John stuart mill

goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in individual cases,

its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make the rising

generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself. If society

lets any considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of

being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself

to blame for the consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of education,

but with the ascendency which the authority of a received opinion always

exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for themselves; and aided

by the natural penalties which cannot be prevented from falling on those who

incur the distaste or the contempt of those who know them; let not society

pretend that it needs, besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce

obedience in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles

of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are to abide

the consequences. Nor is there anything which tends more to discredit and

frustrate the better means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse.

If there be among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or

temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are

made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will ever feel

that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they have to

prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily comes to be considered a

mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face of such usurped authority, and do

with ostentation the exact opposite of what it enjoins; as in the fashion of

grossness which succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to the fanatical moral

intolerance of the Puritans. With respect to what is said of the necessity of

protecting society from the bad example set to others by the vicious or the

self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have a pernicious effect,

especially the example of doing wrong to others with impunity to the wrong-doer.

But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it does no wrong to others, is

supposed to do great harm to the agent himself: and I do not see how those who

believe this, can think otherwise than that the example, on the whole, must be

more salutary than hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays

also the painful or degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly

censured, must be supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.

But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public

with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that

it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social morality,

of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling

majority, though often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right; because on

such questions they are only required to judge of their own interests; of the

manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would affect

themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on the

minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong

as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people's

opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does not

even mean that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over the

pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and considering

only their own preference. There are many who consider as an injury to

themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an

outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding

the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard

his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is

no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling

of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of

a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a

person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.

It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and

choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires

them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned.

But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its

censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience.

In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but

the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of

judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and

philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach

that things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so.

They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding

on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these

instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they are

tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world?

The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory; and it may

perhaps be expected that I should specify the instances in which the public of

this age and country improperly invests its own preferences with the character

of moral laws. I am not writing an essay on the aberrations of existing moral

feeling. That is too weighty a subject to be discussed parenthetically, and by

way of illustration. Yet examples are necessary, to show that the principle I

maintain is of serious and practical moment, and that I am not endeavoring to

erect a barrier against imaginary evils. And it is not difficult to show, by

abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral

police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the

individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

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

grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are different from theirs, do

not practise their religious observances, especially their religious

abstinences. To cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the creed or practice

of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than

the fact of their eating pork. There are few acts which Christians and Europeans

regard with more unaffected disgust, than Mussulmans regard this particular mode

of satisfying hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence against their

religion; but this circumstance by no means explains either the degree or the

kind of their repugnance; for wine also is forbidden by their religion, and to

partake of it is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their

aversion to the flesh of the "unclean beast" is, on the contrary, of that

peculiar character, resembling an instinctive antipathy, which the idea of

uncleanness, when once it thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems always to

excite even in those whose personal habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly

and of which the sentiment of religious impurity, so intense in the Hindoos, is

a remarkable example. Suppose now that in a people, of whom the majority were

Mussulmans, that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be eaten

within the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in Mahomedan

countries.[1] Would it be a legitimate exercise of the moral authority of public

opinion? and if not, why not? The practice is really revolting to such a public.

They also sincerely think that it is forbidden and abhorred by the Deity.

Neither could the prohibition be censured as religious persecution. It might be

religious in its origin, but it would not be persecution for religion, since

nobody's religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable ground of

condemnation would be, that with the personal tastes and self-regarding concerns

of individuals the public has no business to interfere.

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

impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to worship him in

any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other public worship is lawful

on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as

not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do

Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to

enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering

with each other's liberty in things which do not concern the interests of

others, on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? or

who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in

the sight of God and man?

No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded as a

personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices in the

eyes of those who regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt

the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are

right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must

beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice

the application to ourselves.

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

contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country, not being likely to

enforce abstinence from meats, or to interfere with people for worshipping, and

for either marrying or not marrying, according to their creed or inclination.

The next example, however, shall be taken from an interference with liberty

which we have by no means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have been

sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain at the time of

the Commonwealth, they have endeavored, with considerable success, to put down

all public, and nearly all private, amusements: especially music, dancing,

public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion, and the theatre.

There are still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions of

morality and religion these recreations are condemned; and those persons

belonging chiefly to the middle class, who are the ascendant power in the

present social and political condition of the kingdom, it is by no means

impossible that persons of these sentiments may at some time or other command a

majority in Parliament. How will the remaining portion of the community like to

have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious

and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not,

with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious members of

society to mind their own business? This is precisely what should be said to

every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall

enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong. But if the principle of the

pretension be admitted, no one can reasonably object to its being acted on in

the sense of the majority, or other preponderating power in the country; and all

persons must be ready to conform to the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as

understood by the early settlers in New England, if a religious profession

similar to theirs should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions

supposed to be declining have so often been known to do.

To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realized than the one

last mentioned. There is confessedly a strong tendency in the modern world

towards a democratic constitution of society, accompanied or not by popular

political institutions. It is affirmed that in the country where this tendency

is most completely realized — where both society and the government are most

democratic — the United States — the feeling of the majority, to whom any

appearance of a more showy or costly style of living than they can hope to rival

is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual sumptuary law, and that in

many parts of the Union it is really difficult for a person possessing a very

large income, to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular

disapprobation. Though such statements as these are doubtless much exaggerated

as a representation of existing facts, the state of things they describe is not

only a conceivable and possible, but a probable result of democratic feeling,

combined with the notion that the public has a right to a veto on the manner in

which individuals shall spend their incomes. We have only further to suppose a

considerable diffusion of Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous in the

eyes of the majority to possess more property than some very small amount, or

any income not earned by manual labor. Opinions similar in principle to these,

already prevail widely among the artisan class, and weigh oppressively on those

who are amenable to the opinion chiefly of that class, namely, its own members.

It is known that the bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many

branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive

the same wages as good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework

or otherwise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others can without

it. And they employ a moral police, which occasionally becomes a physical one,

to deter skilful workmen from receiving, and employers from giving, a larger

remuneration for a more useful service. If the public have any jurisdiction over

private concerns, I cannot see that these people are in fault, or that any

individual's particular public can be blamed for asserting the same authority

over his individual conduct, which the general public asserts over people in

general.

But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our own day,

gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually practised, and still

greater ones threatened with some expectation of success, and opinions proposed

which assert an unlimited right in the public not only to prohibit by law

everything which it thinks wrong, but in order to get at what it thinks wrong,

to prohibit any number of things which it admits to be innocent.

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

of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by law from making any

use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical purposes: for prohibition

of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. And

though the impracticability of executing the law has caused its repeal in

several of the States which had adopted it, including the one from which it

derives its name, an attempt has notwithstanding been commenced, and is

prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of the professed philanthropists, to

agitate for a similar law in this country. The association, or "Alliance" as it

terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has acquired some

notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its Secretary

and one of the very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions

ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's share in this correspondence

is calculated to strengthen the hopes already built on him, by those who know

how rare such qualities as are manifested in some of his public appearances,

unhappily are among those who figure in political life. The organ of the

Alliance, who would "deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could

be wrested to justify bigotry and persecution," undertakes to point out the

"broad and impassable barrier" which divides such principles from those of the

association. "All matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience, appear to

me," he says, "to be without the sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social

act, habit, relation, subject only to a discretionary power vested in the State

itself, and not in the individual, to be within it." No mention is made of a

third class, different from either of these, viz., acts and habits which are not

social, but individual; although it is to this class, surely, that the act of

drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented liquors, however, is

trading, and trading is a social act. But the infringement complained of is not

on the liberty of the seller, but on that of the buyer and consumer; since the

State might just as well forbid him to drink wine, as purposely make it

impossible for him to obtain it. The Secretary, however, says, "I claim, as a

citizen, a right to legislate whenever my social rights are invaded by the

social act of another." And now for the definition of these "social rights." "If

anything invades my social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink does.

It destroys my primary right of security, by constantly creating and stimulating

social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a profit from the

creation of a misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my right to free moral

and intellectual development, by surrounding my path with dangers, and by

weakening and demoralizing society, from which I have a right to claim mutual

aid and intercourse." A theory of "social rights," the like of which probably

never before found its way into distinct language — being nothing short of this

— that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other

individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails

thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to

demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a

principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there

is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right

to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret,

without ever disclosing them; for the moment an opinion which I consider

noxious, passes any one's lips, it invades all the "social rights" attributed to

me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in

each other's moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by

each claimant according to his own standard.

Another important example of illegitimate interference with the rightful liberty

of the individual, not simply threatened, but long since carried into triumphant

effect, is Sabbatarian legislation. Without doubt, abstinence on one day in the

week, so far as the exigencies of life permit, from the usual daily occupation,

though in no respect religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly

beneficial custom. And inasmuch as this custom cannot be observed without a

general consent to that effect among the industrious classes, therefore, in so

far as some persons by working may impose the same necessity on others, it may

be allowable and right that the law should guarantee to each, the observance by

others of the custom, by suspending the greater operations of industry on a

particular day. But this justification, grounded on the direct interest which

others have in each individual's observance of the practice, does not apply to

the self-chosen occupations in which a person may think fit to employ his

leisure; nor does it hold good, in the smallest degree, for legal restrictions

on amusements. It is true that the amusement of some is the day's work of

others; but the pleasure, not to say the useful recreation, of many, is worth

the labor of a few, provided the occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely

resigned. The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all worked on

Sunday, seven days' work would have to be given for six days' wages: but so long

as the great mass of employments are suspended, the small number who for the

enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a proportional increase of earnings;

and they are not obliged to follow those occupations, if they prefer leisure to

emolument. If a further remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment

by custom of a holiday on some other day of the week for those particular

classes of persons. The only ground, therefore, on which restrictions on Sunday

amusements can be defended, must be that they are religiously wrong; a motive of

legislation which never can be too earnestly protested against. "Deorum injuriae

Diis curae." It remains to be proved that society or any of its officers holds a

commission from on high to avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence, which is

not also a wrong to our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one man's duty

that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious

persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully justify them. Though

the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling

on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like, has not

the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is

fundamentally the same. It IS a determination not to tolerate others in doing

what is permitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the

persecutor's religion. It is a belief that God not only abominates the act of

the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we leave him unmolested.

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

made of human liberty, the language of downright persecution which breaks out

from the press of this country, whenever it feels called on to notice the

remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism. Much might be said on the unexpected and

instructive fact, that an alleged new revelation, and a religion, founded on it,