ダランベールの夢 — Denis Diderot
2 You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, November 1879 Author : Various Release date : April 23, 2012 [eBook #39517] Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39517 Credits : Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Nigel Blower and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF The relevant part of the table of contents has been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added. This e-text includes characters that will only display in UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding, including Greek words, e.g. σχολή . If any of these characters do not display properly, or if the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that the browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browser’s default font. All Greek words have mouse-hover transliterations. A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected. Some inconsistent hyphenation and accents have been retained. THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW VOLUME XXXVI. NOVEMBER, 1879 CONTENTS. NOVEMBER, 1879. PAGE On Freedom. By Professor Max Müller 369 Mr. Gladstone: Two Studies suggested by his "Gleanings of Past Years." I. By a Liberal.—II. By a Conservative 398 The Ancien Régime and the Revolution in France. By Professor von Sybel 432 What is the Actual Condition of Ireland? By Edward Stanley Robertson 451 The Deluge: Its Traditions in Ancient Nations. By François Lenormant 465 Suspended Animation. By Richard A. Proctor 501 John Stuart Mill's Philosophy Tested. IV.—Utilitarianism. By Professor W. Stanley Jevons 521 ON FREEDOM. [1] Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth his plea for Liberty. [2] If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John Stuart Mill. But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of individual liberty, a new spirit seems to have taken possession of him. He speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual human soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of growing to something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes a sacred thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is treated as sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of individuality, is represented like an evil spirit, whom it behoves every true man to resist with might and main, and whose demands, as they cannot be altogether ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the lowest level. I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly and strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present day be challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or the most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very humble to our ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to the interests of others." Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle, or who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago, when it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can we imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could more freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in which, in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of England, such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and hard-working Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred inheritance to their sons and daughters? Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and I know you will not find one single period in which the measure of Liberty accorded to each individual was larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if you wish to realize the full blessings of the time in which we live, compare Mill's plea for Liberty with another written not much more than two hundred years ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or boldness to Mill himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an individual in his ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls "freedom of thought," and that freedom of thought consists in our being able to think what we like—so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely, such freedom of thought existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and we should never call thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in solitary and silent confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of action, whether individual or associated, and of that freedom the present generation, as compared with all former generations, the English nation, as compared with all other nations, enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and sometimes running over. It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion, and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any infallibility, and those who at