17; contributions to society and human improvement (which is a key theme of the Enlightenment), but during each contemporary time period, these men were criticized for their own use of reason and for thinking “outside of the box.” Mill showed the world that traditionalism and authority of the masses isn’t necessarily right. He preached to society that every man must be allowed his own liberty at all times only with the exception that man’s liberty does not interfere with the “utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being” (Mill, H-4). Mill further explains that it is unreasonable to shut out the opinion of even a single man out of one hundred because we now know that the “majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now justify” (Mill, H-6). Human progression is earned through the rectification of mistakes by discussion and experience. By remaining open to a variety of opinions instead of silencing the remotest minority, mankind will create a more “stable foundation” in which it can exist more efficiently (Mill, H-6). In a sense, John Stuart Mill was enlightened to the fact that “individuals are lost in the crowd” (Mill, H-12), and this crowd is being ruled “by men much like themselves” (Mill, H-12). The world often exists in a state of regression in which men forget the lessons that thinkers such as Mill have taught us. Humankind will continue to progress if each man uses “observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision” (Mill, H-11).In his book, Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud argues that civilization i...
