Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose
        is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations
        from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for
        the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that
        each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the
        rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one another;
        or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by
        tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in
        each person's bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle)
        of the labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its
        members from injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified
        in enforcing, at all costs to those who endeavor to withhold fulfilment. Nor is
        this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to
        others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the
        length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be
        justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a
        person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has
        jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will
        not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But
        there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person's
        conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not
        affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age,
        and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should
        be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the
        consequences.

        It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that it is
        one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no
        business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern
        themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their
        own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great
        increase of disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But
        disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people
        to their good, than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the
        metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the self-regarding
        virtues; they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social. It
        is equally the business of education to cultivate both. But even education
        works by conviction and persuasion as well as by compulsion, and it is by
        the former only that, when the period of education is past, the
        self-regarding virtues should be inculcated. 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 forever 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. He is the person most interested in
        his own well-being, the interest which any other person, except in cases of
        strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that
        which he himself has; the interest which society has in him individually
        (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect:
        while, with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most
        ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably
        surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else. The interference
        of society to overrule his judgment and purposes in what only regards
        himself, must be grounded on general presumptions; which may be
        altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to
        individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the circumstances
        of such cases than those are who look at them merely from without. In this
        department, therefore, of human affairs, Individuality has its proper field of
        action. In the conduct of human beings towards one another, it is
        necessary that general rules should for the most part be observed, in order
        that people may know what they have to expect; but in each person's own
        concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise.
        Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may
        be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the
        final judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against advice and
        warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him
        to what they deem his good.

  I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by others,
        ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding qualities or
        deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable. If he is eminent in any
        of the qualities which conduce to his own good, he is, so far, a proper
        object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the ideal perfection of
        human nature. If he is grossly deficient in those qualities, a sentiment the
        opposite of admiration will follow. There is a degree of folly, and a degree
        of what may be called (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness
        or depravation of taste, which, though it cannot justify doing harm to the
        person who manifests it, renders him necessarily and properly a subject of
        distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt: a person could not have
        the opposite qualities in due strength without entertaining these feelings.
        Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us
        to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order:
        and since this judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to
        avoid, it is doing him a service to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other
        disagreeable consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be well,
        indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than the
        common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could
        honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without being
        considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also, in various
        ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of any one, not to the oppression
        of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for
        example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to
        parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most
        acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others
        against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a
        pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a
        preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to
        his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe
        penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only
        himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural,
        and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves,
        not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment.

A person who shows rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit -- who cannot live
        within moderate means -- who cannot restrain himself from hurtful
        indulgences -- who pursues animal pleasures at the expense of those of
        feeling and intellect -- must expect to be lowered in the opinion of others,
        and to have a less share of their favorable sentiments, but of this he has no
        right to complain, unless he has merited their favor by special excellence in
        his social relations, and has thus established a title to their good offices,
        which is not affected by his demerits towards himself.

        The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's life which
        concerns only himself, and that which concerns others, many persons will
        refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can any part of the conduct of a
        member of society be a matter of indifference to the other members? No
        person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a person to do
        anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself, without mischief
        reaching at least to his near connections, and often far beyond them. If he
        injures his property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly
        derived support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or less
        amount, the general resources of the community. If he deteriorates his
        bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil upon all who depended on
        him for any portion of their happiness, but disqualifies himself for rendering
        the services which he owes to his fellow-creatures generally; perhaps
        becomes a burden on their affection or benevolence; and if such conduct
        were very frequent, hardly any offence that is committed would detract
        more from the general sum of good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a
        person does no direct harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said)
        injurious by his example; and ought to be compelled to control himself, for
        the sake of those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might
        corrupt or mislead.

        And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be
        confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to abandon
        to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it? If protection
        against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons under age,
        is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of mature years who are
        equally incapable of self-government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or
        incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness,
        and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts
        prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far as is
        consistent with practicability and social convenience, endeavor to repress
        these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law,
        ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against these
        vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to
        practise them? There is no question here (it may be said) about restricting
        individuality, or impeding the trial of new and original experiments in living.
        The only things it is sought to prevent are things which have been tried and
        condemned from the beginning of the world until now; things which
        experience has shown not to be useful or suitable to any person's
        individuality. There must be some length of time and amount of experience,
        after which a moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established,
        and it is merely desired to prevent generation after generation from falling
        over the same precipice which has been fatal to their predecessors.
        I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself, may seriously
        affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly
        connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large. When, by
        conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable
        obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the
        self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in
        the proper sense of the term. If, for example, a man, through intemperance
        or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken
        the moral responsibility of a family, becomes from the same cause
        incapable of supporting or educating them, he is deservedly reprobated,
        and might be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to his family or
        creditors, not for the extravagence. If the resources which ought to have
        been devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the most prudent
        investment, the moral culpability would have been the same. George
        Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress, but if he had
        done it to set himself up in business, he would equally have been hanged.

   Again, in the frequent case of a man who causes grief to his family by
        addiction to bad habits, he deserves reproach for his unkindness or
        ingratitude; but so he may for cultivating habits not in themselves vicious, if
        they are painful to those with whom he passes his life, or who from
        personal ties are dependent on him for their comfort. Whoever fails in the
        consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not
        being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable
        self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not
        for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may
        have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by
        conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty
        incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person
        ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman
        should be punished for being drunk on duty. Whenever, in short, there is a
        definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to
        the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that
        of morality or law.

        But with regard to the merely contingent or, as it may be called,
        constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which
        neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible
        hurt to any assignable individual except himself; the inconvenience is one
        which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human
        freedom. If grown persons are to be punished for not taking proper care of
        themselves, I would rather it were for their own sake, than under pretence
        of preventing them from impairing their capacity of rendering to society
        benefits which society does not pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot
        consent to argue the point as if society had no means of bringing its
        weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational conduct, except
        waiting till they do something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or
        morally, for it. Society has had absolute power over them during all the
        early portion of their existence: it has had the whole period of childhood
        and nonage in which to try whether it could make them capable of rational
        conduct in life. The existing generation is master both of the training and
        the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed make
        them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably deficient in
        goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in individual
        cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make the
        rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself. If
        society lets any considerable number of its members grow up mere
        children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant
        motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences. Armed not only
        with all the powers of education, but with the ascendency which the
        authority of a received opinion always exercises over the minds who are
        least fitted to judge for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties
        which cannot be prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or
        the contempt of those who know them; let not society pretend that it needs,
        besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce obedience in
        the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice
        and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the
        consequences. Nor is there anything which tends more to discredit and
        frustrate the better means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the
        worse. If there be among those whom it is attempted to coerce into
        prudence or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and
        independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke.
 

        But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public
        with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are
        that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social
        morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling
        majority, though often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right; because on
        such questions they are only required to judge of their own interests; of the
        manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would
        affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law
        on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to
        be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best,
        some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very
        often it does not even mean that; the public, with the most perfect
        indifference, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those whose
        conduct they censure, and considering only their own preference. There
        are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they
        have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a
        religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of
        others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by
        persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity
        between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of
        another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire
        of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a
        person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his
        purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the
        freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and
        only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal
        experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public
        which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble
        itself about universal experience. In its interferences with personal conduct
        it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling
        differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is
        held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths
        of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right
        because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to
        search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on
        ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these
        instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they
        are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world?

        The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory; and it may
        perhaps be expected that I should specify the instances in which the public
        of this age and country improperly invests its own preferences with the
        character of moral laws. I am not writing an essay on the aberrations of
        existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a subject to be discussed
        parenthetically, and by way of illustration. Yet examples are necessary, to
        show that the principle I maintain is of serious and practical moment, and
        that I am not endeavoring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils. And it
        is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of
        what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most
        unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most
        universal of all human propensities.

        As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on no better
        grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are different from
        theirs, do not practise their religious observances, especially their religious
        abstinences. To cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the creed or
        practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahomedans
        against them, than the fact of their eating pork. There are few acts which
        Christians and Europeans regard with more unaffected disgust, than
        Mussulmans regard this particular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the
        first place, an offence against their religion; but this circumstance by no
        means explains either the degree or the kind of their repugnance; for wine
        also is forbidden by their religion, and to partake of it is by all Mussulmans
        accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of the
        "unclean beast" is, on the contrary, of that peculiar character, resembling
        an instinctive antipathy, which the idea of uncleanness, when once it
        thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems always to excite even in those
        whose personal habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly and of which
        the sentiment of religious impurity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a
        remarkable example. Suppose now that in a people, of whom the majority
        were Mussulmans, that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to
        be eaten within the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in
        Mahomedan countries.[1] Would it be a legitimate exercise of the moral
        authority of public opinion? and if not, why not? The practice is really
        revolting to such a public. They also sincerely think that it is forbidden and
        abhorred by the Deity. Neither could the prohibition be censured as
        religious persecution. It might be religious in its origin, but it would not be
        persecution for religion, since nobody's religion makes it a duty to eat
        pork. The only tenable ground of condemnation would be, that with the
        personal tastes and self-regarding concerns of individuals the public has
        no business to interfere.

        To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a
        gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to
        worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other
        public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern Europe
        look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent,
        gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere
        feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if
        mankind are justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which
        do not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible
        consistently to exclude these cases? or who can blame people for desiring
        to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of God and man?
        No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded
        as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices
        in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties; and unless we are
        willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute
        others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because
        they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we
        should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.

        The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreasonably, as
        drawn from contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country,
        not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats, or to interfere with
        people for worshipping, and for either marrying or not marrying, according
        to their creed or inclination. The next example, however, shall be taken
        from an interference with liberty which we have by no means passed all
        danger of.