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Unit 13: John Stuart Mill: His Life and Theory of Liberty

Mill accepted the observation of Tocqueville that the modern industrial societies were becoming Notes
more egalitarian and socially conformist, thereby threatening individuality and creativity. He was
fearful “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” . For Mill,
the singular threat to individual liberty was from the tyranny and intolerance of the majority in its
quest for extreme egalitarianism and social conformity. This made him realize the inadequacy of
early liberalism.
... when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively over the separate individuals
who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the act which it may do
by the hands of its political functionaries Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of
the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the
prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other
means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those
who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and if possible, prevent the formation,
of any individuality not in harmony with its ways and compels all characters to fashion
themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of
collective opinion with individual independence : and to find that limit, and maintain
it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as
protection against political despotism.
Mill pointed out that in the area of thought and discussion the active and inquiring mind had
become morally timid, for it concealed the true opinion when discussed in public. “Our merely
social intolerance kills no one, roots out no public, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain
from any active effort for their diffusion” (Mill ibid: 93).
The majority projected itself as the controller of social opinion, as the “moral police”. Social
tyranny was exercised in subtle forms like customs, conventions and mass opinion, which did not
make an individual stop and think where and how one had come to acquire these. There was an
absence of “individuality”. Individuality, to Mill, was not mere non-conformism, but signified the
act of questioning, the right to choice. He encouraged eccentricity, “the mere refusal to bend the
knee to custom” at a time when mass opinion was exceptionally assertive. On the contrary, when
the pressure to conform socially was not so strong, then there was no need to encourage eccentricity.
The second qualification was the link Mill established between the desirability of difference and
the desirability of independence of character. It was only with moral and mental autonomy that
there would be considerable variety of thought and behaviour.
Individuality, to Mill, meant the power or capacity for critical enquiry and responsible thought. It
meant self-development and the expression of free will. He stressed absolute liberty of conscience,
belief and expression, for they were crucial to human progress. Mill offered two arguments for
liberty of expression in the service of truth: (a) the dissenting opinion could be true and its
suppression would rob humankind of useful knowledge; and (b) even if the opinion was false, it
would strengthen the correct view by challenging it.
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the
human race, posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the
opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of
the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as
great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its
collision with error.
For Mill, all creative faculties and the great goods of life could develop only through freedom and
“experiments in living”. On Liberty constituted the most persuasive and convincing defence of the
principle of individual liberty ever written. Like his father James Mill, he also believed in the
individual’s capacity for education, by which he meant not only intellectual training or cultivation

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