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JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
cries, and are taken up by persons who wish rather to use the 
watchword than to follow it. 
In this way their original meaning is sometimes much altered, 
and it is often difficult to get a definition of them at all, and 
almost impossible to get one which will receive general assent. It 
is not at all easy to find a definition of liberty. Every one uses 
the word, and it is assumed that every one knows what it means. 
Every one is familiar with the wurd, no doubt; but familiarity, 
though it is often mistaken for knowledge, is a very different 
thing, and frequently exists without any real knowledge at all. 
Mr. Mill does not define the word, though he is careful to mention 
the kind of liberty with which his Essay is concerned. "It is 
not," he says, "the so-called liberty of the will;" "but civil or 
social liberty : the nature and limits of the power which can be 
legitimately exercised by society over the individual." I don't 
know whether this last sentence is meant to be a definition of 
civil liberty, but if so, it strikes me as a very odd one. Though 
Mr. Mill thus limits the subject of his Essay at the outset, its 
actual range is much wider than this limitation would imply. It 
covers in fact the whole of what he afterwards describes* as 
" the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises," he says, 
" first, the inward domain of consciousness ; demanding liberty of 
conscience in the most comprehensive sense, liberty of thought and 
feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, 
practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological." Erom 
this, he adds, the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions is 
."practically inseparable." Secondly, he continues, the principle 
which he assumes "requires liberty of tastes and pursuits;" and 
thirdly, "liberty of combination among individuals for any pur- 
pose not involving harm to others." The whole of this vast sphere 
is included within the argument of the Essay, which applies as 
directly and completely to intellectual as it does to civil or political 
liberty. 
The range of the Essay being so wide, and the influence which 
it has obtained so great, not only from the reputation of its author, 
but from the vigour and eloquence of its style, and above all from 
its remarkable fulness and felicity of illustration, it is the more 
to be regretted that no definition of liberty is attempted in it. 
The word appears, however, to be used throughout the Essay to 
* People's Edition, p. 7. 
