Monday, June 25, 2007
" On Liberty " - John Stuart Mill (citings 26 june 2007)
" Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities.
Society can and does execute its own mandates. If it issues wrong mandates instead of right, it practises a social tyranniy more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more ddeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough ; there needs proection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling ; against the tendency of society to impose, 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 compel 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 indispensible to a good condition of human afairs, as protection against political despotism.
Society can and does execute its own mandates. If it issues wrong mandates instead of right, it practises a social tyranniy more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more ddeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough ; there needs proection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling ; against the tendency of society to impose, 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 compel 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 indispensible to a good condition of human afairs, as protection against political despotism.
