John stuart mill

gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. Within a month of the same

time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate occasions,[3] were

rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted by the judge and one of

the counsel, because they honestly declared that they had no theological belief;

and a third, a foreigner,[4] 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 honor); 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 strongest 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.[5] 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

favors 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 interests 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 subtile 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 recognize, 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 favor 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.

This 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 endeavored 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 recognizes 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 elite 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 cognizant 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