Title: On Liberty

Author: John Stuart Mill

Release Date: January 10, 2011 [EBook #34901]

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On Liberty.
by John Stuart Mill.

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as

entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the
individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used
be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion
of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That
the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it
will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,
because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even
right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning
with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling
him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify
that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be
calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the
conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which
concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his
independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and
mind, the individual is sovereign.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to

apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are
not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the
law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a
state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected
against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the
same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of
society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The
early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that
there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler
full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any
expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has
no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind
have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.
Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar
or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon
as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own
improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in
all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion,
either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for
non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good,
and justifiable only for the security of others.

It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived

to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent
of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical
questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the
permanent interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I
contend, authorise the subjection of individual spontaneity to external
control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern the
interest of other people. If any one does an act hurtful to others,
there is a primâ facie_ case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal
penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There
are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may
rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court
of justice; to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any
other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he
enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual
beneficence, such as saving a fellow-creature's life, or interposing to
protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is
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obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to
society for not doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his
actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable
to them for the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much
more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one
answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable
for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception. Yet
there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that
exception. In all things which regard the external relations of the
individual, he is _de jure_ amenable to those whose interests are
concerned, and if need be, to society as their protector. There are
often good reasons for not holding him to the responsibility; but these
reasons must arise from the special expediencies of the case: either
because it is a kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act
better, when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in any way
in which society have it in their power to control him; or because the
attempt to exercise control would produce other evils, greater than
those which it would prevent. When such reasons as these preclude the
enforcement of responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself
should step into the vacant judgment seat, and protect those interests
of others which have no external protection; judging himself all the
more rigidly, because the case does not admit of his being made
accountable to the judgment of his fellow-creatures.

But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from

the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending
all that portion of a person's life and conduct which affects only
himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary,
and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I
mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself,
may affect others _through_ himself; and the objection which may be
grounded on this contingency, will receive consideration in the sequel.
This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises,
first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of
conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and
feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects,
practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty
of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different
principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual
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which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as
the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same
reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle
requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life
to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such
consequences as may follow: without impediment from our
fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though
they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from
this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same
limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any
purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being
supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.

No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is

free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely
free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified. The only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our
own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his
own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater
gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves,
than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
…
We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind
(on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and
freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we
will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for

aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own
infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very

commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or
prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it
is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the
truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole
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truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and
earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held
in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of
its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of
the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and
deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma
becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering
the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt
conviction, from reason or personal experience.
…CHAPTER IV.

OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE

INDIVIDUAL.

What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual

over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of
human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more
particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of
life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to
society, the part which chiefly interests society.

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose

is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social
obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society
owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders
it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of
conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring
the interests of one another; or rather certain interests which, either
by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be
considered as rights; and secondly, in each person's bearing his share
(to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours 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 endeavour to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all
that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others,
or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the
5
length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may
then be justly punished by opinion though not by law. As soon as any
part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of
others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the
general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it,
becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any
such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no
persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all
the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of
understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal
and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that

it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have
no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not
concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another,
unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there
is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the
good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments
to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges, either of the
literal or the metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the
self-regarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even
second, to the social. It is equally the business of education to
cultivate both. But even education works by conviction and persuasion as
well as by compulsion, and it is by the former only that, when the
period of education is past, the self-regarding virtues should be
inculcated. Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the
better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid
the latter. They should be for ever stimulating each other to increased
exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their
feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of
degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any
number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of
ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what
he chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own
well-being: the interest which any other person, except in cases of
strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with
that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him
individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and
6
altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings and
circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge
immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else. The
interference of society to overrule his judgment and purposes in what
only regards himself, must be grounded on general presumptions; which
may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be
misapplied to individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the
circumstances of such cases than those are who look at them merely from
without. In this department, therefore, of human affairs, Individuality
has its proper field of action. In the conduct of human beings towards
one another, it is necessary that general rules should for the most part
be observed, in order that people may know what they have to expect; but
in each person's own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to
free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to
strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by
others; but he himself is the final judge. All errors which he is likely
to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of
allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.

I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by

others, ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding
qualities or deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable. If he
is eminent in any of the qualities which conduce to his own good, he is,
so far, a proper object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the
ideal perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in those
qualities, a sentiment the opposite of admiration will follow. There is
a degree of folly, and a degree of what may be called (though the
phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or depravation of taste, which,
though it cannot justify doing harm to the person who manifests it,
renders him necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in
extreme cases, even of contempt: a person could not have the opposite
qualities in due strength without entertaining these feelings. Though
doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge
him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and
since this judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to
avoid, it is doing him a service to warn him of it beforehand, as of any
other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be
well, indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than
the common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person
7
could honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without
being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also, in
various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to
the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are
not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it
(though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the
society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty,
to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation
likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We
may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except
those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may
suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which
directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so
far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous
consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely
inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. A person who shows
rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit--who cannot live within moderate
means--who cannot restrain himself from hurtful indulgences--who pursues
animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and intellect--must
expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less share
of their favourable sentiments; but of this he has no right to complain,
unless he has merited their favour by special excellence in his social
relations, and has thus established a title to their good offices, which
is not affected by his demerits towards himself.

What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly
inseparable from the unfavourable judgment of others, are the only ones
to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his
conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not
affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts
injurious to others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment
on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified
by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair
or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish abstinence from
defending them against injury--these are fit objects of moral
reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment.
And not only these acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are
properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapprobation which may rise to
abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition; malice and ill-nature; that most
8
anti-social and odious of all passions, envy; dissimulation and
insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause, and resentment
disproportioned to the provocation; the love of domineering over others;
the desire to engross more than one's share of advantages (the [Greek:
pleonexia] of the Greeks); the pride which derives gratification from
the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks self and its concerns
more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions
in its own favour;--these are moral vices, and constitute a bad and
odious moral character: unlike the self-regarding faults previously
mentioned, which are not properly immoralities, and to whatever pitch
they may be carried, do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs of
any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but
they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach
of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care
for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not socially
obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to
others. The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than
prudence, means self-respect or self-development; and for none of these
is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, because for none of them
is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.

The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person may

rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and the
reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights of
others, is not a merely nominal distinction. It makes a vast difference
both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he
displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control
him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he displeases
us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as
well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel
called on to make his life uncomfortable. We shall reflect that he
already bears, or will bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he
spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire
to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him, we shall
rather endeavour to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may
avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him. He may be
to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or
resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst
we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself,
9
if we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for
him. It is far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the
protection of his fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The
evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on
others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate
on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment,
and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he
is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in
judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own
sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering
on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same
liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in
his.

The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's life
which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others, many
persons will refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can any part of the
conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to the other
members? No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a
person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself,
without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often
far beyond them. If he injures his property, he does harm to those who
directly or indirectly derived support from it, and usually diminishes,
by a greater or less amount, the general resources of the community. If
he deteriorates his bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil
upon all who depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but
disqualifies himself for rendering the services which he owes to his
fellow-creatures generally; perhaps becomes a burthen on their affection
or benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly any
offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum of
good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct harm
to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) injurious by his example;
and ought to be compelled to control himself, for the sake of those whom
the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.

And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be

confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to
abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it? If
protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons
10
under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of
mature years who are equally incapable of self-government? If gambling,
or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as
injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many
or most of the acts prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not
law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience,
endeavour to repress these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable
imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least to organise a powerful
police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties
those who are known to practise them? There is no question here (it may
be said) about restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of new
and original experiments in living. The only things it is sought to
prevent are things which have been tried and condemned from the
beginning of the world until now; things which experience has shown not
to be useful or suitable to any person's individuality. There must be
some length of time and amount of experience, after which a moral or
prudential truth may be regarded as established: and it is merely
desired to prevent generation after generation from falling over the
same precipice which has been fatal to their predecessors.

I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself, may
seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests,
those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at
large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a
distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the
case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to
moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. If, for example,
a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his
debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a family,
becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them,
he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is for
the breach of duty to his family or creditors, not for the 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,
he deserves reproach for his unkindness or ingratitude; but so he may
11
for cultivating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful to
those with whom he passes his life, or who from personal ties are
dependent on him for their comfort. Whoever fails in the consideration
generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being
compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable
self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure,
but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to
himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a
person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the
performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is
guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for
being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being
drunk on duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a
definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the
case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of
morality or law.

But with regard to the merely contingent, or, as it may be called,

constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which
neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions
perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself; the
inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of
the greater good of human freedom. If grown persons are to be punished
for not taking proper care of themselves, I would rather it were for
their own sake, than under pretence of preventing them from impairing
their capacity of rendering to society benefits which society does not
pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot consent to argue the
point as if society had no means of bringing its weaker members up to
its ordinary standard of rational conduct, except waiting till they do
something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or morally, for
it. Society has had absolute power over them during all the early
portion of their existence: it has had the whole period of childhood and
nonage in which to try whether it could make them capable of rational
conduct in life. The existing generation is master both of the training
and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed
make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably
deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always,
in individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well
able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little
12
better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number of its
members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational
consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the
consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of education, but with
the ascendency which the authority of a received opinion always
exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for themselves;
and aided by the _natural_ penalties which cannot be prevented from
falling on those who incur the distaste or the contempt of those who
know them; let not society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the
power to issue commands and enforce obedience in the personal concerns
of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice and policy, the
decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the consequences. Nor
is there anything which tends more to discredit and frustrate the better
means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be
among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance,
any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are
made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will
ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such
as they have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily
comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face
of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact opposite of
what it enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness which succeeded, in the
time of Charles II., to the fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans.
With respect to what is said of the necessity of protecting society
from the bad example set to others by the vicious or the
self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have a pernicious
effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others with impunity to
the wrong-doer. But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it does
no wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm to the agent himself:
and I do not see how those who believe this, can think otherwise than
that the example, on the whole, must be more salutary than hurtful,
since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also the painful or
degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be
supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.

But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the
public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the
odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On
questions of social morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the
13
public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is
likely to be still oftener right; because on such questions they are
only required to judge of their own interests; of the manner in which
some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would affect
themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on
the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as
likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at
the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people;
while very often it does not even mean that; the public, with the most
perfect indifference, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those
whose conduct they censure, and considering only their own preference.
There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which
they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings;
as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious
feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his
feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there
is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and
the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than
between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the
right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as much his own peculiar
concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine
an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in
all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain
from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But
where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its
censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal
experience? In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom
thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently
from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up
to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine-tenths of
all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right
because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to
search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on
ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these
instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if
they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world?

The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory; and it
may perhaps be expected that I should specify the instances in which the
14
public of this age and country improperly invests its own preferences
with the character of moral laws. I am not writing an essay on the
aberrations of existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a subject to
be discussed parenthetically, and by way of illustration. Yet examples
are necessary, to show that the principle I maintain is of serious and
practical moment, and that I am not endeavouring to erect a barrier
against imaginary evils. And it is not difficult to show, by abundant
instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police,
until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the
individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on no

better grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are different
from theirs, do not practise their religious observances, especially
their religious abstinences. To cite a rather trivial example, nothing
in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred
of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork. There
are few acts which Christians and Europeans regard with more unaffected
disgust, than Mussulmans regard this particular mode of satisfying
hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence against their religion;
but this circumstance by no means explains either the degree or the kind
of their repugnance; for wine also is forbidden by their religion, and
to partake of it is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not
disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of the "unclean beast" is, on
the contrary, of that peculiar character, resembling an instinctive
antipathy, which the idea of uncleanness, when once it thoroughly sinks
into the feelings, seems always to excite even in those whose personal
habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly, and of which the sentiment
of religious impurity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a remarkable
example. Suppose now that in a people, of whom the majority were
Mussulmans, that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be
eaten within the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in
Mahomedan countries.[14] Would it be a legitimate exercise of the moral
authority of public opinion? and if not, why not? The practice is really
revolting to such a public. They also sincerely think that it is
forbidden and abhorred by the Deity. Neither could the prohibition be
censured as religious persecution. It might be religious in its origin,
but it would not be persecution for religion, since nobody's religion
makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable ground of condemnation
15
would be, that with the personal tastes and self-regarding concerns of
individuals the public has no business to interfere.

To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a

gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to
worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other
public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern
Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste,
indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these
perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against
non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering with each
other's liberty in things which do not concern the interests of others,
on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? or
who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a
scandal in the sight of God and man? No stronger case can be shown for
prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal immorality, than
is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who
regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic
of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are
right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we
must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a
gross injustice the application to ourselves.

The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreasonably, as

drawn from contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country,
not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats, or to interfere with
people for worshipping, and for either marrying or not marrying,
according to their creed or inclination. The next example, however,
shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we have by no
means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently
powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain at the time of the
Commonwealth, they have endeavoured, with considerable success, to put
down all public, and nearly all private, amusements: especially music,
dancing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion,
and the theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of
persons by whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are
condemned; and those persons belonging chiefly to the middle class, who
are the ascendant power in the present social and political condition of
the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these
16
sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in Parliament.
How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the
amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious
and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would
they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively
pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely
what should be said to every government and every public, who have the
pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think
wrong. But if the principle of the pretension be admitted, no one can
reasonably object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority, or
other preponderating power in the country; and all persons must be ready
to conform to the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by the
early settlers in New England, if a religious profession similar to
theirs should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions
supposed to be declining have so often been known to do.

To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realised 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 realised--where both
society and the government are most democratic--the United States--the
feeling of the majority, to whom any appearance of a more showy or
costly style of living than they can hope to rival is disagreeable,
operates as a tolerably effectual sumptuary law, and that in many parts
of the Union it is really difficult for a person possessing a very large
income, to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular
disapprobation. Though such statements as these are doubtless much
exaggerated as a representation of existing facts, the state of things
they describe is not only a conceivable and possible, but a probable
result of democratic feeling, combined with the notion that the public
has a right to a veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend
their incomes. We have only further to suppose a considerable diffusion
of Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous in the eyes of the
majority to possess more property than some very small amount, or any
income not earned by manual labour. Opinions similar in principle to
these, already prevail widely among the artisan class, and weigh
oppressively on those who are amenable to the opinion chiefly of that
class, namely, its own members. It is known that the bad workmen who
17
form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are
decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as
good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework or
otherwise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others can
without it. And they employ a moral police, which occasionally becomes a
physical one, to deter skilful workmen from receiving, and employers
from giving, a larger remuneration for a more useful service. If the
public have any jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see that
these people are in fault, or that any individual's particular public
can be blamed for asserting the same authority over his individual
conduct, which the general public asserts over people in general.

But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our own
day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually
practised, and still greater ones threatened with some expectation of
success, and opinions proposed which assert an unlimited right in the
public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks wrong, but
in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number of
things which it admits to be innocent.

Under the name of preventing intemperance, the people of one English

colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by
law from making any use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical
purposes: for prohibition of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to
be, prohibition of their use. And though the impracticability of
executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the States which
had adopted it, including the one from which it derives its name, an
attempt has notwithstanding been commenced, and is prosecuted with
considerable zeal by many of the professed philanthropists, to agitate
for a similar law in this country. The association, or "Alliance" as it
terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has acquired some
notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its
Secretary and one of the very few English public men who hold that a
politician's opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's
share in this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes
already built on him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are
manifested in some of his public appearances, unhappily are among those
who figure in political life. The organ of the Alliance, who would
"deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could be wrested
18
to justify bigotry and persecution," undertakes to point out the "broad
and impassable barrier" which divides such principles from those of the
association. "All matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience,
appear to me," he says, "to be without the sphere of legislation; all
pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject only to a
discretionary power vested in the State itself, and not in the
individual, to be within it." No mention is made of a third class,
different from either of these, viz. acts and habits which are not
social, but individual; although it is to this class, surely, that the
act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented liquors,
however, is trading, and trading is a social act. But the infringement
complained of is not on the liberty of the seller, but on that of the
buyer and consumer; since the State might just as well forbid him to
drink wine, as purposely make it impossible for him to obtain it. The
Secretary, however, says, "I claim, as a citizen, a right to legislate
whenever my social rights are invaded by the social act of another." And
now for the definition of these "social rights." "If anything invades my
social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys
my primary right of security, by constantly creating and stimulating
social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a profit
from the creation of a misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my
right to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path
with dangers, and by weakening and demoralising society, from which I
have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse." A theory of "social
rights," the like of which probably never before found its way into
distinct language--being nothing short of this--that it is the absolute
social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act
in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in
the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to
demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a
principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with
liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify;
it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that
of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for the
moment an opinion which I consider noxious, passes any one's lips, it
invades all the "social rights" attributed to me by the Alliance. The
doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other's
moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each
claimant according to his own standard.
19
Another important example of illegitimate interference with the rightful
liberty of the individual, not simply threatened, but long since carried
into triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legislation. Without doubt,
abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the exigencies of life
permit, from the usual daily occupation, though in no respect
religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom.
And inasmuch as this custom cannot be observed without a general consent
to that effect among the industrious classes, therefore, in so far as
some persons by working may impose the same necessity on others, it may
be allowable and right that the law should guarantee to each, the
observance by others of the custom, by suspending the greater operations
of industry on a particular day. But this justification, grounded on the
direct interest which others have in each individual's observance of
the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen occupations in which a
person may think fit to employ his leisure; nor does it hold good, in
the smallest degree, for legal restrictions on amusements. It is true
that the amusement of some is the day's work of others; but the
pleasure, not to say the useful recreation, of many, is worth the labour
of a few, provided the occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely
resigned. The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all
worked on Sunday, seven days' work would have to be given for six days'
wages: but so long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the
small number who for the enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a
proportional increase of earnings; and they are not obliged to follow
those occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument. If a further
remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment by custom of a
holiday on some other day of the week for those particular classes of
persons. The only ground, therefore, on which restrictions on Sunday
amusements can be defended, must be that they are religiously wrong; a
motive of legislation which never can be too earnestly protested
against. "Deorum injuriæ Diis curæ." It remains to be proved that
society or any of its officers holds a commission from on high to
avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence, which is not also a wrong to
our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one man's duty that another
should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious
persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully justify
them. Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to
stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of
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Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the
state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It is a
determination not to tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their
religion, because it is not permitted by the persecutor's religion. It
is a belief that God not only abominates the act of the misbeliever, but
will not hold us guiltless if we leave him unmolested.

I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the little account

commonly made of human liberty, the language of downright persecution
which breaks out from the press of this country, whenever it feels
called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism. Much might
be said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that an alleged new
revelation, and a religion founded on it, the product of palpable
imposture, not even supported by the _prestige_ of extraordinary
qualities in its founder, is believed by hundreds of thousands, and has
been made the foundation of a society, in the age of newspapers,
railways, and the electric telegraph. What here concerns us is, that
this religion, like other and better religions, has its martyrs; that
its prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put to death by a mob;
that others of its adherents lost their lives by the same lawless
violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body, from the country
in which they first grew up; while, now that they have been chased into
a solitary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly
declare that it would be right (only that it is not convenient) to send
an expedition against them, and compel them by force to conform to the
opinions of other people. The article of the Mormonite doctrine which is
the chief provocative to the antipathy which thus breaks through the
ordinary restraints of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy;
which, though permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems
to excite unquenchable animosity when practised by persons who speak
English, and profess to be a kind of Christians. No one has a deeper
disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution; both for other
reasons, and because, far from being in any way countenanced by the
principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle, being
a mere riveting of the chains of one half of the community, and an
emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation towards them.
Still, it must be remembered that this relation is as much voluntary on
the part of the women concerned in it, and who may be deemed the
sufferers by it, as is the case with any other form of the marriage
21
institution; and however surprising this fact may appear, it has its
explanation in the common ideas and customs of the world, which teaching
women to think marriage the one thing needful, make it intelligible that
many a woman should prefer being one of several wives, to not being a
wife at all. Other countries are not asked to recognise such unions, or
release any portion of their inhabitants from their own laws on the
score of Mormonite opinions. But when the dissentients have conceded to
the hostile sentiments of others, far more than could justly be
demanded; when they have left the countries to which their doctrines
were unacceptable, and established themselves in a remote corner of the
earth, which they have been the first to render habitable to human
beings; it is difficult to see on what principles but those of tyranny
they can be prevented from living there under what laws they please,
provided they commit no aggression on other nations, and allow perfect
freedom of departure to those who are dissatisfied with their ways. A
recent writer, in some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use
his own words), not a crusade, but a _civilizade_, against this
polygamous community, to put an end to what seems to him a retrograde
step in civilisation. It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that
any community has a right to force another to be civilised. So long as
the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other
communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them
ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all
who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end
to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant,
who have no part or concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if they
please, to preach against it; and let them, by any fair means (of which
silencing the teachers is not one), oppose the progress of similar
doctrines among their own people. If civilisation 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 civilisation. A civilisation that can thus
succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first have become so degenerate,
that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has
the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be
so, the sooner such a civilisation 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.

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FOOTNOTE:

[14] The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point. When
this industrious and 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 Hindoo
sovereigns, on condition of not eating beef. When those regions
afterwards fell under the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors, the Parsees
obtained from them a continuance of indulgence, on condition of
refraining from pork. What was at first obedience to authority became a
second nature, and the Parsees to this day abstain both from beef and
pork. Though not required by their religion, the double abstinence has
had time to grow into a custom of their tribe; and custom, in the East,
is a religion.

23