Chapter Three of On Liberty – “On Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-being” – is a passionate defence of individuality and diversity, and the liberty that allows them to flourish. Of course, Mill does not advocate unrestricted freedom and the standard caveats apply: children should not be given full liberty but should instead be educated in the best examples of tradition and custom; and in ‘early states of society’ (§6), where social rules are too weak to control powerful individuals, freedom is more of a curse than a blessing. But in a modern society of adults:
... men should be free to act upon their opinions – to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. 3.1
Nevertheless, Mill is willing to place more limits on action than he did on speech since actions tend to have more measurable effects. The Harm Principle, as ever, dictates the boundaries of freedom.
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. 3.1
His reasons for advocating freedom of action are the same reasons for advocating freedom of expression:
That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good. 3.1
Just as the ‘collision of opinions’ will, in the end, generate a better understanding of the truth, so a diversity of different lifestyles will allow people to discover better ways to live.
As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. 3.1
By arguing against legal and social interference in a person’s lifestyle, Mill is advocating negative freedom. But he goes a step further than this, and insists that once these impediments are removed, people will – and should – develop strongly individual personalities. He quotes with approval the observation of Wilhelm von Humboldt that for individuality to flourish, two things are needed: ‘freedom, and a variety of situations’ (3.2). Appealing as always to ‘the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’, Mill insists:
... it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings... 3.10
This emphasis upon individuality and eccentricity is a result of Mill’s utilitarianism. Self-determination is:
... one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress. 3.1
– but in reality, it is astonishing what little value people generally place on this. Instead they prefer to bow to the tyranny of the majority and frown upon the truly individual lifestyle.
One objection is that Mill is overstating the case here, and while a little individuality is a good thing, so is the recognition of what others have already achieved. On the surface, Mill accepts this criticism:
... it would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in the world before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done nothing towards showing that one mode of existence, or of conduct, is preferable to another. 3.3
Mill cautiously agrees that there is a value to custom and tradition, and he recommends that it should form the basis of an education for children. But for adults, the experiences of others are of limited use. Mill presents three arguments against using others as role models. Firstly, the experiences of others may be too narrow to be relevant, or they may have interpreted them wrongly. Secondly, what works for some may not work for all since personalities can differ greatly. Thirdly and most importantly, following the example of others is too easy, a mere ‘ape-like imitation’ (§4):
He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. 3.3
What is important to Mill is the activity of choice and the exercise of one’s faculties in individual development (just as, in Chapter Two, Mill insists on active understanding of the grounds and reasons for and against a belief). This is closely connected to Mill’s utilitarianism, and his identification of real happiness with the higher, intellectual pleasures. As Isaiah Berlin put it, On Liberty celebrates:
... a certain type of character of which Mill approved – fearless, original, imaginative, independent, non-conforming to the point of eccentricity.
This is Mill’s picture of the good life: autonomous, active and deliberative.
He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. 3.4
For Mill, humankind is progressive, in the sense that we can learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves. This perfectionist view requires an understanding of just what constitutes such ‘improvement’. Mill identifies the good life with autonomy and the full and free exercise of individual choice. This is the key justification for liberty of action: it is required by Mill’s perfectionist understanding of what it means to be human.
Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself... Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. 3.4
The perfecting of human life demands an active personality with strong desires and impulses:
To say that one person’s desires and feelings are stronger and more various than those of another, is merely to say that he has more of the raw material of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but certainly of more good. 3.5
Mill makes the point that this model of human nature and development differs markedly from others, such as the self-denial of Calvinism. But such religious asceticism ‘dulls and blunts the whole nature’ (§9). The development of individuals and the celebration of diversity may not appeal to religious reformers, but they are essential for the broader progress of humanity.
Of course, Mill’s model of humanity can be disputed, and some thinkers are more concerned to define humans as social beings – in terms of the collective rather than the individual. But a defence of the individual is always at the heart of liberal thinking. As Berlin remarks:
Every plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest against exploitation and humiliation, against the encroachment of public authority, or the mass hypnosis of custom or organized propaganda, springs from this individualistic, and much disputed, conception of man.
In the second part of this chapter (§11ff) Mill argues that it is not only the nonconformist who benefits from freedom of action, but society as a whole.
In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. 3.9
This is because the talented individual, the ‘genius’ as Mill likes to say, helps in the discovery of new ideas and the establishment of new practices – ‘better modes of action, and customs more worthy of general adoption’ (§14). This is also true of good government which needs original thinkers to guide policy. Mill makes much of this notion of genius and the importance of originality:
The initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual. 3.13
In defence of diversity, Mill notes that people are sufficiently different from each other to require a variety of conditions in which each may flourish (§14), and as he emphasises elsewhere, each person is the best judge of their own needs:
... with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else. 4.4
For these reasons, then, society as a whole has much to gain from the existence of individuals and a diversity of lifestyles. Mill, however, feels that his own society lacks such strong personalities and the energy required for progress: all that exists now are ‘weak feelings and weak energies’ (§16). When that happens, and the ‘despotism of custom’ (§17) triumphs over individualism, the result is social stagnation.
Mill’s perfectionist sensibilities require individuality and diversity to realise his vision of the good life, and there is only one guaranteed way to achieve that vision:
... the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals. 3.17
Not surprisingly, perhaps, some commentators have found fault with Mill’s analysis here. James Fitzjames Stephen thought that Mill’s faith in liberty was misplaced:
To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance... ch 2
He further argued that there is no necessary connection between diversity and human progress, quoting his brother, Leslie Stephen, to underline the point:
Though goodness is various, variety is not in itself good. A nation in which everybody was sober would be a happier, better, and more progressive, though a less diversified, nation than one of which half the members were sober and the other half habitual drunkards. ch 2
Isaiah Berlin noted the same confusion of two ideas: first, that liberty is a good; and second, that liberty is required for full human development. Stephen was not alone in agreeing to the first point but questioning the second. As Berlin puts it:
... integrity, love of truth and fiery individualism grow at least as often in severely disciplined communities among, for example, the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New England, or under military discipline, as in more tolerant or indifferent societies; and if this is so accepted, Mill’s argument for liberty as a necessary condition for the growth of human genius falls to the ground.
In Carol Reed’s 1949 movie of The Third Man, the character of Harry Lime famously says:
... in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Even under the brutal and corrupt Borgias, Lime claims, the creative faculties have flourished; and in conditions of freedom, they can wither away. History contains its own examples of major advances under oppressive conditions: Galileo’s discoveries in the face of religious persecution, the emergence of Jazz music among the black communities of the Southern United States, and so on. This is a common objection and, if true, one that is damaging to Mill’s argument. Even if Mill’s perfectionism is plausible, it seems doubtful that liberty is the only, or even the best, method of achieving it.
In the 150 years since Mill wrote On Liberty it is interesting to ask whether increasing freedom has led to human progress. In one sense, with increasing liberation from colonial or social oppression, and a corresponding recognition of universal human rights and dignities, it seems that progress has indeed been the result of freedom. On the other hand, the wars of the twentieth century cast doubt on any notion of human progress, and the growth of global capitalism appears to be destroying the diversity that Mill advocated.