herefore even acts that seem purely
self-regarding have indirect and negative consequences to the rest of
the world. But to allow considerations of this sort to prevent us from
using a common-sense classification of acts by the proportion of the
personal element in them, is as unreasonable as if we allowed the
doctrine of the conservation of physical force, or the evolution of one
mode of force into another, to prevent us from classifying the
affections of matter independently, as light, heat, motion, and the
rest. There is one objection obviously to be made to most of the
illustrations which are designed to show the public element in all
private conduct. The connection between the act and its influence on
others is so remote (using the word in a legal sense), though quite
certain, distinct, and traceable, that you can only take the act out of
the self-regarding category, by a process which virtually denies the
existence of any such category. You must set a limit to this 'indirect
and at-a-distance argument,' as Locke called a similar plea, and the
setting of this limit is the natural supplement to Mr. Mill's 'simple
principle.'

The division between self-regarding acts and others then, rests on
observation of their actual consequences. And why was Mr. Mill so
anxious to erect self-regarding acts into a distinct and important
class, so important as to be carefully and diligently secured by a
special principle of liberty? Because observation of the recorded
experience of mankind teaches us, that the recognition of this
independent provision is essential to the richest expansion of human
faculty. To narrow or to repudiate such a province, and to insist
exclusively on the social bearing of each part of conduct, is to limit
the play of motives, and to thwart the doctrine that 'mankind obtain a
greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and
conditions required by the rest, than when each makes the good of the
rest his only object.' To narrow or to repudiate such a province is to
tighten the power of the majority over the minority, and to augment the
authority of whatever sacerdotal or legislative body may represent the
majority. Whether the lawmakers be laymen in parliament, or priests of
humanity exercising the spiritual power, it matters not.

We may best estimate the worth and the significance of the doctrine of
Liberty by considering the line of thought and observation which led to
it. To beg