prompt:
Chapter: "Into my house come bold and free,
     Its rightful mistress there to be."

I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I
believe I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my
ragged wadded dressing-gown--exactly as I had imagined the scene not
long before in a fit of depression.  After standing over us for a
couple of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more at
ease.  What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed with
confusion, more so, in fact, than I should have expected.  At the sight
of me, of course.

"Sit down," I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and I
sat down on the sofa.  She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me
open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once.  This naivete
of expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.

She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as
usual, while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I should
make her pay dearly for ALL THIS.

"You have found me in a strange position, Liza," I began, stammering
and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin.  "No, no, don't
imagine anything," I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed.  "I
am not ashamed of my poverty....  On the contrary, I look with pride
on my poverty.  I am poor but honourable....  One can be poor and
honourable," I muttered.  "However ... would you like tea?...."

"No," she was beginning.

"Wait a minute."

I leapt up and ran to Apollon.  I had to get out of the room somehow.

"Apollon," I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the
seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,
"here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must
come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant.
If you won't go, you'll make me a miserable man!  You don't know what
this woman is.... This is--everything!  You may be imagining
something.... But you don't know what that woman is! ..."

Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles
again, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or
putting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention
to me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle,
which he had not yet threaded.  I waited before him for three minutes
with my arms crossed A LA NAPOLEON.  My temples were moist with sweat.
I was pale, I felt it.  But, thank God, he must have been moved to
pity, looking at me.  Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up
from his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off
his spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me
over his shoulder: "Shall I get a whole portion?" deliberately walked
out of the room.  As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to
me on the way: shouldn't I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown,
no matter where, and then let happen what would?

I sat down again.  She looked at me uneasily.  For some minutes we were
silent.

"I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist
so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

"What are you saying!" she cried, starting.

"I will kill him!  kill him!" I shrieked, suddenly striking the table
in absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid
it was to be in such a frenzy.  "You don't know, Liza, what that
torturer is to me. He is my torturer....  He has gone now to fetch
some rusks; he ..."

And suddenly I burst into tears.  It was an hysterical attack.  How
ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain
them.

She was frightened.

"What is the matter?  What is wrong?" she cried, fussing about me.

"Water, give me water, over there!" I muttered in a faint voice, though
I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without
water and without muttering in a faint voice.  But I was, what is
called, PUTTING IT ON, to save appearances, though the attack was a
genuine one.

She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment.  At that moment
Apollon brought in the tea.  It suddenly seemed to me that this
commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all
that had happened, and I blushed crimson.  Liza looked at Apollon with
positive alarm.  He went out without a glance at either of us.

"Liza, do you despise me?" I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling
with impatience to know what she was thinking.

She was confused, and did not know what to answer.

"Drink your tea," I said to her angrily.  I was angry with myself, but,
of course, it was she who would have to pay for it.  A horrible spite
against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have
killed her.  To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a
word to her all the time.  "She is the cause of it all," I thought.

Our silence lasted for five minutes.  The tea stood on the table; we
did not touch it.  I had got to the point of purposely refraining from
beginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to
begin alone.  Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity.
I was obstinately silent.  I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer,
because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful
stupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

"I want to... get away ... from there altogether," she began, to break
the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought
not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as
I was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and
unnecessary straightforwardness.  But something hideous at once stifled
all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom.  I did not
care what happened.  Another five minutes passed.

"Perhaps I am in your way," she began timidly, hardly audibly, and was
getting up.

But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively
trembled with spite, and at once burst out.

"Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?" I began, gasping for
breath and regardless of logical connection in my words.  I longed to
have it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to
begin.  "Why have you come?  Answer, answer," I cried, hardly knowing
what I was doing.  "I'll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.
You've come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then.  So now you
are soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again.  So you may
as well know that I was laughing at you then.  And I am laughing at you
now.  Why are you shuddering?  Yes, I was laughing at you!  I had been
insulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening
before me.  I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer;
but I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult on
someone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on
you and laughed at you.  I had been humiliated, so I wanted to
humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power....
That's what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose
to save you.  Yes?  You imagined that?  You imagined that?"

I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in
exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very
well indeed.  And so, indeed, she did.  She turned white as a
handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully;
but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe.  And
all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and her
eyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror.  The cynicism, the
cynicism of my words overwhelmed her....

"Save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down
the room before her.  "Save you from what?  But perhaps I am worse than
you myself.  Why didn't you throw it in my teeth when I was giving you
that sermon: 'But what did you come here yourself for?  was it to read
us a sermon?'  Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I
wanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your
hysteria--that was what I wanted then!  Of course, I couldn't keep it
up then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the
devil knows why, gave you my address in my folly.  Afterwards, before I
got home, I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I
hated you already because of the lies I had told you.  Because I only
like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really
want is that you should all go to hell.  That is what I want.  I want
peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so
long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go
without my tea?  I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I
always get my tea.  Did you know that, or not?  Well, anyway, I know
that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.  Here I
have been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your
coming.  And do you know what has worried me particularly for these
three days?  That I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would see
me in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told you
just now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as well know
that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, more
afraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief, because I am as
vain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt.
Surely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you for
having found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at
Apollon like a spiteful cur.  The saviour, the former hero, was flying
like a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was
jeering at him!  And I shall never forgive you for the tears I could
not help shedding before you just now, like some silly woman put to
shame!  And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall never forgive
you either! Yes--you must answer for it all because you turned up like
this, because I am a blackguard, because I am the nastiest, stupidest,
absurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit
better than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion;
while I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom!  And
what is it to me that you don't understand a word of this!  And what do
I care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or
not?  Do you understand?  How I shall hate you now after saying this,
for having been here and listening. Why, it's not once in a lifetime a
man speaks out like this, and then it is in hysterics!  ...  What more
do you want?  Why do you still stand confronting me, after all this?
Why are you worrying me?  Why don't you go?"

But at this point a strange thing happened.  I was so accustomed to
think and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in
the world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand,
that I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance.  What
happened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great
deal more than I imagined.  She understood from all this what a woman
understands first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that I
was myself unhappy.

The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first by
a look of sorrowful perplexity.  When I began calling myself a
scoundrel and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade was
accompanied throughout by tears) her whole face worked convulsively.
She was on the point of getting up and stopping me; when I finished she
took no notice of my shouting: "Why are you here, why don't you go
away?" but realised only that it must have been very bitter to me to
say all this.  Besides, she was so crushed, poor girl; she considered
herself infinitely beneath me; how could she feel anger or resentment?
She suddenly leapt up from her chair with an irresistible impulse and
held out her hands, yearning towards me, though still timid and not
daring to stir....  At this point there was a revulsion in my heart
too.  Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burst
into tears.  I, too, could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I never
had before.

"They won't let me ... I can't be good!" I managed to articulate; then
I went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a
quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics.  She came close to me, put her
arms round me and stayed motionless in that position.  But the trouble
was that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the
loathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust
into my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a
far-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward
now for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face.  Why
was I ashamed?  I don't know, but I was ashamed.  The thought, too,
came into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely
changed, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed and
humiliated creature as she had been before me that night--four days
before....  And all this came into my mind during the minutes I was
lying on my face on the sofa.

My God! surely I was not envious of her then.

I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course,
I was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now.  I
cannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but ...
there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to
reason.

I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner
or later ... and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I
was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled
and flamed up in my heart ... a feeling of mastery and possession.  My
eyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly.  How I
hated her and how I was drawn to her at that minute!  The one feeling
intensified the other.  It was almost like an act of vengeance.  At
first there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but
only for one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: When the young narrator appears before Liza, he feels angry and ashamed. He hates that she sees him in his old clothing and his poverty. He does, however, ask her to come in and sit down. He also sends Apollon out to get some tea and some food to eat. After the servant has left, the young narrator excuses himself for a moment and goes to his room. There he goes into a fit of hysteria, which Liza overhears. She comes and tries to comfort him. Because he is embarrassed, the young narrator says nothing to Liza for five or ten minutes. During this time, he acknowledges to himself that he feels sorry for the girl, but he turns his heart against her. Even after she explains that she really wants to escape her job as a prostitute, he continues his silence and decides he will feel no compassion for her. Since she is being ignored, Liza says she is going to leave. In order to stop her, the young narrator finally breaks his silence and turns on the girl, speaking rapidly and cruelly. He demands to know why she has come to see him since he had mocked her in the brothel. He now laughs at her ignorance for allowing herself to being treated poorly and allowing him to have power over her. He also tries to shame her for coming to his apartment. When Liza realizes that the young narrator is sad and miserable, she comes to him and embraces him. The underground man reacts with another fit of hysterics, obviously to hide his true emotions for her and to avoid talking. Although the fit is real, he is also trying to keep Liza from knowing that she now has power over him.


prompt:
Chapter: A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in
frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and
peeped through the crack at Liza.  She was sitting on the ground with
her head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying.  But she
did not go away, and that irritated me.  This time she understood it
all.  I had insulted her finally, but ... there's no need to describe
it.  She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge,
a fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred
was added now a PERSONAL HATRED, born of envy....  Though I do not
maintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she
certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what
was worse, incapable of loving her.

I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to
be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange
I should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love.  Why is it
strange?  In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I
repeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral
superiority.  I have never in my life been able to imagine any other
sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking
that love really consists in the right--freely given by the beloved
object--to tyrannise over her.

Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a
struggle.  I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral
subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated
object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded
in so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with "real life,"
as to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to
shame for having come to me to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not even
guess that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me,
because to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of
ruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and can only show
itself in that form.

I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room
and peeping through the crack in the screen.  I was only insufferably
oppressed by her being here.  I wanted her to disappear.  I wanted
"peace," to be left alone in my underground world.  Real life oppressed
me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.

But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as
though she were unconscious.  I had the shamelessness to tap softly at
the screen as though to remind her....  She started, sprang up, and
flew to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her
escape from me....  Two minutes later she came from behind the screen
and looked with heavy eyes at me.  I gave a spiteful grin, which was
forced, however, to KEEP UP APPEARANCES, and I turned away from her
eyes.

"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.

I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and
closed it again.  Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the
other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway....

I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this
accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through
losing my head.  But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straight
out that I opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite.  It
came into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room
and she was sitting behind the screen.  But this I can say for certain:
though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the
heart, but came from my evil brain.  This cruelty was so affected, so
purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that
I could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid
seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza.  I opened
the door in the passage and began listening.

"Liza!  Liza!" I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.
There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on
the stairs.

"Liza!" I cried, more loudly.

No answer.  But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open
heavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the stairs.

She had gone.  I went back to my room in hesitation.  I felt horribly
oppressed.

I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and
looked aimlessly before me.  A minute passed, suddenly I started;
straight before me on the table I saw....  In short, I saw a crumpled
blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute
before.  It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other
in the flat.  So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table
at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.

Well!  I might have expected that she would do that.  Might I have
expected it?  No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for
my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so.  I
could not endure it.  A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,
flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her.  She
could not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the
street.

It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling
almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as
though with a pillow.  There was no one in the street, no sound was to
be heard.  The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer.  I
ran two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.

Where had she gone?  And why was I running after her?

Why?  To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet,
to entreat her forgiveness!  I longed for that, my whole breast was
being rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with
indifference. But--what for?  I thought.  Should I not begin to hate
her, perhaps, even tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?
Should I give her happiness?  Had I not recognised that day, for the
hundredth time, what I was worth?  Should I not torture her?

I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered
this.

"And will it not be better?" I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,
stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams.  "Will it
not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for
ever? Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and
painful consciousness!  Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and
have exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never
die in her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--the
feeling of insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred ... h'm!
... perhaps, too, by forgiveness....  Will all that make things easier
for her though? ..."

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which
is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?  Well, which is
better?

So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain
in my soul.  Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could
there have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that
I should turn back half-way?  I never met Liza again and I have heard
nothing of her.  I will add, too, that I remained for a long time
afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment
and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.

      *      *      *      *      *

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory.
I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes"
here?  I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I
have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's
hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell
long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally
rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through
divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world,
would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the
traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what
matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all
divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less.
We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for
real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come
almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and
we are all privately agreed that it is better in books.  And why do we
fuss and fume sometimes?  Why are we perverse and ask for something
else?  We don't know what ourselves.  It would be the worse for us if
our petulant prayers were answered.  Come, try, give any one of us, for
instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the
spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you
... we should be begging to be under control again at once.  I know
that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin
shouting and stamping.  Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your
miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of
us--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all of
us."  As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life
carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and
what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have
found comfort in deceiving yourselves.  So that perhaps, after all,
there is more life in me than in you.  Look into it more carefully!
Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it
is called?  Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in
confusion at once.  We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling
to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and
blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive
to be some sort of impossible generalised man.  We are stillborn, and
for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and
that suits us better and better.  We are developing a taste for it.
Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.  But enough; I
don't want to write more from "Underground."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: When the young narrator appears before Liza, he feels angry and ashamed. He hates that she sees him in his old clothing and his poverty. He does, however, ask her to come in and sit down. He also sends Apollon out to get some tea and some food to eat. After the servant has left, the young narrator excuses himself for a moment and goes to his room. There he goes into a fit of hysteria, which Liza overhears. She comes and tries to comfort him. Because he is embarrassed, the young narrator says nothing to Liza for five or ten minutes. During this time, he acknowledges to himself that he feels sorry for the girl, but he turns his heart against her. Even after she explains that she really wants to escape her job as a prostitute, he continues his silence and decides he will feel no compassion for her. Since she is being ignored, Liza says she is going to leave. In order to stop her, the young narrator finally breaks his silence and turns on the girl, speaking rapidly and cruelly. He demands to know why she has come to see him since he had mocked her in the brothel. He now laughs at her ignorance for allowing herself to being treated poorly and allowing him to have power over her. He also tries to shame her for coming to his apartment. When Liza realizes that the young narrator is sad and miserable, she comes to him and embraces him. The underground man reacts with another fit of hysterics, obviously to hide his true emotions for her and to avoid talking. Although the fit is real, he is also trying to keep Liza from knowing that she now has power over him.


prompt:
Chapter: The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so
unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical
Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the
power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the
individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in
general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical
controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to
make itself recognised as the vital question of the future. It is so far
from being new, that in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost
from the remotest ages; but in the stage of progress into which the more
civilised portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself
under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental
treatment.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous
feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar,
particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England. But in old times this
contest was between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the
government. By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the
political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some of the
popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic position
to the people whom they ruled. They consisted of a governing One, or a
governing tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance
or conquest, who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the
governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not
desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its
oppressive exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as
highly dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against
their subjects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent the
weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable
vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey
stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king
of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any
of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude
of defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots,
was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to
exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by
liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition
of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it
was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and
which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was
held to be justifiable. A second, and generally a later expedient, was
the establishment of constitutional checks; by which the consent of the
community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its
interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important
acts of the governing power. To the first of these modes of limitation,
the ruling power, in most European countries, was compelled, more or
less, to submit. It was not so with the second; and to attain this, or
when already in some degree possessed, to attain it more completely,
became everywhere the principal object of the lovers of liberty. And so
long as mankind were content to combat one enemy by another, and to be
ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less
efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations
beyond this point.

A time, however, came, in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased
to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an
independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It appeared to
them much better that the various magistrates of the State should be
their tenants or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way
alone, it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers of
government would never be abused to their disadvantage. By degrees, this
new demand for elective and temporary rulers became the prominent object
of the exertions of the popular party, wherever any such party existed;
and superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit
the power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for making the ruling
power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons
began to think that too much importance had been attached to the
limitation of the power itself. _That_ (it might seem) was a resource
against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the
people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified
with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and
will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its
own will. There was no fear of its tyrannising over itself. Let the
rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and
it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself
dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's own power,
concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise. This mode of
thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last
generation of European liberalism, in the Continental section of which
it still apparently predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a
government may do, except in the case of such governments as they think
ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions among the
political thinkers of the Continent. A similar tone of sentiment might
by this time have been prevalent in our own country, if the
circumstances which for a time encouraged it, had continued unaltered.

But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons,
success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have
concealed from observation. The notion, that the people have no need to
limit their power over themselves, might seem axiomatic, when popular
government was a thing only dreamed about, or read of as having existed
at some distant period of the past. Neither was that notion necessarily
disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those of the French
Revolution, the worst of which were the work of a usurping few, and
which, in any case, belonged, not to the permanent working of popular
institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak against
monarchical and aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic
republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and made
itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of
nations; and elective and responsible government became subject to the
observations and criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It
was now perceived that such phrases as "self-government," and "the power
of the people over themselves," do not express the true state of the
case. The "people" who exercise the power are not always the same people
with those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken
of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the
rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means, the will of
the most numerous or the most active _part_ of the people; the majority,
or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority: the
people, consequently, _may_ desire to oppress a part of their number;
and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other
abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government
over individuals, loses none of its importance when the holders of power
are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest
party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the
intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important
classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests
democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and
in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally
included among the evils against which society requires to be on its
guard.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is
still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of
the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when
society is itself the tyrant--society collectively, over the separate
individuals who compose it--its means of tyrannising are not restricted
to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries.
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong
mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which
it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable
than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually
upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape,
penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the
soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the
magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the
tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of
society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas
and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to
fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any
individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to
fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the
legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual
independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against
encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs,
as protection against political despotism.

But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in general
terms, the practical question, where to place the limit--how to make the
fitting adjustment between individual independence and social
control--is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done. All
that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of
restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct,
therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on
many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What
these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but
if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which
least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and scarcely any
two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of one age or
country is a wonder to another. Yet the people of any given age and
country no more suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject
on which mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain among
themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but
universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of
custom, which is not only, as the proverb says, a second nature, but is
continually mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing
any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on
one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on
which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be
given, either by one person to others, or by each to himself. People are
accustomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the belief by some
who aspire to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on
subjects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons
unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions
on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person's mind
that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he
sympathises, would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to
himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion
on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one
person's preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal
to a similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many
people's liking instead of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own
preference, thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory
reason, but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of
morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written in his
religious creed; and his chief guide in the interpretation even of that.
Men's opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are
affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in
regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those
which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their
reason--at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their
social affections, not seldom their anti-social ones, their envy or
jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their
desires or fears for themselves--their legitimate or illegitimate
self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of
the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its
feelings of class superiority. The morality between Spartans and Helots,
between planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between
nobles and roturiers, between men and women, has been for the most part
the creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments
thus generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of
the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves. Where, on the
other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or
where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments
frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority.
Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act
and forbearance, which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been
the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions
of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility, though
essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly
genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and
heretics. Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious
interests of society have of course had a share, and a large one, in the
direction of the moral sentiments: less, however, as a matter of reason,
and on their own account, than as a consequence of the sympathies and
antipathies which grew out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which
had little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have made
themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with quite as great
force.

The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of
it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules
laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or
opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society in
thought and feeling have left this condition of things unassailed in
principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some of
its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring what
things society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning whether its
likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals. They preferred
endeavouring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points
on which they were themselves heretical, rather than make common cause
in defence of freedom, with heretics generally. The only case in which
the higher ground has been taken on principle and maintained with
consistency, by any but an individual here and there, is that of
religious belief: a case instructive in many ways, and not least so as
forming a most striking instance of the fallibility of what is called
the moral sense: for the _odium theologicum_, in a sincere bigot, is one
of the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling. Those who first broke
the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church, were in general as
little willing to permit difference of religious opinion as that church
itself. But when the heat of the conflict was over, without giving a
complete victory to any party, and each church or sect was reduced to
limit its hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already
occupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of becoming
majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to those whom they
could not convert, for permission to differ. It is accordingly on this
battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the individual against
society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim
of society to exercise authority over dissentients, openly controverted.
The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it
possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible
right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others
for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in
whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly
anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference,
which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has
added its weight to the scale. In the minds of almost all religious
persons, even in the most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is
admitted with tacit reserves. One person will bear with dissent in
matters of church government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate
everybody, short of a Papist or a Unitarian; another, every one who
believes in revealed religion; a few extend their charity a little
further, but stop at the belief in a God and in a future state. Wherever
the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found
to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed.

In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our political history,
though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter,
than in most other countries of Europe; and there is considerable
jealousy of direct interference, by the legislative or the executive
power, with private conduct; not so much from any just regard for the
independence of the individual, as from the still subsisting habit of
looking on the government as representing an opposite interest to the
public. The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power of the
government their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so,
individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the
government, as it already is from public opinion. But, as yet, there is
a considerable amount of feeling ready to be called forth against any
attempt of the law to control individuals in things in which they have
not hitherto been accustomed to be controlled by it; and this with very
little discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within the
legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the feeling, highly
salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well
grounded in the particular instances of its application. There is, in
fact, no recognised principle by which the propriety or impropriety of
government interference is customarily tested. People decide according
to their personal preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be
done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government
to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount
of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human
interests amenable to governmental control. And men range themselves on
one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general
direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree of interest
which they feel in the particular thing which it is proposed that the
government should do, or according to the belief they entertain that the
government would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but
very rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere,
as to what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me
that in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side is
at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of government
is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly
condemned.

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as
entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the
individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used
be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion
of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That
the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it
will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,
because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even
right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning
with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling
him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify
that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be
calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the
conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which
concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his
independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and
mind, the individual is sovereign.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to
apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are
not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the
law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a
state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected
against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the
same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of
society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The
early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that
there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler
full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any
expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has
no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind
have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.
Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar
or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon
as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own
improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in
all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion,
either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for
non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good,
and justifiable only for the security of others.

It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived
to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent
of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical
questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the
permanent interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I
contend, authorise the subjection of individual spontaneity to external
control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern the
interest of other people. If any one does an act hurtful to others,
there is a _prima facie_ case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal
penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There
are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may
rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court
of justice; to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any
other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he
enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual
beneficence, such as saving a fellow-creature's life, or interposing to
protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is
obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to
society for not doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his
actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable
to them for the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much
more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one
answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable
for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception. Yet
there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that
exception. In all things which regard the external relations of the
individual, he is _de jure_ amenable to those whose interests are
concerned, and if need be, to society as their protector. There are
often good reasons for not holding him to the responsibility; but these
reasons must arise from the special expediencies of the case: either
because it is a kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act
better, when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in any way
in which society have it in their power to control him; or because the
attempt to exercise control would produce other evils, greater than
those which it would prevent. When such reasons as these preclude the
enforcement of responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself
should step into the vacant judgment seat, and protect those interests
of others which have no external protection; judging himself all the
more rigidly, because the case does not admit of his being made
accountable to the judgment of his fellow-creatures.

But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from
the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending
all that portion of a person's life and conduct which affects only
himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary,
and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I
mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself,
may affect others _through_ himself; and the objection which may be
grounded on this contingency, will receive consideration in the sequel.
This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises,
first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of
conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and
feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects,
practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty
of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different
principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual
which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as
the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same
reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle
requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life
to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such
consequences as may follow: without impediment from our
fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though
they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from
this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same
limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any
purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being
supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.

No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is
free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely
free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified. The only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our
own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his
own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater
gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves,
than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to some persons, may have
the air of a truism, there is no doctrine which stands more directly
opposed to the general tendency of existing opinion and practice.
Society has expended fully as much effort in the attempt (according to
its lights) to compel people to conform to its notions of personal, as
of social excellence. The ancient commonwealths thought themselves
entitled to practise, and the ancient philosophers countenanced, the
regulation of every part of private conduct by public authority, on the
ground that the State had a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental
discipline of every one of its citizens; a mode of thinking which may
have been admissible in small republics surrounded by powerful enemies,
in constant peril of being subverted by foreign attack or internal
commotion, and to which even a short interval of relaxed energy and
self-command might so easily be fatal, that they could not afford to
wait for the salutary permanent effects of freedom. In the modern world,
the greater size of political communities, and above all, the separation
between spiritual and temporal authority (which placed the direction of
men's consciences in other hands than those which controlled their
worldly affairs), prevented so great an interference by law in the
details of private life; but the engines of moral repression have been
wielded more strenuously against divergence from the reigning opinion in
self-regarding, than even in social matters; religion, the most powerful
of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling,
having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a
hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by
the spirit of Puritanism. And some of those modern reformers who have
placed themselves in strongest opposition to the religions of the past,
have been noway behind either churches or sects in their assertion of
the right of spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose social
system, as unfolded in his _Traite de Politique Positive_, aims at
establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism
of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the
political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient
philosophers.

Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is also in
the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the
powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and
even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of all the changes
taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the
power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which
tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and
more formidable. The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as
fellow-citizens to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule
of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best
and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is
hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as
the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of
moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in
the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.

It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at once entering
upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves in the first instance to a
single branch of it, on which the principle here stated is, if not
fully, yet to a certain point, recognised by the current opinions. This
one branch is the Liberty of Thought: from which it is impossible to
separate the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing. Although these
liberties, to some considerable amount, form part of the political
morality of all countries which profess religious toleration and free
institutions, the grounds, both philosophical and practical, on which
they rest, are perhaps not so familiar to the general mind, nor so
thoroughly appreciated by many even of the leaders of opinion, as might
have been expected. Those grounds, when rightly understood, are of much
wider application than to only one division of the subject, and a
thorough consideration of this part of the question will be found the
best introduction to the remainder. Those to whom nothing which I am
about to say will be new, may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if on a
subject which for now three centuries has been so often discussed, I
venture on one discussion more.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mill begins by explaining that his purpose in this essay is to discuss the maximum power that society can exercise over an individual and study the struggle between Liberty and Authority. In earlier times, liberty was utilized as protection against political tyranny because rulers were endowed with the power to both suppress the rights of would-be aggressors and their own citizenry. As time elapsed however, the citizens began to want an limit to be placed on the power of the government in order to achieve their liberty. This attempt to ensure liberty involved two steps: 1) obtaining political rights that were safe against all forms of tyranny and 2) implementing the safeguard of community consent in the form of a mandate or body that would guard against an abuse of power. The first step was easily obtained, but the second step was met with more opposition by governments. After a while, people began to see an importance in having their government act as their delegates, a democratic body who would make decisions according to what the people wanted. This development was seen as the end to tyranny by many how could people oppress themselves? "Self-government" and "the power of the people over themselves" were common ways to refer to the new, empowered system of government. Mill refuses these characterizations; rather he asserts that the people who have the power are not necessarily those that are affected by the power. He goes on to conclude that the will of the people is simply the will of the majority of the active governed people. Mill asserts that this type of tyranny, tyranny of the majority, is just as evil as any other form of political despotism. In fact, he believes that it is often much worse than other forms of despotism because it is more pervasive and able to infiltrate our lives and social interactions. Mill concludes that there needs to be protection against this tyranny of prevailing opinion. Mill acknowledges that finding the correct limit on the majority's influence is a difficult task, especially since most people have different perceptions of the correct limit to be implemented. Each person, Mill claims, will think that their own opinion on a matter is right, but their reasoning is affected by their own self-interest and the external and internal pressures that they may or may not be aware of. As a result, several principles determine the standards of a country's people. First of all, the moral standards and self-perceptions of the higher class in a society will likely have the most influence on the morality of their country. Secondly, men are likely to follow the mandates of their religion and this adds to the rules of conduct for society. Finally, the basic interests of society influence moral sentiments as a whole Mill points out that it isn't the actual interests that influence, but rather the empathy and apathy that stem from these interests. From these principles, Mill states that it is society's likes and dislikes that create most of the rules for the citizenry. Oftentimes, the question of what society dislikes or likes wrongly supersedes the question of whether society should implement these preferences as laws. An exception to this is in regards to religion, where society was refused the right to uniformly implement its preferences due to the concept of liberty and freedom, along with the minority religious factions that left few majorities to enforce their will. However, Mill claims that there is really no complete religious freedom because although there is religious tolerance, there is still little accommodation for religious dissenters where the majority of a society has a strong religious preference. Mill speaks about his native country, England, and how people resent the government telling its citizens what to do because the opinion exists that government's opinion is usually not the same as or in the best interest of the public. The English people didn't know what it was like to have their vote reflected in the country's decisions, but they did believe that government shouldn't exercise control in areas that they hadn't previously. They also had the tendency to decide the government's worth by its adherence to their own personal preferences, some wanted the government to do good things while rectifying bad things and some wanted the government to not interfere no matter the cost to society. Mill believes that the extent to which society can impose its influence on an individual is to ensure the self-protection of others. If a person is places himself in a position that is dangerous solely to him, society has no right to interfere according to Mill. Just because society believes an action is good, it can not be imposed on its citizens, because each citizen is autonomous. Mill does not apply this independence to small children or those who cannot take care of themselves -Mill extends this to undeveloped races that need to be improved by society's rules- but once manhood or womanhood is reached, there is no reason for society to impose its values on an adult. If a person inflicts harm on others, he is subject to legal prosecution, the consequences of his actions. Mill asserts that a person should be held accountable for both the direct harm to another person or inaction that results in harm being done to an individual. Mill believes human liberty should encompass 1) the inward domain of consciousness, 2) liberty of thought and feeling 3) liberty of expressing and publishing opinions, 4) liberty of tastes and pursuits, and 5) the liberty of individuals to join a collective group. He believes that his expressed ideas form the opposite of what society's instincts dictate. Society is based largely on the art of conformity in opinion and action and Mill only sees the imposition of society on the individuals growing over time.