Sources and editorial notes

The interests of others are no more chimerical, visionary, fantastic than my own, being founded in truth, and both are brought home to my bosom in the same way by the force of imagination and sympathy.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt gives other people’s interests the same imaginative reality as one’s own. Shared domestic arrangements require that shift from a private preference to a claim someone else can actually have.

When the first bitterness was over, the family accepted the inevitable, and tried to bear it cheerfully, helping one another by the increased affection which comes to bind households tenderly together in times of trouble.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Alcott’s narrator describes the March family responding together after a loss. The relevant possibility is mutual support, not a demand to bear every domestic burden cheerfully or remain in harmful circumstances.

This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the family relations, a case, in its direct influence on human happiness, more important than all others taken together.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill brings questions of freedom and responsibility into family relations. His argument supplies a counterpoint to the idea that whatever happens inside a household is beyond ethical examination.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

William Hazlitt · Table Talk, in Collected Works, volume VI · Read the source

Hazlitt’s pointed comparison treats the effort to mislead as an acknowledgment that a truthful understanding would matter. The broken dish case likewise depends on the difference between an accurate fact and an intentionally misleading assurance.

But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some confidence before.

George Eliot · Middlemarch · Read the source

Eliot describes Bulstrode becoming uncertain when an encounter requires more disclosure than he planned. The fictional moment shows how protecting an account can become another task alongside addressing the original conduct.

But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth: nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon considers the attraction of falsehood beyond the labor of discovering truth. This historical moral argument invites examination of a convenient misleading answer; it does not establish a motive for every mistaken statement.

He talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and development which the child does not possess.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams questions an adult who demands a capacity from a child while describing the demand as moral development. Her criticism makes it important to examine the standard and its reasonable application, not merely who failed it.

In every case, he pretends, it falls short of that complete self-denial which it pretends to, and, instead of a conquest, is commonly no more than a concealed indulgence of our passions.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith is reporting and criticizing Mandeville’s sweeping suspicion of virtue, rather than endorsing it. Recognizing imperfect motives does not justify treating every shared standard as a pretense or granting oneself an exemption.

I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.

Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography · Read the source

Franklin admits discovering more faults than he expected. That admission supplies a contrast to Hypocrisy: accepting that one has failed a standard differs from insisting that the same standard should not apply.

It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves, and the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith’s impartial spectator offers a way to examine one’s own concerns from a less privileged viewpoint. The kitchen case asks what becomes visible when the memorable Sunday meal is not allowed to represent the entire week.

But I do not take it for granted that every prejudice is ill-founded; nor that every paradox is self-evident, merely because it contradicts the vulgar opinion.

William Hazlitt · Table Talk, in Collected Works, volume VI · Read the source

Hazlitt refuses to treat either a familiar belief or a surprising reversal as automatically correct. Reconsidering the household story requires reasons, rather than a compulsory assumption that one’s first account must be false.

Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized opinion.

George Eliot · Middlemarch · Read the source

Eliot describes Casaubon’s conscientious attachment to an accepted code. Within the novel, that self-understanding is not a guarantee of perceptive or generous judgment; a flattering identity still needs examination in its particular acts.

But he did not write the letter that day, for as he rummaged out his best paper, he came across something which changed his purpose.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Laurie’s interrupted letter in Alcott’s novel records a genuine change of purpose. It is useful precisely because a change alone does not settle whether a commitment has been abandoned without adequate reason.

It is to no purpose that the person who has been guilty of the breach of it, urges that he promised in order to save his life, and that he broke his promise because it was inconsistent with some other respectable duty to keep it.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith examines a disputed promise made under pressure and a competing duty. The passage introduces reasons a commitment may need reassessment; this reading does not adopt an unconditional rule that every promise must be kept.

But nobler spirits may converse, even in the midst of pleasures, if the mind be well guarded with constancy and resolution.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon connects steadiness with a guarded purpose amid pleasures. Applied to the picnic case, the question is whether a fresh attraction has displaced a considered agreement, not whether enjoyment itself is suspect.

While my care was employ’d in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.

Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography · Read the source

Franklin distinguishes an intention to improve from the habits that continue while attention is elsewhere. His admission illuminates why general good intentions do not by themselves provide care for a particular entrusted concern.

It ought to have been a habit with him by this time, of following his duty, instead of consulting expediency.

Jane Austen · Emma · Read the source

Austen presents a judgment about Frank Churchill’s repeated choices. Its place in dialogue matters: it invites scrutiny of an alleged pattern rather than authorizing the reader to diagnose every inconvenient absence as neglect.

It was only to show that I cared how you get on, and what is said here is said in confidence, you know,” cried Meg, much alarmed at the thought of what might follow from her careless speech.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Meg recognizes that a careless disclosure can have consequences beyond the conversation in which it was made. Alcott’s scene broadens care from looking after objects to attending to information entrusted by another person.

It was really very pleasant to see how her unselfishness and simple sense of justice called out the same good qualities in others.

Elizabeth Gaskell · Cranford · Read the source

Gaskell’s narrator notices how Miss Matty’s fairness calls forth a response in others. The passage offers an image of shared consideration without promising that unselfish conduct will always receive an equally generous return.

if we never actually sacrifice any great interest of others, to any little interest of our own

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith distinguishes the intensity of self-concern from the choices that actually subordinate another’s greater interest. The reading corner makes that weighting visible without requiring anyone to stop having personal needs.

from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself

Jane Austen · Emma · Read the source

Austen’s narrator describes Mr Woodhouse’s difficulty imagining a different experience. The adjective gentle makes the point sharper: a softly expressed preference can still repeatedly displace the interests of others.

The word sympathy, in its most proper and primitive signification, denotes our fellow-feeling with the sufferings, not that with the enjoyments, of others.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith explains a use of sympathy directed toward another’s suffering. His terminology is historical, not a complete account of the word today; the relevant connection is the other person’s experience becoming a reason for concern.

She almost made me angry by dividing her sympathy between these directors (whom she imagined overwhelmed by self-reproach for the mismanagement of other people’s affairs) and those who were suffering like her.

Elizabeth Gaskell · Cranford · Read the source

The Cranford narrator initially resents Miss Matty’s sympathy even for the directors implicated in a bank’s failure. The scene separates attention to people’s distress from approving how they have acted.

Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her patience, as from her purse.

Jane Austen · Emma · Read the source

Austen’s narrator credits Emma with concrete attention as well as money in responding to need. The passage supplies a constructive contrast to an elaborate domestic welcome that never responds to the person present.

Though very happy in the social atmosphere about her, and very busy with the daily work that earned her bread and made it sweeter for the effort, Jo still found time for literary labors.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Alcott describes Jo combining paid work with continuing literary effort. This is one fictional arrangement, not a universal expectation of productivity; it helps distinguish meaningful engagement from appearances of busyness.

The longer it is delayed and kept sacred from the vulgar gaze, the more it swells into imaginary consequence; the labour and care required for a work of this kind being immense:—and then there are no faults in an unexecuted translation.

William Hazlitt · Table Talk, in Collected Works, volume VI · Read the source

Hazlitt jokes about the perfect work that remains unexecuted. His observation fits the teaspoon contrivance: preparation and ingenuity can protect an undertaking from the ordinary test of actually beginning it.

It is true that the amusement of some is the day's work of others; but the pleasure, not to say the useful recreation, of many, is worth the labour of a few, provided the occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely resigned.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill makes freely chosen and freely resignable work a condition in his example. That qualification matters here: someone’s refusal of an imposed or unfair burden cannot simply be relabeled Laziness.

our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

George Eliot · Middlemarch · Read the source

Eliot’s narrator teases the distance between abstract impartiality and judgments involving familiar people. Domestic favoritism becomes visible when an admired principle changes shape according to whose conduct is being considered.

We must view them, neither from our own place, nor yet from his, neither with our own eyes nor yet with his, but from the place, and with the eyes of a third person, who has no particular connexion with either, and who judges with impartiality between us.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith proposes a standpoint that gives neither party an automatic exemption. This is an invitation to examine the relevant claims, not a requirement to feel equal affection for everyone or ignore differing needs.

Poverty invites a sort of pity, a miserable dole of assistance; necessity neglect and scorn; wealth attracts and allures to itself more wealth, by natural association of ideas, or by that innate love of inequality and injustice, which is the favourite principle of the imagination.

William Hazlitt · Table Talk, in Collected Works, volume VI · Read the source

Hazlitt attacks the unequal attraction of wealth and status. His broad polemic is not adopted as a law of human behavior; it prompts the domestic question of whose case receives a favorable hearing before its facts are examined.

Miss Bingley was then sorry that she had proposed the delay; for her jealousy and dislike of one sister much exceeded her affection for the other.

Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Read the source

Austen describes Miss Bingley’s conflicting attachments as a motive within the novel. The passage helps distinguish a jealous feeling from what a person chooses to do with it; it does not make the feeling a diagnosis.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill states a philosophical claim about personal freedom. Read alongside a request for closeness, it keeps independent agency in view; it is not a claim that every choice is free of effects or obligations to others.

for their own comfort they would have retained her wholly; but this would be selfishness

Jane Austen · Emma · Read the source

Austen’s narrator recognizes that a wish to retain a loved person can serve the comfort of those keeping them. The distinction concerns allowing a separate life, not a requirement that every relationship continue unchanged.

It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon notices the paradox of seeking power over others while losing self-government. The mug case applies that tension to an ordinary interaction where help becomes a repeated demand for permission.

We have all seen parental control and the family claim assert their authority in fields of effort which belong to the adult judgment of the child and pertain to activity quite outside the family life.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams explicitly distinguishes an adult child’s judgment from parental claims over it. The passage makes domestic authority a question to justify, rather than something made unlimited by the name of the relationship.

We only shew a spirit of independence and resistance to power, as long as power is against us.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt challenges resistance to power that lasts only while one lacks it. Shared life tests the same consistency when someone who values their own independence begins directing another adult’s harmless choices.

One great ground of confidence and support has, indeed, been struck from under my feet; but I have made it up to myself by proportionable pertinacity of opinion.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt’s self-directed irony replaces a lost source of confidence with greater stubbornness. The spare shelf leg asks the related question: is certainty being maintained because its evidence weakened?

The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion itself.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill argues that a claim of usefulness is itself open to examination. A claim of household expertise likewise cannot settle whether the particular correction is sound without considering its reasons.

for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments

Elizabeth Gaskell · Cranford · Read the source

Gaskell’s narrator affectionately satirizes the self-sufficiency of Cranford’s judgments. The irony exposes certainty that dispenses with reasons, rather than endorsing the community’s assumption that further argument is unnecessary.

Persons of overweening vanity and short-sighted ambition, who would forestall the meed of fame, show themselves unworthy of it, for they reduce it to a level with the reputation they have already earned.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt distinguishes immediately acquired reputation from the more substantial achievement it imitates. The dinner photograph similarly risks making a visible impression stand in for the hospitality actually received by the guests.

Mandeville, the most methodical of those two authors, considers whatever is done from a sense of propriety, from a regard to what is commendable and praise-worthy, as being done from a love of praise and commendation, or as he calls it from vanity.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith reports Mandeville’s tendency to explain praise-worthy conduct as vanity and goes on to criticize that reduction. Wanting acknowledgment does not establish the excessive dependence on admiration examined here.

Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us.

Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Read the source

Mary Bennet gives this distinction in Austen’s novel; it is character dialogue, not a scientific classification. It nevertheless offers a useful comparison between one’s own estimate and the opinion one wants from an audience.

Instead of saying above—‘Never despise any one for any thing that he cannot help’—I might have said, ‘Never despise any one at all;’ for contempt implies a triumph over and pleasure in the ill of another.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt links contempt with triumph over another’s misfortune, extending toward what this register distinguishes as Cruelty. His stronger formulation invites comparison rather than silently replacing the narrower editorial definition.

“I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously,” said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

George Eliot · Middlemarch · Read the source

Eliot lets a protest against contempt carry a touch of disdain itself. The irony makes the manner of disagreement part of the case, while leaving the cousin’s actual conduct open to examination.

The charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams describes a visitor receiving kindly contempt without genuine respect. The phrase separates cordial behavior from the standing accorded to another person, a distinction relevant to apparently polite domestic dismissal.

How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?

Jane Austen · Emma · Read the source

Knightley challenges Emma after the Box Hill joke at Miss Bates’s expense. The fictional correction directs attention to the actual target and circumstances rather than allowing wit to justify the humiliation it produces.

He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness of his relenting: he must go to her again; the friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a power which he dreaded.

George Eliot · Middlemarch · Read the source

Eliot describes Will Ladislaw recognizing his own cruelty while dreading its consequences. The tangled fictional scene resists a simple division between people who care and people whose conduct cannot cause deliberate hurt.

People laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn all at once from pretty children into fine young men.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Jo’s discussion of growing children notices how ridicule can accompany unrealistic expectations. The historical passage is not developmental guidance; it illuminates the humiliation hidden inside demands to become immediately less awkward.

Again, envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man’s self; and where there is no comparison, no envy; and therefore kings are not envied but by kings.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon places comparison at the center of envy. His sweeping claims about who envies whom are not adopted here; the relevant question is whether another person’s advantage has become the thing one wants diminished.

If he knows he has an undoubted superiority in any respect, he will not be uneasy because every one he meets is not in the secret, nor staggered by the report of rival excellence.

William Hazlitt · Table Talk, in Collected Works, volume VI · Read the source

Hazlitt contrasts secure knowledge of an ability with dependence on universal recognition of it. Another person’s excellent cake need not become evidence that one’s own contribution has lost all value.

Envy is the grudging or receiving pain from any accomplishment or advantage possessed by another.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt identifies another person’s advantage as the object of resentment. The wider passage makes expansive claims about motives; this reading uses the narrower comparison without assuming a cause for every disappointed feeling.

I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Marmee acknowledges persistent anger while talking with Jo. The admission distinguishes feeling from response; this reading does not adopt never showing or never feeling anger as a standard of moral worth.

how the particular motions of anger may be repressed, or, at least, refrained from doing mischief

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon distinguishes the movement of anger from the harm it can do. The remainder also discusses manipulating another person’s anger; that material is not imported as a recommendation for domestic relationships.

I was angry, perhaps, at first, but my anger soon began to take a proper direction.”

Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Read the source

Darcy tells Elizabeth that his anger changed direction after reflection. Within Austen’s dialogue, the point is a reconsidered response rather than a claim that anger must disappear before judgment can improve.

I couldn’t enjoy myself if I neglected them even for you, so there’s no need of hurry or impatience.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Jo distinguishes love from a demand to abandon present responsibilities in a hurry. The dialogue allows separate work and time, rather than making immediate reunion the necessary proof of attachment.

Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as impatience generally is.

Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Read the source

Austen’s narrator turns an eagerly awaited letter into a dry observation about impatience. The joke does not condemn wanting news; it invites recognition of how expectation can promise more satisfaction than the event supplies.

Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B——’s face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy.

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt records a social moment in which impatience remains visible without dictating the conduct. The comic observation helps distinguish the feeling of waiting from an insistence that others immediately remove it.

Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption; therefore, always when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to steal it.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon recommends making a changed judgment and its reasons explicit. The passage supports accountable reconsideration, while its political setting does not imply that every private preference requires a public defense.

Waiving, however, this possibility—assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind, but abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argument—this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational being.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill distinguishes holding an opinion as a reasoned judgment from protecting it as a prejudice immune to argument. A household tradition needs the same distinction when circumstances no longer fit its method.

“It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.”

Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Read the source

Elizabeth’s remark in Austen’s dialogue exposes the difficulty of promising never to change an opinion. The irony favors answerability to correction, not the equally unreasoned habit of changing one’s mind for novelty.

Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon observes that retaliation can be arranged as a message to its target. The missing cushion likewise has an audience; this reading does not adopt the essay’s suggested hierarchy of more and less generous revenge.

Grief and resentment for private misfortunes and injuries may easily, for example, be too high, and in the greater part of mankind they are so.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith allows that resentment over private injury can become disproportionate. The distinction is not a demand to suppress hurt or forgive; it asks whether the response is becoming a penalty rather than protection or fair accountability.

The only idea that occupies her mind and hardens it against every other, is that of the affront she has received, and the desire of revenge

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt’s account of an absorbed grievance shows revenge narrowing attention to a private reckoning. Its gendered example is not a claim about women; the orientation can occur in anyone.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power; the spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty, or a strong desire of self-indulgence.

William Hazlitt · Table Talk, in Collected Works, volume VI · Read the source

Hazlitt proposes different motives behind acquisition, including fear and indulgence. These are historical interpretations, not grounds for diagnosing poverty or anxiety; the domestic question remains whether fair claims are being overridden.

For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something.

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays, First Series · Read the source

Emerson asks the reader to notice what accompanies a gain. In the picnic case, taking more can cost the shared purpose and other people’s fair participation even before the food is eaten.

Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon shifts attention from possessing resources to what their use makes possible. His broad formulation is a perspective to discuss, not a claim that every private reserve is morally illegitimate.

allowing the fruit to rot in the gardens and hot-houses of a fine old mansion in large quantities, sooner than let any of it be given away in presents to the neighbours

William Hazlitt · Characteristics and other writings, Collected Works volume XII · Read the source

Hazlitt’s example makes preservation defeat the very use of a resource. Its polemical portrait concerns an unwillingness to give despite abundance, rather than a judgment about people constrained by scarcity.

There, economy was always “elegant,” and money-spending always “vulgar and ostentatious”; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us very peaceful and satisfied.

Elizabeth Gaskell · Cranford · Read the source

Cranford’s narrator calls economy elegant while recognizing an element of sour grapes. The gentle satire leaves room for dignified thrift and exposes how a preferred description can protect every refusal of expenditure.

If your friend lent you money in your distress, ought you to lend him money in his?

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith poses a question about help received and help returned. It opens consideration of provision and capacity rather than establishing that every past favor creates an unlimited obligation to lend money.

Those virtues, however, do not require an entire insensibility to the objects of the passions which they mean to govern.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith rejects the attempt to make every remaining pleasure disprove temperance. That boundary matters to Wastefulness: a defensible concern for resources should not become a general condemnation of enjoyment.

the words ‘fifty dollars’ seemed stamped like a pattern down each breadth.

Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Read the source

Alcott lets Meg’s attractive purchase carry a second, less attractive pattern: its cost. The fictional moment concerns her particular circumstances, not a general rule about clothing, women or a permissible amount to spend.

Human felicity is produc’d not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography · Read the source

Franklin values recurring small advantages over rare strokes of fortune. The storage-box case asks what the next purchase will contribute to ordinary life after the brief satisfaction of acquiring it has passed.

You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.”

Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Read the source

Elizabeth challenges a reassuring account of Charlotte’s marriage in Austen’s novel. The speech is a character’s contested judgment, not authority for judging another person’s choices; it exposes how reassurance can rename a consequence without examining it.

Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill’s philosophical argument distinguishes private preference from consequences imposed on others. This historical statement is not a description of current law; the cups case uses the ethical question of whose risk is being accepted.

If a separation of two months should not have cooled him, there were dangers and evils before her:—caution for him and for herself would be necessary.

Jane Austen · Emma · Read the source

Austen shows Emma considering consequences for Harriet as well as herself. The passage is a fictional assessment, not a prediction; it keeps another person’s interests in view when a plan appears attractive.