concerns itself. One might suppose that this would have passed as an axiom, instead of being caviled at on all hands. Why should society, more than any other entity, interfere with what does not concern it? Even accepting the axiom, we may yet work it in society's favor by those numerous pretexts whereby individual action is alleged to have social bearings; but to refuse the axiom itself argues some defect of intelligent comprehension.
As a piece of vigorous composition, this chapter is not inferior to any in the book; it is admirable as an exposition in practical ethics, and might be enshrined as a standing homily in the moral instruction of mankind. It does what homilies rarely do, namely, endeavor to draw precise lines between social duty and individual liberty; and reviews the more notable instances where society still tyrannizes over minorities. Still, the instances adduced seem scarcely to justify the denunciations of the author; they are the remains of past ages of intolerance, and are gradually losing their hold.
It is in his subsequent chapter of "Applications" that we seem to approach his strongest case—but it is little more than hinted at—I mean the relationship of the sexes. It hardly admits of question that any great augmentation of human happiness that may be achieved in the future must proceed first upon a better standard of worldly circumstances, and next upon the harmonizing and adjusting of the social relations. After people are fed, clothed, and housed, at a reasonable expenditure of labor, their next thing is to seek scope for their affections; it is at this point that 'there occur the greatest successes and the greatest failures in happy living. The marriage relation is the most critical of any; and we have now a class of thinkers that maintain that this is enforced with too great stringency and monotony. To attain some additional latitude in this respect is an object that Mill, in common with his father, considered very desirable. Both were strongly averse to encouraging mere sensuality; they were not prepared with any definite scheme of sexual reform; they merely urged that personal freedom should be extended in this respect, with a view to such social experiments as might lead to the better fulfillment of the great ideal that the sexual relation has in view.
The "Liberty" was exposed to a good deal of carping in consequence of Mill's admitting unequivocally that a certain amount of disapproval was proper and inevitable toward persons that behaved badly to themselves. It was said. What is this, after all, but a milder form of punishing them for what does not concern either us or society at large? He fully anticipated such a remark, and I think amply disposed of it, by drawing the very wide distinction between mere lowered estimation and the treatment proper to offenders against society. He might have gone further, and drawn up a sliding scale or graduated table of modes of behavior, from the most intense individual preference at the one end to the severest reprobation at the other. At least
