CHAPTER II.

OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION.

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be

necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against

corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now

be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not

identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them,

and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to

hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so

triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it need not be

specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the

subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of

the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force

against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when

fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their

propriety;[6] and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional

countries, to be apprehended that the government, whether completely

responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the

expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ

of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore,

that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks

of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it

conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to

exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The

power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to

it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in

accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all

mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the

contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that

one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in

silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value

except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were

simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the

injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar

evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing

the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who

dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the

opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging

error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit,

the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its

collision with error.

It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of

which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can

never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false

opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may

possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its

truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the

question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means

of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure

that it is false, is to assume that _their_ certainty is the same thing

as _absolute_ certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption

of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common

argument, not the worse for being common.

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their

fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment,

which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows

himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions

against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any

opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of

the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute

princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually

feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all

subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their

opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they

are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their

opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they

habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in his

own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on

the infallibility of "the world" in general. And the world, to each

individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his

party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be

called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means

anything so comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his

faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that

other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have

thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own

world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient

worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has

decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance,

and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would

have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is as evident

in itself as any amount of argument can make it, that ages are no more

infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which

subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as

certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future

ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.

The objection likely to be made to this argument, would probably take

some such form as the following. There is no greater assumption of

infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error, than in any other

thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment and

responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because

it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to

use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious, is not claiming

exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them,

although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we

were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong,

we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties

unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct, can be no valid

objection to any conduct in particular. It is the duty of governments,

and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them

carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure

of being right. But when they are sure (such reasoners may say), it is

not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their

opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the

welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered

abroad without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened

times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true. Let us take

care, it may be said, not to make the same mistake: but governments and

nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be

fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes,

made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under

whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must act to

the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty,

but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. We

may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our own

conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid bad men to pervert

society by the propagation of opinions which we regard as false and

pernicious.

I answer that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest

difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every

opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its

truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty

of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which

justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no

other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance

of being right.

When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary conduct

of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and the other

are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the inherent force of the

human understanding; for, on any matter not self-evident, there are

ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is

capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative;

for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many

opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things

which no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the

whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational

conduct? If there really is this preponderance--which there must be,

unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate

state--it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of

everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral

being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of

rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience

alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be

interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and

argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind,

must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own

story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength

and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that

it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only

when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the

case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how

has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his

opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all

that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just,

and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what

was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human

being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by

hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of

opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every

character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but

this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any

other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own

opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt

and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable

foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that

can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his

position against all gainsayers--knowing that he has sought for

objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out

no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter--he has a

right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any

multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind, those who

are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find necessary to warrant

their relying on it, should be submitted to by that miscellaneous

collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the

public. The most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even

at the canonisation of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a

"devil's advocate." The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted

to posthumous honours, until all that the devil could say against him is

known and weighed. If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted

to be questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its

truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have

no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to

prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted

and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we

have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we

have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching

us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better

truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it;

and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to

truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty

attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for

free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme;" not

seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are

not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are

not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be

free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be _doubtful_, but

think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to

be questioned because it is _so certain_, that is, because _they are

certain_ that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while

there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is

not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with

us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other

side.

In the present age--which has been described as "destitute of faith, but

terrified at scepticism"--in which people feel sure, not so much that

their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without

them--the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are

rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. There

are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so useful, not to say indispensable

to well-being, that it is as much the duty of governments to uphold

those beliefs, as to protect any other of the interests of society. In a

case of such necessity, and so directly in the line of their duty,

something less than infallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and

even bind, governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the

general opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and still oftener

thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary

beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining

bad men, and prohibiting what only such men would wish to practise.

This mode of thinking makes the justification of restraints on

discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their

usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the

responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But

those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the assumption

of infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. 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. There is the same need of an infallible judge of opinions to

decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be false, unless the

opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending itself. And it will

not do to say that the heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility or

harmlessness of his opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth. The

truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would know whether or

not it is desirable that a proposition should be believed, is it

possible to exclude the consideration of whether or not it is true? In

the opinion, not of bad men, but of the best men, no belief which is

contrary to truth can be really useful: and can you prevent such men

from urging that plea, when they are charged with culpability for

denying some doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they

believe to be false? Those who are on the side of received opinions,

never fail to take all possible advantage of this plea; you do not find

_them_ handling the question of utility as if it could be completely

abstracted from that of truth: on the contrary, it is, above all,

because their doctrine is "the truth," that the knowledge or the belief

of it is held to be so indispensable. There can be no fair discussion of

the question of usefulness, when an argument so vital may be employed on

one side, but not on the other. And in point of fact, when law or public

feeling do not permit the truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are

just as little tolerant of a denial of its usefulness. The utmost they

allow is an extenuation of its absolute necessity, or of the positive

guilt of rejecting it.

In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of denying a hearing to

opinions because we, in our own judgment, have condemned them, it will

be desirable to fix down the discussion to a concrete case; and I

choose, by preference, the cases which are least favourable to me--in

which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on the score of

truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the

opinions impugned be the belief in a God and in a future state, or any

of the commonly received doctrines of morality. To fight the battle on

such ground, gives a great advantage to an unfair antagonist; since he

will be sure to say (and many who have no desire to be unfair will say

it internally), Are these the doctrines which you do not deem

sufficiently certain to be taken under the protection of law? Is the

belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure of which, you hold to

be assuming infallibility? But I must be permitted to observe, that it

is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call

an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that

question _for others_, without allowing them to hear what can be said on

the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the

less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However

positive any one's persuasion may be, not only of the falsity, but of

the pernicious consequences--not only of the pernicious consequences,

but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and

impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of that private judgment,

though backed by the public judgment of his country or his

contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence,

he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less

objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or

impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal. These

are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit

those dreadful mistakes, which excite the astonishment and horror of

posterity. It is among such that we find the instances memorable in

history, when the arm of the law has been employed to root out the best

men and the noblest doctrines; with deplorable success as to the men,

though some of the doctrines have survived to be (as if in mockery)

invoked, in defence of similar conduct towards those who dissent from

_them_, or from their received interpretation.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named

Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of

his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and

country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down

to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous

man in it; while _we_ know him as the head and prototype of all

subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty

inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, "_i

maëstri di color che sanno_," the two headsprings of ethical as of all

other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers

who have since lived--whose fame, still growing after more than two

thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which

make his native city illustrious--was put to death by his countrymen,

after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in

denying the gods recognised by the State; indeed his accuser asserted

(see the "Apologia") that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in

being, by his doctrines and instructions, a "corruptor of youth." Of

these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing,

honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all

then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a

criminal.

To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial iniquity, the

mention of which, after the condemnation of Socrates, would not be an

anticlimax: the event which took place on Calvary rather more than

eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of those who

witnessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his moral

grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to him as

the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as what? As a

blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook

him for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as that

prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held to be, for their

treatment of him. The feelings with which mankind now regard these

lamentable transactions, especially the later of the two, render them

extremely unjust in their judgment of the unhappy actors. These were, to

all appearance, not bad men--not worse than men commonly are, but rather

the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full

measure, the religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and

people: the very kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have

every chance of passing through life blameless and respected. The

high-priest who rent his garments when the words were pronounced, which,

according to all the ideas of his country, constituted the blackest

guilt, was in all probability quite as sincere in his horror and

indignation, as the generality of respectable and pious men now are in

the religious and moral sentiments they profess; and most of those who

now shudder at his conduct, if they had lived in his time, and been born

Jews, would have acted precisely as he did. Orthodox Christians who are

tempted to think that those who stoned to death the first martyrs must

have been worse men than they themselves are, ought to remember that one

of those persecutors was Saint Paul.

Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if the

impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of him

who falls into it. If ever any one, possessed of power, had grounds for

thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his cotemporaries,

it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole

civilised world, he preserved through life not only the most unblemished

justice, but what was less to be expected from his Stoical breeding, the

tenderest heart. The few failings which are attributed to him, were all

on the side of indulgence: while his writings, the highest ethical

product of the ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they differ

at all, from the most characteristic teachings of Christ. This man, a

better Christian in all but the dogmatic sense of the word, than almost

any of the ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have since reigned,

persecuted Christianity. Placed at the summit of all the previous

attainments of humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, and a

character which led him of himself to embody in his moral writings the

Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianity was to be a good

and not an evil to the world, with his duties to which he was so deeply

penetrated. Existing society he knew to be in a deplorable state. But

such as it was, he saw, or thought he saw, that it was held together,

and prevented from being worse, by belief and reverence of the received

divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it his duty not to suffer

society to fall in pieces; and saw not how, if its existing ties were

removed, any others could be formed which could again knit it together.

The new religion openly aimed at dissolving these ties: unless,

therefore, it was his duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to be his

duty to put it down. Inasmuch then as the theology of Christianity did

not appear to him true or of divine origin; inasmuch as this strange

history of a crucified God was not credible to him, and a system which

purported to rest entirely upon a foundation to him so wholly

unbelievable, could not be foreseen by him to be that renovating agency

which, after all abatements, it has in fact proved to be; the gentlest

and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn sense of

duty, authorised the persecution of Christianity. To my mind this is one

of the most tragical facts in all history. It is a bitter thought, how

different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the

Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the

auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine. But it

would be equally unjust to him and false to truth, to deny, that no one

plea which can be urged for punishing anti-Christian teaching, was

wanting to Marcus Aurelius for punishing, as he did, the propagation of

Christianity. No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism is false,

and tends to the dissolution of society, than Marcus Aurelius believed

the same things of Christianity; he who, of all men then living, might

have been thought the most capable of appreciating it. Unless any one

who approves of punishment for the promulgation of opinions, flatters

himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus Aurelius--more

deeply versed in the wisdom of his time, more elevated in his intellect

above it--more earnest in his search for truth, or more single-minded in

his devotion to it when found;--let him abstain from that assumption of

the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude, which the great

Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result.

Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of punishment for

restraining irreligious opinions, by any argument which will not justify

Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of religious freedom, when hard pressed,

occasionally accept this consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson, that

the persecutors of Christianity were in the right; that persecution is

an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and always passes

successfully, legal penalties being, in the end, powerless against

truth, though sometimes beneficially effective against mischievous

errors. This is a form of the argument for religious intolerance,

sufficiently remarkable not to be passed without notice.

A theory which maintains that truth may justifiably be persecuted

because persecution cannot possibly do it any harm, cannot be charged

with being intentionally hostile to the reception of new truths; but we

cannot commend the generosity of its dealing with the persons to whom

mankind are indebted for them. To discover to the world something which

deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to

it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or

spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can

render to his fellow-creatures, and in certain cases, as in those of the

early Christians and of the Reformers, those who think with Dr. Johnson

believe it to have been the most precious gift which could be bestowed

on mankind. That the authors of such splendid benefits should be

requited by martyrdom; that their reward should be to be dealt with as

the vilest of criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error

and misfortune, for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth and ashes,

but the normal and justifiable state of things. The propounder of a new

truth, according to this doctrine, should stand, as stood, in the

legislation of the Locrians, the proposer of a new law, with a halter

round his neck, to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did

not, on hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition.

People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, cannot be supposed

to set much value on the benefit; and I believe this view of the subject

is mostly confined to the sort of persons who think that new truths may

have been desirable once, but that we have had enough of them now.

But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is

one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another

till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.

History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not

suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only

of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least twenty times

before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra

Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were put

down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards were put down. The

Hussites were put down. Even after the era of Luther, wherever

persecution was persisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy,

Flanders, the Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out; and, most

likely, would have been so in England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen

Elizabeth died. Persecution has always succeeded, save where the

heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted. No

reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated

in the Roman Empire. It spread, and became predominant, because the

persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and

separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a

piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any

inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and

the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for

error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties

will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real

advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is

true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the

course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it,

until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable

circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to

withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

It will be said, that we do not now put to death the introducers of new

opinions: we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we even

build sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put heretics to death;

and the amount of penal infliction which modern feeling would probably

tolerate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not sufficient to

extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves that we are yet free

from the stain even of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at

least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is

not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible

that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at

the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man,[7]

said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was

sentenced to twenty-one months' imprisonment, for uttering, and writing

on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. Within a month

of the same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate

occasions,[8] were rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted

by the judge and by one of the counsel, because they honestly declared

that they had no theological belief; and a third, a foreigner,[9] for

the same reason, was denied justice against a thief. This refusal of

redress took place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can

be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not profess

belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state; which is

equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws, excluded from the

protection of the tribunals; who may not only be robbed or assaulted

with impunity, if no one but themselves, or persons of similar opinions,

be present, but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity,

if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The assumption on

which this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, of a person who

does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much

ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically

true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons

of distinguished integrity and honour); and would be maintained by no

one who had the smallest conception how many of the persons in greatest

repute with the world, both for virtues and for attainments, are well

known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule,

besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence

that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who

are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of

publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A

rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed

purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of

persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity, that the

qualification for undergoing it, is the being clearly proved not to

deserve it. The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less

insulting to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not believe

in a future state, necessarily lies, it follows that they who do believe

are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are, by the fear of

hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of the rule the injury of

supposing, that the conception which they have formed of Christian

virtue is drawn from their own consciousness.

These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution, and may be

thought to be not so much an indication of the wish to persecute, as an

example of that very frequent infirmity of English minds, which makes

them take a preposterous pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle,

when they are no longer bad enough to desire to carry it really into

practice. But unhappily there is no security in the state of the public

mind, that the suspension of worse forms of legal persecution, which has

lasted for about the space of a generation, will continue. In this age

the quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to

resuscitate past evils, as to introduce new benefits. What is boasted of

at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow

and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry; and

where there is the strong permanent leaven of intolerance in the

feelings of a people, which at all times abides in the middle classes of

this country, it needs but little to provoke them into actively

persecuting those whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of

persecution.[10] For it is this--it is the opinions men entertain, and

the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they

deem important, which makes this country not a place of mental freedom.

For a long time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that

they strengthen the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really

effective, and so effective is it that the profession of opinions which

are under the ban of society is much less common in England, than is, in

many other countries, the avowal of those which incur risk of judicial

punishment. In respect to all persons but those whose pecuniary

circumstances make them independent of the good will of other people,

opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be

imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread. Those

whose bread is already secured, and who desire no favours from men in

power, or from bodies of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear

from the open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and

ill-spoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic mould to

enable them to bear. There is no room for any appeal _ad misericordiam_

in behalf of such persons. But though we do not now inflict so much evil

on those who think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to

do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment

of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose

like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole

intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the

Christian church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping the

older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade. Our

merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but

induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for

their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or

even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far

and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and

studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the

general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. And

thus is kept up a state of things very satisfactory to some minds,

because, without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning

anybody, it maintains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed,

while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by

dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for

having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on

therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort

of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral

courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of

the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the

genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their own

breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much

as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have

internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters,

and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world.

The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are either mere

conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on

all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which

have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so by

narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of

without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to small

practical matters, which would come right of themselves, if but the

minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be

made effectually right until then: while that which would strengthen and

enlarge men's minds, free and daring speculation on the highest

subjects, is abandoned.

Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics is no evil,

should consider in the first place, that in consequence of it there is

never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions; and that

such of them as could not stand such a discussion, though they may be

prevented from spreading, do not disappear. But it is not the minds of

heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on all inquiry

which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done

is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is

cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute

what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined

with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous,

independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something

which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among

them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and

subtle and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating

with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of

ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience

and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end

succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise,

that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to

whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of

one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the

true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer

themselves to think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great

thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is

as much, and even more indispensable, to enable average human beings to

attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been,

and may again be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of

mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that

atmosphere, an intellectually active people. Where any people has made a

temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread

of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where there is a

tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the

discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is

considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high

scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so

remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large

and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the mind of a people

stirred up from its foundations, and the impulse given which raised even

persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of

thinking beings. Of such we have had an example in the condition of

Europe during the times immediately following the Reformation; another,

though limited to the Continent and to a more cultivated class, in the

speculative movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century; and a

third, of still briefer duration, in the intellectual fermentation of

Germany during the Goethian and Fichtean period. These periods differed

widely in the particular opinions which they developed; but were alike

in this, that during all three the yoke of authority was broken. In

each, an old mental despotism had been thrown off, and no new one had

yet taken its place. The impulse given at these three periods has made

Europe what it now is. Every single improvement which has taken place

either in the human mind or in institutions, may be traced distinctly to

one or other of them. Appearances have for some time indicated that all

three impulses are well-nigh spent; and we can expect no fresh start,

until we again assert our mental freedom.

Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dismissing

the supposition that any of the received opinions may be false, let us

assume them to be true, and examine into the worth of the manner in

which they are likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and

openly canvassed. However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion

may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be

moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not

fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead

dogma, not a living truth.

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as formerly)

who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think

true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion,

and could not make a tenable defence of it against the most superficial

objections. Such persons, if they can once get their creed taught from

authority, naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of its

being allowed to be questioned. Where their influence prevails, they

make it nearly impossible for the received opinion to be rejected wisely

and considerately, though it may still be rejected rashly and

ignorantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and

when it once gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give

way before the slightest semblance of an argument. 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. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but

one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which

enunciate a truth.

If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cultivated, a thing

which Protestants at least do not deny, on what can these faculties be

more appropriately exercised by any one, than on the things which

concern him so much that it is considered necessary for him to hold

opinions on them? If the cultivation of the understanding consists in

one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of

one's own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is

of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to

defend against at least the common objections. But, some one may say,

"Let them be _taught_ the grounds of their opinions. It does not follow

that opinions must be merely parroted because they are never heard

controverted. Persons who learn geometry do not simply commit the

theorems to memory, but understand and learn likewise the

demonstrations; and it would be absurd to say that they remain ignorant

of the grounds of geometrical truths, because they never hear any one

deny, and attempt to disprove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching

suffices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to

be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the

evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one

side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on

every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth

depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting

reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other

explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead

of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be

shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is

shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the

grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more

complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the

business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed

opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion

different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left

it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great,

if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero

practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by

all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows

only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be

good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally

unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so

much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either

opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment,

and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by

authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to

which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear

the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they

state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is

not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real

contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who

actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very

utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and

persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which

the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he

will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets

and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called

educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently

for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false

for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the

mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered

what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any

proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves

profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify

the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly

conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two

apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred.

All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the

judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it

ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and

impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in

the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real

understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all

important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and

supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil's

advocate can conjure up.

To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy of free discussion

may be supposed to say, that there is no necessity for mankind in

general to know and understand all that can be said against or for their

opinions by philosophers and theologians. That it is not needful for

common men to be able to expose all the misstatements or fallacies of an

ingenious opponent. That it is enough if there is always somebody

capable of answering them, so that nothing likely to mislead

uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That simple minds, having been

taught the obvious grounds of the truths inculcated on them, may trust

to authority for the rest, and being aware that they have neither

knowledge nor talent to resolve every difficulty which can be raised,

may repose in the assurance that all those which have been raised have

been or can be answered, by those who are specially trained to the task.

Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be claimed for

it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of understanding of

truth which ought to accompany the belief of it; even so, the argument

for free discussion is no way weakened. For even this doctrine

acknowledges that mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all

objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be

answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken? or how can

the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no

opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at

least the philosophers and theologians who are to resolve the

difficulties, must make themselves familiar with those difficulties in

their most puzzling form; and this cannot be accomplished unless they

are freely stated, and placed in the most advantageous light which they

admit of. The Catholic Church has its own way of dealing with this

embarrassing problem. It makes a broad separation between those who can

be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and those who must

accept them on trust. Neither, indeed, are allowed any choice as to what

they will accept; but the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided

in, may admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the

arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may, therefore,

read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special permission, hard

to be obtained. This discipline recognises a knowledge of the enemy's

case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means, consistent with

this, of denying it to the rest of the world: thus giving to the _élite_

more mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it allows to

the mass. By this device it succeeds in obtaining the kind of mental

superiority which its purposes require; for though culture without

freedom never made a large and liberal mind, it can make a clever _nisi

prius_ advocate of a cause. But in countries professing Protestantism,

this resource is denied; since Protestants hold, at least in theory,

that the responsibility for the choice of a religion must be borne by

each for himself, and cannot be thrown off upon teachers. Besides, in

the present state of the world, it is practically impossible that

writings which are read by the instructed can be kept from the

uninstructed. If the teachers of mankind are to be cognisant of all that

they ought to know, everything must be free to be written and published

without restraint.

If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of free

discussion, when the received opinions are true, were confined to

leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those opinions, it might be

thought that this, if an intellectual, is no moral evil, and does not

affect the worth of the opinions, regarded in their influence on the

character. The fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the

opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the

meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it, cease to

suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were

originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid conception and a

living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if

any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer

essence being lost. The great chapter in human history which this fact

occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly studied and meditated on.

It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines and

religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to those who

originate them, and to the direct disciples of the originators. Their

meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps

brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle

lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency over other creeds. At

last it either prevails, and becomes the general opinion, or its

progress stops; it keeps possession of the ground it has gained, but

ceases to spread further. When either of these results has become

apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and gradually dies away. The

doctrine has taken its place, if not as a received opinion, as one of

the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those who hold it have

generally inherited, not adopted it; and conversion from one of these

doctrines to another, being now an exceptional fact, occupies little

place in the thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as at

first, constantly on the alert either to defend themselves against the

world, or to bring the world over to them, they have subsided into

acquiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to arguments

against their creed, nor trouble dissentients (if there be such) with

arguments in its favour. From this time may usually be dated the decline

in the living power of the doctrine. We often hear the teachers of all

creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers

a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognise, so

that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the

conduct. No such difficulty is complained of while the creed is still

fighting for its existence: even the weaker combatants then know and

feel what they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other

doctrines; and in that period of every creed's existence, not a few

persons may be found, who have realised its fundamental principles in

all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered them in all their

important bearings, and have experienced the full effect on the

character, which belief in that creed ought to produce in a mind

thoroughly imbued with it. But when it has come to be a hereditary

creed, and to be received passively, not actively--when the mind is no

longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital

powers on the questions which its belief presents to it, there is a

progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the

formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it

on trust dispensed with the necessity of realising it in consciousness,

or testing it by personal experience; until it almost ceases to connect

itself at all with the inner life of the human being. Then are seen the

cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the

majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind,

encrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to

the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering

any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for

the mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep them

vacant.

To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted to make the deepest

impression upon the mind may remain in it as dead beliefs, without being

ever realised in the imagination, the feelings, or the understanding, is

exemplified by the manner in which the majority of believers hold the

doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I here mean what is accounted

such by all churches and sects--the maxims and precepts contained in the

New Testament. These are considered sacred, and accepted as laws, by all

professing Christians. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one

Christian in a thousand guides or tests his individual conduct by

reference to those laws. The standard to which he does refer it, is the

custom of his nation, his class, or his religious profession. He has

thus, on the one hand, a collection of ethical maxims, which he believes

to have been vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his

government; and on the other, a set of every-day judgments and

practices, which go a certain length with some of those maxims, not so

great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to some, and are,

on the whole, a compromise between the Christian creed and the interests

and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of these standards he

gives his homage; to the other his real allegiance. All Christians

believe that the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are

ill-used by the world; that it is easier for a camel to pass through the

eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven; that

they should judge not, lest they be judged; that they should swear not

at all; that they should love their neighbour as themselves; that if one

take their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that they should

take no thought for the morrow; that if they would be perfect, they

should sell all that they have and give it to the poor. They are not

insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe

them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never

discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regulates

conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it

is usual to act upon them. The doctrines in their integrity are

serviceable to pelt adversaries with; and it is understood that they are

to be put forward (when possible) as the reasons for whatever people do

that they think laudable. But any one who reminded them that the maxims

require an infinity of things which they never even think of doing,

would gain nothing but to be classed among those very unpopular

characters who affect to be better than other people. The doctrines have

no hold on ordinary believers--are not a power in their minds. They have

a habitual respect for the sound of them, but no feeling which spreads

from the words to the things signified, and forces the mind to take

_them_ in, and make them conform to the formula. Whenever conduct is

concerned, they look round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go

in obeying Christ.

Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far

otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity

never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised Hebrews

into the religion of the Roman empire. When their enemies said, "See how

these Christians love one another" (a remark not likely to be made by

anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier feeling of the meaning

of their creed than they have ever had since. And to this cause,

probably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity now makes so little

progress in extending its domain, and after eighteen centuries, is still

nearly confined to Europeans and the descendants of Europeans. Even with

the strictly religious, who are much in earnest about their doctrines,

and attach a greater amount of meaning to many of them than people in

general, it commonly happens that the part which is thus comparatively

active in their minds is that which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some

such person much nearer in character to themselves. The sayings of

Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect

beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland.

There are many reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which are the badge of

a sect retain more of their vitality than those common to all recognised

sects, and why more pains are taken by teachers to keep their meaning

alive; but one reason certainly is, that the peculiar doctrines are more

questioned, and have to be oftener defended against open gainsayers.

Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there

is no enemy in the field.

The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all traditional

doctrines--those of prudence and knowledge of life, as well as of morals

or religion. All languages and literatures are full of general

observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct oneself

in it; observations which everybody knows, which everybody repeats, or

hears with acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of which

most people first truly learn the meaning, when experience, generally of

a painful kind, has made it a reality to them. How often, when smarting

under some unforeseen misfortune or disappointment, does a person call

to mind some proverb or common saying, familiar to him all his life, the

meaning of which, if he had ever before felt it as he does now, would

have saved him from the calamity. There are indeed reasons for this,

other than the absence of discussion: there are many truths of which the

full meaning _cannot_ be realised, until personal experience has brought

it home. But much more of the meaning even of these would have been

understood, and what was understood would have been far more deeply

impressed on the mind, if the man had been accustomed to hear it argued

_pro_ and _con_ by people who did understand it. The fatal tendency of

mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer

doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. A contemporary author has

well spoken of "the deep slumber of a decided opinion."

But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an indispensable

condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some part of mankind

should persist in error, to enable any to realise the truth? Does a

belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally

received--and is a proposition never thoroughly understood and felt

unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have unanimously

accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and

best result of improved intelligence, it has hitherto been thought, is

to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment of all important

truths: and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not

achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very

completeness of the victory?

I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of doctrines

which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the

increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be measured by the

number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point of being

uncontested. The cessation, on one question after another, of serious

controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the consolidation of

opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of true opinions, as it

is dangerous and noxious when the opinions are erroneous. But though

this gradual narrowing of the bounds of diversity of opinion is

necessary in both senses of the term, being at once inevitable and

indispensable, we are not therefore obliged to conclude that all its

consequences must be beneficial. The loss of so important an aid to the

intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by the

necessity of explaining it to, or defending it against, opponents,

though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the

benefit of its universal recognition. Where this advantage can no longer

be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind

endeavouring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance for making

the difficulties of the question as present to the learner's

consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient

champion, eager for his conversion.

But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost

those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently

exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this

description. They were essentially a negative discussion of the great

questions of philosophy and life, directed with consummate skill to the

purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted the commonplaces of

received opinion, that he did not understand the subject--that he as yet

attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed; in order

that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to

attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the

meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school disputations of

the middle ages had a somewhat similar object. They were intended to

make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary

correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of

the one and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests

had indeed the incurable defect, that the premises appealed to were

taken from authority, not from reason; and, as a discipline to the mind,

they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which

formed the intellects of the "Socratici viri": but the modern mind owes

far more to both than it is generally willing to admit, and the present

modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies

the place either of the one or of the other. A person who derives all

his instruction from teachers or books, even if he escape the besetting

temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to

hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment,

even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the weakest part of what

everybody says in defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a reply

to antagonists. It is the fashion of the present time to disparage

negative logic--that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in

practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism

would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to

attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it

cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically

trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general

average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical

departments of speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions

deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had

forced upon him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental

process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active

controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so

indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd is it

to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons

who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will

let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them,

and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought,

if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our

convictions, to do with much greater labour for ourselves.

It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make

diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until

mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at

present seems at an incalculable distance. We have hitherto considered

only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and some

other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being

true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear

apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner

case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of

being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and

the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the

truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part. Popular

opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom

or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a

greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and

disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and

limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are generally some of

these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the bonds which kept

them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the truth contained in

the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves

up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is

hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has

always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in

revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another

rises. Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only

substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement

consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more

wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it

displaces. Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even

when resting on a true foundation; every opinion which embodies somewhat

of the portion of truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be

considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that

truth may be blended. No sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to

be indignant because those who force on our notice truths which we

should otherwise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see.

Rather, he will think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is

more desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided

asserters too; such being usually the most energetic, and the most

likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which

they proclaim as if it were the whole.

Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed, and all

those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost in admiration

of what is called civilisation, and of the marvels of modern science,

literature, and philosophy, and while greatly overrating the amount of

unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times,

indulged the belief that the whole of the difference was in their own

favour; with what a salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode

like bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided

opinion, and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with

additional ingredients. Not that the current opinions were on the whole

farther from the truth than Rousseau's were; on the contrary, they were

nearer to it; they contained more of positive truth, and very much less

of error. Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and has floated

down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of

exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and these are the

deposit which was left behind when the flood subsided. The superior

worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralising effect of

the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which have

never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote;

and they will in time produce their due effect, though at present

needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for

words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their power.

In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order

or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary

elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the

other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally

of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be

preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of

thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it

is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within

the limits of reason and sanity. Unless opinions favourable to democracy

and to aristocracy, to property and to equality, to co-operation and to

competition, to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and

individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the other standing

antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and

enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is no chance

of both elements obtaining their due; one scale is sure to go up and the

other down. Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a

question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few

have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment

with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough

process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile

banners. On any of the great open questions just enumerated, if either

of the two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be

tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which

happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority. That is

the opinion which, for the time being, represents the neglected

interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining

less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any

intolerance of differences of opinion on most of these topics. They are

adduced to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality

of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the

existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair-play to all sides of

the truth. When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to

the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is

in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something

worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something

by their silence.

It may be objected, "But _some_ received principles, especially on the

highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The

Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject,

and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly in

error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice, none can

be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing what

Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide what is

meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the New

Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge of this from

the book itself, can suppose that it was announced, or intended, as a

complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing

morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars in which that

morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider and higher;

expressing itself, moreover, in terms most general, often impossible to

be interpreted literally, and possessing rather the impressiveness of

poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation. To extract from

it a body of ethical doctrine, has ever been possible without eking it

out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but

in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people.

St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the

doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes a

pre-existing morality, namely, that of the Greeks and Romans; and his

advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accommodation to

that; even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery. What

is called Christian, but should rather be termed theological, morality,

was not the work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later origin,

having been gradually built up by the Catholic church of the first five

centuries, and though not implicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants,

has been much less modified by them than might have been expected. For

the most part, indeed, they have contented themselves with cutting off

the additions which had been made to it in the middle ages, each sect

supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own character and

tendencies. That mankind owe a great debt to this morality, and to its

early teachers, I should be the last person to deny; but I do not

scruple to say of it, that it is, in many important points, incomplete

and one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it,

had contributed to the formation of European life and character, human

affairs would have been in a worse condition than they now are.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it

is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative

rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than

Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good:

in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates

unduly over "thou shalt." In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol

of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of

legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the

appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling

far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to

human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each

man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures,

except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him for

consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it

inculcates submission to all authorities found established; who indeed

are not to be actively obeyed when they command what religion forbids,

but who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any

amount of wrong to ourselves. And while, in the morality of the best

Pagan nations, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place,

infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian

ethics, that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or

acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read

the maxim--"A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in

his dominions another man better qualified for it, sins against God and

against the State." What little recognition the idea of obligation to

the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman

sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life,

whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even

the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious

part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of

ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognised, is that of

obedience.

I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are

necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every manner in which

it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral

doctrine which it does not contain, do not admit of being reconciled

with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts

of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all, that I

can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they are

irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality requires;

that everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within them,

with no greater violence to their language than has been done to it by

all who have attempted to deduce from them any practical system of

conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent with this, to believe that

they contain, and were meant to contain, only a part of the truth; that

many essential elements of the highest morality are among the things

which are not provided for, nor intended to be provided for, in the

recorded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity, and which have

been entirely thrown aside in the system of ethics erected on the basis

of those deliverances by the Christian Church. And this being so, I

think it a great error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian

doctrine that complete rule for our guidance, which its author intended

it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe,

too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil,

detracting greatly from the value of the moral training and instruction,

which so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves

to promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings

on an exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular

standards (as for want of a better name they may be called) which

heretofore co-existed with and supplemented the Christian ethics,

receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there

will result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of

character, which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme

Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathising in the conception of

Supreme Goodness. I believe that other ethics than any which can be

evolved from exclusively Christian sources, must exist side by side with

Christian ethics to produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that

the Christian system is no exception to the rule, that in an imperfect

state of the human mind, the interests of truth require a diversity of

opinions. It is not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths

not contained in Christianity, men should ignore any of those which it

does contain. Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is

altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always

exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good.

The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole,

must and ought to be protested against, and if a reactionary impulse

should make the protestors unjust in their turn, this one-sidedness,

like the other, may be lamented, but must be tolerated. If Christians

would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they should themselves

be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service to blink the fact,

known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary

history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral

teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men

who knew and rejected, the Christian faith.

I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the freedom of

enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the evils of

religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men of narrow

capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and

in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world,

or at all events none that could limit or qualify the first. I

acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become sectarian is not

cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated

thereby; the truth which ought to have been, but was not, seen, being

rejected all the more violently because proclaimed by persons regarded

as opponents. But it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the

calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of

opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between

parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the

formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen

to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden

into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by

being exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few mental

attributes more rare than that judicial faculty which can sit in

intelligent judgment between two sides of a question, of which only one

is represented by an advocate before it, truth has no chance but in

proportion as every side of it, every opinion which embodies any

fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as

to be listened to.

We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind

(on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and

freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we

will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for

aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own

infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very

commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or

prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it

is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the

truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole

truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and

earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held

in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of

its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of

the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and

deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma

becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering

the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt

conviction, from reason or personal experience.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take

some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions

should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do

not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the

impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed;

for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think

experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is

telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and

whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any

strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent. But this, though

an important consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a

more fundamental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an

opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and

may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind

are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal,

to bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue

sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements

of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to

the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good

faith, by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may

not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely

possible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the

misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume

to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. With regard to

what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective,

sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons

would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them

equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment

of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they

may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to

obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous

indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest

when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and

whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode

of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions. The

worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to

stigmatise those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.

To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are

peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential,

and nobody but themselves feel much interest in seeing justice done

them; but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those

who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to

themselves, nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their

own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can

only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most

cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever

deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured

vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does

deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to

those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and

justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of

vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were

necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage

offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion. It is, however,

obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either,

while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the

circumstances of the individual case; condemning every one, on whichever

side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either

want of candour, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling

manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which

a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our

own: and giving merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may

hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents

and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit,

keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their

favour. This is the real morality of public discussion; and if often

violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who

to a great extent observe it, and a still greater number who

conscientiously strive towards it.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give them an

emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of

1858. That ill-judged interference with the liberty of public discussion

has not, however, induced me to alter a single word in the text, nor has

it at all weakened my conviction that, moments of panic excepted, the

era of pains and penalties for political discussion has, in our own

country, passed away. For, in the first place, the prosecutions were not

persisted in; and, in the second, they were never, properly speaking,

political prosecutions. The offence charged was not that of criticising

institutions, or the acts or persons of rulers, but of circulating what

was deemed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness of Tyrannicide.

If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought

to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter

of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be

considered. It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to

examine here, whether the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that title. I

shall content myself with saying, that the subject has been at all times

one of the open questions of morals; that the act of a private citizen

in striking down a criminal, who, by raising himself above the law, has

placed himself beyond the reach of legal punishment or control, has been

accounted by whole nations, and by some of the best and wisest of men,

not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue; and that, right or wrong, it

is not of the nature of assassination, but of civil war. As such, I hold

that the instigation to it, in a specific case, may be a proper subject

of punishment, but only if an overt act has followed, and at least a

probable connection can be established between the act and the

instigation. Even then, it is not a foreign government, but the very

government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can

legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existence.

[7] Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following,

he received a free pardon from the Crown.

[8] George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857.

[9] Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough-Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.

[10] Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions

of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst

parts of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy

insurrection. The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may

be unworthy of notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have

announced as their principle, for the government of Hindoos and

Mahomedans, that no schools be supported by public money in which the

Bible is not taught, and by necessary consequence that no public

employment be given to any but real or pretended Christians. An

Under-Secretary of State, in a speech delivered to his constituents on

the 12th of November, 1857, is reported to have said: "Toleration of

their faith" (the faith of a hundred millions of British subjects), "the

superstition which they called religion, by the British Government, had

had the effect of retarding the ascendency of the British name, and

preventing the salutary growth of Christianity.... Toleration was the

great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this country; but do

not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he understood it,

it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship, _among

Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation_. It meant

toleration of all sects and denominations of _Christians who believed in

the one mediation_." I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man

who has been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this

country, under a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who

do not believe in the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of

toleration. Who, after this imbecile display, can indulge the illusion

that religious persecution has passed away, never to return?