Discussion Questions:

• What is utilitarianism?
• What is the East India Company?

• What is Mill's main argument?  How valid is it?

• Explain: The human "is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone" (1166).
• Explain:  "Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning" (1166).
• Explain:  "The claims of opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on it truth, as on its importance to society" (1166).
• Explain:  "The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion" (1166).

• Explain:  "The truth of an opinion is part of its utility" (1167).
• On what four grounds does Mill argue the necessity of the free expression of opinion?

• Explain:  "In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence" (1168).
• What is "the real morality of public discussion" (1168)?

• Explain:  "No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions" (1168).

• Explain:  "Free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others" (1169).
• Explain:  "Spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers" (1169).

• Explain:  "It is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way" (1170).
• Explain:  "He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties" (1170).

• Explain:  "The danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency of, personal impulses and preferences" (1171).

• Explain:  "In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others" (1172).
• Explain:  "Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men" (1172).

• Explain Mill's discussion of "genius" on this page.
• How, according to Mill, is mediocrity "the ascendant power among mankind" (1173)?

• Explain:  "The initiation of all wise and noble things, comes and must come from individuals" (1174).
• Explain:  "In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service" (1174).
• Explain:  "The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained" (1174).

• What is the "despotism of custom" (1175)?
• Explain:  Custom "does not preclude change, provided all change together" (1175).

• How is China, according to Mill, "a warning example" (1176)?

• What is Mill's main argument?  How does it compare with Wollstonecraft's in  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman?

• What, according to Mill, are the foundations of the contemporary subordination of women to men?
• Explain:  "Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? (1177).

• Explain:  "Unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and . . . everything which is usual appears natural" (1178).

• Explain:  "No enslaved class ever asked for complete liberty at once" (1179).
• Explain:  "It is a political law of nature that those who are under any power of ancient origin, never begin by complaining of the power itself, but only of its inappropriate exercise" (1179).
• Explain the comparison of women and slaves on this page. How do the affections contribute to women's "enslavement"?

• How, according to Mill, is the social subjection of women "an isolated fact in modern social organizations" (1180)?

• Explain:  "Experience cannot possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there has only been experience of one" (1181).
• Explain:  "What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing" (1181).

• Explain:  "The position of looking up to another is extremely unpropitious to complete sincerity and openness with him" (1183).
• Explain:  "The greater part of what women write about is mere sycophancy to men" (1183).

• Explain:  "All women of spirit and capacity should prefer doing almost everything else, not in their own eyes degrading, rather than marry, when marrying is giving themselves a master, and a master of all their earthly possessions" (1185).

• What is coverture?
• How legally binding would this statement have been?  Explain.