John Stuart Mill · Public domain edition · 65 cards · 17 chapters
This deck covers John Stuart Mill’s autobiographical chapters in On Liberty, including his education, early writings, parliamentary career, and Harriet Taylor’s influence. It also addresses Mill’s argument that liberty concerns social rather than metaphysical freedom, and why he viewed social tyranny as more formidable than political oppression.
1 / 65
Chapter 1 · Question
How did Mill describe his own childhood in the text?
WakeCards · wakecards.com · Big ideas. Quick review.
Chapter 1 · Answer
Mill says, "I never was a boy," and "never played cricket." His exercise consisted of walks with his father, during which the elder Mill lectured and examined him on his work. The text states his youth was sacrificed to an idea, as his father designed him to carry on his work and the boy's individuality was unimportant.
WakeCards · wakecards.com · Big ideas. Quick review.
Arrow keys move between cards. Space or Enter flips.
All questions and answers
Every card in the deck, in reading order. Click a chapter to expand. The reviewer above uses the same content.
I.4 cards
How did Mill describe his own childhood in the text?
Mill says, "I never was a boy," and "never played cricket." His exercise consisted of walks with his father, during which the elder Mill lectured and examined him on his work. The text states his youth was sacrificed to an idea, as his father designed him to carry on his work and the boy's individuality was unimportant.
Chapter 1
What effect did Mill's visit to southern France at fourteen have?
At fourteen Mill visited the south of France with the family of General Sir Samuel Bentham. The text says it gave him a glimpse of another atmosphere, though the studious habits of his home life were maintained. From it he derived his interest in foreign politics, which remained one of his characteristics to the end of his life.
Chapter 1
What does the text say about Mill's early essays and literary output?
Mill's first essays appeared in the Traveller about a year before he entered the India House in 1823. From then his literary work was uninterrupted save by attacks of illness, and his industry was stupendous. He wrote on political, metaphysical, philosophic, religious, and poetical subjects, discovered Tennyson for his generation, and influenced Carlyle's French Revolution and its success.
Chapter 1
How did Mill fare in Parliament and what did Gladstone say of him?
Seven years after his wife's death, Mill was invited to contest Westminster. He refused personal action in the election and stated his political views frankly, yet was elected by a large majority. He was not a conventional success in the House and lacked magnetism as a speaker, but his influence was widely felt. Gladstone said he rejoiced in Mill's advent and deplored his disappearance.
Chapter 1
II.4 cards
According to the chapter, what was Mrs. Taylor's role in Mill's Political Economy?
The chapter states the purely scientific part was not learned from her, but her influence gave the book its general tone, chiefly distinguishing laws of production from modes of distribution. Mill credits her with prompting this view, though he had partially learned it from St. Simonian speculations. She also prompted the chapter on the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes, which was absent from the first draft.
Chapter 2
What does Mill admit about Mrs. Taylor's influence on his Logic?
Mill states his published work on Logic owed nothing to her in its doctrines. He says the only actual revolution in his modes of thinking was already complete before her influence became paramount. He adds that he held a humble opinion of his own powers as an original thinker except in abstract science—logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of political economy and politics.
Chapter 2
How does the chapter describe the differing mental contributions in Mill's marriage?
The chapter suggests the usual pattern is a valuable action and reaction of two orders of mind: the woman's lively presentment of concrete fact comes as a shock to the abstract speculator, and her instinct can illustrate a truth she could not philosophically reason out. The man, using careful logical methods, may suppose the happy intuition rests on the intellectual processes he is conscious of in himself.
Chapter 2
What does the chapter say about Mrs. Taylor's connection to The Subjection of Women?
The chapter says we cannot be wrong in attributing the parentage of The Subjection of Women to her. Mill had already learned that men and women ought to be equal in legal, political, social, and domestic relations, a point on which he had fallen foul of his father's essay on Government. But Mrs. Taylor had written on this very point, and the warmth of Mill's denunciations was caught from her view.
Chapter 2
CHAPTER I.4 cards
What does Mill say is the subject of this Essay, as opposed to 'Liberty of the Will'?
Mill states the subject is Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power society can legitimately exercise over the individual. He explicitly sets this apart from the so-called Liberty of the Will, which he says is unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. He calls this question the vital question of the future.
Chapter 3
How did 'liberty' differ in old times, and by what two methods was it sought?
Mill says liberty originally meant protection against the tyranny of political rulers, who were seen as necessarily antagonistic to the governed. It was sought first by recognizing immunities called political liberties or rights, whose infringement justified resistance or rebellion, and second, generally later, by constitutional checks making the consent of the community or a representative body necessary for important acts of the governing power.
Chapter 3
Why does Mill argue 'self-government' and 'power of the people over themselves' misdescribe the case?
Mill argues the people exercising power are not always the same as those over whom it is exercised; self-government is government of each by all the rest. The will of the people practically means the will of the most numerous or most active part, the majority or those accepted as such. So the people may desire to oppress part of their number, and precautions are as needed as against any other abuse of power.
Chapter 3
What is 'social tyranny,' and why does Mill consider it more formidable than political oppression?
Mill says society can execute its own mandates, and when it issues wrong mandates, or any mandates in things it should not meddle with, it practices social tyranny. This is more formidable than many kinds of political oppression because, though not usually upheld by extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrates more deeply into the details of life, and enslaves the soul itself.
Chapter 3
CHAPTER II. (part 1)4 cards
Why does Mill say silencing an opinion harms the human race?
Mill argues that silencing an opinion robs the human race, including posterity and dissenters even more than holders. If the opinion is right, people are deprived of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.
Chapter 4
What does Mill mean by calling all silencing of discussion an assumption of infallibility?
Mill argues that refusing to hear an opinion because one is sure it is false assumes one's own certainty equals absolute certainty. Those who suppress deny the opinion's truth but are not infallible and have no authority to decide for all mankind. He notes people readily admit fallibility in theory yet rarely guard against it in practice.
Chapter 4
How does Mill answer the objection that forbidding error is like any other official action?
Mill replies that presuming an opinion true because it has survived every opportunity for contest is very different from assuming its truth to prevent refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the condition that justifies acting on it; without that, a being with human faculties has no rational assurance of being right.
Chapter 4
Why does Mill say the wisest person's judgment depends on open criticism?
Mill argues human errors are corrigible through discussion and experience, not experience alone, since facts need commentary to reveal meaning. A judgment deserving confidence comes from keeping the mind open to criticism, hearing every variety of opinion, and answering objections. This habit, he argues, is the only stable foundation for relying on one's own opinion.
Chapter 4
CHAPTER II. (part 2)3 cards
According to Mill, what was Socrates charged with and convicted of?
Socrates was judicially convicted and put to death by his countrymen for impiety and immorality. Impiety meant denying the gods recognized by the State—his accuser claimed he believed in no gods at all. Immorality meant being a "corruptor of youth" through his doctrines and instructions. Mill says there is every ground for believing the tribunal honestly found him guilty.
Chapter 5
Why did Marcus Aurelius authorize persecution of Christianity, per Mill?
Mill argues Aurelius, though just and tender-hearted and near-Christian in ethics, judged Christianity false and saw the existing society held together by reverence for received divinities. Fearing society would fall apart if those ties dissolved, and believing it his duty to preserve it, he persecuted Christianity under a solemn sense of duty. Mill calls this one of the most tragical facts in history.
Chapter 5
What does Mill say about the claim that truth always triumphs over persecution?
Mill calls it a pleasant falsehood refuted by all experience. History teems with truths put down by persecution—the Reformation broke out at least twenty times before Luther and was suppressed; Arnold of Brescia, Savonarola, the Albigeois, the Vaudois, the Lollards and Hussites were all put down. Truth's real advantage is that it may be rediscovered across ages until it escapes persecution.
Chapter 5
CHAPTER II. (part 3)4 cards
According to Mill, what happens to true opinions that are never freely and fearlessly discussed?
Mill argues that however true an opinion may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma rather than a living truth. Held as a prejudice proof against argument, it is not really knowing the truth but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words that enunciate a truth.
Chapter 6
Why does Mill say mathematics differs from morals and politics regarding objections?
Mill argues that in mathematics all the argument is on one side: there are no objections and no answers to objections, so learning demonstrations suffices. But on any subject where difference of opinion is possible, truth depends on striking a balance between two sets of conflicting reasons, so one must know the grounds of one's own opinion against common objections.
Chapter 6
What does Mill require a person to do to truly know their own doctrine?
Mill argues a person must hear opponents' arguments from those who actually believe them, defended earnestly in their most plausible and persuasive form, and feel the full force of the difficulty. Hearing refutations from one's own teachers is insufficient. He says if opponents of important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply the strongest arguments.
Chapter 6
What examples does Mill give of periods when mental freedom spurred intellectual activity?
Mill cites three periods alike in having broken the yoke of authority: Europe immediately after the Reformation; the speculative movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century, limited to the Continent and a cultivated class; and the brief intellectual fermentation of Germany during the Goethian and Fichtean period. He traces every improvement in mind or institutions to one of them.
Chapter 6
CHAPTER II. (part 4)4 cards
According to Mill, why do traditional doctrines lose their vital meaning?
Mill argues that people stop thinking about a doctrine once it is no longer disputed, calling this "the fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful." He cites the "deep slumber of a decided opinion" and notes that teachers and learners "go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field."
Chapter 7
What does Mill say about the Socratic dialectics and medieval school disputations?
Mill describes Socratic dialectics as a negative discussion aimed at convincing those who merely adopted received opinion that they did not understand it, so they might seek stable belief. Medieval disputations had a similar object but the incurable defect that premises came from authority, not reason. Mill claims modern education supplies nothing replacing either, and the modern mind owes more to both than it admits.
Chapter 7
What third case does Mill add beyond opinion being false or true-but-contested?
Mill identifies a commoner case: conflicting doctrines share the truth between them, and the nonconforming opinion supplies the remainder the received doctrine omits. Popular opinions on non-palpable subjects are often true but seldom the whole truth, being exaggerated and disjoined from limiting truths. Heretical opinions are generally suppressed truths, and one-sidedness is the rule of the human mind.
Chapter 7
How does Mill use Rousseau as an example of the value of heretical opinion?
Mill says eighteenth-century thinkers overrated modern civilization and its difference from antiquity. Rousseau's paradoxes exploded like bombshells, dislocating one-sided opinion and forcing its elements to recombine. Mill concedes current opinions were nearer the truth than Rousseau's, containing more positive truth and less error, yet Rousseau carried truths the popular opinion wanted, such as the superior worth of simplicity of life and the demoralising effect of artificial society.
Chapter 7
CHAPTER II. (part 5)4 cards
What four grounds does Mill give for freedom of opinion and its expression?
Mill recapitulates four grounds: first, a silenced opinion may be true, and to deny this assumes our own infallibility; second, even a false opinion may contain a portion of truth, and prevailing opinion is rarely the whole truth, so collision of adverse opinions supplies the rest; third, even a wholly true received opinion, unless vigorously contested, is held as a prejudice without grasp of its rational grounds; fourth, without contest the doctrine's meaning risks being lost or enfeebled, becoming a mere formal profession.
Chapter 8
What does Mill say about Christ's sayings versus the ethics built on them by the Church?
Mill says he does not insinuate defects in the doctrines and precepts of Christ himself; he believes Christ's sayings are irreconcilable with nothing a comprehensive morality requires. But he holds they contain, and were meant to contain, only part of the truth, and that many essential elements of the highest morality were not provided for in them and have been entirely thrown aside by the system of ethics the Christian Church erected on that basis.
Chapter 8
Why does Mill object to permitting free expression only on condition of temperate manner?
Mill says fixing where the bounds of fair discussion lie is impossible: if the test is offence to those attacked, offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful. He adds that the principal offences, such as sophistry and misrepresentation, are mostly impossible to bring home to conviction and are done in good faith. He also notes invective is chiefly restrained against prevailing opinion, while against the unprevailing it earns praise for honest zeal.
Chapter 8
What is the real morality of public discussion, per Mill?
Mill says law and authority have no business restraining intemperate discussion; opinion should judge each case by its circumstances. One should condemn want of candour, malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling wherever they appear, but not infer these vices from the side a person takes. Honour is due to anyone, whatever opinion, who calmly sees and honestly states what opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing against them and withholding nothing in their favour.
Chapter 8
CHAPTER III. (part 1)4 cards
How does Mill distinguish freedom of opinion from freedom of action?
Mill holds that actions should not be as free as opinions. Opinions lose immunity when their expression constitutes a positive instigation to a mischievous act—for example, an opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor may be punished when delivered orally to an excited mob before a corn-dealer's house, though unmolested in the press. Acts harming others without justifiable cause may be controlled, and in important cases absolutely require control.
Chapter 9
What does Mill say about following custom merely as custom?
Mill argues that conforming to custom merely as custom does not educate or develop any distinctive human qualities. Perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and moral preference are exercised only in making a choice; he who acts because it is custom makes no choice. Mental and moral powers, like muscular ones, improve only by being used, so the mere imitator exercises only the ape-like faculty of imitation.
Chapter 9
What does Mill mean by saying human nature is a tree, not a machine?
Mill argues human nature is not a machine built after a model to do prescribed work, but a tree that must grow and develop on all sides according to inward forces making it a living thing. He contends it matters not only what people do but what manner of people they are, and that exchanging even starved civilized men for human-form automatons would be a considerable loss.
Chapter 9
How does Mill defend strong impulses and desires?
Mill argues desires and impulses are as much part of a perfect human being as beliefs and restraints, and strong impulses are perilous only when unbalanced. It is not strong desires but weak consciences that make people act ill. Strong impulses are another name for energy; those with most natural feeling can cultivate the strongest feelings, generating passionate love of virtue and sternest self-control.
Chapter 9
CHAPTER III. (part 2)2 cards
According to Mill, what happens to beliefs and practices without originality?
The author argues that even the best beliefs and practices tend to degenerate into the mechanical. Without a succession of original persons preventing their grounds from becoming merely traditional, dead matter would not resist the smallest shock from anything alive, and civilization could die out, as in the Byzantine Empire.
Chapter 10
Why does Mill say a person's own mode of life is best for them?
The author argues that if a person has tolerable common-sense and experience, their own mode of laying out existence is best not because it is best in itself, but because it is their own mode. Different persons require different conditions for spiritual development, like plants needing different climates.
Chapter 10
CHAPTER III. (part 3)4 cards
According to Mill, what preserved Europe from stagnation and made it progressive?
The author argues Europe owes its progressive, many-sided development wholly to its remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes and nations were extremely unlike one another and struck out varied paths, each leading to something valuable. Though travellers on different paths were intolerant and tried to force others onto their road, these attempts rarely succeeded permanently, and each eventually received the good the others offered.
Chapter 11
What two conditions does Humboldt identify as necessary for human development?
Mill quotes Wilhelm von Humboldt, who points out two things as necessary conditions of human development, because they render people unlike one another: freedom, and variety of situations. Mill adds that in his country the second condition, variety of situations, is diminishing every day, as the circumstances surrounding different classes and individuals become more assimilated.
Chapter 11
What causes does Mill list as promoting growing similarity among people?
Mill cites political changes tending to raise the low and lower the high; extensions of education bringing people under common influences; improvements in communication creating contact and rapid movement; and increased commerce and manufactures widening easy circumstances and opening ambition to all classes. Most powerful is the complete establishment of the ascendency of public opinion in the State, leaving no social support for nonconformity.
Chapter 11
Why does Mill say resistance to enforced assimilation must happen now?
The author argues the demand that all others resemble ourselves grows by what it feeds on. If resistance waits until life is reduced nearly to one uniform type, all deviations will be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily becomes unable to conceive diversity once unaccustomed to seeing it, so the stand must be made in the earlier stages.
Chapter 11
CHAPTER IV. (part 1)4 cards
According to Mill, how should life be divided between individuality and society?
Mill argues that individuality should govern the part of life in which the individual is chiefly interested, while society should govern the part that chiefly interests society. Each receives its proper share when each has what particularly concerns it. He grounds this not in a social contract but in the return owed by everyone who receives society's protection.
Chapter 12
What two kinds of conduct does Mill say society may justifiably enforce?
Mill states society is justified in enforcing, at all costs, two conditions: first, that people not injure one another's interests, specifically interests that ought to be considered rights by legal provision or tacit understanding; second, that each bear an equitable share of labours and sacrifices for defending society and its members from injury and molestation.
Chapter 12
How does Mill distinguish self-regarding faults from other-regarding vices?
Mill argues self-regarding faults—folly, rashness, intemperance—are not properly immoralities and do not constitute wickedness, though they may lower one in others' esteem. Vices like cruelty, malice, envy, and insincerity are moral vices because they breach duty to others. Duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory unless circumstances make them duties to others.
Chapter 12
What penalties may society inflict for conduct concerning only the person himself?
Mill holds that a person may suffer severe penalties for self-regarding faults, but only as the natural, spontaneous consequences of those faults—such as being lowered in others' opinion or avoided—not penalties purposely inflicted as punishment. We may warn others against him and give others preference in optional good offices, except those tending to his improvement.
Chapter 12
CHAPTER IV. (part 2)4 cards
Why does Mill say public interference with purely personal conduct is likely to err?
The author argues the strongest argument against public interference in self-regarding conduct is that when it interferes, it probably interferes wrongly and in the wrong place. On duties to others, majority opinion is often wrong but likelier right, since people judge their own interests. On self-regarding matters, the majority's opinion is as likely wrong as right, often reflecting mere distaste rather than concern for the person censured.
Chapter 13
How does Mill answer the claim that bad example justifies coercing the vicious?
Mill concedes bad example can have pernicious effects, especially wronging others with impunity. But for self-harming conduct, he argues the example must on the whole be more salutary than hurtful: if it displays the misconduct, it also displays the painful or degrading consequences that just censure supposes attend it in all or most cases.
Chapter 13
What pork example does Mill use against moral police?
Mill notes Christians' eating pork envenoms Mahomedan hatred more than any creed item; Mussulmans find it disgusting, though wine is also forbidden yet not disgusting. If a Mussulman majority banned pork, it would be no religious persecution, since no religion requires eating pork. The only tenable objection is that personal tastes and self-regarding concerns are not the public's business.
Chapter 13
What Puritan and democratic examples does Mill give of moral police?
Mill cites Puritans in New England and Commonwealth Britain suppressing music, dancing, public games and the theatre, warning stricter Calvinists and Methodists might command a Parliamentary majority. He also notes democratic feeling in the United States operating as a sumptuary law against showy spending, and artisan majorities using moral, sometimes physical, police to stop skilled workers earning more.
Chapter 13
CHAPTER IV. (part 3)4 cards
Why does Mill oppose a 'civilizade' against the Mormons?
Mill argues that no community has a right to force another to be civilized. Since the Mormons left the countries where their doctrines were unwelcome and settled a remote corner they made habitable, they may live under whatever laws they please, provided they commit no aggression on other nations and allow free departure to the dissatisfied. He says outsiders may send missionaries, but not compel conformity.
Chapter 14
What is Mill's own view of Mormon polygamy?
Mill says no one disapproves of the Mormon institution more deeply than he does, calling it a direct infraction of the principle of liberty: a riveting of the chains of one half of the community and an emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation. He still notes the relation is as voluntary for the women as any other form of marriage.
Chapter 14
Why does Mill think women might voluntarily accept polygamy?
Mill concedes the relation is as voluntary on the part of the women concerned as any other form of marriage. He explains this by the common ideas and customs of the world, which teach women to think marriage the one thing needful, making it intelligible that many a woman would prefer being one of several wives to not being a wife at all.
Chapter 14
What does the Bombay Parsees footnote illustrate?
The Parsees, descendants of Persian fire-worshippers, were tolerated in Western India on condition of not eating beef, then under Mahomedan rulers on condition of refraining from pork. What began as obedience to authority became second nature, and they still abstain from both though their religion does not require it. Mill notes that in the East, custom is a religion.
Chapter 14
CHAPTER V. (part 1)4 cards
What two maxims does Mill say form the entire doctrine of the Essay?
First, the individual is not accountable to society for actions concerning only himself; society may only advise, instruct, persuade, or avoid him. Second, for actions prejudicial to others' interests, the individual is accountable and may face social or legal punishment if society deems it necessary for its protection.
Chapter 15
Why does Mill say damage to others does not always justify social interference?
Mill argues that in pursuing legitimate objects, people necessarily cause pain or loss to others, as when winning a competitive exam or an overcrowded profession. Society admits no right of disappointed competitors to immunity from such suffering, and interferes only when fraud, treachery, or force are used.
Chapter 15
How does Mill distinguish Free Trade from the principle of individual liberty?
Mill argues trade is a social act, so it falls within society's jurisdiction in principle. But the doctrine of Free Trade rests on different, though equally solid, grounds than individual liberty: restraints on trade are wrong solely because they fail to produce the desired results, not because liberty is violated.
Chapter 15
What is Mill's view on restricting the sale of poisons?
Mill argues poisons may serve innocent and useful purposes, so restrictions cannot target one use without affecting the other. Labelling may be enforced without violating liberty, but requiring a medical certificate would make legitimate purchase impossible or expensive. He favors Bentham's 'preappointed evidence,' such as a seller's register of the transaction.
Chapter 15
CHAPTER V. (part 2)4 cards
Why does Mill argue a contract of voluntary slavery should be legally void?
Mill argues that by selling himself as a slave, a person abdicates his liberty and foregoes any future use of it beyond that single act, defeating the very purpose that justifies allowing him to dispose of himself. The principle of freedom, he concludes, cannot require that a person be free not to be free, nor is it freedom to be allowed to alienate his freedom.
Chapter 16
What obligations arise when a person's conduct leads another to rely on it?
Mill states that when a person, by express promise or by conduct, has encouraged another to rely on his continuing to act in a certain way—to build expectations and stake part of his plan of life on that supposition—a new series of moral obligations arises toward that person. These may possibly be overruled, but cannot be ignored.
Chapter 16
Why does Mill oppose the State directing education, as distinct from enforcing it?
Mill argues that a general State education is a contrivance for moulding people to be exactly alike, and the mould pleases whichever power predominates—monarch, priesthood, aristocracy, or majority—establishing despotism over the mind and tending toward one over the body. He deprecates State direction of education but not State enforcement of it, which he supports.
Chapter 16
What examination scheme does Mill propose to enforce compulsory education?
Mill proposes public examinations beginning at an early age, with an age fixed at which every child must be examined to ascertain if he or she can read. A father without sufficient excuse might face a moderate fine, worked out by labour if necessary, with the child schooled at his expense. Examinations would be renewed yearly with a gradually extending range, and beyond the minimum, voluntary examinations would grant certificates.
Chapter 16
CHAPTER V. (part 3)4 cards
What is Mill's practical principle for balancing central and local power?
The author argues for "the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralisation of information, and diffusion of it from the centre." Local business should be handled by locally chosen officers, while a central organ gathers and circulates information and experience from all localities, with actual power limited to enforcing laws laid down by the legislature.
Chapter 17
Why does Mill consider a talented, well-organized bureaucracy a danger to freedom?
The author argues that if all high talent were drawn into government service, a numerous bureaucracy would monopolize culture and intelligence. The public would lack practical experience to criticize it, and even a reforming ruler could effect no reform contrary to the bureaucracy's interest. Mill cites Russia, where the Czar can send officials to Siberia but cannot govern against their will.
Chapter 17
What does Mill say happens to a bureaucracy that absorbs all the country's principal ability?
The author argues it is fatal, sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body itself. Working by fixed rules, officials sink into indolent routine or rush into half-examined crudities. The only check is the watchful criticism of equal ability outside the body, so independent means of forming such ability must exist, lest the bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy.
Chapter 17
When does government interference become mischievous, according to Mill?
The author argues a government cannot have too much activity that aids and stimulates individual exertion. Mischief begins when it substitutes its own activity for individuals', making them work in fetters or doing their work instead of them. The worth of a State is the worth of the individuals composing it; a State that dwarfs its men finds that with small men no great thing can be accomplished.
Chapter 17
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #34901 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-18. Cards reviewed 2026-10-18.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
Turn your own notes into cards
Upload a PDF, Word, or text file and get question-and-answer cards for closed-notes practice. Five cards are free, no signup.