The same remark might be made of Englishmen in a far greater degree. (In a passage already quoted from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out two things as necessary conditions of human development, because necessary to render people unlike one another; namely, freedom, and variety of situations. The second of these two conditions is in this country every day diminishing. The circumstances which surround different classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighbourhoods, different trades and professions, lived in what might be called different worlds; at present, to a great degree in the same. Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same

constrast

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of

rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting with them. Great as are the differences of positione ; which remain, they are nothing to those which have ceased. And the assimilation is still proceeding. increasing All the political changes of the age promote it, since Fucation they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high. of interests, Every extension of education promotes it, because specializa, po education brings people under common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts Progress to and sentiments. Improvements in the means of be sure, was communication promote it, by bringing the inha- divers ficatos

but at the cost of individua place, stability, roots.

extension of his was, yet not witha Consumer hyperspace is the arm

wedom with constraint.

bitants of distant places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another. The increase of commerce and manufactures promotes it, by diffusing more widely the advantages of easy circumstances, and opening all objects of ambition, even the highest, to general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer the character of a particular class, but of all classes. A more powerful agency than even all these, in bringing about a general similarity among mankind, is the complete establishment, in this and other free countries, of the ascendancy of public opinion in the State. As the various social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them to disregard the opinion of the multitude, gradually become levelled; as the very idea of resisting the will of the public, when it is positively known that they have a will, disappears more and more from the minds of practical politicians; there ceases to be any social support for non-conformity—any substantive power in society, which, itself opposed to the ascendancy of numbers, is interested in taking under its protection opinions and tendencies at variance with those of the public.

The combination of all these causes forms so great a mass of influences hostile to Individuality, that it is not easy to see how it can stand its ground. It will do so with increasing difficulty,

unless the intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its value—to see that it is good there should be differences, even though not for the better, even though, as it may appear to them, some should be for the worse. If the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the time is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment. The demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds on. If resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one uniform type, all deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it.

OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL.

THAT, 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, 7.

in each person's bearing his share (to be fixed on
some equitable principle) of the labours and sacri-
fices incurred for defending the society or its mem-
bers from injury and molestation. These condi-
tions 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 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, be-
comes 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 conse-
quences.

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