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 |