l to others.' (_Liberty_,
22.)

Two disputable points in the above doctrine are likely at once to reveal
themselves to the least critical eye. First, that doctrine would seem to
check the free expression of disapproval; one of the most wholesome and
indispensable duties which anybody with interest in serious questions
has to perform, and the non-performance of which would remove the most
proper and natural penalty from frivolous or perverse opinions and
obnoxious conduct. Mr. Mill deals with this difficulty as follows:--'We
have a right in various ways to act upon our unfavourable 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.' (_Liberty_,
139.) This appears to be a satisfactory way of meeting the objection.
For though the penalties of disapproval may be just the same, whether
deliberately inflicted, or naturally and spontaneously falling on the
object of such disapproval, yet there is a very intelligible difference
between the two processes in their effect on the two parties concerned.
A person imbued with Mr. Mill's principle would feel the responsibility
of censorship much more seriously; would reflect more carefully and
candidly about the conduct or opinion of which he thought ill; would be
more on his guard against pharisaic censoriousness, and that desire to
be ever judging one another, which Milton well called the stronghold of
our hypocrisy. The disapproval of such a person would have an austere
colour, a gravity, a self-respecting reserve, which could never belong
to an equal degree of disapproval in a person who had started from the
officious principl