by Andrew Lynn
Freedom for Mill also meant optimal cultivation of individuality: a man should be free not only to think and speak as he pleases, but also to act as he pleases, subject only to the condition that he cause no harm to others. Individuality is the basis for improvement of society: it is as a result of citizens expressing the full scope of their individuality that society becomes aware of new and better practices. Individuality is, just as importantly, the basis for the growth of each human being according to his own particular needs. This is a good in itself. The end of man is not to act as a cog in a societal machine; the end of man is ‘the highest and most harmonious development of his powers’.
These principles are profound and have stood the test of time. They are well known and, nominally at least, widely accepted. And yet some of Mill’s most penetrating observations remain overlooked despite their enduring—and indeed increasing—significance for modern man.
In the first place, Mill has much of importance to say about the opponents of free speech, their motivations, and the gravity of their error. He rightly establishes that underlying the belief that one person or group has the right to silence another person or group is the assumption of infallibility. He accepts, admittedly, that men acknowledge, in theory at least, their own fallibility; but very few of them think it necessary to guard against this fallibility, or indeed recognise the possibility that they could be fallible in matters of which they feel certain. Men place this unbounded confidence not in every idea they have, but in those ideas that are shared by all around them, or by those to whom they habitually defer. In short, they tend to repose trust in the infallibility of ‘the world’. But—and here is where Mill displays his characteristic perspicacity—what this means in practice is the part of the world with which each particular man comes in contact: ‘his party, his sect, his church, his class of society’. Few, unfortunately, care to reflect that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and still do think, the exact opposite. In fact, it is precisely where a man is at the same time most un-self-reflective and most parochial that he is likely to be the most convinced of the infallibility of his belief.
In an insight that has the greatest of implications for contemporary man, Mill explained that the main tool by which ‘mental freedom’ is impaired is social stigma; neither actual persecution nor legal restrictions, as such, are strictly necessary. Indeed, Mill observed that in England, at least, the profession of opinions under the ‘ban of society’ is much less common than those that incur the risk of actual judicial punishment in other nations. The only people in a position to effectively resist the use of social stigma to shut down dissent are persons of independent means; those dependent upon ‘earning their bread’ are at constant risk of having their social reputations, and livelihoods, destroyed. The attraction to the oppressor of working through the method of social stigma, rather than legal punishment, is obvious: it maintains the dominance of the permitted opinions, and the exclusion of dissenting viewpoints and contradicting facts, without ‘the unpleasant business of fining or imprisoning anybody’. The cost to individuals as well as to society at large, however, is immense. It goes without saying that those who profess the ‘heretical’ views will be deprived of a fair opportunity of putting their case to the world. Beyond this obvious result lie two other serious consequences. On the one hand, the general level of society is brought down, for the sort of men who prosper in such an environment will tend to be mere conformers, those ‘time-servers for truth’ who are willing to say whatever is necessary to get along, rather than the ‘open, fearless characters and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world’. On the other hand, the ‘multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters’, who might in freer circumstances have made valuable contributions to society, will find their whole mental development cramped and distorted through self-censorship, and their resources exhausted in attempting to reconcile their reasoning faculty with the demands of orthodoxy.
Mill deprecates, in particular, the idea that any part of education should be in the hands of the state. His position is that state education is ‘a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another’ and ‘as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body’. The state’s role in public examinations or certifications is also, Mill argues, pernicious, and to prevent it from exercising, through these arrangements, any improper influence over opinion, the knowledge required for such examinations should be confined to facts and ‘positive science’ exclusively. Even then, examinations should be entirely voluntary and no one should be excluded from any profession on the basis of alleged deficiency of qualifications.
In a troublingly prescient section of the essay, Mill turns his guns upon the argument that opinions ought to be silenced insofar as they cause offence to others. It is here that he is at his indomitable best. He states the obvious objection to this position—namely, the difficulty of identifying where the supposed bounds are to be placed—and that experience shows that offence tends to be given whenever the person or persons who claim to be offended perceive that the attack against their ideas has been, or is about to become, ‘telling and powerful’. He points out the hypocrisy that while great efforts are made to disallow the giving of offence by those who challenge the prevailing dogma, offence is routinely allowed against such freethinkers. Such ‘offence’ (if any) that we ought to object to is the tendency ‘to stigmatise those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men’—a calumny to which those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed.
There has arisen to prominence another tradition, alien to that of John Stuart Mill and classical liberalism, deriving in spirit and in substance from Marxism and its modern variants, the primary tenets of which, insofar as they relate to questions of freedom of thought and speech, are contained in Herbert Marcuse’s essay, ‘Repressive Tolerance’.[1] While paying lip service to Mill, Marcuse’s starting point is that free speech cannot be granted equally and cannot protect what he calls ‘false words’; nor is free speech, he says, appropriate for the mass of men who have been ‘manipulated and indoctrinated’ to parrot the views of their masters. Withdrawal of toleration of free speech and assembly is, therefore, necessary for those who ‘promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion,’ and even for those who ‘oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.’; there would also need to be, he said, ‘new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions’, although he expected—not unreasonably it turns out—that this aspect could be enforced by students and teachers themselves. In startlingly Orwellian terms, Marcuse indicated that this approach would bring about the ‘restoration of freedom’ from ‘false tolerance’. ‘Liberating tolerance,’ he explained, ‘would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.’ It is palpably clear that free speech, in this view, is to be reserved for those who belong to preferred groups and who espouse a ‘correct view’. The question of which groups are to be privileged and which viewpoints are correct is, presumably, to be determined by Marcuse and others like him.
The battle for free speech today is fought in substance between these two viewpoints. Admittedly, it is difficult, based upon the respective philosophical merits, to imagine how classical liberalism could have lost so much ground to its challenger. Indeed, reading Mill’s essay alongside that of Marcuse reveals the quality of the former’s thinking to be far superior to that of the latter: where Mill builds his argument step by step with impeccable logic and consistency, Marcuse’s effort is clumsy, unsophisticated, and at times outright self-contradictory. Ind
eed, it seems that Marcuse misunderstands, or misrepresents, and therefore fails to answer Mill’s fundamental point: that to arrogate to oneself the right to restrict another’s thought or speech presupposes one’s own infallibility, and that it is only through allowing men generally the right to have and to express opinions that we approach the truth. Nevertheless, there is no denying that free speech is under threat not only in Mill’s homeland but also across the Western world, and not only in the media but also in the universities, corporations, government, and across the public and even private spheres. This resurgence of opposition to free thought and free speech can be explained to a considerable degree by its age-old emotional appeal: to censor, or deplatform, or mob, or prosecute, or otherwise harm the fundamental economic interests of one’s opponents confers, presumably, pleasant feelings of power, superiority, and self-righteousness. It is also in the interests of those currently holding power to quash dissent almost before it has formed, and that is done by ensuring the human mind is not exposed, in the first place, to the materials out of which dissenting viewpoints could arise.
John Stuart Mill’s great essay constitutes a standing—and monumental—rebuke to this tendency, and a reminder of our capacity arrive at, or to return to, a more civilised mode of being.
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Chapter 2
Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the ‘liberty of the press’ as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their propriety;[2] and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be apprehended that the government, whether completely responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. 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. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. 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.
It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course, deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment which is always allowed to it in theory; for while everyone well 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. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of ‘the world’ in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Peking. Yet it is as evident in itself, as any amount of argument can make it, that ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
The objection likely to be made to this argument would probably take some such form as the following. There is no greater assumption of infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error than in any other thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment and responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct can be no valid objection to any conduct in particular. It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure of being right. But when they are sure (such reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered abroad without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true. Let us take care, it may be said, not to make the same mistak
e: but governments and nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions which we regard as false and pernicious.
I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.
When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and the other are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the inherent force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If there really is this preponderance—which there must be unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state—it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man, either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? 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 as 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. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers—knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter—he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.