Having been (somewhat inexplicably) invited to attend a Liberty Fund confab on Mill earlier this year, I read the assigned text, On Liberty — which Mill really should have entitled Reasons Why I Should Get to Sleep With That Other Guy’s Wife.
So I was earger to read Anthony Daniels’ (aka Theodore Dalrymple’s new essay on Mill in the New Criterion and was not disappointed:
The mind recoils from consideration of the question whether this Old Testament prophet in rationalist utilitarian clothing suffered from (or is it enjoyed?) the physical sexual proclivities that are said to be so prevalent among Englishmen of a certain social class, but the evidence that he was at least mentally masochistic is overwhelming. He was as abjectly submissive to Harriet Taylor as any masochist to any dominatrix.
