WEBVTT NOTE Roger J. Williams and the Science of Individuality 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.000 The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with Jeff Rigenbach. 2 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:21.000 It seems to have been in the 1950s that Roger J. Williams began turning up here and there in the libertarian world. 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:27.000 This would make a kind of sense because it was in the 50s that Williams began publishing the books 4 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:33.000 and other books that one would think might make him and his ideas interesting to libertarians. 5 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:44.000 First there was Free and Unequal, the biological basis of individual liberty, which came out in 1953 when Williams was 60 years old. 6 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:52.000 Three years later, in 1956, when Williams was 63, there came Biochemical Individuality. 7 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:58.420 To have been these two books that won Williams an invitation to address a symposium on individuality 8 00:00:58.420 --> 00:01:05.760 and personality, sponsored in Princeton, New Jersey in September of 1956 by the Foundation 9 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:11.800 for American Studies, which was concerned about what it described as the problem of 10 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:18.760 man's freedom in the face of modern society's seemingly irresistible urge to socialize and 11 00:01:18.760 --> 00:01:22.600 and regiment the thought and action of the individual. 12 00:01:22.600 --> 00:01:27.480 Other participants in the conference included Felix Morley and Milton Friedman. 13 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:33.480 Then, more than a decade later, Williams published what is probably his best-known book, the 14 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:39.720 only one of his 26 books to be brought out under the imprint of a major New York trade 15 00:01:39.720 --> 00:01:47.600 publisher, You Are Extraordinary, which appeared in 1967, when Williams was 74 years old. 16 00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:54.680 In 1973, Murray Rothbard cited all three of these books, Free and Unequal, Biochemical 17 00:01:54.680 --> 00:02:01.480 Individuality and You Are Extraordinary, in his classic essay, Egalitarianism as a 18 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:03.800 Revolt Against Nature. 19 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:06.960 Roger J. Williams was a biochemist. 20 00:02:06.960 --> 00:02:12.440 He was born in India of American missionary parents in 1893. 21 00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:17.060 The month has variously been reported as August and October. 22 00:02:17.060 --> 00:02:22.020 When Williams was two years old, his family returned to the United States, where he grew 23 00:02:22.020 --> 00:02:24.560 up in Kansas and California. 24 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:29.260 He earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Redlands in Southern 25 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:36.000 California in 1914, then moved on to graduate school at the University of Chicago, where 26 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:40.520 he earned a Ph.D. in the same field in 1919. 27 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:45.960 In 1920, he joined the faculty at the University of Oregon in Eugene. 28 00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:51.960 In 1932 he moved up the road a piece to Oregon State, at Corvallis. 29 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:59.360 Then later in the 30s, the exact year has been variously reported as 1934, 1939 and 30 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:05.840 1940, he took a faculty position at the University of Texas in Austin, where he stayed for the 31 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:08.080 rest of his professional life. 32 00:03:08.080 --> 00:03:15.140 He became emeritus professor of chemistry there in 1971 at the age of 77 and retired 33 00:03:15.140 --> 00:03:24.900 from that position in 1986 at the age of 92. He was 94 when he died in 1988. 34 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:30.300 In the beginning, Williams concentrated his research on nutritional issues. During the 35 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:36.460 30s and 40s, according to his obituary in the New York Times, he discovered the growth-promoting 36 00:03:36.460 --> 00:03:42.600 vitamin pantothenic acid, a member of the important family of vitamins known collectively 37 00:03:42.600 --> 00:03:44.920 as the Bee Complex. 38 00:03:44.920 --> 00:03:51.360 He also did pioneering work in the discovery of folic acid, an important agent in combating 39 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:57.220 pernicious anemia and another member of the Bee Complex, and was credited with making 40 00:03:57.220 --> 00:04:03.640 significant advances in knowledge of the way nutrients affect health, aging, psychological 41 00:04:03.640 --> 00:04:10.180 disorders, alcoholism, and mental retardation, among other diseases. 42 00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:16.100 Back in 1921, however, during what Williams later called my first year as a university 43 00:04:16.100 --> 00:04:21.340 teacher of chemistry at the University of Oregon, Williams had had an experience that 44 00:04:21.340 --> 00:04:27.460 would eventually provide him with a second and very different area of research specialty. 45 00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:34.220 As he tells the story in You Are Extraordinary, I had an ulcer operation years ago in Eugene, 46 00:04:34.220 --> 00:04:35.220 Oregon. 47 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:40.300 From the hospital after the operation I was given a shot of morphine to relieve my pain 48 00:04:40.300 --> 00:04:42.040 and put me to sleep. 49 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:45.920 It abolished my pain but didn't put me to sleep. 50 00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:50.880 In fact it kept me wide awake and made my mind very active. 51 00:04:50.880 --> 00:04:55.820 To remedy the situation the doctor ordered a second and heavier shot. 52 00:04:55.820 --> 00:04:57.520 There was hell to pay. 53 00:04:57.520 --> 00:05:04.220 My mind speeded up with agonizing rapidity from one thought to another, second by second, 54 00:05:04.220 --> 00:05:10.380 All Night Long, and it was a long, long night full of torture. 55 00:05:10.380 --> 00:05:16.140 The following day, after it was over, Williams recalled feeling thankful it was past, but 56 00:05:16.140 --> 00:05:23.020 being a scientist by inclination and training, I was disposed to ask, why did I react to 57 00:05:23.020 --> 00:05:26.780 morphine in this unusual way? 58 00:05:26.780 --> 00:05:31.260 Williams found that he couldn't get a satisfactory answer to his question. 59 00:05:31.260 --> 00:05:37.400 Words, he would write years later, sometimes cover up ignorance, and the word used to cover 60 00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:42.460 up this particular bit of ignorance was idiosyncrasy. 61 00:05:42.460 --> 00:05:46.860 Reacting to morphine in this way was my idiosyncrasy. 62 00:05:46.860 --> 00:05:50.600 But to give a phenomenon a name doesn't explain it. 63 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:55.820 This rather silly answer didn't satisfy me, but it was the only one I was to have for 64 00:05:55.820 --> 00:06:01.620 for nearly 20 years, during which time the question lurked in the back of my mind and 65 00:06:01.620 --> 00:06:08.020 occasionally popped out at me, but I had many other things to do and think about. 66 00:06:08.020 --> 00:06:13.940 Things like identifying B-complex vitamins and considering various nutritional issues, 67 00:06:13.940 --> 00:06:15.540 as we have seen. 68 00:06:15.540 --> 00:06:21.780 I didn't realize at all at the time Williams wrote nearly 50 years after receiving those 69 00:06:21.780 --> 00:06:51.340 Over the next 20 years, Williams gradually began to 70 00:06:51.340 --> 00:06:58.780 to realize that, as he put it, idiosyncrasies might be widespread rather than extremely rare. 71 00:06:58.780 --> 00:07:04.020 In time, he decided that they were, in fact, extremely widespread. 72 00:07:04.020 --> 00:07:12.580 In time, he decided that, in his words, each of us is built in a highly distinctive way in every particular, 73 00:07:12.580 --> 00:07:16.220 and that this is the basis of individuality. 74 00:07:16.220 --> 00:07:22.020 He decided further, again in his words, that human bodies can't be averaged, and that 75 00:07:22.020 --> 00:07:30.020 an adequate single picture of the human body, or any of its major parts, cannot be drawn. 76 00:07:30.020 --> 00:07:36.480 A picture which purports to show the human body is bound to be misleading, and may be 77 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:38.980 vicious in its effects. 78 00:07:38.980 --> 00:07:45.300 Williams wrote that normal individuals are highly distinctive with respect to their stomachs, 79 00:08:15.300 --> 00:08:22.300 William's Wrote in 1967 that it is an inescapable fact that every individual is highly distinctive with respect to the numbers and distribution of money. 80 00:09:15.300 --> 00:09:20.820 Only quotes the American botanist Albert Francis Blakeslee as having said that, 81 00:09:20.820 --> 00:09:27.460 Different people live in different worlds, so far as their sensory reactions are concerned. 82 00:09:27.460 --> 00:09:31.740 Williams himself took an only somewhat more moderate position. 83 00:09:31.740 --> 00:09:36.760 From the fact that different human brains are as unlike each other as are the brains 84 00:09:36.760 --> 00:09:42.540 of different species and even different orders of animals, he wrote, you may conclude that 85 00:09:42.540 --> 00:09:47.100 your brain probably differs from your neighbors far more than your facial 86 00:09:47.100 --> 00:09:53.660 features vary from his. Further, while no one knows precisely how our brains work, 87 00:09:53.660 --> 00:09:58.940 we are all convinced that the brain has something to do with thinking, and it 88 00:09:58.940 --> 00:10:03.300 would be surprising indeed in view of the differences in the structure of our 89 00:10:03.300 --> 00:10:08.460 brains if it should develop to be a fact that we all think alike. In some, 90 00:10:08.460 --> 00:10:14.760 Some, according to Williams, the basic answer to the question, why are you an individual, 91 00:10:14.760 --> 00:10:21.140 is that your body in every detail, including your entire nervous system and your brain 92 00:10:21.140 --> 00:10:24.460 thinking apparatus, is highly distinctive. 93 00:10:24.460 --> 00:10:27.600 You are not built like anyone else. 94 00:10:27.600 --> 00:10:32.380 You owe some of your individuality to the fact that you have been influenced uniquely 95 00:10:32.380 --> 00:10:36.500 by your environment, which is not like anyone else's. 96 00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:42.660 But from all that may be known about basic inborn individuality, it seems clear that 97 00:10:42.660 --> 00:10:48.540 the amount of individuality we would possess if we were all born with exactly the same 98 00:10:48.540 --> 00:10:57.100 detailed equipment would be puny indeed compared with the individuality we actually possess. 99 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:02.100 Williams believed he saw larger political implications in all this. 100 00:11:02.100 --> 00:11:06.380 Politically, he wrote, individuality is fundamental. 101 00:11:06.380 --> 00:11:12.420 If we did not possess individuality, we would all have the same tastes in eating, drinking, 102 00:11:12.420 --> 00:11:19.480 reading, art, music, religion and all other pursuits, and would willingly submit to regimentation 103 00:11:19.480 --> 00:11:22.340 and censorship in all matters. 104 00:11:22.340 --> 00:11:28.420 We do not submit willingly to regimentation, however, and the reason, according to Williams, 105 00:11:28.420 --> 00:11:32.180 is our mainly biochemical individuality. 106 00:11:32.180 --> 00:11:38.140 As the peoples of the earth continue to multiply, he wrote, the wide open spaces tend to be 107 00:11:38.140 --> 00:11:43.380 replaced more and more by cities where crowding takes place. 108 00:11:43.380 --> 00:11:49.300 As an inescapable result of crowding, there is a need to organize people and to regulate 109 00:11:49.300 --> 00:11:51.300 them more and more. 110 00:11:51.300 --> 00:11:58.260 This means rules, and rules can cause conflict if people have strong individuality. 111 00:11:58.260 --> 00:12:04.160 Put another way, which Williams is kind enough to do on the very next page, it is a fact 112 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:11.100 that normal people may respond very differently when they are treated in the same way. 113 00:12:11.100 --> 00:12:16.480 The challenge before us then is clear, or at least so Williams believed. 114 00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:21.380 We need to become expert, he wrote, in the making of rules. 115 00:12:21.380 --> 00:12:27.520 These should be of high quality, ones that will not be disruptive or damaging, unless 116 00:12:27.520 --> 00:12:34.080 As we have a basic knowledge of what people are like, especially regarding their individuality, 117 00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:39.600 we are like workmen trying to be skilled carpenters without any perception of the characteristics 118 00:12:39.600 --> 00:12:41.240 of wood. 119 00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:47.560 Above all, Williams believed, we, by whom he seems to mean those who run the government, 120 00:12:47.560 --> 00:12:51.560 must learn to sort people more efficiently. 121 00:12:51.560 --> 00:12:57.840 The problem of how to sort and classify people in a valid manner, he wrote, is a pressing 122 00:12:57.840 --> 00:12:58.840 one. 123 00:12:58.840 --> 00:13:04.100 We need to be able to sort children so that they can be effectively educated, each to 124 00:13:04.100 --> 00:13:07.240 suit his or her own make-up. 125 00:13:07.240 --> 00:13:12.260 Children do not have exactly the same food requirements because of their biochemical 126 00:13:12.260 --> 00:13:13.640 individuality. 127 00:13:13.640 --> 00:13:19.100 We need to know how to sort them so they can all get what they need. 128 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:23.340 And these are only two of the many examples Williams cites. 129 00:13:23.340 --> 00:13:29.820 The recreations that suit some individuals, he continues, will not suit others at all. 130 00:13:29.820 --> 00:13:33.100 People need help in sorting themselves. 131 00:13:33.100 --> 00:13:38.140 We need to know how to sort people because of the fact that they will not need the same 132 00:13:38.140 --> 00:13:42.260 books, the same music, or the same religion. 133 00:13:42.260 --> 00:13:46.940 Expertness must be developed in sorting people in connection with the selection of marriage 134 00:13:46.940 --> 00:13:48.580 mates. 135 00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:53.500 Business in sorting people is a challenging objective which must be sought in the decades 136 00:13:53.500 --> 00:13:54.660 to come. 137 00:13:54.660 --> 00:14:00.700 It will not be easy, but I have confidence that human minds aided by computers will find 138 00:14:00.700 --> 00:14:03.500 ways of accomplishing it. 139 00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:08.060 This is a far cry from libertarianism of any sort, of course. 140 00:14:08.060 --> 00:14:13.700 What it really is, is technocracy, rule by enlightened experts. 141 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:18.300 Williams showed where he was really coming from on the fundamental question of political 142 00:14:18.300 --> 00:14:37.300 Government by the People is justified, Williams wrote in that paper, only because we all have distinctive patterns of mentality, and by pooling our faculties, we can hope to come out with better answers than if we heed one man, a dictator, who has his own mental pattern, and may be able to change the way we think about it. 143 00:14:48.300 --> 00:15:07.100 So why did Roger J. Williams start turning up here and there in the libertarian world back in the 1950s? 144 00:15:07.100 --> 00:15:15.100 Why was he cited approvingly by as wise a libertarian thinker as Rothbard as late as 1973? 145 00:15:15.100 --> 00:15:27.600 I think part of the answer is that in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was so rare to encounter any intellectual who was willing to go to bat for any kind of individualism, 146 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:40.600 that if a new one came along, especially one with legitimate academic credentials, there was perhaps a tendency, at least at first, to overestimate that new intellectual's importance. 147 00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:57.600 Another and more important reason that many libertarians adopted Roger J. Williams half a century ago is the fact that Williams' ideas do fit in rather nicely with what one might call a certain minor tradition within libertarian thought. 148 00:15:57.600 --> 00:16:08.600 This minor tradition argues essentially that because every individual is unique, no general rules applicable to all can be justified. 149 00:16:08.600 --> 00:16:14.920 This idea appears, for example, in the writing of the German philosopher Max Stirner, or, 150 00:16:14.920 --> 00:16:19.500 as those Americans of today who have ever heard of him would be more likely to pronounce 151 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:22.320 his name, Max Stirner. 152 00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:29.520 Stirner's major work, Der Einsige und sein Eigentum, first published in 1844, was translated 153 00:16:29.520 --> 00:16:35.640 into English about a hundred years ago by Stephen T. Byington under the title The Ego 154 00:16:35.640 --> 00:16:38.040 and His Own. 155 00:16:38.040 --> 00:16:43.160 Some scholars have suggested that a more literal translation of Stirner's title would be 156 00:16:43.160 --> 00:16:46.120 The Unique One and His Property. 157 00:16:46.120 --> 00:16:52.440 More recent revisions of Buyington's translation, which is still in use after a century of wear, 158 00:16:52.440 --> 00:16:58.000 have not adopted this suggestion, but have modified the title a little, rendering it 159 00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:04.480 a bit more idiomatically for English speakers as The Ego and Its Own. 160 00:17:04.480 --> 00:17:09.960 In The Ego and Its Own, Sterner asserts an early and radical version of what today we 161 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:12.880 call methodological individualism. 162 00:17:12.880 --> 00:17:18.880 Man, or humanity, he contends, does not exist in reality. 163 00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:22.040 It is an abstraction, a fixed idea. 164 00:17:22.040 --> 00:17:26.360 All that really exists in the world is individuals. 165 00:17:26.360 --> 00:17:33.160 Each one of these is unique, and the purpose of the state is invariably to limit, tame, 166 00:17:33.160 --> 00:17:43.160 Roger J. Williams wrote very similarly at times. 167 00:17:43.160 --> 00:17:49.180 In one of the later chapters of You Are Extraordinary, for example, he argues against what he calls 168 00:17:49.180 --> 00:17:51.400 overgeneralizations. 169 00:17:51.400 --> 00:17:58.280 He asserts that, if one writes a book or article having to do with the child, this has been 170 00:17:58.280 --> 00:18:07.280 have been done many times. This is an effective way of overgeneralizing without calling attention to the fact that a generalization has been made. 171 00:18:07.280 --> 00:18:18.280 It implies, but is careful not to state, that all children are alike, and that the prototype, child, should be our primary concern. 172 00:18:18.280 --> 00:18:27.780 Similarly, one may surreptitiously generalize about the newspaper reader, the churchgoer, or the criminal. 173 00:18:27.780 --> 00:18:34.280 The honest thing is to speak of children, newspaper readers, churchgoers, criminals. 174 00:18:34.280 --> 00:18:39.280 If one wants to make generalizations, he can then do so at his own risk. 175 00:18:39.280 --> 00:18:45.280 The sneaky thing to do is to try to get the generalization by without stating it. 176 00:18:45.280 --> 00:18:52.160 And on the following page Williams notes that Stirner's least favorite fixed idea, man, 177 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:57.160 is just another way of saying the human being. 178 00:18:57.160 --> 00:19:02.800 Yet another variant of this minor tradition within libertarian thought, the idea that 179 00:19:02.800 --> 00:19:09.480 anyone who properly acknowledges the uniqueness of each individual human being must also oppose 180 00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:15.080 coercive government, is to be found in the work of John Stuart Mill, specifically in 181 00:19:15.080 --> 00:19:21.880 and his great essay, On Liberty, first published fifteen years after Max Stirner's magnum opus 182 00:19:21.880 --> 00:19:24.000 in 1859. 183 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:29.580 In Mill's view, and these are his words, it is essential that different persons should 184 00:19:29.580 --> 00:19:36.840 be allowed to lead different lives, and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever 185 00:19:36.840 --> 00:19:42.640 name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions 186 00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:44.100 of men. 187 00:19:44.100 --> 00:19:50.860 To Mill, as to Stirner, Emerson and Thoreau before him, self-realization was a good thing 188 00:19:50.860 --> 00:19:53.220 in and of itself. 189 00:19:53.220 --> 00:19:59.400 What more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs, Mill asked, than that it 190 00:19:59.400 --> 00:20:04.880 brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? 191 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:10.540 Or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good than that it prevents this? 192 00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:17.340 Doubtless, however, these considerations will not suffice to convince those who most need convincing, 193 00:20:17.340 --> 00:20:24.540 and it is necessary further to show those who do not desire liberty and would not avail themselves of it, 194 00:20:24.540 --> 00:20:32.640 that they may be in some intelligible manner rewarded for allowing other people to make use of it without hindrance. 195 00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:37.240 What Mill proposes as an argument for this view is ingenious. 196 00:20:37.240 --> 00:20:44.240 What good does freedom of self-realization and self-expression do for those who don't care to exercise it? 197 00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:47.240 What good are bohemians to bourgeoisie? 198 00:20:47.240 --> 00:20:55.240 I would suggest, Mill wrote, that they, the bourgeoisie, might possibly learn something from them, the bohemians. 199 00:20:55.240 --> 00:21:02.240 It will not be denied by anybody that originality is a valuable element in human affairs. 200 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:20.240 There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices and set the example of more enlightened conduct and better taste and sense in human life. 201 00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:30.240 This cannot well be gainsaid by anybody who does not believe that the world has already attained perfection in all its ways and practices. 202 00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:37.240 Mill was not unrealistic about the usefulness of lifestyle experimentation to society in general. 203 00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:43.240 It is true, he wrote, that this benefit is not capable of being rendered by everybody alike. 204 00:21:43.240 --> 00:22:13.240 The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit 205 00:22:13.240 --> 00:22:14.920 in which they grow. 206 00:22:14.920 --> 00:22:20.120 Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. 207 00:22:20.120 --> 00:22:26.400 Persons of genius are more individual than any other people, less capable consequently 208 00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:32.840 of fitting themselves without hurtful compression into any of the small number of molds which 209 00:22:32.840 --> 00:22:39.900 society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. 210 00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:45.920 In a way, you could say that John Stuart Mill drew the correct implications from Roger J. 211 00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:52.980 Williams' analysis of biochemical individuality a hundred years before Williams presented 212 00:22:52.980 --> 00:22:54.620 that analysis. 213 00:22:54.620 --> 00:23:01.660 If every individual is unique, there should be very, very few general laws that everyone 214 00:23:01.660 --> 00:23:03.820 is expected to obey. 215 00:23:03.820 --> 00:23:09.180 There should be a minimum of that, and a maximum of personal liberty. 216 00:23:09.180 --> 00:23:15.260 Mises argues, like Mill, that because we all have distinctive patterns of mentality, we 217 00:23:15.260 --> 00:23:18.620 can benefit by pooling our faculties. 218 00:23:18.620 --> 00:23:23.540 But he frets that effective pooling of our faculties is not easy. 219 00:23:23.540 --> 00:23:25.420 No, it isn't. 220 00:23:25.420 --> 00:23:31.620 But the most effective mechanism ever devised for making effective pooling of our faculties 221 00:23:31.620 --> 00:23:38.100 as easy as it can be, the free market, is also the natural result of reducing general 222 00:23:38.100 --> 00:23:43.940 Biological laws applicable to everyone to a bare minimum, and leaving people free to 223 00:23:43.940 --> 00:23:47.780 make their own choices about their own values. 224 00:23:47.780 --> 00:23:53.620 Roger J. Williams failed to see all this, but his work on biochemical individuality 225 00:23:53.620 --> 00:24:00.340 is full of valuable insight and useful information for any libertarian drawn to certain of the 226 00:24:00.340 --> 00:24:06.660 views of certain of our intellectual forefathers, Max Stirner, for example, and John Stuart 227 00:24:06.660 --> 00:24:07.700 Mill. 228 00:24:07.700 --> 00:24:14.380 In that sense, Williams made an important contribution to the libertarian tradition. 229 00:24:14.380 --> 00:24:15.380 This is Jeff Rigenbach.