On Liberty

When I read, I like to mark my place with a 3x5 index card that I use to note page numbers and record ideas or questions inspired by my reading. A typical bookmark might have several pages noted and a few thoughts scribbled on the reverse, but I’ve been reading a book this week that, if it were longer, would easily fill an entire card with page numbers alone. It is an essay by John Stuart Mill, published in 1863, called On Liberty.

Though its worldly acclaim lies in its political implications – defending personal liberty against both tyrannical governments and societal “tyranny of the majority” – I have deeply enjoyed reading it from a less concrete perspective. When applied to religion and man’s search for truth, I have found his insights incredibly compelling.

I suppose my favorable impression is due partially to the degree to which I find my ideas falling in line with Mill’s, and certainly there may others among you who are more bored by the book than anything else. Its language is a little curious, as one might expect from a book 140 years old, but I have underlined twice as many passages in the first 60 pages of this book than I did over the entire 200+ pages of Standing for Something by Gordon B. Hinckley, another book I finished this week.

If I were able to spend a day writing I would take at least four of the topics Mill introduces and craft my own essays on the subject -- so much of the material can be applied to the Mormon-based topics recently discussed on this blog -- but for now they will have to make do in the "future writing" queue along with the rest. Instead I'll include some quotes from the first two chapters. These aren’t “Quote of the Day” style quotes designed to be grasped easily in passing; the ideas Mill presents demand some thought and exploration to be useful.

I’m also taking some liberty in formatting these quotes; Mill uses commas the way a valley girl says “like,” so when the original formatting seems to muddle the idea, I’ll change it below.

“So natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference … has added its weight to the scale.”

“People are accustomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the belief by some who aspire to the character of philosophers, that their feelings … are better than reasons and render reasons unnecessary.”

“The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as citizens, to impose their opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly kept under restraint by anything but a want of power.”

“If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

The "evil" of suppressing contrary opinions:
“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.”

“[One is confident of his beliefs] because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”

Speaking of the Bible:
“He has thus, on one hand, a collection of ethical maxims, which he believes to have been vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his government; and on the other, a set of every-day judgments and practices, which go a certain length with some of those maxims, not so great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to some, and are, on the whole, a compromise between the Christian creed and the interests and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of these standards he gives his homage; to the other is his real allegiance… Whenever conduct is concerned, they look around for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ.”

“Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something whitch would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral?”

In political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation.”

“The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.”

“While everyone knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion of which they feel very certain may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.”

“It is also often argued, and still oftener thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these (religious) beliefs… This mode of thinking makes justification of restraints on discussions not a question of the truth of the doctrines, but of their usefulness.”

“Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves then by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”

“To refuse hearing to an opinion because they are sure it is false, it to assume that their certainty is absolute certainty.”

“We are capable of rectifying our mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion to show how experience is to be interpreted.”

“Very few facts are able to tell their own story without comments to bring out their meaning.”

“In the opinion, not of bad men but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can be really useful.”

“Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.”

“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusion it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”

“However unwillingly a person how has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”

“If the cultivation of understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections.”

“Mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken?”

“People believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed.”

“As a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, (negative logic) cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect.”

“If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions to do with much greater labor for ourselves.”

“No sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those who force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see.”

“When there are persons to be found who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probably that the dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.”

“There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.”