CHAPTER ONE:  INTRODUCTORY

1.  The problem involves questions of civil or social liberty - limits of the power of anyone, any group, or any government over the individual.

2.  What was the early concept, in more primitive governments, of liberty?
        Very negative:  protection of the people against the tyrannical power of rulers.
            "To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down."

3.  What is the early concept of rights?
    a.  Specific political liberties it was wrong for the ruler to infringe, and infringement woudl result in revolution.
    b.  Constitutional checks for the benefit of the community against the power of rulers.

4.  Does the phrase "power of the people over themselves" mean that each person is ruler over himself?  NO.
    "The 'people' who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the 'self-government' spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest.  The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people - the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; . . . .

5.  Must be on guard against the tyranny of the majority.  "There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own."

6.  Why custom is dangerous.  People begin to think they need no reasons for holding the positions they hold.  "The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct is the feeling in each person's mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes, would like them to act."

7.  An appeal to majority preference is still not a reason, but the feeling of many people rather than just one.
    People who form laws for individuals do this.  They inquire into what people like and dislike and don't consider whether those likings or dislikings should be laws.

8.   THE OBJECT OF ON LIBERTY:  To assert the simple principle:  "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self protection.  That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.  His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."

    "The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others.  In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.  Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

    These considerations apply to "advanced" societies, not to "barbarians."  In such cases, despotism is justified, BUT ONLY WHEN ABSOLUTE CONTROL IS IMPOSED FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF BARBARIANS.  Despotism is not justified  when people have "attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion...."

9.  REMEMBER, FOR THE UTILITARIAN, THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS THE ULTIMATE APPEAL IN ALL QUESTIONS OF MORALITY AND SOCIETY.  The principle of utility is:
    "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness.  By happiness is intended pleasure and the privation of pain, by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure."

10.  It is true that there is a distinction between active and passive harm, and the harm principle seems not to take into account cases in which a person's INACTION may lead to the harm of others.
    But there are good reasons in many cases not to hold a person to responsibility for others:
    a.  When it is a case in which he is likely to act better when left to his own devices
    b.  When an attempt to control the person would produce other evils, or greater ones than it would prevent.

11.  The proper domain of liberty is:
    a.  Conscience - thought, feeling, opinion
    b.  A plan of life
    c.  Combination, Assembly

    "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.  Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily or mention and spiritual.  Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."
 

CHAPTER TWO:  OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION -

1.  Liberty of the press is the best defense against tyrannical government.

2.  There is no justification in an advanced society for stifling the opinions of others:
    "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."
        a.  If right, lose the benefit of the clearer perception of the truth "by its collision with error."

To silence an opinion is to assume one's own infallibility.

    Don't count on the opinion of "the world" - what counts as "the world" is the people with whom the individual tends to come into contact.  People tend to forget that "the same causes which make him a churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Peking."

3.  Some might object that we MUST use our judgment and the fact that we might sometimes make mistakes in judgment is no argument that we ought not use it at all.
    Mill's reply:  There's a difference between presuming that an opinion is true when you have had the chance to refute or contest it but it has not been refuted and a case in which we assume an opinion is true so that no one is allowed to contest it.  "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."
    A person who has sought objections to his own principles and who has pushed those objections to an "extreme" are those who understand the necessity of free discussion.  Those who hold that we ought not push positions to an extreme miss the point that "unless reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case."

4.  There is nothing wrong with feeling sure of your own position - that alone does not imply that you think yourself infallible.  The assumption of infallibility is "undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side."