Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual

Mill draws the line. Society has full claims over conduct that affects the interests of others: it may judge it, penalise it, legislate against it. It has no rightful authority over conduct that concerns only the agent himself — however foolish, distasteful, or self-destructive that conduct may appear. Disapproval is permitted; advice, remonstrance, even ostracism are permitted. Compulsion is not.

He takes the hardest objection head-on: is any act purely self-regarding? A man who ruins himself by drink also harms his family and his creditors. A man who lives badly sets a bad example. Mill's answer is to distinguish definite harm to assignable persons — the wife who is neglected, the creditor who is defrauded — from the diffuse displeasure that neighbours take at a way of living they dislike. The first is harm in the strict sense, and society may respond to it. The second is not, and must not be used as a pretext for coercion.

The principle cuts both ways. It leaves no room for laws that enforce private virtue on grounds that virtue is good for the person required to practise it. It also leaves no room for the comfortable claim that tolerance is all very well in theory but some things are just too offensive to be permitted. Mill holds to the line rigorously, and the rigour is the point. A principle that dissolves under social pressure is no principle at all.