Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort;

ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable

conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the

necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely

co-extensive with these; given certain institutions and customs, wages,

profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class

of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue

that these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no human

means can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the

produce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The _Principles of

Political Economy_ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the

scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the

conditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating

those conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend not

on necessaties of nature but on those combined with the existing

arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as

liable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement. I had

indeed partially learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakened

in me by the speculations of the St. Simonians; but it was made a living

principle pervading and animating the book by my wife's promptings. This

example illustrates well the general character of what she contributed

to my writings. What was abstract and purely scientific was generally

mine; the properly human element came from her: in all that concerned

the application of philosophy to the exigencies of human society and

progress, I was her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and

cautiousness of practical judgment. For, on the one hand, she was much

more courageous and far-sighted than without her I should have been, in

anticipation of an order of things to come, in which many of the limited

generalizations now so often confounded with universal principles will

cease to be applicable. Those parts of my writings, and especially of

the _Political Economy_, which contemplate possibilities in the future

such as, when affirmed by Socialists, have in general been fiercely

denied by political economists, would, but for her, either have been

absent, or the suggestions would have been made much more timidly and in

a more qualified form. But while she thus rendered me bolder in

speculation on human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her almost

unerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me all tendencies

that were really visionary. Her mind invested all ideas in a concrete

shape, and formed to itself a conception of how they would actually

work: and her knowledge of the existing feelings and conduct of mankind

was so seldom at fault, that the weak point in any unworkable suggestion

seldom escapes her.[6]

 

During the two years which immediately preceded the cessation of my

official life, my wife and I were working together at the "Liberty."

I had first planned and written it as a short essay in 1854. It was in

mounting the steps of the Capitol, in January, 1855, that the thought

first arose of converting it into a volume. None of my writings have

been either so carefully composed, or so sedulously corrected as this.

After it had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us,

bringing it out from time to time, and going through it _de novo_,

reading, weighing, and criticizing every sentence. Its final revision

was to have been a work of the winter of 1858-9, the first after my

retirement, which we had arranged to pass in the south of Europe. That

hope and every other were frustrated by the most unexpected and bitter

calamity of her death--at Avignon, on our way to Montpellier, from a

sudden attack of pulmonary congestion.

 

Since then I have sought for such allevation as my state

admitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel her still

near me. I bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she

is buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer and now my chief

comfort) and I, live constantly during a great portion of the year. My

objects in life are solely those which were hers; my pursuits and

occupations those in which she shared, or sympathized, and which are

indissolubly associated with her. Her memory is to me a religion, and

her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all

worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life.

 

After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to print and

publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom I had

lost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made no alteration or

addition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants the last touch of her

hand, no substitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine.

 

The _Liberty_ was more directly and literally our joint production than

anything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence of it

that was not several times gone through by us together, turned over in

many ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought or

expression, that we detected in it. It is in consequence of this that,

although it never underwent her final revision, it far surpasses, as a

mere specimen of composition, anything which has proceeded from me

either before or since. With regard to the thoughts, it is difficult to

identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the

rest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression,

was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it, that

the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both. That I was thus

penetrated with it, however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was a

moment in my mental progress when I might easily have fallen into a

tendency towards over-government, both social and political; as there

was also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess, I might have

become a less thorough radical and democrat than I am. In both these

points, as in many others, she benefited me as much by keeping me right

where I was right, as by leading me to new truths, and ridding me of

errors. My great readiness and eagerness to learn from everybody, and to

make room in my opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old

and the new to one another, might, but for her steadying influence, have

seduced me into modifying my early opinions too much. She was in nothing

more valuable to my mental development than by her just measure of the

relative importance of different considerations, which often protected

me from allowing to truths I had only recently learnt to see, a more

important place in my thoughts than was properly their due.

 

The _Liberty_ is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have

written (with the possible exception of the _Logic_), because the

conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic

text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking

place in modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the

importance, to man and society of a large variety in types of character,

and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in

innumerable and conflicting directions. Nothing can better show how deep

are the foundations of this truth, than the great impression made by the

exposition of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did not

seem to stand much in need of such a lesson. The fears we expressed,

lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of

public opinion, should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke of

uniformity in opinion and practice, might easily have appeared

chimerical to those who looked more at present facts than at tendencies;

for the gradual revolution that is taking place in society and

institutions has, thus far, been decidedly favourable to the development

of new opinions, and has procured for them a much more unprejudiced

hearing than they previously met with. But this is a feature belonging

to periods of transition, when old notions and feelings have been

unsettled, and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascendancy.

At such times people of any mental activity, having given up their old

beliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those they still retain can

stand unmodified, listen eagerly to new opinions. But this state of

things is necessarily transitory: some particular body of doctrine in

time rallies the majority round it, organizes social institutions and

modes of action conformably to itself, education impresses this new

creed upon the new generations without the mental processes that have

led to it, and by degrees it acquires the very same power of

compression, so long exercised by the creeds of which it had taken the

place. Whether this noxious power will be exercised, depends on whether

mankind have by that time become aware that it cannot be exercised

without stunting and dwarfing human nature. It is then that the

teachings of the _Liberty_ will have their greatest value. And it is to

be feared that they will retain that value a long time.

 

As regards originality, it has of course no other than that which every

thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressing

truths which are common property. The leading thought of the book is one

which though in many ages confined to insulated thinkers, mankind have

probably at no time since the beginning of civilization been entirely

without. To speak only of the last few generations, it is distinctly

contained in the vein of important thought respecting education and

culture, spread through the European mind by the labours and genius of

Pestalozzi. The unqualified championship of it by Wilhelm von Humboldt

is referred to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his own

country. During the early part of the present century the doctrine of

the rights of individuality, and the claim of the moral nature to

develop itself in its own way, was pushed by a whole school of German

authors even to exaggeration; and the writings of Goethe, the most

celebrated of all German authors, though not belonging to that or to any

other school, are penetrated throughout by views of morals and of

conduct in life, often in my opinion not defensible, but which are

incessantly seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of the

right and duty of self-development. In our own country before the book

_On Liberty_ was written, the doctrine of Individuality had been

enthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation sometimes

reminding one of Fichte, by Mr. William Maccall, in a series of writings

of which the most elaborate is entitled _Elements of Individualism_: and

a remarkable American, Mr. Warren, had framed a System of Society, on

the foundation of _the Sovereignty of the individual_, had obtained a

number of followers, and had actually commenced the formation of a

Village Community (whether it now exists I know not), which, though

bearing a superficial resemblance to some of the projects of Socialists,

is diametrically opposite to them in principle, since it recognizes no

authority whatever in Society over the individual, except to enforce

equal freedom of development for all individualities. As the book which

bears my name claimed no originality for any of its doctrines, and was

not intended to write their history, the only author who had preceded me

in their assertion, of whom I thought it appropriate to say anything,

was Humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although in one

passage I borrowed from the Warrenites their phrase, the sovereignty of

the individual. It is hardly necessary here to remark that there are

abundant differences in detail, between the conception of the doctrine

by any of the predecessors I have mentioned, and that set forth in the

book.

 

The political circumstances of the time induced me, shortly after, to

complete and publish a pamphlet (_Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_),

part of which had been written some years previously on the occasion of

one of the abortive Reform Bills, and had at the time been approved and

revised by her. Its principal features were, hostility to the Ballot (a

change of opinion in both of us, in which she rather preceded me), and a

claim of representation for minorities; not, however, at that time going

beyond the cumulative vote proposed by Mr. Garth Marshall. In finishing

the pamphlet for publication, with a view to the discussions on the

Reform Bill of Lord Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's Government in 1859, I

added a third feature, a plurality of votes, to be given, not to

property, but to proved superiority of education. This recommended

itself to me as a means of reconciling the irresistible claim of every

man or woman to be consulted, and to be allowed a voice, in