Books: Freedom How?

ON LIBERTY AND LIBERALISM: THE CASE OF JOHN STUART MILL by GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB 345 pages. Knopf. $8.95.

What a delicious irony Gertrude Himmelfarb suggests: behind every hippie crying "Do your own thing" and "Let it all hang out" stands an uptight Victorian with tics and twitches. Her Exhibit A is that pre-eminent Victorian John Stuart Mill, child protégé and author of On Liberty (1854). Himmelfarb, professor of history at the City University of New York and author of Victorian Minds, constructs a careful case about Mill as the sponsor of what she takes...

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