The effect will be not only to do more for
society as a whole, but to make superior men by means of self-education.
'He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He
gains no practice either in discerning or desiring what is best. The
mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being
used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely
because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because
others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to a
person's own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened, but is likely to
be weakened by adopting it: and if the inducements to an act are not
such as are consentaneous to his own feelings and character (where
affection or the rights of others are not concerned), it is so much done
toward rendering his feelings and character inert and torpid, instead of
active and energetic.'
Against these views, and, indeed, against the great body of valuable
thoughts so admirably presented in this work, no rational objection
would seem to be fairly adducible. But there are some very striking
passages liable to a very different criticism--passages which, if not
founded on actual misconception of facts, are, at least, so exaggerated
in statement as to require very material modifications, both as to the
existence of the evil they allege and the remedy they propose. Mr. Mill
complains of the despotism of society as having utterly suppressed all
spontaneity or individuality, and reduced the mass of mankind to a
condition of lamentable uniformity.
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