All languages and literatures are full of general
observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct
oneself in it; observations which everybody knows, which everybody
repeats, or hears with acquiescence, which are received as truisms,
yet of which most people first truly learn the meaning, when
experience, generally of a painful kind, has made it a reality to
them. How often, when smarting under some unforeseen misfortune or
disappointment, does a person call to mind some proverb or common
saying familiar to him all his life, the meaning of which, if he had
ever before felt it as he does now, would have saved him from the
calamity. There are indeed reasons for this, other than the absence
of discussion: there are many truths of which the full meaning cannot
be realized, until personal experience has brought it home. But much
more of the meaning even of these would have been understood, and
what was understood would have been far more deeply impressed on the
mind, if the man had been accustomed to hear it argued pro and con by
people who did understand it. The fatal tendency of mankind to leave
off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the
cause of half their errors. A contemporary author has well spoken of
"the deep slumber of a decided opinion."
But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an
indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some
part of mankind should persist in error, to enable any to realize the
truth? Does a belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is
generally received--and is a proposition never thoroughly understood
and felt unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have
unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The
highest aim and best result of improved intelligence, it has hitherto
been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment
of all important truths: and does the intelligence only last as long
as it has not achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish
by the very completeness of the victory?
I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of doctrines
which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the
increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be measured by the
number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point of
being uncontested. The cessation, on one question after another, of
serious controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the
consolidation of opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of
true opinions, as it is dangerous and noxious when the opinions are
erroneous. But though this gradual narrowing of the bounds of
diversity of opinion is necessary in both senses of the term, being
at once inevitable and indispensable, we are not therefore obliged to
conclude that all its consequences must be beneficial. The loss of so
important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a
truth, as is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to, or
defending 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 endeavoring to provide a
substitute for it; some contrivance for making the difficulties of
the question as present to the learner's consciousness, as if they
were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his
conversion.
But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have
lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so
magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a
contrivance of this description. They were essentially a negative
discussion of the great questions of philosophy and life, directed
with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one who had
merely adopted the commonplaces of received opinion, that he did not
understand the subject --that he as yet attached no definite meaning
to the doctrines he professed; in order that, becoming aware of his
ignorance, he might be put in the way to attain a stable belief,
resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and
of their evidence. The school disputations of the Middle Ages had a
somewhat similar object. They were intended to make sure that the
pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the
opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of the one and
confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests had indeed
the incurable defect, that the premises appealed to were taken from
authority, not from reason; and, as a discipline to the mind, they
were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which
formed the intellects of the "Socratici viri:" but the modern mind
owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit, and the
present modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest
degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other. A
person who derives all his instruction from teachers or books, even
if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with
cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is
far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both
sides; and the weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his
opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is the
fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic --that which
points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without
establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be
poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any
positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued
too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it,
there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of
intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of
speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name
of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him by
others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which
would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy
with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so
indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than 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 regard for either the certainty or
the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for
ourselves.
It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make
diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until
mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which
at present seems at an incalculable distance. We have hitherto
considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be
false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the
received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is
essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But
there is a commoner case than either of these; when the conflicting
doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the
truth between them; and the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply
the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine embodies
only a part. Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense,
are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part
of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but
exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by which they
ought to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the
other hand, are generally some of these suppressed and neglected
truths, bursting the bonds which kept them down, and either seeking
reconciliation with the truth contained in the common opinion, or
fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves up, with similar
exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the
most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has always been
the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in
revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while
another rises. Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most
part only substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another;
improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of
truth is more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than
that which it displaces. Such being the partial character of
prevailing opinions, even when resting on a true foundation; every
opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the
common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever
amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended. No sober
judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those
who force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have
overlooked, overlook some of those which we see. Rather, he will
think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is more
desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided
asserters too; such being usually the most energetic, and the most
likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which
they proclaim as if it were the whole.
Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed,
and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost in
admiration of what is called civilization, and of the marvels of
modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly
overrating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and
those of ancient 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 compact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its
elements to recombine in a better form and with additional
ingredients. Not that the current opinions were on the whole farther
from the truth than Rousseau's were; on the contrary, they were
nearer to it; they contained more of positive truth, and very much
less of error. Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and has
floated down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable
amount of exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and
these are the deposit which was left behind when the flood subsided.
The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and
demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial
society, are ideas which have never been entirely absent from
cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce
their due effect, though at present needing to be asserted as much as
ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject, have
nearly exhausted their power.
In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of
order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both
necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the
one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a
party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing
what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of
these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of
the other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other
that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless
opinions favorable to democracy and to aristocracy, to property and
to equality, to co-operation and to competition, to luxury and to
abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to liberty and
discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life,
are expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with
equal talent and energy, there is no chance of both elements
obtaining their due; one scale is sure to go up, and the other down.
Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question
of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have
minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment
with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough
process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile
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 neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in
danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there is
not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on
most of these topics. They are adduced to show, by admitted and
multiplied examples, the universality of the fact, that only through
diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human
intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth. When
there are persons to be found, who form an exception to the apparent
unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the
right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth
hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by
their silence.
It may be objected, "But some received principles, especially on
the highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The
Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject
and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly
in error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice,
none can be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing
what Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide
what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the
New Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge of
this from the book itself, can suppose that it was announced, or
intended, as 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, moreover, in terms most
general, often impossible to be interpreted literally, and possessing
rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision
of legislation. To extract from it a body of ethical doctrine, has
never been possible without eking it out from the Old Testament, that
is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous,
and intended only for a barbarous people. St. Paul, a declared enemy
to this Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine and filling up the
scheme of his Master, equally assumes a preexisting morality, namely,
that of the Greeks and Romans; and his advice to Christians is in a
great measure a system of accommodation to that; even to the extent
of giving an apparent sanction to slavery. What is called Christian,
but should rather be termed theological, morality, was not the work
of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later 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 themselves
with cutting off the additions which had been made to it in the
Middle Ages, each sect supplying the place by fresh additions,
adapted to its own character and tendencies. That mankind owe a great
debt to this morality, and to its early teachers, I should be the
last person to deny; but I do not scruple to say of it, that it is,
in many important points, incomplete and one-sided, and that unless
ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it, had contributed to the
formation of European life and character, human affairs would have
been in a worse condition than they now are. Christian morality (so
called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a
protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive;
passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness;
Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its
precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly
over "thou shalt." In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of
asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of
legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as
the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this
falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it
to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by
disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his
fellow-creatures, except so far as a self-interested inducement is
offered to him for consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of
passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found
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 the State
holds even a disproportionate place, infringing on the just liberty
of the individual; in purely Christian ethics that grand department
of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not
the New Testament, that we read the maxim--"A ruler who appoints any
man to an office, when there is in his dominions another man better
qualified for it, sins against God and against the State." What
little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in
modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from
Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists
of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of
honor, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of
our 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 doctrines
and precepts of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ
are all, that I can see any evidence of their having been intended to
be; that they are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive
morality requires; that everything which is excellent in ethics may
be brought within them, with no greater violence to their language
than has been done to it by all who have attempted to deduce from
them any practical system of conduct whatever. But it is quite
consistent with this, to believe that they contain and were meant to
contain, only a part of the truth; that many essential elements of
the highest morality are among the things which are not provided for,
nor intended to be provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the
Founder of Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown aside in
the system of ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances by
the Christian Church. And this being so, I think it a great error to
persist in attempting to find in the Christian doctrine that complete
rule for our guidance, which its author intended it to sanction and
enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe, too, that this
narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil, detracting greatly
from the value of the moral training and instruction, which so many
wellmeaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to promote.
I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings on an
exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular standards
(as for want of a better name they may be called) which heretofore
coexisted with and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiving some
of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there will
result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of
character, which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the
Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathizing in the
conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that other ethics than any
one which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources, must
exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the moral
regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is no
exception to the rule that in an imperfect state of the human mind,
the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions. It is not
necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths not contained in
Christianity, men should ignore any of those which it does contain.
Such 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 Christians
would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they should
themselves be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service to blink
the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with
literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most
valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men who did
not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith.
I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the freedom of
enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the evils of
religious or 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 exacerbated 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
bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect.
Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet
suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always
hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they
attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth
itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into
falsehood. And since there are few mental attributes more rare than
that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between
two sides of a question, of which only one is represented by an
advocate before it, truth has no chance but in proportion as every
side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth,
not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to.
We have now recognized the necessity to the mental wellbeing 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 object is rarely or never the whole truth,
it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of
the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the
whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously
and earnestly 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 itself will be in danger of being lost,
or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the 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 notice of those who say, that the free expression of all
opinions 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 these supposed bounds
are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion
is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given
whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent
who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer,
appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an
intemperate opponent. But this, though an important consideration in
a practical point of view, merges in a more fundamental objection.
Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a
true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur severe
censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it is
mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home
to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to
suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or
misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most
aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith, by
persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not
deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely
possible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the
misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law
presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. With
regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely,
invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of
these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to
interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to
restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion:
against the 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 defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage
can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues
almost exclusively to received opinions. The worst offence of this
kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize those who
hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of this
sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed,
because they are in general few and uninfluential, and nobody but
themselves feels much interest in seeing justice done them; but this
weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those who attack a
prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to
themselves, nor if they could, would it do anything but recoil on
their own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly
received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language,
and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which
they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing
ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the
prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary
opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the
interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important
to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other;
and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much
more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on
religion. It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no
business with restraining either, while opinion ought, in every
instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the
individual case; condemning every one, on whichever side of the
argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of
candor, or malignity, bigotry or intolerance of feeling manifest
themselves, but not inferring these vices from the side which a
person takes, though it be the contrary 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 to 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 number who conscientiously strive towards it.
[1] These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give them
an emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions
of 1858. That illjudged interference with the liberty of 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 far 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 prosecutions. The offence
charged was not that of criticizing institutions, or the acts or
persons of rulers, but of circulating what was deemed an immoral
doctrine, the lawfulness of Tyrannicide.
If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there
ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a
matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be
considered. It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to
examine here, whether the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that
title. I shall content myself with saying, that the subject has been
at all times one of the open questions of morals, that the act of a
private citizen in striking down a criminal, who, by raising himself
above the law, has placed himself beyond the reach of legal
punishment or control, has been accounted by whole nations, and by
some of the best and wisest of men, not a crime, but an act of
exalted virtue and that, right or wrong, it is not of the nature of
assassination but of civil war. As such, I hold that the instigation
to it, in a specific case, may be a proper subject of punishment, but
only if an overt act has followed, and at least a probable connection
can be established between the act and the instigation. Even then it
is not a foreign government, but the very government assailed, which
alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can legitimately punish
attacks directed against its own existence.
[2] Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December
following, he received a free pardon from the Crown.
[3] George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July,
1857.
[4] Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, August 4,
1857.
[5] Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the
passions of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of
the worst parts of our national character on the occasion of the
Sepoy insurrection. The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the
pulpit may be unworthy of notice; but the heads of the Evangelical
party have announced as their principle, for the government of
Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools be supported by public money
in which the Bible is not taught, and by necessary consequence that
no public employment be given to any but real or pretended
Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in a speech delivered to his
constituents on the 12th of 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, among Christians, who worshipped
upon the same foundation. It meant toleration of all sects and
denominations of Christians who believed in the one mediation." I
desire to call attention to the fact, that a man who has been deemed
fit to fill a high office in the government of this country, under a
liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe
in the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who,
after this imbecile display, can indulge the illusion that religious
persecution has passed away, never to return?
CHAPTER III
ON INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELLBEING
SUCH being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings
should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions
without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the
intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man, unless
this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition;
let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that men
should be free to act upon their opinions--to carry these out in
their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their
fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. This last
proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions
should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose
their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed
are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to
some mischievous act. An opinion that corndealers are starvers of the
poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested
when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur
punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before
the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob
in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind, which, without
justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more
important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the
unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference
of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited;
he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he
refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts
according to his own inclination 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 opposite opinions, is not desirable, and
diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more
capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are
principles applicable to men's modes of action, not less than to
their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect
there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be
different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to
varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth
of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one
thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things
which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert
itself. Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions of
customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one
of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief
ingredient of individual and social progress.
In maintaining this principle, the greatest difficulty to be
encountered does not lie in the appreciation of means towards an
acknowledged end, but in the indifference of persons in general to
the end itself. If it were felt that the free development of
individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it
is not only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the
terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a
necessary 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, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as
they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot
comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody;
and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the
majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with
jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction 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 politician, made the text of a
treatise-that "the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the
eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague
and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development
of his powers to a complete and consistent whole;" that, therefore,
the object "towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct
his efforts, and on which especially those who design to influence
their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of
power and development;" that for this there are two requisites,
"freedom, and a variety of situations;" and that from the union of
these arise "individual vigor and manifold diversity," which combine
themselves in "originality."[1]
Little, however, as people are accustomed to a doctrine like that
of Von Humboldt, and surprising as it may be to them to find so high
a value attached to individuality, the question, one must
nevertheless think, can only be one of degree. No one's idea of
excellence in conduct is that people should do absolutely nothing but
copy one another. No one would assert that people ought not to put
into their mode of life, and into the conduct of their concerns, any
impress whatever of their own judgment, or of their own individual
character. On the other hand, it would be absurd to pretend that
people ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in the
world before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done
nothing 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 experience. 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 part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his
own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs of other
people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what their experience
has taught them; presumptive evidence, and as such, have a claim to
this deference: but, in the first place, their experience may be too
narrow; or they may not have interpreted it rightly. Secondly, their
interpretation of experience may be correct but unsuitable to him.
Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary
characters: and his circumstances or his character 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, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and
even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who
does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no
practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental
and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.
The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely
because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because
others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to
the person's own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened, but is
likely to be weakened by his adopting it: and if the inducements to
an act are not such as are consentaneous to his own feelings and
character (where affection, or the rights of others are not
concerned), it is so much done towards rendering his feelings and
character inert and torpid, instead of active and energetic.
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of
life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one
of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his
faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to
foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to
decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to
his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and
exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he
determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one.
It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept
out of harm's way, without any of these things. But what will be his
comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not
only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it.
Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in
perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man
himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown,
battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers
said, by machinery--by automatons in human form--it would be a
considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and
women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world,
and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and
will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a
model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree,
which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to
the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should
exercise their understandings, and that an intelligent following of
custom, or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom, is
better than a blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it. To a
certain extent it is admitted, that our understanding should be our
own: but there is not the same willingness to admit that our desires
and impulses should be our own likewise; or that to possess impulses
of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a peril and a snare.
Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being,
as beliefs and restraints: and strong impulses are only perilous when
not properly balanced; when one set of aims and inclinations is
developed into strength, while others, which ought to coexist with
them, remain weak and inactive. It is not because men's desires are
strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.
There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak
conscience. The natural connection is the other way. To say that one
person's desires and feelings are stronger and more various than
those of another, is merely to say that he has more of the raw
material of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more
evil, but certainly of more good. Strong impulses are but another
name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good may
always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and
impassive one. Those who have most natural feeling, are always those
whose cultivated feelings may be made the strongest. The same strong
susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and powerful,
are also the source from whence are generated the most passionate
love of virtue, and the sternest selfcontrol. It is through the
cultivation of these, that society both does its duty and protects
its interests: not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made,
because it knows not how to make them. A person whose desires and
impulses are his own--are the expression of his own nature, as it has
been developed and modified by his own culture--is said to have a
character. One whose desires and impulses are not his owN, has no
character, no more than a steam-engine has a character. If, in
addition to being his own, his impulses are strong, and are under the
government of a strong will, he has an energetic character. Whoever
thinks that individuality of desires and impulses should not be
encouraged to unfold itself, must maintain that society has no need
of strong natures--is not the better for containing many persons who
have much character--and that a high general average of energy is not
desirable.
In some early states of society, these forces might be, and were,
too much ahead of the power which society then possessed of
disciplining and 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 impulses. To overcome this
difficulty, law and discipline, like the Popes struggling against the
Emperors, asserted a power over the whole man, claiming to control
all his life in order to control his character-which society had not
found any other sufficient means of binding. But society has now
fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which
threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of
personal impulses and preferences. Things are vastly changed, since
the passions of those who were strong by station or by personal
endowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and
ordinances, and required to be rigorously chained up to enable the
persons within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our
times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest every one
lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only
in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the
individual, or the family, do not ask themselves--what do I prefer?
or, what would suit my character and 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 persons of my station and pecuniary
circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a
station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they
choose what is customary, in 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 equally with crimes: until by dint of not
following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their
human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of
any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without
either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.
Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature?
It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. According to that, the one
great offence of man is Self-will. All the good of which humanity is
capable, is comprised in Obedience. You have no choice; thus you must
do, and no otherwise; "whatever is not a duty is a sin." Human nature
being radically corrupt, there is no redemption for any one until
human nature is killed within him. To one 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
surrendering himself to the will of God: and if he uses any of his
faculties for any other purpose but to do that supposed will more
effectually, he is better without them. That is the theory of
Calvinism; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by many who do not
consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in giving a
less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of God; asserting it
to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their
inclinations; of course not in the manner they themselves prefer, but
in the way of 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 present a strong tendency
to this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type
of human character which it patronizes. Many persons, no doubt,
sincerely think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed, are as
their Maker designed them to be; just as many have thought that trees
are a much finer thing when 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 cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out
and consumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer approach made
by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in them, every
increase in any of their capabilities of comprehension, of action, or
of enjoyment. There is a different type of human excellence from the
Calvinistic; a conception of humanity as having its nature bestowed
on it for other purposes than merely to be abnegated. "Pagan
selfassertion" is one of the elements of human worth, as well as
"Christian self-denial."[2] There is a Greek ideal of
self-development, which the Platonic and Christian ideal of
self-government blends with, but does not supersede. It may be better
to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a
Pericles than either; nor 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 cultivating it and calling it forth, within the
limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human
beings become a noble and beautiful object of 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 more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating
feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to
the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to. In
proportion to the development of his individuality, each person
becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being
more valuable to others. There is a greater fulness of life about
his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is
more in the mass which is composed of them. As much compression as is
necessary to prevent the stronger specimens of human nature from
encroaching on the rights of others, cannot be dispensed with; but
for this there is ample compensation even in the point of view of
human development. The means of development which the individual
loses by being prevented from gratifying his inclinations to the
injury of others, are chiefly obtained at the expense of the
development of other people. And even to himself there is a full
equivalent in the better development of the social part of his
nature, rendered possible by the restraint put upon the selfish part.
To be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, develops
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, develops nothing valuable, except such force
of character as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint. If
acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts the whole nature. To give any fair
play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons
should be allowed to lead different lives. In 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 enforcing the will of God or the
injunctions of men.
Having said that Individuality is the same thing with development,
and that it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces,
or can produce, well-developed human beings, I might here close the
argument: for what more or better can be said of any condition of
human affairs, than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to
the best thing they can be? or what worse can be said of any
obstruction to good, than that it prevents this? Doubtless, however,
these considerations will not suffice to convince those who most need
convincing; and it is necessary further to show, that these developed
human beings are of some use to the undeveloped--to point out to
those who do not desire liberty, and would not avail themselves of
it, that they may be in some intelligible manner rewarded for
allowing other people to make use of it without hindrance.
In the first place, then, I would suggest that they might possibly
learn something from them. It will not be denied by anybody, that
originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always
need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when
what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new
practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and
better taste and sense in human life. This cannot well be gainsaid by
anybody who does not believe that the world has already attained
perfection in all its ways and practices. It is true that this
benefit is not capable of being rendered by everybody alike: there
are but few persons, in comparison with the whole of mankind, whose
experiments, if adopted by others, would be likely to be any
improvement on established practice. But these few are the 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 in those which already existed. If there
were nothing new to be done, would human intellect 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? There is only 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 becoming
merely traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest
shock from anything really alive, and there would be no reason why
civilization should not die out, as in the Byzantine Empire. Persons
of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small
minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the
soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an
atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more
individual than any other people--less capable, consequently, of
fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the
small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its
members the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity
they consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to let all
that part of themselves which cannot 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 they become a
mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to
common-place, to point at with solemn warning as "wild," "erratic,"
and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara river for
not flowing smoothly between its banks like a Dutch canal.
I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius, and the
necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both in thought and
in practice, being well aware that no one will deny the position in
theory, but knowing also that almost every one, in reality, is
totally indifferent to it. People think genius a fine thing if it
enables a man to write an exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in
its true sense, that of originality in thought and action, though no
one says that it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart,
think they can do very well without it. Unhappily this is too natural
to be wondered at. Originality 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 themselves original.
Meanwhile, recollecting that nothing was ever yet done which some one
was not the first to do, and that all good things which exist are the
fruits of originality, let them be modest enough to believe that
there is something still left for it to accomplish, and assure
themselves that they are more in need of originality, the less they
are conscious of the want.
In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to
real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things
throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power
among mankind. In ancient history, in the Middle Ages, and in a
diminishing degree through the long transition from feudality to the
present time, the individual was a power in himself; and If he had
either great talents or a high social position, he was a considerable
power. At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it
is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the
world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of
governments 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 opinion, are not always the same
sort of public: in America, they are the whole white population; in
England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that
is to say, collective mediocrity. And what is still greater novelty,
the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or
State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done
for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in
their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers. I am
not complaining of all this. I do not assert that anything better is
compatible, as a general rule, with the present low state of the
human mind. But that does not hinder the government of mediocrity
from being mediocre government. No government by a democracy or a
numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the
opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or
could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign Many
have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they always
have done) by the counsels and 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 respond 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 out the way. The power of compelling
others into it, is not only inconsistent with the freedom and
development of all the rest, but corrupting to the strong man
himself. It does seem, however, that when the opinions of masses of
merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant
power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would be, the
more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the
higher eminences of thought. It Is in these circumstances most
especially, that exceptional individuals, instead of being deterred,
should be encouraged in acting differently from the mass. In other
times there was no advantage in their doing so, unless they acted not
only differently, but better. In this age the mere example of
non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is
itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as
to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break
through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity
has always abounded when and where strength of character has
abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally
been proportional to the amount of 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 the freest scope possible
to uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear which of
these are fit to be converted into customs. But independence of
action, and disregard of custom are not solely deserving of
encouragement for the chance they afford that better modes of action,
and customs more worthy of general adoption, may be struck out; nor
is it only persons of decided mental superiority who have a just
claim to carry on their lives in their own way. There is no reason
that all human existences should be constructed on some one, or some
small number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount
of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his
existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but
because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep; and even
sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a
pair of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure,
or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to
fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like
one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than
in the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have
diversities of taste that is reason enough for not attempting to
shape them all after one model. But different persons also require
different conditions for their spiritual development; and can no more
exist healthily in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can
in the same physical atmosphere and climate. The same things which
are helps to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature,
are hindrances 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 suspends 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 corresponding
diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair
share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic
stature of which their nature is capable. Why then should tolerance,
as far as the public sentiment is concerned, extend only to tastes
and modes of life which extort acquiescence by the multitude of their
adherents? Nowhere (except in some monastic institutions) is
diversity of taste entirely unrecognized; a person may without blame,
either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or music, or athletic
exercises, or chess, or cards, or study, because both those who like
each of these things, and those who dislike them, are too numerous to
be put down. But the man, and still more the woman, who can be
accused either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what
everybody does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if
he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. Persons
require to possess a title, or some other badge of rank, or the
consideration of people of rank, to be able to 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 in dulgence, incur the risk of something
worse than disparaging speeches--they are in peril of a commission de
lunatico, and of having their property taken from them and given to
their relations.[3]
There is one characteristic of the present direction of public
opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked
demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are
not only moderate in intellect, but also 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 movement has set in
towards the improvement of morals, and it is evident what we have to
expect. In these days such a movement has set in; much has actually
been effected in the way of increased regularity of conduct, and
discouragement of excesses; and there is a philanthropic spirit
abroad, for the exercise of which there is no more inviting field
than the moral and prudential improvement of our fellow-creatures.
These tendencies of the times cause the public to be more disposed
than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of conduct,
and 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 prominently, and tends to make the person markedly
dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity.
As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one half of what
is desirable, the present standard of approbation produces only an
inferior imitation of the other half. Instead of great energies
guided by vigorous reason, and strong feelings strongly controlled by
a conscientious will, its result is weak feelings and weak energies,
which therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any
strength either of will or of reason. Already energetic characters on
any large scale are becoming merely traditional. There is now
scarcely any outlet for energy in this country except business. The
energy expended in 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 dimensions. The greatness of
England is now all collective: individually small, we only appear
capable of anything great by our habit of combining; and with this
our moral and religious philanthropists are perfectly contented. But
it was men of another stamp than this that made England what it has
been; and men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline.
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to
human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition
to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according
to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or
improvement. The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of
liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling
people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such
attempts, may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents
of improvement; 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 improvement, is antagonistic to the sway of Custom,
involving at least emancipation from 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 speaking, no
history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the
case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final
appeal; Justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of
custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of
resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had
originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered,
and versed in many of the arts of life; they made themselves all
this, and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the
world. What are they now? The subjects or dependents of tribes whose
forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent
palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only a
divided rule with liberty and progress. A people, it appears, may be
progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop: when does it
stop? When it ceases to possess individuality. If a similar change
should befall the nations of Europe, it will not be in exactly the
same shape: the despotism of custom with which these nations are
threatened is not precisely stationariness. It proscribes
singularity, but it does not preclude change, provided all change
together. We have discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers;
every one must still dress like other people, but the fashion may
change once or twice a year. We thus take care that when there is
change, it shall be for change's sake, and not from any idea of
beauty or convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience
would not strike all the world at the same moment, and be
simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment. But we are
progressive as well as changeable: we continually make new inventions
in mechanical things, and keep them until they are again superseded
by better; we are eager for improvement in politics, in education,
even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly
consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as
ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we
flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever
lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we
had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that
the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing
which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own
type, and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by
combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than
either. We have a warning example in China--a nation of much talent,
and, in some respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good fortune of
having been provided at an early period with a particularly good set
of customs, the work, in some measure, of men to whom even the most
enlightened European must accord, under certain limitations, the
title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable, too, in the
excellence of their apparatus for impressing, as far as possible, the
best wisdom they possess upon every mind in the community, and
securing that those who have appropriated most of it shall occupy the
posts of honor and power. Surely the people who did this have
discovered the secret of human progressiveness, and must have kept
themselves steadily at the head of the movement of the world. On the
contrary, they have become stationary--have remained so for thousands
of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by
foreigners. They have succeeded beyond all hope in what English
philanthropists are so industriously working at--in making a people
all alike, all governing their thoughts and conduct by the same
maxims and rules; and these are the fruits. The modern regime of
public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what the Chinese
educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless
individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against
this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its
professed Christianity, will tend to become another China.
What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe from this lot? What
has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a
stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them,
which when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but
their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals,
classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have
struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something
valuable; and although at every period those who travelled in
different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would
have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been
compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's
development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in
time endured to receive the good which the others have offered.
Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths
for its progressive and many-sided development. But it already begins
to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is
decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people
alike. M. de Tocqueville, in his last important work, remarks how
much more the Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another, than
did those even of the last generation. The same remark might be made
of Englishmen in a far greater degree. In a passage already quoted
from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out two things as necessary
conditions of human development, because necessary to render people
unlike one another; namely, freedom, and variety of situations. The
second of these two conditions is in this country every day
diminishing. The circumstances which surround different classes and
individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more
assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighborhoods,
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 same things, listen to the
same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their
hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same rights
and liberties, and the same means of 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 contact, 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 advantages of easy circumstances, and
opening all objects of ambition, even the highest, to general
competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer the
character of a particular class, but of all classes. A more powerful
agency than even all these, in bringing about a general similarity
among mankind, is the complete establishment, in this and other free
countries, of the ascendancy of public opinion in the State. As the
various social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them to
disregard the opinion of the multitude, gradually became levelled; as
the very idea of resisting the will of the public, when it is
positively known that they have a will, disappears more and more from
the minds of practical politicians; there ceases to be any social
support for 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 Individuality, that it is not easy to see how
it can stand its ground. It will do so with increasing difficulty,
unless the intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its
value--to see that it is good there should be differences, even
though not for the better, even though, as it may appear to them,
some should be for the worse. If the claims of Individuality are ever
to be asserted, the time is now, while much is still wanting to
complete the enforced assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages
that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment. The
demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves, grows by what
it feeds on. If resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one
uniform type, all deviations from that type will come to be
considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature.
Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when they have
been for some time unaccustomed to see it.
[1] The Sphere and Duties of Government, from the German of Baron
Wilhelm von Humboldt, pp. 11-13.
[2] Sterling's Essays.
[3] There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of
evidence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially
declared unfit for the management of his affairs; and after his
death, his disposal of his property can be set aside, if there is
enough of it to pay the expenses of litigation--which are charged on
the property itself. All of the minute details of his daily life are
pried into, and whatever is found which, seen through the medium of
the perceiving and escribing 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 jurors
being little, if at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses;
while the judges, with that extraordinary want of knowledge of human
nature and life which continually astonishes us in English lawyers,
often help to mislead them. These trials speak volumes as to the
state of feeling and opinion among the vulgar 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 of
sanity can desire such freedom. In former days, when it was proposed
to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest putting them in a
madhouse instead: it would be nothing surprising now-a-days were we
to see this done, and the doers applauding themselves, because,
instead of persecuting for religion, they had adopted so humane and
Christian a mode of treating these unfortunates, not without a silent
satisfaction at their having thereby obtained their deserts.
CHAPTER IV
OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL
WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the
individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin?
How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how
much to society?
Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more
particularly concerns it. To 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 contract, and though no good
purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social
obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society
owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society
renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a
certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists,
first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather
certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by
tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly,
in each person's bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable
principle) of the labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the
society or its members from injury and molestation. 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 for their welfare, without going the length of
violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be
justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of
a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others,
society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the
general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it,
becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining
any such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no
persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like
(all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount
of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom,
legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.
It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose
that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human
beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that
they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being
of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any
diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested
exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence
can find other instruments to persuade people to their good, than
whips and scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical sort. I
am the last person to undervalue the self-regarding virtues; they are
only second in importance, if even second, to the social. It is
equally the business of education to cultivate both. But even
education works by conviction and persuasion as well as by
compulsion, and it is by the former only that, when the period of
education is past, the self-regarding virtues should be inculcated.
Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from
the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the
latter. They should be forever stimulating each other to increased
exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their
feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead
of degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor
any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human
creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his
own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the person most
interested in his own well-being, the interest which any other
person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in
it, is trifling, compared with that which he himself has; the
interest which society has in him individually (except as to his
conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect: while,
with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary
man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those
that can be possessed by any one else. The interference of society to
overrule his judgment and purposes in what only regards himself, must
be grounded on general presumptions; which may be altogether wrong,
and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to
individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the
circumstances of such cases than those are who look at them merely
from without. In this department, therefore, of human affairs,
Individuality has its proper field of action. In the conduct of human
beings towards one another, it is necessary that general rules should
for the most part be observed, in order that people may know what
they have to expect; but in each person's own concerns, his
individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise. Considerations
to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be
offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is
the final judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against
advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others
to constrain him to what they deem his good.
I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by
others, ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding
qualities or deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable. If
he is eminent in any of the qualities which 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 admiration
will follow. There is a degree of folly, and a degree of what may be
called (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or
depravation of taste, which, though it cannot justify doing harm to
the person who manifests it, renders him necessarily and properly a
subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt: a person
could not have the opposite qualities in due strength without
entertaining these feelings. Though doing no wrong to any one, a
person may so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a
fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and since this judgment and
feeling are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a
service to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other disagreeable
consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be well, indeed, if
this good office were much more freely rendered than the common
notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could
honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without
being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also, in
various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of any one, not to
the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We
are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to
avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to
choose the 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 pernicious effect on those with whom
he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional
good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these
various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands
of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he
suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and,
as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves,
not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of
punishment. A person who shows rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit--who
cannot live within moderate means--who cannot restrain himself from
hurtful indulgences--who pursues animal pleasures at the expense of
those of feeling and intellect--must expect to be lowered in the
opinion of others, and 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 title to their good offices, which is not
affected by his demerits towards himself.
What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly
inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others, are the only
ones to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of
his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does
not affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts
injurious to others require a totally different treatment.
Encroachment 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 moral
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 abhorrence. Cruelty of
disposition; malice and ill-nature; that most anti-social and odious
of all passions, envy; dissimulation and insincerity, irascibility on
insufficient cause, and resentment disproportioned to the
provocation; the love of domineering over others; the desire to
engross more than one's share of advantages (the [greekword] 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 constitute 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 carried, do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs of any
amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but
they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a
breach of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to
have care for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not
socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same
time duties to others. The term duty to oneself, when it means
anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self-development;
and for none of these is any one accountable to his fellow-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 consideration which a person
may rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and
the reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights
of others, is not a merely nominal distinction. It makes a vast
difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him,
whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right
to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he
displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof
from a person as well as from a thing that displeases 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 endeavor 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 leaving him to himself, If we do not interfere benevolently
by showing interest or concern for him. It is far otherwise if he has
infringed the rules necessary for the protection of his
fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The evil consequences
of his acts do not then fall on 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 that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he is an
offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in judgment
on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own sentence: in
the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering on him,
except what may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty
in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in his.
The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's
life which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others,
many persons will refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can any part
of the conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to
the other members? No person is an entirely isolated being; it is
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 support from
it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or less amount, the general
resources of the community. If he deteriorates his bodily or 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 his fellow-creatures
generally; perhaps becomes a burden on their affection or
benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly any
offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum of
good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct
harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) injurious by his
example; and ought to be compelled to control himself, for the sake
of those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or
mislead.
And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could
be confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society
to abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for
it? If protection against themselves is confessedly due to children
and persons under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to
persons of mature years who are equally incapable of self-government?
If gambling, or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or
uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a
hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited by
law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far as is consistent
with practicability and social convenience, endeavor to repress these
also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law,
ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against
these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are
known to practise them? There is no question here (it may be said)
about restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of new and
original experiments in living. The only things it is sought to
prevent are things which have been tried and condemned from the
beginning of the world until now; things which experience has shown
not to be useful or suitable to any person's individuality. There
must be some length of time and amount of experience, after which a
moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established, and it is
merely desired to prevent generation after generation from falling
over the same precipice which has been fatal to their predecessors.
I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself, may
seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests,
those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at
large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a
distinct and 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 intemperance 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 educating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and might
be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to his family or
creditors, not for the extravagence. If the resources which ought to
have been devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the most
prudent investment, the moral culpability would have been the same.
George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress, but
if he 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 unkindness or ingratitude; 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 consideration generally
due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by
some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference,
is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for
the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself,
which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person
disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the
performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he
is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply
for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for
being drunk on duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage,
or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the
public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed
in that of morality or law.
But with regard to the merely contingent or, as it may be called,
constructive injury which a 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
inconvenience 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
impairing their capacity of rendering to society benefits which
society does not pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot
consent to argue the point as if society had no means of bringing its
weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational conduct,
except waiting till they do something irrational, and then punishing
them, legally or morally, for it. Society has had absolute power over
them during all the early portion of their existence: it has had the
whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try whether it could
make them capable of rational conduct in life. The existing
generation is master both of the training and the entire
circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed make them
perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably deficient
in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in
individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well
able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a
little better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number
of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by
rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to
blame for the consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of
education, but with the ascendency which the authority of a received
opinion always exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge
for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which cannot be
prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or the
contempt of those who know them; let not society pretend that it
needs, besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce
obedience in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all
principles of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with
those who are to abide the consequences. Nor is there anything which
tends more to discredit and frustrate the better means of influencing
conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be among those whom it
is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the
material of which vigorous and independent characters are made, they
will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will ever feel
that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they
have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily comes
to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face of
such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact 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 to others by the vicious or the
self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have a pernicious
effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others with impunity
to the wrong-doer. But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it
does no wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm to the agent
himself: and I do not see how those who believe this, can think
otherwise than that the example, on the whole, must be more salutary
than hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also
the painful or degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly
censured, must be supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.
But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of
the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does
interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong
place. On questions of social morality, of duty to others, the
opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling majority, though
often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right; because on such
questions they are only required to judge of their own interests; of
the manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised,
would affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority,
imposed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding
conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases
public opinion means, at the best, some people's opinion of what is
good or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean
that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over
the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and
considering only their own preference. There are many who consider as
an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for,
and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot,
when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has
been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting
in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between
the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of
another who is offended 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 matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain
from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But
where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its
censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal
experience. In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom
thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling
differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly
disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and
philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers.
These teach that things are right because they are right; because we
feel them to be so. They tell us to search in our own minds and
hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others.
What can the poor public do but apply these 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 instances 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 necessary, to show that the principle
I maintain is of serious and practical moment, and that I am not
endeavoring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils. And it is
not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the
bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the
most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of
the most universal of all human propensities.
As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on
no better grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are
different from theirs, do not practise their religious observances,
especially their religious abstinences. To cite a rather trivial
example, nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to
envenom the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their
eating pork. There are few acts which Christians and Europeans regard
with more unaffected disgust, than Mussulmans regard this particular
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 repugnance; for wine also is
forbidden by their religion, and to partake of it is by all
Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their aversion to the
flesh of the "unclean beast" is, on the contrary, of that peculiar
character, resembling an instinctive antipathy, which the idea of
uncleanness, when once it thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems
always to excite even in those whose personal habits are anything but
scrupulously cleanly and of which the sentiment of religious
impurity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a remarkable example. Suppose
now that in a people, of whom the majority were Mussulmans, that
majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be eaten within
the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in Mahomedan
countries.[1] Would it be a legitimate exercise 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 censured as religious persecution. It might be religious in its
origin, but it would not be persecution for religion, since nobody's
religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable ground of
condemnation would be, that with the personal tastes and
self-regarding concerns of individuals the public has no business to
interfere.
To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it
a gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme
Being, to worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic;
and no other public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of
all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only
irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do
Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the
attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are
justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which do
not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible
consistently to exclude these cases? or who can blame people for
desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of
God and man?
No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is
regarded as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing
these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties;
and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to
say that we may persecute others because we are right, and 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 contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this
country, not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats, or to
interfere with people for worshipping, and for either marrying or not
marrying, according to their creed or inclination. The next example,
however, shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we
have by no means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have
been sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain
at the time of the Commonwealth, they have endeavored, with
considerable success, to put down all public, and nearly all private,
amusements: especially music, dancing, public games, or other
assemblages for purposes of diversion, and the theatre. There are
still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions of
morality and religion these recreations 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 sentiments may at
some time or other command a majority in Parliament. How will the
remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that
shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral
sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not,
with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious
members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely what
should be said to every government and every public, who have the
pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think
wrong. But if the principle of the pretension be admitted, no one can
reasonably object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority,
or other preponderating power in the country; and all persons must be
ready to conform to the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as
understood by the early settlers in New England, if a religious
profession similar to theirs should ever succeed in regaining its
lost ground, as religions supposed to be declining have so often been
known to do.
To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realized
than the one last mentioned. There is confessedly a strong tendency
in the modern world towards a democratic constitution of society,
accompanied or not by popular political institutions. It is affirmed
that in the country where this tendency is most completely
realized--where both society and the government are most
democratic--the United States--the feeling of the majority, to whom
any appearance of a more showy or costly style of living than they
can hope to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual
sumptuary law, and that in many parts of the Union it is really
difficult for a person possessing a very large income, to find any
mode of spending it, which will not incur popular disapprobation.
Though such statements as these are doubtless much exaggerated as a
representation of existing facts, the state of things they describe
is not only a conceivable and possible, but a probable result of
democratic feeling, combined with the notion that the public has a
right to a veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend their
incomes. We have only further to suppose a considerable diffusion of
Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous in the eyes of the
majority to possess more property than some very small amount, or any
income not earned by manual 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 is known that the bad workmen who
form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are
decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages
as good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework or
otherwise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others can
without it. And they employ a moral police, which occasionally
becomes a physical one, to deter skilful workmen from receiving, and
employers from giving, a larger remuneration for a more useful
service. If the public have any jurisdiction over private concerns, I
cannot see that these people are in fault, or that any individual's
particular public can be blamed for asserting the same authority over
his individual conduct, which the general public asserts over people
in general.
But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our
own day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually
practised, and still greater ones threatened with some expectation of
success, and opinions proposed which assert an unlimited right in the
public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks wrong,
but in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number
of things which it admits to be innocent.
Under the name of preventing intemperance the people of one English
colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted
by law from making any use whatever of fermented drinks, except for
medical purposes: 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 prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of the
professed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in this
country. The association, or "Alliance" as it terms itself, which has
been formed for this purpose, has acquired some notoriety through the
publicity given to a correspondence between its Secretary and one of
the very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's share in this
correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes already built on
him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are manifested in
some of his public appearances, 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 persecution," undertakes to point out the "broad
and impassable barrier" which divides such principles from those of
the association. "All matters relating to thought, opinion,
conscience, appear to me," he says, "to be without the sphere of
legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject
only to a discretionary power vested in the State itself, and not in
the individual, to be within it." No mention is made of a third
class, different from either of these, viz., acts and habits which
are not social, but individual; although it is to this class, surely,
that the act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented
liquors, 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, "I claim, as a citizen, a
right to legislate whenever my social rights are invaded by the
social act of another." And now for the definition of these "social
rights." "If anything invades my social rights, certainly the traffic
in strong drink does. It destroys my primary right of security, by
constantly creating and stimulating social disorder. It invades my
right of equality, by deriving a profit from the creation of a
misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my right to free moral and
intellectual development, by surrounding my path with dangers, and by
weakening and demoralizing society, from which I have a right to
claim mutual aid and intercourse." A theory of "social rights," the
like of which probably never before found its way into distinct
language--being nothing short of this--that it is the absolute social
right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in
every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in
the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to
demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So
monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single
interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it
would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever,
except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever
disclosing them; for the moment an opinion which I consider noxious,
passes any one's lips, it invades all the "social rights" attributed
to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested
interest in each other's moral, intellectual, and even physical
perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own
standard.
Another important example of illegitimate interference with the
rightful liberty of the individual, not simply threatened, but long
since carried into triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legislation.
Without doubt, abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the
exigencies of life permit, from the usual daily occupation, though in
no respect religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly
beneficial custom. And inasmuch as this custom cannot be observed
without a general consent to that effect among the industrious
classes, therefore, in so far as some persons by working may impose
the same necessity on others, it may be allowable and right that the
law should guarantee to each, the observance by others of the custom,
by suspending the greater operations of industry on a particular day.
But this justification, 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 restrictions on amusements. It is true that the amusement
of some is the day's work of others; but the pleasure, not to say the
useful recreation, of many, is worth the labor of a few, provided the
occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely resigned. The
operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all worked on
Sunday, seven days' work would have to be given for six days' wages:
but so long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the small
number who for the enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a
proportional increase of earnings; and they are not obliged to follow
those occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument. If a further
remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment by custom of
a holiday on 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 injuriae Diis curae." It remains to be
proved that society or any of its officers holds a commission from on
high to avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence, which is not also
a wrong to our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one man's duty
that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the
religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully
justify them. Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated
attempts to stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the resistance to
the opening of Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old
persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the
same. It IS a determination not to tolerate others in doing what is
permitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the
persecutor's religion. It is a belief that God not only abominates
the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we
leave him unmolested.
I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the little
account commonly made of human liberty, the language of downright
persecution which breaks out from the press of this country, whenever
it feels called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism.
Much might be said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that an
alleged new revelation, and a religion, founded on it, the product of
palpable imposture, not even supported by the prestige of
extraordinary qualities in its founder, is believed by hundreds of
thousands, and has been made the foundation of a society, in the age
of newspapers, railways, and the electric telegraph. What here
concerns us is, that this religion, like other and better religions,
has its martyrs; that its prophet and founder was, for his teaching,
put to death by a mob; that others of its adherents lost their lives
by the same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a
body, from the country in which they first grew up; while, now that
they have been chased into a solitary recess in the midst of a
desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be right
(only that it is not convenient) to send an expedition against them,
and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people.
The article of the Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provocative
to the antipathy which thus breaks through the ordinary restraints of
religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy; which, though
permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems to excite
unquenchable animosity when practised by persons who speak English,
and profess to be a kind of Christians. No one has a deeper
disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution; both for other
reasons, and because, far from being in any way countenanced by the
principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle,
being a mere riveting of the chains of one half of the community, and
an emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation towards
them. Still, it must be remembered that this relation is as much
voluntary on the part of the women 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 common ideas and customs of the world,
which teaching women to think marriage the one thing needful, make it
intelligible that many a woman should prefer being one of several
wives, to not being a wife at all. Other countries are not asked to
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 established
themselves in a remote corner of the earth, which they have been the
first to render habitable to human beings; it is difficult to see on
what 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 perfect freedom of departure
to those who are dissatisfied with their ways. A recent writer, in
some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use his own words,)
not a crusade, but a civilizade, against this polygamous community,
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 community has a
right to force another to be civilized. So long as the sufferers by
the bad law do not invoke assistance from other communities, I cannot
admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in
and require that a condition of things with which all who are
directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to
because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant,
who have no part or concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if
they please, to preach against it; and let them, by any fair means,
(of which silencing the teachers is not one,) oppose the progress of
similar doctrines among their own people. If civilization has got the
better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too
much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly
got under, should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization
that can 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 civilization 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
barbarians.
[1] The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point.
When this industrious and enterprising tribe, the descendants of the
Persian fireworshippers, flying from their native country before the
Caliphs, arrived in Western India, they were admitted to toleration
by the Hindoo sovereigns, on condition of not eating beef. When those
regions afterwards fell under the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors,
the Parsees obtained from them a continuance of indulgence, on
condition of refraining from pork. What was at first obedience to
authority became a second nature, and the Parsees to this day abstain
both from beef and pork. Though not required by their religion, the
double abstinence has had time to grow into a custom of their tribe;
and custom, in the East, is a religion.
CHAPTER V
APPLICATIONS
THE principles asserted in these pages must be more generally
admitted as the basis for discussion of details, before a consistent
application of them to all the various departments of government and
morals can be attempted with any prospect of advantage. The few
observations I propose to make on questions of detail, are designed
to illustrate the principles, rather than to follow them out to their
consequences. I offer, not so much applications, as specimens of
application; which may serve to bring into greater clearness the
meaning and limits of the two maxims which together form the entire
doctrine of this Essay and to assist the judgment in holding the
balance between them, in the cases where it appears doubtful which of
them is applicable to the case.
The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to
society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of
no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance
by other people, if thought necessary by them for their own good, are
the only measures by which society can justifiably express its
dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such
actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual
is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal
punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is
requisite for its protection.
In the first place, it must by no means be supposed, because
damage, or probability of damage, to the interests of others, can
alone justify the interference of society, that therefore it always
does justify such interference. In many cases, an individual, in
pursuing a legitimate object, necessarily and therefore legitimately
causes pain or loss to others, or intercepts a good which they had a
reasonable hope of obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between
individuals often arise from bad social institutions, but are
unavoidable while those institutions last; and some would be
unavoidable under any institutions. Whoever succeeds in an
overcrowded profession, or in a competitive examination; whoever is
preferred to another in any contest for an object which both desire,
reaps benefit from the loss of others, from their wasted exertion and
their disappointment. But it is, by common admission, better for the
general interest of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects
undeterred by this sort of consequences. In other words, society
admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed
competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and feels
called on to interfere, only when means of success have been employed
which it is contrary to the general interest to permit--namely, fraud
or treachery, and force.
Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any
description of goods to the public, does what affects the interest of
other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in
principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it
was once held to be the duty of governments, in all cases which were
considered of importance, to fix prices, and regulate the processes
of manufacture. But it is now recognized, though not till after a
long struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of
commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the
producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal
freedom to the buyers for supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the
so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which rests on grounds different
from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty
asserted in this Essay. Restrictions on trade, or on production for
purposes of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, qua
restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in question affect only
that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are
wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it
is desired to produce by them. As the principle of individual liberty
is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade so neither is it in
most of the questions which arise respecting the limits of that
doctrine: as for example, what amount of public control is admissible
for the prevention of fraud by adulteration; how far sanitary
precautions, or arrangements to protect work-people employed in
dangerous occupations, should be enforced on employers. Such
questions involve considerations of liberty, only in so far as
leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris 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 essentially
questions of liberty; such as the Maine Law, already touched upon;
the prohibition of the importation of opium into China; the
restriction of the sale of poisons; all cases, in short, where the
object of the interference is to make it impossible or difficult to
obtain a particular commodity. These interferences are objectionable,
not as infringements on the liberty of the producer or seller, but on
that of the buyer.
One of these examples, that of the sale of poisons, opens a new
question; the proper limits of what may be called the functions of
police; how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the
prevention of crime, or of accident. It is one of the undisputed
functions of government to take precautions against crime before it
has been committed, as well as to detect and punish it afterwards.
The preventive function of 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 some form or other of
delinquency. Nevertheless, if a public authority, or even a private
person, sees any one evidently preparing to commit a crime, they are
not bound to look on inactive until the crime is committed, but may
interfere to prevent it. If poisons were never bought or used for any
purpose except the commission of murder, it would be right to
prohibit their manufacture and sale. They may, however, be wanted not
only for innocent but for useful purposes, and restrictions cannot be
imposed in the one case without operating in the other. Again, it is
a proper office of public authority to guard against accidents. If
either a public officer or any one else saw a person attempting to
cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and there
were no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn
him back without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty
consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall
into the river. Nevertheless, when there is not a certainty, but only
a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself can judge of the
sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk: in
this case, therefore, (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in some
state of excitement or absorption 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 question as the sale of
poisons, may enable us to decide which among the possible modes of
regulation are or are not contrary to principle. Such a precaution,
for example, as that of labelling the drug with some word expressive
of its dangerous character, may be enforced without violation of
liberty: the buyer cannot wish not to know that the thing he
possesses has poisonous qualities. But to require in all cases the
certificate of a medical practitioner, would make it sometimes
impossible, always expensive, to obtain the article for legitimate
uses. The only mode apparent to me, in which difficulties may be
thrown in the way of crime committed through this means, without any
infringement, worth taking into account, Upon the liberty of those
who desire the poisonous substance for other purposes, consists in
providing what, in the apt language of Bentham, is called
"preappointed evidence." This provision is familiar to every one in
the case of contracts. It is usual and right that the law, when a
contract is entered into, should require as the condition of its
enforcing performance, that certain formalities should be observed,
such as signatures, attestation of witnesses, and the like, in order
that in case of subsequent dispute, there may be evidence to prove
that the contract was really entered into, and that there was nothing
in the circumstances to render it legally invalid: the effect being,
to throw great obstacles in the way of fictitious contracts, or
contracts made in circumstances which, if known, would destroy their
validity. Precautions of a similar nature might be enforced in the
sale of articles adapted to be instruments of crime. The seller, for
example, might be required to enter in a register the exact time of
the transaction, the name and address of the buyer, the precise
quality and quantity sold; to ask the purpose for which it was
wanted, and record the answer he received. When there was no medical
prescription, the presence of some third person might be required, to
bring home the fact to the purchaser, in case there should afterwards
be reason to believe that the article had been applied to criminal
purposes. Such regulations would in general be no material impediment
to obtaining the article, but a very considerable one to making an
improper use of it without detection.
The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes against itself by
antecedent precautions, suggests the obvious limitations to the
maxim, that purely self-regarding misconduct cannot properly be
meddled with in the way of prevention or punishment. Drunkennesses,
for example, in ordinary cases, is not a fit subject for legislative
interference; but I should deem it perfectly legitimate that a
person, who had once been convicted of any act of violence to others
under the influence of drink, should be placed under a special legal
restriction, personal to himself; that if he were afterwards found
drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, and that if when in that
state he committed another offence, the punishment to which he would
be liable for that other offence should be increased in severity. The
making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm
to others, is a crime against others. So, again, idleness, except in
a person receiving support from the public, or except when it
constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without tyranny be made a
subject of legal punishment; but if either from idleness or from any
other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform 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 labor, if no other
means are available.
Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious only to
the agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but
which, if done publicly, are a violation of good manners, and coming
thus within the category of offences against others, may rightfully
be prohibited. Of this kind are offences against decency; on which it
is unnecessary to dwell, the rather as they are only connected
indirectly with our subject, the objection to publicity being equally
strong in the case of many actions not in themselves condemnable, nor
supposed to be so.
There is another question to which an answer must be found,
consistent with the principles which have been laid down. In cases of
personal conduct supposed to be blameable, but which respect for
liberty precludes society from preventing or punishing, because the
evil directly resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is
free to do, ought other persons to be equally free to counsel or
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-regarding conduct. 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. If people must be allowed, in
whatever concerns only themselves, to act as seems best to themselves
at their own peril, they must equally be free to consult with one
another about what is fit to be so done; to exchange opinions, and
give and receive suggestions. Whatever it is permitted to do, it
must be permitted to advise to do. The question is doubtful, only
when the instigator derives a personal benefit from his advice; when
he makes it his occupation, for subsistence, or pecuniary gain, to
promote what society and the State consider to be an evil. Then,
indeed, a new element of complication is introduced; namely, the
existence of classes of persons with an interest opposed to what is
considered as the public weal, and whose mode of living is grounded
on the counteraction of it. Ought this to be interfered with, or not?
Fornication, for example, must be tolerated, and so must gambling;
but should a person be free to be a pimp, or to keep a
gambling-house? The case is one of those which lie on the exact
boundary line between two principles, and it is not at once 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
consistently prohibited; that if the principles which we have
hitherto defended are true, society has no business, as society, to
decide anything to be wrong which concerns only the individual; that
it cannot go beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as free
to persuade, as another to dissuade. In opposition to this it may be
contended, that although the public, or the State, are not warranted
in authoritatively deciding, for purposes of repression or
punishment, that such or such conduct affecting only the interests of
the individual is good or bad, they are fully justified in assuming,
if they regard it as bad, that its being so or not is at least a
disputable question: That, this being supposed, they cannot be acting
wrongly in 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 promote 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 stimulate their inclinations for interested
purposes of their own. Thus (it may be said) though the statutes
respecting unlawful games are utterly indefensible--though all
persons should be free to gamble in their own or each other's houses,
or in any place of meeting established by their own subscriptions,
and open only to the 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, gamblinghouses can always 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 knows 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 punishing
the accessary, when the principal is (and must be) allowed to go
free; of fining or imprisoning the procurer, but not the fornicator,
the gambling-house keeper, but not the gambler. Still less ought the
common operations of buying and selling to be interfered with on
analogous grounds. Almost every article which is bought and sold may
be used in excess, and the sellers have a pecuniary interest in
encouraging that excess; but no argument can be founded on this, in
favor, for instance, of the Maine Law; because the class of dealers
in strong drinks, though interested in their abuse, are indispensably
required for the sake of their legitimate use. The interest, however,
of these dealers in promoting intemperance is a real evil, and
justifies the State in imposing restrictions and requiring
guarantees, which but for that justification would be infringements
of legitimate liberty.
A further question is, whether the State while it permits, should
nevertheless indirectly discourage conduct which it deems contrary to
the best 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
distinctions require to be made. To tax stimulants for the sole
purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained, is a measure
differing only in degree from their entire 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 expending their income, after satisfying their legal and
moral obligations to the State and to individuals, are their own
concern, and must rest with their own judgment. These considerations
may seem at first sight to condemn the selection of stimulants as
special subjects of taxation for purposes of revenue. But it must be
remembered that taxation for fiscal purposes is absolutely
inevitable; that in most countries it is necessary that a
considerable part of that taxation should be indirect; that the
State, therefore, cannot help imposing penalties, which to some
persons may be prohibitory, on the use of some articles of
consumption. It is hence the duty of the State to consider, in the
imposition of taxes, what commodities the consumers can best spare;
and a fortiori, to select in preference those of which it deems the
use, beyond a very moderate quantity, to be positively injurious.
Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, up to the point which produces
the largest amount of revenue (supposing that the State needs all the
revenue which it yields) is not only admissible, but to be approved
of.
The question of making the sale of these 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 restraint 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 respectability of
conduct; to make such regulations respecting hours of opening and
closing as may be requisite for public surveillance, and to withdraw
the license if breaches of the peace repeatedly take place through
the connivance or incapacity of the keeper of the house, or if it
becomes a rendezvous for concocting and preparing offences against
the law. Any further restriction I do not conceive to be, in
principle, justifiable. The limitation in number, for instance, of
beer and spirit-houses, for the express purpose of rendering them
more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions of
temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there
are some by whom the facility would be abused, but is suited only to
a state of society in which the laboring classes are avowedly treated
as children or savages, and placed under an education of restraint,
to fit them for future admission to the privileges of freedom. This
is not the principle on which the 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 is only
because the institutions of this country are a mass of
inconsistencies, that things find admittance into our practice which
belong to the system of despotic, or what is called paternal,
government, while the general freedom of our institutions precludes
the exercise of the amount of control necessary to render the
restraint of any real efficacy as a moral education.
It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay, that the liberty
of the individual, in things wherein the individual is alone
concerned, implies a corresponding liberty in any number of
individuals to regulate by mutual agreement such things as regard
them jointly, and regard no persons but themselves. This question
presents no difficulty, so long as the will of all the persons
implicated remains unaltered; but since that will may change, it is
often necessary, even in things in which they alone are concerned,
that they should enter into engagements with one another; and when
they do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those engagements 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 considered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an
engagement, that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most
other civilized countries, for example, an engagement by which a
person should sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave,
would be null and void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The
ground for thus limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his
own lot in life, is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this
extreme case. The reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of
others, with a person's voluntary acts, is consideration for his
liberty. His voluntary choice is evidence that what he so chooses is
desirable, or at the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the
whole best provided for by allowing him to take his own means of
pursuing it. But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his
liberty; he foregoes any future use of it, beyond that single act. He
therefore defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is the
justification of allowing him to dispose of himself. He is no longer
free; but is thenceforth in a position which has no longer the
presumption in its 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
alienate his freedom. These reasons, the force of which is so
conspicuous in this peculiar case, are evidently of far wider
application; yet a limit is everywhere set to them by the necessities
of life, which continually require, not indeed that we should resign
our freedom, but that we should consent to this and the other
limitation of it. The principle, however, which demands uncontrolled
freedom of action in all that concerns only the agents themselves,
requires that those who have become bound to one another, in things
which concern no third party, should be able to release one another
from the engagement: and even without such voluntary release, there
are perhaps no contracts or engagements, except those that relate to
money or money's worth, of which one can venture to say that there
ought to be no liberty whatever of retractation. Baron Wilhelm von
Humboldt, in the excellent Essay from which I have already quoted,
states it as his conviction, that engagements which involve personal
relations or services, should never be legally binding beyond a
limited duration of time; and that the most important of these
engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity that its objects are
frustrated unless the feelings of both the parties are in harmony
with it, should require nothing more than the declared will of either
party to dissolve it. This subject is too important, and too
complicated, to 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
obliged him in this instance to content himself with enunciating his
conclusion without discussing the premises, he would doubtless have
recognized that the question cannot be decided on grounds so simple
as those to which he confines himself. When a person, either by
express promise or by conduct, has encouraged another to rely upon
his continuing to act in a certain way--to build expectations and
calculations, and stake any part of his plan of life upon that
supposition, a new series of moral obligations arises on his part
towards that person, which may possibly be overruled, but can not be
ignored. And again, if the relation between two contracting parties
has been followed 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 disruption of the relation
between the original parties to the contract. It does not follow, nor
can I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the
fulfilment of the contract at all costs to the happiness of the
reluctant party; but they are a necessary element in the question;
and even if, as Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no
difference in the legal freedom of the parties to release themselves
from the engagement (and I also hold that they ought not to make much
difference), they necessarily make a great difference in the moral
freedom. A person is bound to take all these circumstances into
account, before resolving on a step which may affect such important
interests of others; and if he does not allow proper weight to those
interests, he is morally responsible for the wrong. I have made
these obvious remarks for the better illustration of the general
principle of liberty, and not because they are at all needed on the
particular question, which, on the contrary, is usually discussed as
if the interest of children was everything, and that of grown persons
nothing.
I have already observed that, owing to the 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 concerns; 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 happiness, more important than all the others taken together.
The almost despotic power of husbands over wives needs not be
enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete
removal of the evil, than that wives should have the same rights, and
should receive the protection of law in the same manner, as all other
persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established
injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty, but stand
forth openly as the champions of power. It is in the case of
children, that misapplied notions of liberty are a real obstacle to
the fulfilment by the State of its duties. One would almost think
that a man's children were supposed to be literally, and not
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 generality of mankind value
liberty than power. Consider, for example, the case of education. Is
it not almost a selfevident axiom, that the State should require and
compel the education, 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 education fitting him to perform his
part well in life towards 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.
Instead of his being required to make any exertion or sacrifice for
securing education to the child, it is left to his choice to accept
it or not when it is provided gratis! It still remains unrecognized,
that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being
able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and
training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate
offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil
this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge,
as far as possible, of the parent.
Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there
would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should
teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a
mere battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labor
which should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in
quarrelling about education. If the government would make up its mind
to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the
trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the
education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping
to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and
defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to
pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against
State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the
State, but to the State's taking upon itself to direct that
education: which is a totally different thing. That the whole or any
large part of the 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 conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable
importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a
mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another:
and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the
predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a
priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing
generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it
establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to
one over the body. An education established and controlled by the
State, should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many
competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and
stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence.
Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so backward a state
that it could not or would not provide for itself any proper
institutions of education, unless the government undertook the task;
then, indeed, the government may, as the less of two great evils,
take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may
that of joint-stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape
fitted for undertaking great works of industry does not exist in the
country. But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number
of persons qualified to provide education under government auspices,
the same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good
education on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of
remuneration afforded by a law rendering education compulsory,
combined with State aid to those unable to defray the expense.
The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than public
examinations, extending 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 unable,
the father, unless he has some sufficient ground of excuse, might be
subjected to a moderate fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by his
labor, and the child might be put to school at his expense. Once in
every year the examination should be renewed, with a gradually
extending range of subjects, so as to make the universal acquisition,
and what is more, retention, of a certain minimum of general
knowledge, virtually compulsory. Beyond that minimum, there should be
voluntary examinations on all subjects, at which all who come up to a
certain standard of proficiency might claim a certificate. To prevent
the State from exercising through these arrangements, an improper
influence over opinion, the knowledge required for passing an
examination (beyond the merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such
as languages and their use) should, even in the higher class of
examinations, be confined to facts and positive science exclusively.
The examinations on religion, politics, or other disputed topics,
shouLd not turn on the truth or falsehood of opinions, but on the
matter of fact that such and such an opinion is held, on such
grounds, by such authors, or schools, or churches. Under this system,
the rising generation would be no worse off in regard to all disputed
truths, than they are at present; they would be brought up either
churchmen or dissenters as they now are, the State merely taking care
that they should be instructed churchmen, 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. All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its
citizens on disputed subjects, are evil; but it may very properly
offer to ascertain and certify that a person possesses the knowledge
requisite to make his conclusions, on any given subject, worth
attending to. A student of philosophy would be the better for being
able to stand an examination both in Locke and in Kant, whichever of
the two he takes up with, or even if with neither: and there is no
reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of
Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in
them. The examinations, however, in the higher branches of knowledge
should, I conceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giving too
dangerous a power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any
one from professions, even from the profession of teacher, for
alleged deficiency of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von
Humboldt, that degrees, or other public certificates of scientific or
professional acquirements, should be given to all who present
themselves for examination, and stand the test; but that such
certificates should 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 that 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 blessing--unless the being on whom it is
to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable
existence, is a crime against that being. And in a country either
over-peopled or threatened with being so, to produce children, beyond
a very small number, with the effect of reducing the reward of labor
by their 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 supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate
powers of the State: and whether such laws be expedient or not (a
question mainly dependent on local circumstances and feelings), they
are not objectionable as violations of liberty. Such laws are
interferences of the State to prohibit a mischievous act--an act
injurious to others, which ought to be a subject of reprobation, and
social stigma, even when it is not deemed expedient to superadd legal
punishment. Yet the current ideas of liberty, which bend so easily to
real 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 sufficiently within reach to be in any way
affected by their actions. When we compare the strange respect of
mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for it, we
might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm to
others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to
any one.
I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions
respecting the limits of government interference, which, though
closely connected with the subject of this Essay, do not, in
strictness, belong to it. These are cases in which the reasons
against interference do not turn upon the principle of liberty: the
question is not about restraining the actions of individuals, but
about helping them: it is asked whether the government should do, or
cause to be done, something for their benefit, instead of leaving it
to be done by themselves, individually, or in voluntary combination.
The objections to government interference, when it is not such as
to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.
The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done
by individuals than by the government. Speaking generally, there is
no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom
it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it.
This principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the
legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary
processes of industry. But this part of the subject has been
sufficiently enlarged upon by political economists, and is not
particularly related to the principles of this Essay.
The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many
cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on
the average, as the officers of government, it is 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, exercising 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 free and
popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of
industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations.
These are not questions of liberty, and are connected with that
subject only by remote tendencies; but they are questions of
development. It belongs to a different occasion from the present to
dwell on these things as parts of national education; as being, in
truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the
political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow
circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to
the comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint
concerns--habituating them to act from public or semipublic 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 the too-often transitory nature of political freedom in countries
where it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties.
The management of purely local business by the localities, and of the
great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily
supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the
advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to
individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action.
Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals
and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied
experiments, 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 experimentalist to benefit by
the experiments of others, instead of tolerating no experiments but
its own.
The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference
of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its
power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the
government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more
widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and
ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of
some party which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the
railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock
companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of
them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal
corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them,
became 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 popular constitution of the
legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than
in name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and
scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed--the more
skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and
heads with which to work it. In England it has of late been proposed
that all the members of the civil service of government should be
selected by competitive examination, to obtain for those employments
the most intelligent and instructed persons procurable; and much has
been said and written for and against this proposal. One of the
arguments most insisted on by its opponents is that the occupation of
a permanent official servant of the State does not hold out
sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract the
highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting
career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other
public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this argument had
been used by the friends of the proposition, as an answer to its
principal difficulty. Coming from the opponents it is strange enough.
What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed
system. If indeed all the high talent of the country could be drawn
into the service of the government, a proposal tending to bring about
that result might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the
business of society which required organized concert, or large and
comprehensive views, were in the hands of the government, and if
government offices were universally filled by the ablest men, all the
enlarged culture and practised intelligence in the country, except
the purely speculative, would be concentrated 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 and aspiring for personal advancement. To be admitted
into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when admitted, to rise
therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under this regime,
not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of practical
experience, to criticize or check the mode of operation of the
bureaucracy, but even if the accidents of despotic or the natural
working of popular institutions occasionally raise to the summit a
ruler or rulers of reforming inclinations, no reform can be effected
which is contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the
melancholy condition of the Russian empire, as is shown in the
accounts of those who have had sufficient opportunity of observation.
The Czar himself is powerless against the bureaucratic body: he can
send any one of them to Siberia, but he cannot govern without them,
or against their will. On every decree of his they have a tacit veto,
by merely refraining from carrying it into effect. In countries of
more advanced civilization 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 of patience, they rise against
the government and make what is called a revolution; whereupon
somebody else, with or without legitimate authority from the nation,
vaults into the seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and
everything goes on much as it did before; the bureaucracy being
unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking their place.
A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed
to transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people
having been engaged in military service, many of whom have held at
least the rank of noncommissioned officers, there are in every
popular insurrection several persons competent to take the lead, and
improvise some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in
military affairs, the Americans are in every kind of civil business;
let them be left without a government, every body of Americans is
able to improvise one, and to carry on that or any other public
business with a sufficient amount of intelligence, order and
decision. This is what every free people ought to be: and a people
capable of this is certain to be free; it will never let itself be
enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize
and pull the reins of the central administration. No bureaucracy can
hope to make such a people as this do or undergo 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 organization 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 bureaucracy included. For the governors are as much
the slaves of their organization and discipline, as the governed are
of the governors. A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and creature
of a despotism as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is to
the utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order though the
order itself exists for the collective power and importance of its
members.
It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the
principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal,
sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the
body itself. Banded together as they are--working a system which,
like all systems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure by fixed
rules--the official body are under the constant temptation of sinking
into indolent routine, or, if they now and then desert that
mill-horse round, of rushing into some half-examined crudity which
has struck the fancy of some leading member of the corps: and the
sole check to these closely allied, though seemingly opposite,
tendencies, the only stimulus which can keep the ability of the body
itself up to a high standard, is liability to the watchful criticism
of equal ability outside the body. It is indispensable, therefore,
that the means should exist, independently of the government, of
forming such ability, and furnishing it with the 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 to
adopt improvements; if we would not have our bureaucracy 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 formidable to human
freedom and advancement begin, or rather at which they begin to
predominate over the benefits attending the collective application of
the force of society, under 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 general activity, is one of the most difficult and
complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great
measure, a question of detail, in which many and various
considerations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid
down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety
resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test
all arrangements intended for overcoming the 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
municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England
States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the
localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons
directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each
department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a
branch of the general government. The organ of this superintendence
would concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and
experience derived from the conduct of that branch of public business
in all the localities, from everything analogous which is done in
foreign countries, and from the general principles of political
science. This 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 prejudices and narrow views of a locality by its elevated
position and comprehensive sphere of observation, its advice would
naturally carry much authority; but its actual power, as a permanent
institution, should, I conceive, be limited to 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. For the violation of rules, they should be responsible
to law, and the rules themselves should be laid down by the
legislature; the central administrative authority only watching over
their execution, and if they were not properly carried into effect,
appealing, according to the nature of the case, to the tribunal to
enforce the law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the
functionaries 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 administrators of the
Poor Rate throughout the country. Whatever powers the Board exercises
beyond this limit, were right and necessary in that peculiar case,
for the cure of rooted habits of mal-administration in matters deeply
affecting not the localities merely, but the whole community; since
no locality has a moral right to make itself by mismanagement a nest
of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other 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 exercised 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
begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of
individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs;
when, instead of informing, advising, and upon occasion denouncing,
it makes them work in fetters or bids them stand aside and does their
work instead of them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the
worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones
the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little
more of administrative skill or that semblance of it which practice
gives, in the details of business; a State, which dwarfs its men, in
order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for
beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can
really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which
it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for
want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work
