On Liberty
On Liberty INTRODUCTION.CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.CHAPTER II. OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION.CHAPTER III. OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING.CHAPTER IV. OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL.CHAPTER V. APPLICATIONS.Copyright
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
INTRODUCTION.
I.
John Stuart Mill was born on 20th May 1806. He was a delicate
child, and the extraordinary education designed by his father was
not calculated to develop and improve his physical powers. "I never
was a boy," he says; "never played cricket." His exercise was taken
in the form of walks with his father, during which the elder Mill
lectured his son and examined him on his work. It is idle to
speculate on the possible results of a different treatment. Mill
remained delicate throughout his life, but was endowed with that
intense mental energy which is so often combined with physical
weakness. His youth was sacrificed to an idea; he was designed by
his father to carry on his work; the individuality of the boy was
unimportant. A visit to the south of France at the age of fourteen,
in company with the family of General Sir Samuel Bentham, was not
without its influence. It was a glimpse of another atmosphere,
though the studious habits of his home life were maintained.
Moreover, he derived from it his interest in foreign politics,
which remained one of his characteristics to the end of his life.
In 1823 he was appointed junior clerk in the Examiners' Office at
the India House.Mill's first essays were written in theTravellerabout a year before he
entered the India House. From that time forward his literary work
was uninterrupted save by attacks of illness. His industry was
stupendous. He wrote articles on an infinite variety of subjects,
political, metaphysical, philosophic, religious, poetical. He
discovered Tennyson for his generation, he influenced the writing
of Carlyle'sFrench Revolutionas well as its success. And all the while he was engaged in
studying and preparing for his more ambitious works, while he rose
step by step at the India Office. HisEssays on
Unsettled Questions in Political Economywere
written in 1831, although they did not appear until thirteen years
later. HisSystem of Logic, the
design of which was even then fashioning itself in his brain, took
thirteen years to complete, and was actually published before
thePolitical Economy. In 1844
appeared the article on Michelet, which its author anticipated
would cause some discussion, but which did not create the sensation
he expected. Next year there were the "Claims of Labour" and
"Guizot," and in 1847 his articles on Irish affairs in theMorning Chronicle. These years were
very much influenced by his friendship and correspondence with
Comte, a curious comradeship between men of such different
temperament. In 1848 Mill published hisPolitical
Economy, to which he had given his serious study
since the completion of hisLogic. His articles and reviews, though they involved a good deal
of work—as, for instance, the re-perusal of theIliadand theOdysseyin the original before
reviewing Grote'sGreece—were
recreation to the student. The year 1856 saw him head of the
Examiners' Office in the India House, and another two years brought
the end of his official work, owing to the transfer of India to the
Crown. In the same year his wife died.Libertywas published shortly after, as
well as theThoughts on Parliamentary
Reform, and no year passed without Mill making
important contributions on the political, philosophical, and
ethical questions of the day.Seven years after the death of his wife, Mill was invited to
contest Westminster. His feeling on the conduct of elections made
him refuse to take any personal action in the matter, and he gave
the frankest expression to his political views, but nevertheless he
was elected by a large majority. He was not a conventional success
in the House; as a speaker he lacked magnetism. But his influence
was widely felt. "For the sake of the House of Commons at large,"
said Mr. Gladstone, "I rejoiced in his advent and deplored his
disappearance. He did us all good." After only three years in
Parliament, he was defeated at the next General Election by Mr. W.
H. Smith. He retired to Avignon, to the pleasant little house where
the happiest years of his life had been spent in the companionship
of his wife, and continued his disinterested labours. He completed
his edition of his father'sAnalysis of the
Mind, and also produced, in addition to less
important work,The Subjection of
Women, in which he had the active co-operation
of his step-daughter. A book on Socialism was under consideration,
but, like an earlier study of Sociology, it never was written. He
died in 1873, his last years being spent peacefully in the pleasant
society of his step-daughter, from whose tender care and earnest
intellectual sympathy he caught maybe a far-off reflection of the
light which had irradiated his spiritual life.II.The circumstances under which John Stuart Mill wrote
hisLibertyare largely
connected with the influence which Mrs. Taylor wielded over his
career. The dedication is well known. It contains the most
extraordinary panegyric on a woman that any philosopher has ever
penned. "Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one-half
the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her
grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is
ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and
unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom." It is easy for the
ordinary worldly cynicism to curl a sceptical lip over sentences
like these. There may be exaggeration of sentiment, the necessary
and inevitable reaction of a man who was trained according to the
"dry light" of so unimpressionable a man as James Mill, the father;
but the passage quoted is not the only one in which John Stuart
Mill proclaims his unhesitating belief in the intellectual
influence of his wife. The treatise onLibertywas written especially under
her authority and encouragement, but there are many earlier
references to the power which she exercised over his mind. Mill was
introduced to her as early as 1831, at a dinner-party at Mr.
Taylor's house, where were present, amongst others, Roebuck, W. J.
Fox, and Miss Harriet Martineau. The acquaintance rapidly ripened
into intimacy and the intimacy into friendship, and Mill was never
weary of expatiating on all the advantages of so singular a
relationship. In some of the presentation copies of his work
onPolitical Economy, he wrote
the following dedication:—"To Mrs. John Taylor, who, of all persons
known to the author, is the most highly qualified either to
originate or to appreciate speculation on social advancement, this
work is with the highest respect and esteem dedicated." An article
on the enfranchisement of women was made the occasion for another
encomium. We shall hardly be wrong in attributing a much later
book,The Subjection of Women,
published in 1869, to the influence wielded by Mrs. Taylor.
Finally, the pages of theAutobiographyring with the dithyrambic
praise of his "almost infallible counsellor."The facts of this remarkable intimacy can easily be stated.
The deductions are more difficult. There is no question that Mill's
infatuation was the cause of considerable trouble to his
acquaintances and friends. His father openly taxed him with being
in love with another man's wife. Roebuck, Mrs. Grote, Mrs. Austin,
Miss Harriet Martineau were amongst those who suffered because they
made some allusion to a forbidden subject. Mrs. Taylor lived with
her daughter in a lodging in the country; but in 1851 her husband
died, and then Mill made her his wife. Opinions were widely
divergent as to her merits; but every one agreed that up to the
time of her death, in 1858, Mill was wholly lost to his friends.
George Mill, one of Mill's younger brothers, gave it as his opinion
that she was a clever and remarkable woman, but "nothing like what
John took her to be." Carlyle, in his reminiscences, described her
with ambiguous epithets. She was "vivid," "iridescent," "pale and
passionate and sad-looking, a living-romance heroine of the
royalist volition and questionable destiny." It is not possible to
make much of a judgment like this, but we get on more certain
ground when we discover that Mrs. Carlyle said on one occasion that
"she is thought to be dangerous," and that Carlyle added that she
was worse than dangerous, she was patronising. The occasion when
Mill and his wife were brought into close contact with the Carlyles
is well known. The manuscript of the first volume of theFrench Revolutionhad been lent to
Mill, and was accidentally burnt by Mrs. Mill's servant. Mill and
his wife drove up to Carlyle's door, the wife speechless, the
husband so full of conversation that he detained Carlyle with
desperate attempts at loquacity for two hours. But Dr. Garnett
tells us, in hisLife of Carlyle, that Mill made a substantial reparation for the calamity
for which he was responsible by inducing the aggrieved author to
accept half of the £200 which he offered. Mrs. Mill, as I have
said, died in 1858, after seven years of happy companionship with
her husband, and was buried at Avignon. The inscription which Mill
wrote for her grave is too characteristic to be omitted:—"Her great
and loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original,
and comprehensive intellect, made her the guide and support, the
instructor in wisdom and the example in goodness, as she was the
sole earthly delight of those who had the happiness to belong to
her. As earnest for all public good as she was generous and devoted
to all who surrounded her, her influence has been felt in many of
the greatest improvements of the age, and will be in those still to
come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects like hers, this
earth would already become the hoped-for Heaven." These lines prove
the intensity of Mill's feeling, which is not afraid of abundant
verbiage; but they also prove that he could not imagine what the
effect would be on others, and, as Grote said, only Mill's
reputation could survive these and similar displays.Every one will judge for himself of this romantic episode in
Mill's career, according to such experience as he may possess of
the philosophic mind and of the value of these curious but not
infrequent relationships. It may have been a piece of infatuation,
or, if we prefer to say so, it may have been the most gracious and
the most human page in Mill's career. Mrs. Mill may have flattered
her husband's vanity by echoing his opinions, or she may have
indeed been an Egeria, full of inspiration and intellectual
helpfulness. What usually happens in these cases,—although the
philosopher himself, through his belief in the equality of the
sexes, was debarred from thinking so,—is the extremely valuable
action and reaction of two different classes and orders of mind. To
any one whose thoughts have been occupied with the sphere of
abstract speculation, the lively and vivid presentment of concrete
fact comes as a delightful and agreeable shock. The instinct of the
woman often enables her not only to apprehend but to illustrate a
truth for which she would be totally unable to give the adequate
philosophic reasoning. On the other hand, the man, with the more
careful logical methods and the slow processes of formal reasoning,
is apt to suppose that the happy intuition which leaps to the
conclusion is really based on the intellectual processes of which
he is conscious in his own case. Thus both parties to the happy
contract are equally pleased. The abstract truth gets the concrete
illustration; the concrete illustration finds its proper foundation
in a series of abstract inquiries. Perhaps Carlyle's epithets of
"iridescent" and "vivid" refer incidentally to Mrs. Mill's quick
perceptiveness, and thus throw a useful light on the mutual
advantages of the common work of husband and wife. But it savours
almost of impertinence even to attempt to lift the veil on a
mystery like this. It is enough to say, perhaps, that however much
we may deplore the exaggeration of Mill's references to his wife,
we recognise that, for whatever reason, the pair lived an ideally
happy life.It still, however, remains to estimate the extent to which
Mrs. Taylor, both before and after her marriage with Mill, made
actual contributions to his thoughts and his public work. Here I
may be perhaps permitted to avail myself of what I have already
written in a previous work.[1]Mill gives
us abundant help in this matter in theAutobiography. When first he knew her,
his thoughts were turning to the subject of Logic. But his
published work on the subject owed nothing to her, he tells us, in
its doctrines. It was Mill's custom to write the whole of a book so
as to get his general scheme complete, and then laboriously to
re-write it in order to perfect the phrases and the composition.
Doubtless Mrs. Taylor was of considerable help to him as a critic
of style. But to be a critic of doctrine she was hardly qualified.
Mill has made some clear admissions on this point. "The only actual
revolution which has ever taken place in my modes of thinking was
already complete,"[2]he says, before her
influence became paramount. There is a curiously humble estimate of
his own powers (to which Dr. Bain has called attention), which
reads at first sight as if it contradicted this. "During the
greater part of my literary life I have performed the office in
relation to her, which, from a rather early period, I had
considered as the most useful part that I was qualified to take in
the domain of thought, that of an interpreter of original thinkers,
and mediator between them and the public." So far it would seem
that Mill had sat at the feet of his oracle; but observe the highly
remarkable exception which is made in the following sentence:—"For
I had always a humble opinion of my own powers as an original
thinker,except in abstract science (logic,
metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of political economy and
politics.)"[3]If Mill
then was an original thinker in logic, metaphysics, and the science
of economy and politics, it is clear that he had not learnt these
from her lips. And to most men logic and metaphysics may be safely
taken as forming a domain in which originality of thought, if it
can be honestly professed, is a sufficient title of
distinction.Mrs. Taylor's assistance in thePolitical
Economyis confined to certain definite points.
The purely scientific part was, we are assured, not learnt from
her. "But it was chiefly her influence which gave to the book that
general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of political economy that had any pretensions to be
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds
which those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted
chiefly in making the proper distinction between the laws of the
production of wealth, which are real laws of Nature, dependent on
the properties of objects, and the modes of its distribution,
which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human
will....I had indeed partially learnt this view
of things from the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of
St. Simonians; but it was made a living
principle, pervading and animating the book, by my wife's
promptings."[4]The part which is
italicised is noticeable. Here, as elsewhere, Mill thinks out the
matter by himself; the concrete form of the thoughts is suggested
or prompted by the wife. Apart from this "general tone," Mill tells
us that there was a specific contribution. "The chapter which has
had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on the
Probable Future of the Labouring Classes, is entirely due to her.
In the first draft of the book that chapter did not exist. She
pointed out the need of such a chapter, and the extreme
imperfection of the book without it; she was the cause of my
writing it." From this it would appear that she gave Mill that
tendency to Socialism which, while it lends a progressive spirit to
his speculations on politics, at the same time does not manifestly
accord with his earlier advocacy of peasant proprietorships. Nor,
again, is it, on the face of it, consistent with those doctrines of
individual liberty which, aided by the intellectual companionship
of his wife, he propounded in a later work. The ideal of individual
freedom is not the ideal of Socialism, just as that invocation of
governmental aid to which the Socialist resorts is not consistent
with the theory oflaisser-faire. YetLibertywas planned
by Mill and his wife in concert. Perhaps a slight visionariness of
speculation was no less the attribute of Mrs. Mill than an absence
of rigid logical principles. Be this as it may, she undoubtedly
checked the half-recognised leanings of her husband in the
direction of Coleridge and Carlyle. Whether this was an instance of
her steadying influence,[5]or whether it
added one more unassimilated element to Mill's diverse intellectual
sustenance, may be wisely left an open question. We cannot,
however, be wrong in attributing to her the parentage of one book
of Mill,The Subjection of Women. It is true that Mill had before learnt that men and women
ought to be equal in legal, political, social, and domestic
relations. This was a point on which he had already fallen foul of
his father's essay onGovernment. But Mrs. Taylor had actually written on this very point,
and the warmth and fervour of Mill's denunciations of women's
servitude were unmistakably caught from his wife's view of the
practical disabilities entailed by the feminine
position.III.Libertywas published in 1859, when the
nineteenth century was half over, but in its general spirit and in
some of its special tendencies the little tract belongs rather to
the standpoint of the eighteenth century than to that which saw its
birth. In many of his speculations John Stuart Mill forms a sort of
connecting link between the doctrines of the earlier English
empirical school and those which we associate with the name of Mr.
Herbert Spencer. In hisLogic,
for instance, he represents an advance on the theories of Hume, and
yet does not see how profoundly the victories of Science modify the
conclusions of the earlier thinker. Similarly, in hisPolitical Economy, he desires to
improve and to enlarge upon Ricardo, and yet does not advance so
far as the modifications of political economy by Sociology,
indicated by some later—and especially German—speculations on the
subject. In the tract onLiberty, Mill is advocating the rights of the individual as against
Society at the very opening of an era that was rapidly coming to
the conclusion that the individual had no absolute rights against
Society. The eighteenth century view is that individuals existed
first, each with their own special claims and responsibilities;
that they deliberately formed a Social State, either by a contract
or otherwise; and that then finally they limited their own action
out of regard for the interests of the social organism thus
arbitrarily produced. This is hardly the view of the nineteenth
century. It is possible that logically the individual is prior to
the State; historically and in the order of Nature, the State is
prior to the individual. In other words, such rights as every
single personality possesses in a modern world do not belong to him
by an original ordinance of Nature, but are slowly acquired in the
growth and development of the social state. It is not the truth
that individual liberties were forfeited by some deliberate act
when men made themselves into a Commonwealth. It is more true to
say, as Aristotle said long ago, that man is naturally a political
animal, that he lived under strict social laws as a mere item,
almost a nonentity, as compared with the Order, Society, or
Community to which he belonged, and that such privileges as he
subsequently acquired have been obtained in virtue of his growing
importance as a member of a growing organisation. But if this is
even approximately true, it seriously restricts that liberty of the
individual for which Mill pleads. The individual has no chance,
because he has no rights, against the social organism. Society can
punish him for acts or even opinions which are anti-social in
character. His virtue lies in recognising the intimate communion
with his fellows. His sphere of activity is bounded by the common
interest. Just as it is an absurd and exploded theory that all men
are originally equal, so it is an ancient and false doctrine to
protest that a man has an individual liberty to live and think as
he chooses in any spirit of antagonism to that larger body of which
he forms an insignificant part.Nowadays this view of Society and of its development, which
we largely owe to thePhilosophie
Positiveof M. Auguste Comte, is so familiar and
possibly so damaging to the individual initiative, that it becomes
necessary to advance and proclaim the truth which resides in an
opposite theory. All progress, as we are aware, depends on the
joint process of integration and differentiation; synthesis,
analysis, and then a larger synthesis seem to form the law of
development. If it ever comes to pass that Society is tyrannical in
its restrictions of the individual, if, as for instance in some
forms of Socialism, based on deceptive analogies of Nature's
dealings, the type is everything and the individual nothing, it
must be confidently urged in answer that the fuller life of the
future depends on the manifold activities, even though they may be
antagonistic, of the individual. In England, at all events, we know
that government in all its different forms, whether as King, or as
a caste of nobles, or as an oligarchical plutocracy, or even as
trades unions, is so dwarfing in its action that, for the sake of
the future, the individual must revolt. Just as our former point of
view limited the value of Mill's treatise onLiberty, so these considerations tend
to show its eternal importance. The omnipotence of Society means a
dead level of uniformity. The claim of the individual to be heard,
to say what he likes, to do what he likes, to live as he likes, is
absolutely necessary, not only for the variety of elements without
which life is poor, but also for the hope of a future age. So long
as individual initiative and effort are recognised as a vital
element in English history, so long will Mill'sLiberty, which he confesses was based
on a suggestion derived from Von Humboldt, remain as an
indispensable contribution to the speculations, and also to the
health and sanity, of the world.What his wife really was to Mill, we shall, perhaps, never
know. But that she was an actual and vivid force, which roused the
latent enthusiasm of his nature, we have abundant evidence. And
when she died at Avignon, though his friends may have regained an
almost estranged companionship, Mill was, personally, the poorer.
Into the sorrow of that bereavement we cannot enter: we have no
right or power to draw the veil. It is enough to quote the simple
words, so eloquent of an unspoken grief—"I can say nothing which
could describe, even in the faintest manner, what that loss was and
is. But because I know that she would have wished it, I endeavour
to make the best of what life I have left, and to work for her
purposes with such diminished strength as can be derived from
thoughts of her, and communion with her memory."FOOTNOTES:[1]Life of John Stuart Mill,
chapter vi. (Walter Scott.)[2]Autobiography, p.
190.[3]Ibid., p. 242.[4]Autobiography, pp. 246,
247.[5]Cf. an instructive page in
theAutobiography, p.
252.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the
Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of
Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature
and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by
society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly
ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences
the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and
is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital question of
the future. It is so far from being new, that in a certain sense,
it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages; but in the
stage of progress into which the more civilised portions of the
species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions,
and requires a different and more fundamental
treatment.The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most
conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are
earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and
England. But in old times this contest was between subjects, or
some classes of subjects, and the government. By liberty, was meant
protection against the tyranny of the political rulers. The rulers
were conceived (except in some of the popular governments of
Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic position to the people
whom they ruled. They consisted of a governing One, or a governing
tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance or
conquest, who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of
the governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did
not desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against
its oppressive exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but
also as highly dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to
use against their subjects, no less than against external enemies.
To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed
upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be
an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them
down. But as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon
preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was
indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his
beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits
to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over
the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.
It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition of
certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it
was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe,
and which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general
rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A second, and generally a
later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional checks; by
which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort,
supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition
to some of the more important acts of the governing power. To the
first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most
European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit. It was
not so with the second; and to attain this, or when already in some
degree possessed, to attain it more completely, became everywhere
the principal object of the lovers of liberty. And so long as
mankind were content to combat one enemy by another, and to be
ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less
efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their
aspirations beyond this point.A time, however, came, in the progress of human affairs, when
men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors
should be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves.
It appeared to them much better that the various magistrates of the
State should be their tenants or delegates, revocable at their
pleasure. In that way alone, it seemed, could they have complete
security that the powers of government would never be abused to
their disadvantage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and
temporary rulers became the prominent object of the exertions of
the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and superseded,
to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit the power
of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for making the ruling power
emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons began
to think that too much importance had been attached to the
limitation of the power itself.That(it might seem) was a resource against rulers whose interests
were habitually opposed to those of the people. What was now wanted
was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that
their interest and will should be the interest and will of the
nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own
will. There was no fear of its tyrannising over itself. Let the
rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it,
and it could afford to trust them with power of which it could
itself dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's
own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise.
This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common
among the last generation of European liberalism, in the
Continental section of which it still apparently predominates.
Those who admit any limit to what a government may do, except in
the case of such governments as they think ought not to exist,
stand out as brilliant exceptions among the political thinkers of
the Continent. A similar tone of sentiment might by this time have
been prevalent in our own country, if the circumstances which for a
time encouraged it, had continued unaltered.