Against these views, and, indeed, against the great body of valuable thoughts so admirably presented in this work, no rational objection would seem to be fairly adducible. But there are some very striking passages liable to a very different criticism--passages which, if not founded on actual misconception of facts, are, at least, so exaggerated in statement as to require very material modifications, both as to the existence of the evil they allege and the remedy they propose. Mr. Mill complains of the despotism of society as having utterly suppressed all spontaneity or individuality, and reduced the mass of mankind to a condition of lamentable uniformity. He thinks this evil has not only gone to a dangerous extent already, but that it threatens a still further invasion of individual liberty with even greater disasters in its train. It is better, however, to let Mr. Mill speak for himself in the following passages:
'But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess but the deficiency of personal impulses and preferences.' * *
'In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship.' * *
'I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes; until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow; their human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth or properly their own.'
And so, speaking of men of genius as being less capable than other persons 'of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of _the small number of moulds_ which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character,' he continues: