Also see The Further Wit and Wisdom of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen
Sir J. F. Stephen, Bt., K.C.S.I., (1829-1894) was a Victorian judge. His father and grandfather were active in the campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire. His younger brother Sir Leslie Stephen was the father of Virginia Woolf. Stephen wrote about the criminal law but is best known nowadays for his riposte to Mill's "On Liberty", entitled "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" (first edition, 1873: page references below relate to the Liberty Press edition which is currently in print). Stephen espoused a cantankerous (to say the least) philosophy of life which I entirely endorse, but which may give offence to the modern reader, at least to the modern reader whose interest in writings of the past is limited to searching for evidence of racism, sexism, imperialism, Christian belief, Toryism, and so on. At one level Stephen expresses the view that the whole world is going to the dogs, but this is betrayed by the confidence of his prose which seems to suggest "but it won't as long as I am around".
"Jesus wept" - Stephen on his deathbed in 1894, re-reading the notes he made as a young man enumerating the pros and cons of careers in the law, medicine, and the Church.
"...Dr Milman disclaims the 'fierce African' and his 'unchristian fanaticism.' I do not love him, but if Christianity had had no threats and used no intimidation, there would have been no metropolitan deans. Religions are not founded on mildness and benevolence. Talleyrand's speech to the theophilanthropists has always been memorable to me. 'Gentlemen, when Jesus Christ wanted to found a religion, he had to be crucified, dead, and buried, and to rise on the third day from the dead. If you want to convince mankind, go and do likewise.'" (p. 15)
"Look at our own time and country, and mention any single great change which has been effected by mere discussion. Can a single case be mentioned in which the passions of men were interested where the change was not carried by force - that is to say, ultimately by the fear of revolution?... Look at small matters which involve more or less of a principle but do not affect many men's passions, and see how much reasoning has to do with their settlement. Such questions as the admission of Jews into Parliament and the legalisation of marriage between brothers and sisters-in-law drag on and on after the argument has been exhausted, till in the course of time those who take one view or the other grow into a decided majority, and settle the matter their own way. Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same." (pp. 20-21)
"The difference between a rough and a civilised society is not that force is used in the one case and persuasion in the other, but that force is (or ought to be) guided with greater case in the second case than in the first. President Lincoln attained his objects by the use of a degree of force which would have crushed Charlemagne and his paladins and peers like so many eggshells." (p. 21)
"Innumerable creeds, religious and political, have swept across the world, arguing, preaching, gesticulating, and fighting. Compare the amount of recognition which the worst of them has obtained and the devotion which it has called forth with the degree of really intelligent appreciation which has been accorded to science. Millions upon millions of men, women, and children believe in Mahommed to the point of regulating their whole life by his law. How many people have understood Adam Smith? Did anybody, except perhaps Mr Buckle, ever feel any enthusiasm about him?" (p. 22) [H T Buckle (1821-1862) was the author of the "History of Civilisation in England".]
"[Certain of Mill's arguments for unlimited liberty of thought and discussion] apply exclusively to that small class of persons whose opinions depend principally upon the consciousness that they have reached them by intellectual processes correctly performed. The incalculable majority of mankind form their opinions in quite a different way, and are attached to them because they suit their temper and meet their wishes, and not because and in so far as they think themselves warranted by evidence in believing them to be true. The notorious result of unlimited freedom of thought and discussion is to produce general scepticism on many subjects in the vast majority of minds. If you want zealous belief, set men to fight." (p. 29)
"Habitual exertion is the greatest of all invigorators of character, and restraint and coercion in one form or another is the great stimulus to exertion. If you wish to destroy originality and vigour of character, no way to do so is so sure as to put a high level of comfort easily within the reach of moderate and commonplace exertion. A life made up of danger, vicissitude and exposure is the sort of life which produces originality and resource. A soldier or sailor on active service lives in an atmosphere of coercion by the elements, by enemies, by disease, by the discipline to which he is subjected. Is he usually a tamer and less original person than a comfortable London shopkeeper or a man with just such an income as enables him to do exactly as he likes? A young man who is educated and so kept under close and continuous discipline till he is twenty-two or twenty-three years of age will generally have a much more vigorous and more original character than one who is left entirely to his own devices at an age when his mind and his tastes are unformed." (p. 31)
"[Mill wrote that]'The initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual.' The natural inference would be that these individuals are the born rulers of the world, and that the world should acknowledge and obey them as such. Mr. Mill will not admit this. All that the man of genius can claim is 'freedom to point out the way. The power of compelling others into it, is not only inconsistent with the freedom and development of all the rest, but corrupting to the strong man himself.' This would be perfectly true if the compulsion consisted in a simple exertion of blind force, like striking a nail with a hammer; but who ever acted so on others to any extent worth mentioning? The way in which the man of genius rules is by persuading an efficient minority to coerce an indifferent and self-indulgent majority, which is quite a different process. (p. 33)
"Originality consists in thinking for yourself, not in thinking differently from other people." (p.34)
"Surely it is an idle dream to say that one man in a thousand really exercises much individual choice as to his religious or moral principles, and I doubt whether it is not an exaggeration to say that one man in a million is capable of making any very material addition to what is already known or plausibly conjectured on these matters." (p.49)
"I cannot understand how a man who is not a Roman Catholic can regard a real Roman Catholic with absolute neutrality. A man who really thinks that a wafer is God Almighty, and who really believes that rational men owe any sort of allegiance to any kind of priest, is either right -- in which case the man who differs from him ought to repent in sackcloth and ashes -- or else he is wrong, in which case he is the partizan of a monstrous imposture. How the question of whether he is right or wrong can be regarded as one indifferent to his general character and to the moral estimate which persons of a different way of thinking must form of him is to me quite inconceivable... When religious differences come to be and are regarded as mere differences of opinion, it is because the controversy is really decided in the sceptical sense, though people may not like to acknowledge it formally." (p. 54)
"The only road to peace leads through truth, and when a powerful and energetic minority, sufficiently vigorous to impose their will on their neighbours, have made up their minds as to what is true, they will no more tolerate error for the sake of abstract principles about freedom than any one of us tolerates a nest of wasps in his own garden." (p. 55)
"... it appears to me quite certain that if our notions of moral good and evil are substantially true, and if the doctrines of God and a future state are true, the object of causing people to believe in them is good, and that social intolerance on the behalf of those who do towards those who do not believe in them cannot be regarded as involving evils of any great importance in comparison with the results at which it aims. I am quite aware that this is not a pleasant doctrine, and that it is liable to great abuse. The only way of guarding against its abuse is by pointing out that people should not talk about what they do not understand... The true ground of moral tolerance in the common sense of the words appears to me to lie in this -- that most people have no right to any opinions whatever on these questions, except in so far as they are necessary for the regulation of their own affairs. When some ignorant preacher calls his betters atheists and the like, his fault is not intolerance but impudence and rudeness." (p. 57)
"I do not envy the Englishman whose heart does not beat high as he looks at the scarred and shattered walls of Delhi or at the union jack flying from the fort at Lahore." (p. 61)
"Either the German or the French army in 1870-71 would have crushed the hordes which fought at Chalons or Tours as a steam-engine cracks a nut." (p. 69)
"There is no surer mark of a poor, contemptible, cowardly character than the inability to conduct disputes of this sort with fairness, temper, humanity, goodwill to antagonists, and a determination to accept a fair defeat in good part and to make the best of it." (p. 95)
"I can hardly imagine a greater blessing to the whole community than a reduction in the lavish extravagance which makes life so difficult and laborious. It is difficult for me to look at a lace machine with patience. The ingenuity which went to devise it might have made human life materially happier in a thousand ways, and its actual effect has been to enable a great number of people to wear an imitation of an ornament which derives what little merit it has principally from its being made by hand. If anyone could practically solve the problem of securing the devotion of the higher forms of human ingenuity to objects worthy of them, he would be an immense benefactor to his species." (p. 103)
"The attitude of mind engendered by continual glorification of the present time, and of successful resistance to an authority assumed to be usurped and foolish, is almost of necessity fatal to the recognition of the fact that to obey a real superior, to submit to a real necessity and make the best of it in good part, is one of the most important of all virtues -- a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of anything great and lasting." (p. 114)
"Practically, the effect of the popularity about the commonplaces about liberty has been to raise in the minds of ordinary people a strong presumption against obeying anybody, and by a natural rebound to induce minds of another class to obey the first person who claims their confidence with sufficient emphasis and self-confidence." (p. 115)
"Of all items of liberty, none is either so important or so universally recognised as the liberty of acquiring property. It is difficult to see what liberty you leave to a man at all if you restrict him in this matter... Assume that every man has a right to be on an equality with every other man because all are so closely connected together that the results of their labour should be thrown into a common stock out of which they are all to be maintained, and you certainly give a very distinct sense to Equality and Fraternity, but you must absolutely exclude Liberty. Experience has proved that this is not merely a theoretical but also a practical difficulty. It is the standing and insuperable obstacle to all socialist schemes, and it explains their failure.... [Socialism] is a system which embodies in its most intense form all the bitterness and resentment which can possibly be supposed to be stored up in the hearts of the most disappointed envious and ferociously revengeful members of the human race against those whom they regard as their oppressors." (pp. 120-1)
"Take the following set of questions: 'Shall we live on this scale or that? Shall we associate with such and such persons? Shall I, the husband, embark on such an undertaking, and shall we change our place of residence in order that I may do so? Shall we send our son to college? Shall we send our daughters to school or have a governess? For what profession shall we train our sons?' On these and a thousand other such questions the wisest and the most affectionate people might arrive at opposite conclusions. What is to be done in such a case? for something must be done. I say the wife ought to give way. She ought to obey her husband, and carry out the view at which he deliberately arrives, just as, when the captain gives the word to cut away the masts, the lieutenant carries out his orders at once, though he may be a better seaman and may disapprove them. I also say that to regard this as a humiliation, as a wrong, as an evil in itself, is a mark not of spirit and courage, but of a base, unworthy, mutinous disposition -- a disposition utterly subversive of all that is most worth having in life." (p. 141)
"No doubt, however, Mr. Mill's assumption is that the progress of society is from bad to good... I think that the progress has been mixed, partly good and partly bad. I suspect that in many ways it has been a progress from strength to weakness; that people are more sensitive, less enterprising and ambitious, less earnestly desirous to get what they want, and more afraid of pain, both for themselves and others, than they used to be. If this should be so, it appears to me that all other gains, whether in wealth, knowledge or humanity, afford no equivalent. Strength, in all its forms, is life and manhood. To be less strong is to be less of a man, whatever else you may be. This suspicion prevents me, for one, from feeling any enthusiasm about progress, but I do not undertake to say it is well founded... The greater part of our [']humanity['] appears to me to be a mere excess of nervous sensibility in which I feel no satisfaction at all." (pp. 143-4)
"If in old times a slave was inattentive, his master might no doubt have him maimed or put to death or flogged; but he had to consider that in doing so he was damaging his own property, that when the slave had been flogged he would still continue to be his slave; and that the flogging might make him mischievous or revengeful, and so forth. If a modern servant misconducts himself, he can be turned out of the house on the spot, and another can be hired as easily as you would call a cab. To refuse the dismissed person a character may very likely be equivalent to sentencing him to months of suffering and to a permanent fall in the social scale. Such punishments are inflicted without appeal, without reflection, without the smallest disturbance of the smooth surface of ordinary life." (p. 151)
"To try to make men equal by altering social arrangements is like trying to make the cards of equal value by shuffling the pack. Men are fundamentally unequal, and this inequality will show itself arrange society as you like." (p. 152)
"If I am asked, What do you propose to substitute for universal suffrage?
Practically, what have you to recommend? I answer at once, Nothing. The
whole current of thought and feeling, the whole stream of human affairs, is
setting with irresistible force in that direction. The old ways of living,
many of which were just as bad in their time as any of our devices can be in
ours, are breaking down all over Europe, and are floating this way and that
like haycocks in a flood. Nor do I see why any wise man should expend much
thought or trouble on trying to save their wrecks. The waters are out and no
human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream
we need sing Hallelujah to the river god. I am not so vain as to suppose
that anything that I can say will do either good or harm to any perceptible
degree, but an attempt to make a few neutral observations on a process which
is all but universally spoken of with passion on one side or the other may
interest a few readers.
"The substance of what I have to say to the disadvantage of the theory
and practice of universal suffrage is that it tends to invert what I should
have regarded as the true and natural relation between wisdom and folly. I
think that wise and good men ought to rule those who are foolish and bad. To
say that the sole function of the wise and good is to preach to their
neighbours, and that everyone indiscriminately should be left to do what he
likes, and should be provided with a rateable share of the sovereign power
in the shape of a vote, and that the result of this will be the direction of
power by wisdom, seems to me to be the wildest romance that ever got
possession of any considerable number of minds." (p. 156)
"I should certainly not agree with Mr. Mill's opinion that English people in general are dull, deficient in originality, and as like each other as herrings in a barrel appear to us. Many and many a fisherman, common sailor, workman, labourer, gamekeeper, policeman, non-commissioned officer, servant and small clerk have I known who were just as distinct from one another, just as original in their own way, just as full of character, as men in a higher rank of life." (p. 158)
"For my part I should limit myself to this, that the number of people who are able to carry on anything like a systematic train of thought, or to grasp the bearings of any subject consisting of several parts, is exceedingly small." (p. 158)
"Endless discussion, continual explanation, the constant statement and re-statement to Parliament of every matter on which the Government is to act hamper to the last degree the process of governing. Nothing can be done at all till the importance of doing it has been made obvious to the very lowest capacity; and whatever can be made obvious to such capacities is sure in course of time to get done, although it may be obvious to people capable of taking a wider view that it ought not to be done. When once done, it is the hardest thing in the world to get it undone." (pp. 158-9)
"The success of equality in America is due, I think, mainly to the circumstance that a large number of people, who were substantially equal in all the more important matters, recognised that fact and did not set up unfounded distinctions. How far they actually are equal now, and how long they will continue to be equal when the population becomes dense, is quite another question. It is also a question I cannot do more than glance at in two words in this place, whether the enormous development of equality in America, the rapid production of an immense multitude of commonplace, self-satisfied and essentially slight people is an exploit which the whole world need fall down and worship." (p. 163)
"... I cannot but think that many persons must share the feeling of disgust with which I, for one, have often read and listened to expressions of general philanthropy... I know hardly anything in literature so nauseous as Rousseau's expressions of love for mankind when read in the light of his confessions. 'Keep your love to yourself, and do not daub me or mine with it,' is the criticism which his books always suggest to me... It is not love that one wants from the great mass of mankind, but respect and justice." (p. 164)
"I believe that many men are bad, a vast majority of men indifferent, and many good, and that the great mass of indifferent people sway this way or that according to circumstances, one of the most important of which circumstances is the predominance for the time being of the bad or the good." (p. 169)
"A friend of mine was once remonstrating with an Afghan chief on the vicious habits which he shared with many of his countrymen, and was pointing out to him their enormity according to European notions. 'My friend,' said the Afghan, 'why will you talk about what you do not understand? Give our way of life a fair trial, and then you will know something about it.'" (p. 173)
"When you have to deal with a man who expects pay and allowances, and is willing to give a fair day's work for it as long as the arrangement suits him, you know where you are. Deal with such a man fairly, and in particular cases, if he is a man of spirit and courage, he will deal with you not only fairly but generously. Earn his gratitude by kindness and justice, and he will in many cases give you what no money could buy or pay for. On the other hand, a man who has a disinterested love for the human race -- that is to say, who has got a fixed idea about some way of providing for the management of the concerns of mankind -- is an unaccountable person with whom it is difficult to deal upon any well-known and recognised principle, and who is capable of making his love for men in general the ground of all sorts of violence against men in particular." (p. 182)
"It is this necessity for working with tools which break in your hand when any really powerful strain is put on them which so often gives an advantage in argument to the inferior over the superior, to the man who can answer to the purpose easy things to understand over the man whose thoughts split the seams of the dress in which he has to clothe them." (p. 189)
"Though the sense of duty which is justified by this form of religion has become instinctive with many of those who feel it, I think that if the belief should ever fail, the sense of duty which grows out of it would die by degrees. I do not believe that any instinct will long retain its hold upon the conduct of a rational and enterprising man when he has discovered that it is a mere instinct which he need not yield to unless he chooses. People who think otherwise would do well to remember that, though custom makes some duties so easy to some people that they are discharged as a matter of course, there are others which it is extremely difficult to discharge at all; and that obvious immediate self-interest, in its narrowest shape, is constantly eating away the edges of morality, and would destroy it if it had not something deeper for its support than an historical or physiological explanation. We cannot judge of the effects of Atheism from the conduct of persons who have been educated as believers in God and in the midst of a nation which believes in God. If we should ever see a generation of men, especially a generation of Englishmen, to whom the word 'God' had no meaning at all, we should get a light upon the subject which might be lurid enough." (p. 196)
"If some theory about human happiness and equality and fraternity makes it our duty to kick against the pricks, to live as rebels against that, whatever it is, in which we find ourselves, a belief in God is immoral, but not otherwise. To my mind the immoral and unmanly thing is revolt, impatience of inevitable evils, gratuitous indiscriminate affection for all sorts of people, whether they deserve it or not, and in particular, a weak, ill-regulated sympathy for those whose sufferings are their own fault. These are sufferings which I, for one, should not wish either to relieve or to avert. I would leave the law to take its course." (p. 200)
"When, for instance, we are told that it is dreadful to think that a nation pretending to believe the Sermon on the Mount should employ so many millions sterling per annum on military expenditure, the answer is that no sane nation ever did or ever will pretend to believe the Sermon on the Mount in any sense which is inconsistent with the maintenance to the very utmost by force of arms of the national independence, honour, and interest. If the Sermon on the Mount really means to forbid this, it ought to be disregarded." (p. 203)