Culturally speaking, morality and the formation of new ideas are more valuable to a society than things like money or gold—morality helps guide humankind’s behavior and new ideas are necessary to progress on both the personal and national levels. However, as John Stuart Mill explains in On Liberty, there are always those who oppose change and thus new ideas and progress. Those in power—for example, the upper classes (using social influence) and political elites (political power)—determine and define the morality that all over classes are expected to follow. Those who don’t abide by the predetermined morality are frowned upon and face the loss of whatever good reputation they have, and perhaps even total social ostracization. In Mill’s essay, he argues that morality is changeable and that occasionally behaviors which are considered immoral by one generation are gladly accepted by the next. For instance, one generation might have strict rules about dating and say an unmarried woman can’t spend any time with an unmarried man without a chaperone; however, the next generation might see no problem in an unmarried couple taking long walks alone together. This change in what constitutes socially-acceptable and moral behavior can be considered progress by Mill’s definition because it affords greater liberty to individuals without hurting anyone else or infringing on their rights. However, for society to progress there must be a constant influx of new discussions on all of society’s accepted customs and ideas (be they social, political, or economic), both old and new. Still, there are always those who oppose such discussions and changes in the name of traditional morality and values. However, as Mill ultimately argues, mankind’s natural tendency toward progress through redefining morality and introducing innovative new ideas is powerful enough to overcome whatever obstacles the prevailing social and political powers can throw in its way.
New ideas often mean progress—a shedding of old traditions and stale beliefs in favor of newer, more modern ones. However, this turnover also means that those who enjoy power in one generation risk losing it with the next; therefore, there is often a tendency among powerful people to suppress new ideas. Mill writes that “Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests.” This means that whenever there is a group or class of people that are generally considered superior to others, the prevailing opinions about moral or immoral behavior of that society serves to support those in power somehow. Historically, those in power will go to great lengths to suppress ideas that threaten their total supremacy. Mill points out that “History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution”; in other words, when someone introduces a new idea that threatens the power of the ruling classes, they will fight back by persecuting—typically socially, through stripping people of their reputations—those who support the new idea. Unfortunately, the threat of persecution is enough to dissuade many people from sharing their ideas and beliefs. After all, as Mill asks, “Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any […] independent train of thought” out of fear of being stigmatized as “irreligious or immoral?”
In the face of immense criticism, it is understandable that many people would choose to keep their opinions under wraps. However, according to Mill, this impulse is far more dangerous than opening oneself up to potential persecution. Mill says, “Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion.” By this Mill means that while people in the modern day aren’t physically punished for diverging from popular opinion, the social stigma that attaches itself to those who go against the grain is enough to deter people from expressing their opinions in the first place. Furthermore, “the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race.” Because every opinion or new idea—no matter how different from prevailing ones—has the potential to positively influence society, “silencing” their expression means “robbing” one’s fellow citizens of the opportunity to apply these new, beneficial ideas to their own lives. Mill also points out that “The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped […] by the fear of heresy.” In other words, people internalize their fear of social stigma or persecution to the point where they limit their private thoughts to those which are in keeping with the prevailing morality.
Despite all of this, Mill believes that it is human nature to be drawn to progress and to want to improve upon the ideas that characterized the past. One of the distinguishing features of human beings is that they are “capable of rectifying [their] mistakes, by discussion and experience.” People can and do make changes to how they live their lives for the better, but part of the reason they’re able to do this is because they are free to openly discuss their opinions and ideas with others. Mill likens human behavior to “a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides,” not just one or two acceptable sides. Society might place restrictions on individual people, but, like a tree, over time they will develop in whatever ways come naturally to them—the only question is whether they express this development externally or internalize it. Ultimately, the persecution of the new ideas that stimulate progress is never strong enough to stop change from happening, as shown by the fact that humanity has changed and progressed over time.
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Morality, New Ideas, and Progress Quotes in On Liberty
What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation’s own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise.
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.
Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light.
The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. 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 which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral?
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the truth view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think different from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.
I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings on an exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular standards […] which heretofore co-existed with and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there will result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of character, which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathizing in the conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that other ethics than any which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources, must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is no exception to the rule, that in an imperfect state of the human mind, the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions.
Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are […] more individual than any other people—less capable, consequently, 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.
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon. […] These tendencies of the times cause the public to be more disposed than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of conduct, and endeavor to make every one conform to the approved standard. And that standard, express or tacit, is to be without any marked character; to maim by compression […] every part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity.
Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. They should be for ever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it.
A theory of ‘social rights’, the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language: being nothing short of this—that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for, the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes any one’s lips, it invades all the ‘social rights’ attribute to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard.
