《论自由·第四章·社会凌驾个人之权力的限度》第17节
But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our own day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually practised, and still greater ones threatened with some expectation of success, and opinions proposed which assert an unlimited right in the public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks wrong, but in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number of things which it admits to be innocent.
注释摘要
密尔在这里做了一个关键转折。前面他一直在设想一些可能的场景，来说明公众如果僭越个人自由会走向何种荒谬。现在，他郑重地告诉读者，这些危险并不是凭空虚构的，而是当下真实发生的。他观察到，在他生活的时代，对私人生活领域的侵犯已经是普遍现象，而且还有更严重的干涉正在酝酿。更可怕的是，舆论中流传着一种极端的看法，认为公众拥有无限制的权力，不但可以用法律去禁止任何他们…