esome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers in their own judgement 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 quote 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 end quote that therefore the objects toward which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts and on which especially those who are designed to influence their fellow men must ever keep their eyes is the individuality of power and development end quote that for this there are two requisites quote freedom and variety of situations end quote and that from the union of these arise quote individual vigor and manifold diversity end quote which combine themselves in originality footnote from the sphere and duties of government from the German of Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt pages 11 to 13 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 judgement 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 to life and that is the question that nothing whatever had been known in the world before they came into it as if experience had has 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 acclaimed to his 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 are customary 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 endowments of a human being the human faculties of perception judgement, 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 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 enact are not such as are constantanious to his own feelings and character where affection or the rights of others are not concerned 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 judgement 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 judgements 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 what is important 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 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 more natural feelings 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 of self control it is through the cultivation of these that society both does its duty and protects its interests not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made or 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 pope 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 have 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 everyone 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 for 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 the exercise choice only among the things commonly done peculiarity of taste eccentricity of conduct are shunned equally with crime until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow their human capacities are withered and starved many strong wishes or native pleasures and are generally without these 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 anyone 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 this 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 condition 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 hide bound type of human character which it patronises many persons no doubt sincerely think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed are as they make a design them to be just as many have thought that trees are a much finer thing when clipped into pollards or cut into figures of animals that as nature made them but if it be any part of a 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 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 quote pagan self assertion end quote is one of the elements of human worth as well as quote christian self denial end quote footnote sterlings essays end footnote 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 Alqui Biedes 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 belong to John Knox it is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves and put 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 element 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 fullness of human 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 the 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 acquiescing 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 as that age being 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 the individuality is the same thing with development and that it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces unproduced 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 must 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 gained said 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 and who keep the life in those which already exist 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-determiny 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 commonplace to point out 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 everyone 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 no one says that it is not a thing to be admired nearly all at heart think that they can do very well without it and happily 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 done which someone 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 in the ascendant power among mankind in ancient history in the middle ages 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 of the name is that of masses and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses this is 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 a still greater novelty the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in church or state from ostensible leaders or from books their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves addressing them or speaking in their name on the spur of the moment through the newspapers I am not complaining of all this I do not assert that anything better is compatible as a general rule with the present low state of the human mind but that does not hinder the government of mediocrity from being mediocre government no government by 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 councils and influence ever 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 applaud 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 counter poison 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 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 freer 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 just claimed to carry on their lives in their own way there is no reason that all human existence should be constructed on some one or some small number of patterns if a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience that 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 warehouse full to choose from and it is 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 confirmation than in the shape of their feet that is enough reason 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 helped 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 exhaust acquiescence by the multitude of their adherence 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 required to possess a title or some other badge of rank or of 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 indulgence incur the risk of something worse than disparaging speeches or commission and of having their property taken from them and given to their relations footnote 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 the minute details of his daily life are pried into and whatever is found which and describing faculties of the lowest of the low bears an appearance unlike absolute commonplace is laid before the jury as evidence of insanity and often with success the 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 right of each individual to act in things indifferent as seems good to his own judgment and inclinations judges and jurors cannot even conceive that a person in a state of sanity could 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 nowadays were we to see this done and to do as applauding themselves because instead of persecuting for religion they had adopted so humane and christian treating these unfortunates not without a silent satisfaction that they're having thereby obtained their desserts end footnote there is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstrations 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 affected 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 endeavour to make everyone 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 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 conscious will its result is weak feelings and weak energies which therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any strength either of will or of reason already energetic characters on any large scale are becoming merely traditional there is now scarcely any outlet for energy in this country except business the energy expended in this may still be regarded as considerable what little 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 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 centers 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 populace lettered and versed in many of the arts of life they made themselves all this and were then the greatest and most powerful nations of the world what are they now the subjects or dependence 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 prescribes singularity but it does not preclude change provided all change together we have discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers everyone must still dress like other people but the fashion may change once or twice a year we thus take care that when there is a change it shall be for change's sake 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 wore 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 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 honour and power surely the people who did this have a lot of aggressiveness 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 further 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 in an organised form what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organised 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 is 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 judgement 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 Monsieur 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 everyday diminishing the circumstances which surround different classes and individuals and shape their characters are daily becoming more assimilated formally different ranks, different neighbourhoods 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 improvement in the means of communication promotes 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 increasing the level of social objects of ambition even the highest to general competition whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer the character of a particular class but of all classes a more powerful agency than even all these in bringing about a general similarity among mankind is the complete establishment in this and other free countries of the ascendancy of public opinion in the state as the various social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them to disregard the opinion of the multitude gradually become levelled as the very idea of resisting the will of the public actively 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 influence 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 to 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 End of Chapter 3 John Liberty by John Stuart Mill Chapter 4 what then is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself where does the authority of the 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 the contract and no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it everyone 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 for certain interests which either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding ought to be considered as rights and secondly in each persons 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 fulfillment 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 to the length of violating any of their constituted rights the offender may be justly punished by opinion though not by law as soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interest 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 interest of no persons besides himself or needs not affect them unless they like all the persons concerning 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 others 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 a need of 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 metaphysical 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 passed 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 increase exercise of their higher faculties and increase 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 in 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 in circumstances the most ordinary man or woman has means or knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by anyone 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 who look at them merely from without in this department therefore of human affairs individuality has its proper field of action in the contact of human beings toward 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 be in any way affected by his self regarding qualities or deficiencies this is neither possible nor desirable if he is imminent 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 these qualities a sentiment the opposite of admiration will follow there is a degree of folly and a degree of what might be called though the phrase is not unobjectionable lowness or deprivation of taste which though it cannot justify doing harm to the persons who manifest 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 and do strength without entertaining these feelings though doing no wrong to anyone a person may so act as to compel us to judge him and feel to him as a fool or as 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 unmanorly or presuming we have a right also in various ways to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone 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 obstancy, 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 excellence in his social relations and has thus established a title to their good offices which is not affected by his demerits toward himself what I contend for this 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 interest of others in their relations with him acts interest 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 disoprobation may rise to abhorrence cruelty of disposition malice and ill nature that most antisocial and odious of all passions envy dissimulation and insincerity harassability on insufficient cause and resentment disproportion to the provocation the love of domineering over others the desire to engross more than one share of advantages the pleonexia of the Greeks the pride which derives gratification from the abasement of others the egotism which thinks itself and its concerns more important than everything else and decides all doubtful questions in its 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 anyone 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 offense 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 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 of 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 him not only to sit in judgment of 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 that we 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 entirely an 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 and directly derive 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 depend 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 offense 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 it 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 are 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 practice 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 the things which have been tried and condemned from the beginning of the world until now things which experience have shown not to be useful or suitable to anyone'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 them 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 disofferbation 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 the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them and is deservedly reprobated and possibly punished but it is for the breach of duty to his family or creditors not for the extravagance if the resources which ought to have been devoted to them had been diverted from them for the most prudent investment the moral culpability would have been the same George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress but if he 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 and 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 life and who for personal ties are dependent on him for their comfort whoever fails in consideration generally due to the interest and feelings of others not being compelled by some 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 social offense 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 a 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 to be punished for 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 standards 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 their early portion of their existence it has had the whole period of childhood and non-age in which to try whether to 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 the powers of education but with the ascendancy which the authority of 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 who 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 oak 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 to 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 and degrading consequences which if the conduct is justly censored 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 opinions of the public that is of an overruling majority though often wrong is likely to be still often are right because on such questions they are only required to judge of their own interests which some mode of conduct if allowed to be practiced would affect themselves but the opinion of the 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 entry 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 like 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 anyone to imagine an ideal public which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all in certain 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 a 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 teach us to search in our 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 tolerable, unanimous in them all 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 invest in its own preferences with a chapter 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 a serious and practical moment and that I am not endeavoring to erect a barrier among 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 crouches 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 practice their religious observances especially their religious abstinences to cite a rather trivial example nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to invent the hatred of the Mohammedans against them than the fact of their eating pork there are few acts which Christians and Europeans with more unaffected disgust than Muslims regard this particular mode of satisfying hunger it is in the first place an offense 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 muslims 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 sprupulously cleanly and of which the sentiment of religious impurity so intense in the Hindus is a remarkable example suppose now that in a people of whom the majority are muslims that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to being eaten within the limits of the country this would be nothing new in Mohammedan countries 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 appored 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 duty to eat pork the only tenable ground of condemnation would be that with the personal taste and self regarding concern of individuals the public has no business to interfere to come somewhat nearer home the majority of Spaniards consider it 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 merry 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 interest 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 that is made out of suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impiates 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 to interfere with people for worshiping 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 past 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 sunlages 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 possible that persons of these sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in the parliament how will the remaining portion of the community like to have 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 eject who 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 hope to rival is disagreeable operates as a tolerable effectual sumptory 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 a loss of income those 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 a democratic feeling combined with the notion that the public has the 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 a small amount or any income not earned by manual labor opinions similar in principle to these already prevail widely among the artisan class and way oppressively on those who are amenable to the opinion chiefly of that class namely its own members it is known that the bad workmen of whom the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are decidedly of the opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good and that no one ought to be allowed through peace work or otherwise to survive 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 skillful workmen from receiving and employers from giving a larger renumeration 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 individuals particular public can be blamed for asserting the same authority over his individual conduct which the general public asserts over people but without dwelling upon suppositionist cases there are in our own day gross assertions upon the liberty of private life actually practiced and still greater ones threatened with some expectation of success and opinions propound 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 same preventing intemperance the people of one English colony and half the United States have been interdicted by law for making any use whatever affirmative drinks except for medicinal purposes for prohibition of their sale is in fact as it is intended to be prohibition of their use and though the impractic ability 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 notwithstanding has been commenced and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of the professional 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 its 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 are manifested in some of his public appearances among those who figure in political life the organ of the alliance who would deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could be rested 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 disciplinary 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 biz acts and habits which are not social but individual although it is to this class surely that the act of drinking permitted liquors belongs selling permitted liquors however is trading and trading is a social act but the infringement complained of is not 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 those social rights if anything invades my social rights certainly the traffic and strong drink does it destroys my primary right of security by constantly creating and stimulating social disorder it invades my right of equality by weakening 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 a demoralizing society from which I have a right to complain 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 monstrance of principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty there is no violation of the 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 whether noxious passes 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 the illegitimate interference with the rightful society of the individual not simply threatened but long since carried into triumph and effect is the sabbiterian legislation without doubt abstinence on one day so far as the exigencies of life permit from the usual daily occupation though in no respect religiously binding on any exempt Jews is a highly beneficial custom and in so much 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 7 days work would have to be given for 6 days wages but so long as the great massive 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 a monument if a further remedy is sought it might be found in the establishment by custom of a holiday or another 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 can never be to earnestly protested against the Oram Injure Discure it remains to be proved that society or any of its officers holds a commission from on high to avenge any supposed offense 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 religious persecutions ever perpetrated and if admitted would fully justify them though the feeling of which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway traveling on Sunday in the resistance of 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 instinctive fact that an alleged new revelation and a religion founded on it the product of palpable imposter 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 compelled 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 by the mohemedons and the hindus and Chinese seems to excite unquenchable animosity when practiced by persons who speak English profess to be a kind of Christian no one has a deeper disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution both for other reasons and because far from being in a way countenance 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 the 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 the case with any other form of 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 makes 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 descendants have conceded of others far more than can 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 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 the 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 to an end 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 teacher 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 have come 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 note one the case of the Bombay Parasites is a curious instance in point when this industrious enterprising tribe the descendants of the Persian fire worshippers flying from their native country before the Caliphs arrived in western India they were admitted to toleration by the Hindu sovereigns on condition of not eating beef when those regions afterwards fell under the dominion of the mohimidin conquerors, the Parsis 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 Parsis to this day abstained both from beef and pork though not required by their religion the double abstinence has had time to grow into custom of their tribe and custom in the east is a religion end of chapter 4 of the limits to the authority of society over the individual or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org On Liberty by John Stuart Mill Chapter 5 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 morale can be attempted with any prospect of advantage the few observations I propose to make to 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 meanings 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 insofar as these concern the interest 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 interest of others the individual is accountable and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection in the first place it must by no means be supposed because damage or probability of damage to the interest 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 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 any contest for an object which both desires 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 person 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 the 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 the society in general and thus this concept 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 to laughter 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 the 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 a 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 projection of fraud by adulteration how far sanitary precautions or arrangements to protect where people employed in dangerous occupations should be enforced on employers such questions involve considerations of liberty only insofar as leaving people to themselves is always better caterers parabas 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 main 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 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 committed as well as to detract and punish it afterwards the preventative function of government however is far more liable to be abused to the prejudice of liberty than the punatory function or 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 of a public authority or even a private person sees anyone evidently preparing to commit a crime they are not bound to look on and active 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 the proper office of public authority to guard against accidents if either a public officer or anyone 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 the danger they might see 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 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 stump-save excitement or absorption incompatible with the full use of the reflecting faculty he ought I conceived 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 labeling the drug with some word expressive of its dangerous characters 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 to account upon the liberty of those who desire the poisonous substance for other purposes consistent providing what in the apt language of Bentham is called pre-appointed evidence this provision is familiar to everyone 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 the 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 precise quality and quantity sold to ask the purpose for which it was wanted and to record the answer that he received when there was no medical prescription the presence of some third person might be required to bring home the fact of 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 limitation to the maximum that purely self-regarding commits conduct cannot be properly meddled with in the way of prevention or punishment drunkenness for example in ordinary cases is not a fifth subject for legislative interference but I should deem it perfectly legitimate that a person who has once been convicted of any act of violence to others under the influence of drink should be placed under special legal restriction personal to himself that if you were afterwards found drunk you should be liable to a penalty and that if when in that state he committed another offense a punishment to which he would be liable for that other offense 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 man fails to perform his legal duties to others as for instance to support his children it is no tyranny to force him to fulfill 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 have done publicly are a violation of good manners and coming thus within the category of offenses against others may rightly be prohibited of this kind are offenses against decency on which it is unnecessary to dwell the rather is 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 cases of personal conduct supposed to be blameable but which respect for liberty preclude 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 anyone 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 this 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 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 ultimately the existence of classes of persons with an interest opposed to what is considered as the public wheel and whose mode of living is grounded on the counteraction of it of this to be interfered with or not for an occasion 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 case is one of those which lie in 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 is an occupation and living or profiting by the practice of it cannot make that criminal which would otherwise be admissible that the action either be consistently permitted or consistently prohibited that if the principles which we have hitherto defined are true society has no business as society to decide anything to be wrong with what concerns only to 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 and authoritatively deciding for purposes of repression or punishment that such or such conduct affecting only the interest of the individual is good or bad they are fully justified and assuming if they regard it as bad 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 object only there can surely it may be urged to be nothing lost no sacrifice of good by so ordering matters that person shall make their election either wisely or foolishly on their own promoting as free as possible from the arts of persons who stimulate their inclination 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 visions yet public gambling houses should not be permitted it is true that the prohibition is never factual and that whatever amount of tyrannical power may be given to the police gambling houses can always be maintained under other pretenses 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 accessory when the principle is and must be allowed to go free a fining or imprisoning the procurer but not the fornicator the gambling housekeeper but not the gambler till less ought the common operations of buying and selling to be interfered with on anomalous 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 favor for instance of the main 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 interest of the agent whether for example it should take measures to render the means of junkets more costly or add to the difficulty procuring them by limiting the number of places of sale on this as on most other practical questions many distinctions required 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 to 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 more obligations to the state and to individuals are their own concern and must rest with their own judgment these considerations may serve 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 is 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 that consumers can best spare and a fortiori to select in preferences those of which it deems to 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 posing 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 the places of this kind of peculiarity because offenses 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 vows for respectability of conduct to make such regulation 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 offenses 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 omission the occasions of temptation not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there are some by whom the facility would be abused but is suited only to a state of society in which the labouring classes are avowally treated as children or savages and placed under an education of restraint to fit them for future admission to the privileges of freedom this is not the principle on which the labouring classes are professively 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 free men 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 to be considered here it is only because the institutions of this country are a massive 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 and things wherein the individual is alone concerned implies the corresponding liberty in any number of individuals to regulate by mutual agreement such things as regard them jointly and regarding no persons but themselves this question presents no difficulties 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 which they are alone 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 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 either enforced by law nor by opinion the ground for thus limiting his power of voluntary disposing of his own lot in life is apparent and is very clearly seen in this extreme case the reason for not interfering and less 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 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 then forth 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 principles of which is so conspicuous in this peculiar case are evidently a 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 their 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 retraction Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt in the excellent essay from which I've 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 declared will of either party to dissolve it this subject is too important and too complicated to be discussed in a parentheses and I touch on it only so far as necessary purposes of illustration if the conciseness in 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 obligation arises on his part towards that person which may possibly be overruled but cannot be ignored and again if the relation between two contracting parties has been followed by 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 fulfillment of which or even at all events the mode of fulfillment 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 fulfillment 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 to 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 interest 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 aren't all needed on a particular question but liberty is usually discussed as if the interest of Jolgen 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 the 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 and acting for another under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs the state while it respects the liberty of each in what specifically regards himself is bound to maintain a vigil in 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 family relations a case in its direct influence on human happiness and all others taken together the almost despotic power of husbands over wives need not be enlarged upon here because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil than that the wife should have the same rights and should receive the protection of the 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 play 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 fulfillment 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 the 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 to the generality of mankind value liberty than power consider for example the case of education is it not almost a self even axiom that the state should require and compel the education up to a certain standard of every human being who was born its citizen yet who was there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth hardly anyone indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the parents or as lauren 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 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 his child it is left to the 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 fulfill this obligation the state ought to see it filled at the charge as far as possible of the parent where 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 battlefield for sex and parties causing the time and labor which should have been spent in educating and wasting and quarreling 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 the parents to obtain education where and how they pleased and contents itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children and deferring the entire school impences of those who have no one else to pay for them the objections which are urged with reason against state education do not imply to the enforcement of education in the state but to the states 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 the state's hands I go as far as anyone in deprecating all that has been said of the importance of individuality of character and diversity in opinions and mode of conduct involves as of the same unspeakable importance diversity of education a general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another and as the mold in which it cast 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 and education established and controlled by the state should only exist if it existed 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 took 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 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 from forcing 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 ascending 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 classes of examinations, be confined to facts and positive signs exclusively the examination on religion politics or other disputed topics should not turn on the truth or false 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 as the same schools where there 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 even 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 which either of the two he takes up with or even 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 can see be entirely voluntary it would be giving too dangerous a power to governments or they allowed to exclude anyone 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 requirements 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 but will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence is a crime against that being and in a country either over people 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 offense 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 to 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 super-add legal punishment yet the current ideas of liberty which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of the individual and 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 to please himself without giving pain to anyone 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 one 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 lied 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 motive strengthening their active facilities exercising their judgment and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal this is a principle though not the sole recommendation of jury trial in case it is 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 belon