of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that degrees,
or other public certificates of scientific or professional acquirements,
should be given to all who present themselves for examination, and stand
the test; but that such certificates should confer no advantage over
competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to their
testimony by public opinion.
It is not in the matter of education only, that misplaced notions of
liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being
recognised, and legal obligations from being imposed, where there are
the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many cases for the
latter also. The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being,
is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To
undertake this responsibility--to bestow a life which may be either a
curse or a blessing--unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will
have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime
against that being. And in a country either over-peopled, or threatened
with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number, with
the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a
serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their
labour. The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid
marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of
supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the state:
and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent
on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as
violations of liberty. Such laws are interferences of the state to
prohibit a mischievous act--an act injurious to others, which ought to
be a subject of reprobation, and social stigma, even when it is not
deemed expedient to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas of
liberty, which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of
the individual, in things which concern only himself, would repel the
attempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations when the consequence
of their indulgence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and depravity
to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach
to be in any way affected by their actions. When we compare the strange
respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for
it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm
to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to
any one.