THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
435 
is it possible for restraint to be entirely removed ? I have shown 
already that it is involved in the very idea of a free act that it 
should be an act according to law, that where there is no law there 
can be no liberty. 
But supposing that this entire removal of the restraint of law 
upon the acts of the mind were possible, does any one, do the most 
strenuous advocates of intellectual liberty, desire it ? Certainly 
Mr. Mill does not. Indeed he makes the very largest exceptions 
to his claims for liberty, exceptions which seem to me virtually to 
cover very nearly the whole ground of the claim. 
I object therefore not so much to his conclusions as to the 
sweeping principles which he has laid down, and which, as Mr. 
Stephen very properly remarks, he has nowhere proved. His 
exceptions include not only children and " young persons below 
the age which the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood," 
but " those backward states of society in which the race itself may 
be considered as in its nonage." " Liberty, as a principle, " he 
says, "has no application to any state of things anterior to the 
time when mankind have become capable of being improved by 
free and equal discussion." (p. 6.) I am not concerned to insist 
upon the difficulty of reconciling these exceptions with the general 
principle which Mr. Mill assumes, or of ascertaining their extent. 
It is enough that Mr. Mill, the most conspicuous and powerful 
advocate of intellectual liberty in the popular sense of the word, 
admits that he is not contending for the entire removal of restraint. 
An argument from analogy would lead us to the same conclusion, 
that the removal of the restraint of law is not the true idea of 
intellectual freedom. We are told that every fresh scientific dis- 
covery reveals to us more clearly that " the reign of law " extends 
over the whole material universe, that events apparently the most 
fortuitous take place according to certain fixed and invariable laws. 
Y/hat reason have we to suppose that the world of mind is, or can 
possibly become, exempt from a similar restraint ? All our experi- 
ence tends to prove the contrary, that the whole world of mind as 
well as the whole material world is under the dominion of laws 
from which it cannot possibly escape. Consider how the mind 
acts when it acts most perfectly. Take the process of scientific 
discovery, what is described in that wonderful book Middlemarch 
as "that delightful labour of the imagination which is not mere 
arbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power, combining and 
