He thinks this evil has not only
gone to a dangerous extent already, but that it threatens a still
further invasion of individual liberty with even greater disasters in
its train. It is better, however, to let Mr. Mill speak for himself in
the following passages:
'But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and
the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess but the
deficiency of personal impulses and preferences.' * * *
'In our times, from the highest class of society down to the
lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded
censorship.' * * *
'I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to
what suits their inclination. It does not occur to them to have any
inclination except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is
bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity
is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise
choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste,
eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes; until by
dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to
follow; their human capacities are withered and starved; they
become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are
generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth or
properly their own.'
And so, speaking of men of genius as being less capable than other
persons 'of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of
_the small number of moulds_ which society provides in order to save its
members the trouble of forming their own character,' he continues:
'If they are of a strong character and break their fetters, they
become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing
them to commonplace, to point at with solemn warning, as 'wild,'
'erratic,' and the like; much as if one should complain of the
Niagara river for not flowing smoothly between its banks like a
Dutch canal.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128