《论自由·第一章·导论》第5节
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant--society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it--its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
注释摘要
密尔写到这里，其实是在为整本书的核心问题做一个关键推进。前面他刚刚讨论完“多数人的暴政”这个概念，指出人们通常只害怕多数通过政府机关和法律来施行暴政。但他立刻就把视角往深处一转，点出更具隐蔽性、也更可怕的暴政来源：社会本身。 他在这里的论证链条是这样的。他先设下一个常见但肤浅的看法：人们普遍认为，多数暴政主要是通过公共权威的行为来体现，比如立法、行政命令之…