Milestones of Science Books

MILL, John Stuart.

On Liberty.

London: John W. Parker and Son, 1859.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Item #002918

8vo (194 x 123 mm). [5] 6-207 [1], [4] pp., including 4 pp. of smaller-sized publisher's advertisements tipped in at end. Original publisher's plum cloth with blind-stamped borders and spine lettered in gilt (rebacked preserving original spine, extremities and boards little rubbed, corners worn). Pages untrimmed. Internally only little age-toned, a few annotations in light pencil, small ink spot to fore-edge. Provenance: David Rowland (ink inscription dated 1859 to front pastedown), The 19th Century Shop (card loosly inserted). A near fine, clean copy. ----

PMM 345; Schumpeter, pp. 430, 528. - FIRST EDITION of a key work by Mill, partially based on Utilitarian doctrine, remarkable for establishing philosophically the virtue of the liberty of the individual as an absolute good for the community as a whole, rather than simply as a relative virtue, in relation to tyranny and oppression.
Mill's "most widely read book ... represents the final stage in the growth of Utilitarian doctrine ... Mill realized that the 'greatest good' of the community is inseparable from the liberty of the individual. Hitherto, liberty had always been considered relative, in relation to tyranny or oppression: Mill extended tyranny to include a custom-ridden majority, and declared that 'the sole end for which mankind is justified in interfering with liberty of action is self-protection.' ... Many of Mill's ideas are now the commonplaces of democracy. His arguments for freedom of every kind of thought or speech have never been improved on. He was the first to recognize the tendency of a democratically elected majority to tyrannize over a minority, and his warning against it has a contemporary ring: 'We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and, if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still'." (PMM 345).

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