His views on what exactly liberty is, directly contradict society's increasing tendency to demand conformity, by saying that: "there is also an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but to grow more and more formidable," (883). ...