 Along with other thinkers of the period—Arnold, Nietzsche, and Schiller are all useful points of comparison—Mill believes that the great danger of mass-society is self-repression and conformism, leading to the sapping of human energy and creativity. Victorian society was, he claimed, governed by an ethos of propriety based on “Christian self-denial”; Mill, in contrast, encourages the “Greek ideal of self-development” (Liberty, XVIII: 266). It is individuals that are well-rounded, authentic and spontaneous, he believes, that are most truly happy.