John stuart mill

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 cognizant 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 canonization of a saint,

admits, and listens patiently to, a "devil's advocate." The holiest of men, it

appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, 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 cotemporaries, 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

maestri 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 recognized 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

"corrupter 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 anti-climax: 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 latter 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 most 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 civilized 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, authorized 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.

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, can not 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 forever, 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,[2] said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was

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