their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. This is the real morality of public discussion ; and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a great extent observe it, and a still greater number who conscientiously strive towards it.

OF INDIVIDUALITY.

107

1

FREE DEM.

CHAPTER III.

OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELLBEING.

UCH being the reasons which make it im

SUCH

perative that human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition; let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their opinions to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical ⚫ or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. This last proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers

are starvers of the poor, or that private prop-
erty is robbery, ought to be unmolested when
simply circulated through the press, but may
justly incur punishment when delivered orally
to an excited mob assembled before the house
of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among
the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts;
of whatever kind, which, without justifiable
cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the
more important cases absolutely require to be,
controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and,
when needful, by the active interference of
mankind. The liberty of the individual must
be thus far limited; he must not make himself
a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains
from molesting others in what concerns them,
and merely acts according to his own inclina-
tion and judgment in things which concern
himself, the same reasons which show that
opinion should be free, prove also that he
should be allowed, without molestation, to
carry his opinions into practice at his own
cost. That mankind are not infallible; that
their truths, for the most part, are only half-
truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting
from the fullest and freest comparison of op-
posite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity
not an evil, but a good, until mankind are
much more capable than at present of recog-

d

Sa

nizing all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men's modes of action, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting. one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.

In maintaining this principle, the greatest difficulty to be encountered does not lie in the appreciation of means towards an acknowledged end, but in the indifference of persons in general to the end itself. If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a coördinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things;

there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued, and the adjustment of the boundaries between it and social control would present no extraordinary difficulty. But the evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard on its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind. Few persons, out of Germany, even comprehend the meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both as a savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise. - that "the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole;" that, therefore, the object "towards