CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP BY F. MAX MÜLLER, M. A., FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE, ETC. VOLUME V. MISCELLANEOUS LATER ESSAYS. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 1881. CONTENTS I. On Freedom II. On The Philosophy Of Mythology. III. On False Analogies In Comparative Theology. IV. On Spelling. V. On Sanskrit Texts Discovered In Japan. Index. Footnotes I. ON FREEDOM. Presidential Address Delivered Before The Birmingham Midland Institute, October 20, 1879. Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth his plea for Liberty.(1) If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John Stuart Mill. But in his Essay “On Liberty,” Mill for once becomes passionate. In presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of individual liberty, he seems to be possessed by a new spirit. He speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual human soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of growing to something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes a sacred thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is treated as sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of individuality, is represented like an evil spirit, whom it behooves every true man to resist with might and main, and whose demands, as they cannot be altogether ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the lowest level. I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly and strenuously in his Essay “On Liberty” would at the present day be challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or the most conservative of politicians. Mill’s demands sound very humble to _our_ ears. They amount to no more than this, “that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to the interests of others.”