 Individualism, a reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. Two, of individuality as one of the elements of well-being, John Stuart Mill. Chapter III of On Liberty, Second Edition, London, John Parker and Sons, 1859. The Englishman J. S. Mill, 1806 to 1873, was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century. Educated by his father, the Scotsman James Mill, a protege of Jeremy Bentham, John popularized the moral and political philosophy known as utilitarianism. The following chapter is from Mill's celebrated book On Liberty, 1859. His other works include A System of Logic, 1843, Principles of Political Economy, 1848, Communism, 1863, and On the Subjection of Women, 1869. Such being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings should be free to form opinions and to express their opinions without reserve, and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual and through that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceited or asserted in spite of prohibition, let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that 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. This last proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act, an opinion that corn dealers are starvers of the poor or that private property is robbery ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others may be and in the more important cases absolutely required to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments and when needful by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited. He must not make himself a nuisance to other people. Not if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free also prove that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost. That mankind are not infallible, that their truths for the most part are only have 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, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men's modes of actions, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be differing 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 anyone thinks fit to try them. It is desirable in short that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where not the person's own character but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principle ingredients of human happiness and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress. In maintaining this principle the greatest difficulty to be encountered does not lie in the appreciation of means towards an acknowledged end but in the indifference of persons in general to the end itself. If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being, that it is not only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things, there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued and the adjustment of the boundaries between it and social control would present no extraordinary difficulty. What the evil is that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth or deserving any regard on its own account. The majority being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are, for it is they who make them what they are, cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody, and what is more spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers but is rather looked on with jealousy as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers in their own judgment think would be best for mankind. Few persons out of Germany even comprehend the meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both as a savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise that the end of man or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason and not suggested by vague and transient desires is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. That therefore the object towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts and on which especially those who designed to influence their fellow men must ever keep their eyes is the individuality of power and development. That for this there are two requisites, freedom and a variety of situations, and that from the union of these arise individual vigor and manifold diversity which combine themselves in originality. Little however, as people are accustomed to a doctrine like that of von Humboldt and surprising as it may be to them to find so high a value attached to individuality, the question one must nevertheless think can only be one of degree. No one's idea of excellence and conduct is that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one another. No one would assert that people ought not to put into their mode of life and into the conduct of their concerns any impress whatever of their own judgment or of their own individual character. On the other hand 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. Nobody denies that people should be so taught and trained in youth as to know and benefit by the ascertained results of human experience. Yet it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being arrived at the maturity of his faculties to use and interpret experience in his own way. It is for him to find out what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs of other people are to a certain extent evidence of what their experience has taught them. Of evidence and as such have a claim to his deference. But in the first place their experience may be too narrow or they may not have interpreted it rightly. Secondly, their interpretation of experience may be correct but unsuitable to him. Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters and his circumstances or his character may be un-customary. Thirdly, though the customs be both good as customs and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom merely as custom does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He who does nothing 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. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to the person's own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened but is likely to be weakened by his adopting it. And if the inducements to an act are not such as are constantanious to his own feelings and character where affection or the rights of others are not concerned, it is so much done towards rendering his feelings and character inert and torpid instead of active and energetic. He who lets the world or his own portion of it choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. 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 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. Among the works of man which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried and even churches erected and prayers said by machinery, by automatons in human form, it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. 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. It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should exercise their understandings and that an intelligent following of custom or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom is better than a blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it. To a certain extent it is admitted that our understanding should be our own, but there is not the same willingness to admit that our desires and impulses should be our own likewise, or that to possess impulses of our own and of any strength is anything but a peril and a snare. Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being as beliefs and restraints, and strong impulses are only perilous when not properly balanced. When one set of aims and inclinations is developed into strength while others which ought to coexist with them remain weak and inactive. It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill, it is because their consciences are weak. There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak conscience, the natural connection is the other way. 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. Strong impulses are but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses, but more good may always be made of an energetic nature than of an indolent and impassive one. Those who have most natural feeling are always those whose cultivated feelings may be made the strongest. The same strong susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and powerful are also the source from whence are generated the most passionate love of virtue and the sternest self-control. It is through the cultivation of these that society both does its duty and protects its interests, not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made because it knows not how to make them. A person whose desires and impulses are his own or the expression of his own nature as it has been developed and modified by his own culture is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own has no character, no more than a steam engine has a character. If in addition to being his own his impulses are strong and are under the government of a strong will he has an energetic character. Whoever thinks that individuality of desires and impulses should not be encouraged to unfold itself must maintain that society has no need of strong natures, is not the better for containing many persons who have much character, and that a high general average of energy is not desirable. In some early states of society these forces might be and were too much ahead of the power which society then possessed of disciplining and controlling them. There has been a time when the element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess and the social principle had a hard struggle with it. The difficulty then was to induce men of strong bodies or minds to pay obedience to any rules which required them to control their impulses. To overcome this difficulty law and discipline like the popes struggling against the emperors asserted a power over the whole man claiming to control all his life in order to control his character, which society had not found any other sufficient means of binding. 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. Things are vastly changed since the passions of those who were strong by station or by personal endowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and ordinances and required to be rigorously chained up to enable the persons within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our times from the highest class of society down to the lowest everyone lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others but in what concerns only themselves the individual or the family do not ask themselves what do I prefer or what would suit my character and disposition or what would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play and enable it to grow and thrive. They ask themselves what is suitable to my position, what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances, or worse still what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine. I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own 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. Now is this or is it not the desirable condition of human nature? It is so on the Calvinistic theory. According to that the one great offence of man is self-will. All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience. You have no choice, thus you must do and no otherwise. Whatever is not a duty is a sin. Human nature being radically corrupt there is no redemption for anyone until human nature is killed within him. The one holding this theory of life, crushing out any of the human faculties, capacities and susceptibilities is no evil. Man needs no capacity but that of surrendering himself to the will of God. And if he uses any of his faculties for any other purpose but to do that supposed will more effectually, he is better without them. That is the theory of Calvinism and it is held in a mitigated form by many who do not consider themselves Calvinists. The mitigation consisting in giving a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of God, asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their inclinations, of course not in the manner they themselves prefer but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way prescribed to them by authority and therefore by the necessary conditions of the case the same for all. In some such insidious form there is at present a strong tendency to this narrow theory of life and to the pinched and hidebound type of human character which it patronizes. Many persons no doubt sincerely think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed are as their maker designed them to be, just as many have thought that trees are a much finer thing when clipped into pollards or cut into figures of animals than as nature made them. But if it be any part of religion to believe that man was made by a good being, it is more consistent with that faith to believe that this being gave all human faculties that they might be cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and consumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer approach made by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in them, every increase in any of their capabilities of comprehension, of action, or of enjoyment. There is a different type of human excellence from the Calvinistic, a conception of humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for other purposes than merely to be abnegated. Pagan self-assertion is one of the elements of human worth as well as Christian self-denial. There is a Greek ideal of self-development which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government blends with, but does not supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibides, but it is better to be a Pericles than either, nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be without anything good which belonged to John Knox. It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation. And as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified and animating, furnishing more abundant element to high thoughts and elevating feelings and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to. 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. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them. As much compression as is necessary to prevent the stronger specimens of human nature from encroaching on the rights of others cannot be dispensed with. But for this there is ample compensation even in the point of view of human development. The means of development which the individual loses by being prevented from gratifying his inclinations to the injury of others are chiefly obtained at the expense of the development of other people. And even to himself there is a full equivalent in the better development of the social part of his nature rendered possible by the restraint put upon the selfish part. To be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others develops the feelings and capacities which have the good of others for their object. But to be restrained in things not affecting their good by their mere displeasure develops nothing valuable except such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint. If acquiesced in it dulls and blunts the whole nature. To give any fair play to the nature of each it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exercised in any age has that age been noteworthy to posterity. Even despotism does not produce its worst effects so long as individuality exists under it. And whatever crushes individuality is despotism by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. Having said that individuality is the same thing with development and that it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces or can produce well-developed human beings I might hear close the argument. For what more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? Or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good than that it prevents this? Doubtless however these considerations will not suffice to convince those who most need convincing and it is necessary further to show that these developed human beings are of some use to the undeveloped. To point out to those who do not desire liberty and would not avail themselves of it that they may be in some intelligible manner rewarded for allowing other people to make use of it without hindrance. In the first place then I would suggest that they might possibly learn something from them. It will not be denied by anybody that originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths and point out when what were once truths are true no longer but also to commence new practices and set the example of more enlightened conduct and better taste and sense in human life. This cannot well be gainsaid by anybody who does not believe that the world has already attained perfection in all its ways and practices. It is true that this benefit is not capable of being rendered by everybody alike. There are but few persons in comparison with the whole of mankind whose experiments if adopted by others would be likely to be any improvement on established practice. But these few are the salt of the earth. Without them human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed. If there were nothing new to be done would human intellect cease to be necessary? Would it be a reason why those who do the old things should forget why they are done and do them like cattle, not like human beings? There is only two great attendency in the best beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical. And unless there were a succession of persons whose ever-recurring originality prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices from becoming merely traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest shock from anything really alive and there would be no reason why civilization should not die out as in the Byzantine Empire. 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 freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are X v. Termini more individual than any other people. Less capable consequently of fitting themselves without hurtful compression into any of the small number of molds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity they consent to be forced into one of these molds and to let all that part of themselves which cannot expand under the pressure remain unexpanded society will be little the better for their genius. If they are of strong character and break their fetters they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to common place 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. I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius and the necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both in thought and in practice being well aware that no one will deny the position in theory but knowing also that almost everyone in reality is totally indifferent to it. People think genius a fine thing if it enables a man to write an exciting poem or paint a picture but in its true sense that of originality and thought and action though no one says that it is not a thing to be admired nearly all at heart think that they can do very well without it. Unhappily this is too natural to be wondered at. Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. They cannot see what it is to do for them. How should they? If they could see what it would do for them it would not be originality. The first service which originality has to render them is that of opening their eyes which being once fully done they would have a chance of being themselves original. Meanwhile recollecting that nothing was ever yet done which someone was not the first to do and that all good things which exist are the fruits of originality let them be modest enough to believe that there is something still left for it to accomplish and assure themselves that they are more in need of originality the less they are conscious of the want. In sober truth whatever homage may be professed or even paid to real or supposed mental superiority the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. In ancient history in the Middle Ages and in a diminishing degree through the long transition from feudality to the present time the individual was a power in himself and if he had either great talents or high social position he was a considerable power. At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private life as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion are not always the same sort of public. In America they are the whole white population. In England chiefly the middle class but they are always a mass that is to say collective mediocrity and what is a still greater novelty the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in church or state from ostensible leaders or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves addressing them or speaking in their name on the spur of the moment through the newspapers. I am not complaining of all this I do not assert that anything better is compatible as a general rule with the present low state of the human mind but that does not hinder the government of mediocrity from being mediocre government. No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities and tone of mind which it fosters ever did or could rise above mediocrity except in so far as the sovereign many have let themselves be guided which in their best times they always have done by the councils and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed one or few. The initiation of all wise or noble things comes and must come from individuals generally at first from some one individual. The honor and glory of the average man is that he is capable of following that initiative that he can respond internally to wise and noble things and be led to them with his eyes open. I am not countenancing the sort of hero worship which applauds the strong man of genius for forcibly seizing on the government of the world and making it do his bidding in spite of itself. All he can claim is freedom to point out the way. The power of compelling others into it is not only inconsistent with the freedom and development of all the rest but corrupting to the strong man himself. It does seem however that when the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant power the counter-poise and corrective to that tendency would be the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the higher eminences of thought. It is in these circumstances most especially that exceptional individuals instead of being deterred should be encouraged in acting differently from the mass. In other times there was no advantage in their doing so unless they acted not only differently but better. In this age the mere example of non-conformity 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. Exentricity 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 vigor and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time. I have said that it is important to give the freest scope possible to uncustomary things in order that it may in time appear which of these are fit to be converted into customs. But independence of action and disregard of custom are not solely deserving of encouragement for the chance they afford that better modes of action and customs more worthy of general adoption may be struck out. Nor is it only persons of decided mental superiority who have a just claim to carry on their lives in their own way. There is no reason that all human existence should be constructed on some one or some small number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience his own mode of laying out his existence is the best not because it is the best in itself but because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or pair of boots to fit him unless they are either made to his measure or he has a whole warehouse full to choose from. And is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual confirmation than in the shape of their feet. If it were only that people have diversities of taste that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model but different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development and can no more exist healthily in the same moral than all the variety of plants can in the same physical atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature are hindrances to another. The same mode of life is a healthy excitement to one keeping all his faculties of action and enjoyment in their best order while to another it is a distracting burden which suspends or crushes all internal life. Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life they neither obtain their fair share of happiness nor grow up to the mental, moral and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable. Why then should tolerance as far as the public sentiment is concerned extend only to tastes and modes of life which extort acquiescence by the multitude of their adherents. Nowhere except in some monastic institutions is diversity of taste entirely unrecognized. A person may without blame either like or dislike rowing or smoking or music or athletic exercises or chess or cards or study because both those who like each of these things and those who dislike them are too numerous to be put down. But the man and still more the woman who can be accused of either doing what nobody does or of not doing what everybody does is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. Persons required to possess a title or some other badge of rank or the consideration of people of rank to be able to indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like without detriment to their estimation. To indulge somewhat I repeat for whoever allow themselves much of that indulgence incur the risk of something worse than disparaging speeches they are in peril of a commission di lunatico and of having their property taken from them and given to their relations. 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. Now in addition to this fact which is general we have only to suppose that a strong movement has set in towards the improvement of morals and it is evident what we have to expect. In these days such a movement has set in much has actually been effected in the way of increased regularity of conduct and discouragement of excesses. And there is a philanthropic spirit abroad for the exercise of which there is no more inviting field than the moral and prudential improvement of our fellow creatures. 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 everyone conform to the approved standard and that standard express or tacit is to desire nothing strongly. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked character to maim by compression like a Chinese lady's foot every part of human nature which stands out prominently and tends to make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity. As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one half of what is desirable the present standard of approbation produces only an inferior imitation of the other half. Instead of great energies guided by vigorous reason and strong feelings strongly controlled by a conscientious will its result is weak feelings and weak energies which therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any strength either of will or of reason. Already energetic characters on any large scale are becoming merely traditional. There is now scarcely any outlet for energy in this country except business. The energy expended in that may still be regarded as considerable. What little is left from that employment is expended on some hobby which may be a useful even a philanthropic hobby but is always some one thing and generally a thing of small dimensions. The greatness of England is now all collective. Individually small we only appear capable of anything great by our habit of combining and with this our moral and religious philanthropists are perfectly contented but it was men of another stamp than this that made England what it has been and men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline. The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary which is called according to circumstances the spirit of liberty or that of progress or improvement. The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people and the spirit of liberty in so far as it resists such attempts may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty since by it there are as many possible independent centers of improvement as there are individuals. The progressive principle however in either shape whether as the love of liberty or of improvement is antagonistic to the sway of custom involving at least emancipation from that yoke and the contest between the two constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind the greater part of the world has properly speaking no history because the despotism of custom is complete this is the case over the whole east custom is there in all things the final appeal justice and right mean conformity to custom the argument of custom no one unless some tyrant intoxicated with power thinks of resisting and we see the result those nations must once have had originality they did not start out of the ground populus lettered and versed in many of the arts of life they made themselves all this and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world what are they now the subjects or dependence of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples but over whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress a people it appears may be progressive for a certain length of time and then stop when does it stop when it ceases to possess individuality if a similar change should befall the nations of europe it will not be in exactly the same shape the despotism of custom with which these nations are threatened is not precisely stationaryness it prescribes singularity but it does not preclude change provided all change together we have discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers everyone must still dress like other people but the fashion may change once or twice a year we thus take care that when there is change it shall be for changes sake and not from any idea of beauty or convenience for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the world at the same moment and be simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment but we are progressive as well as changeable we continually make new inventions in mechanical things and keep them until they are again superseded by better we are eager for improvement in politics in education even in morals though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves it is not progress that we object to on the contrary we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived it is individuality that we against we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type and the superiority of another or the possibility by combining the advantages of both of producing something better than either we have a warning example in china a nation of much talent and in some respects even wisdom owing to the rare good fortune of having been provided at an early period with a particularly good set of customs the work in some measure of men to whom even the most enlightened european must accord under certain limitations the title of sages and philosophers they are remarkable too in the excellence of their apparatus for impressing as far as possible the best wisdom they possess upon every mind in the community and securing that those who have appropriated most of it shall occupy the posts of honor and power surely the people who did this have discovered the secret of human progressiveness and must have kept themselves steadily at the head of the movement of the world on the contrary they have become stationary have remained so for thousands of years and if they are ever to be farther improved it must be by foreigners they have succeeded beyond all hope in what english philanthropists are so industriously working at in making a people all alike all governing their thoughts and conduct by the same maxims and rules and these are the fruits the modern regime of public opinion is in an unorganized form what the chinese educational and political systems are in an organized and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this yoke europe not withstanding its noble antecedents and its professed christianity will tend to become another china what is it that has hitherto preserved europe from this lot what has made the european family of nations and improving instead of a stationary portion of mankind not any superior excellence in them which when it exists exists as the effect not as the cause but their remarkable diversity of character and culture individuals classes nations have been extremely unlike one another they have struck out a great variety of paths each leading to something valuable and although at every period those who traveled in different paths have been intolerant of one another and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered europe is in my judgment wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development but it already begins to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree it is decidedly advancing towards the chinese ideal of making all people alike monsieur de toqueville in his last important work remarks how much more the frenchmen of the present day resemble one another than did those even of the last generation the same remark might be made of englishmen in a far greater degree in a passage already quoted from vilhelm von humboldt he points out two things as necessary conditions of human development because necessary to render people unlike one another namely freedom and variety of situations the second of these two conditions is in this country every day diminishing the circumstances which surround different classes and individuals and shape their characters are daily becoming more assimilated formerly different ranks different neighborhoods different trades and professions lived in what might be called different worlds at present to a great degree in the same comparatively speaking they now read the same things listen to the same things see the same things go to the same places have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects have the same rights and liberties and the same means of asserting them great as are the differences of position which remain they are nothing to those which have ceased and the assimilation is still proceeding all the political changes of the age promote it since they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high every extension of education promotes it because education brings people under common influences and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments improvements in the means of communication promote it by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into personal contact and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another the increase of commerce and manufacturers promotes it by diffusing more widely the advantages of easy circumstances and opening all objects of ambition even the highest to general competition whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer the character of a particular class but of all classes a more powerful agency than even all these and bringing about a general similarity among mankind is the complete establishment in this and other free countries of the ascendancy of public opinion in the state as the various social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them to disregard the opinion of the multitude gradually become leveled as the very idea of resisting the will of the public when it is positively known that they have a will disappears more and more from the minds of practical politicians there ceases to be any social support for non-conformity any substantive power in society which itself opposed to the ascendancy of numbers is interested in taking under its protection opinions and tendencies at variance with those of the public the combination of all these causes forms so great a mass of influences hostile to individuality that it is not easy to see how it can stand its ground it will do so with increasing difficulty unless the intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its value to see that it is good there should be differences even though not for the better even though as it may appear to them some should be for the worse if the claims of individuality are ever to be asserted the time is now while much is still wanting to complete the enforced assimilation it is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment the demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves grows by what it feeds on if resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one uniform type all deviations from that type will come to be considered impious immoral even monstrous and contrary to nature mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it this has been individualism a reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore narrated by James Foster copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute production copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute