Collected here in a single volume for the first time, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Considerations
on Representative Government, and The Subjection of Women show John Stuart Mill
applying his liberal utilitarian philosophy to a range of issues that remain vital today--the
nature of ethics, the scope and limits of individual liberty, the merits of and costs of
democratic government, and the place of women in society. In his Introduction John Gray
describes these essays as applications of Mill's doctrine of the Art of Life, as set out in A …

The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to
the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and
limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A
question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly
influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to
make itself recognized as the vital question of the future. It is so far from being new, that, in a …