Chapter: 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
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 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 _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 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?

 On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion Mill asserts that the government shouldn't act at the beckon of the people because the public shouldn't have the power of coercion over their elected governing body. The government is much more dangerous when dependent on unreliable public opinion. Indeed, public opinion is the popular sentiment of mankind, but forming this opinion requires the silencing of a lot of voices. This omission of minority opinions is very hurtful to the public whether the opinions are wrong or right. If a silenced opinion is right, obviously the public misses out on the truth. However, if the suppressed opinion is wrong, the danger in its loss is often more grave. If a minority opinion can be wrong, it leads to "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth." The majority opinion is not guaranteed to be correct; it can be wrong for the majority has no true authority and no absolute certainty. The fallibility of majority opinions is exemplified by looking at past history, according to Mill. Past popular opinion has often been rejected by present-day society, and there is no guarantee that present popular opinion won't also be rejected by the future. Individuals can only form the most intelligent, educated opinions that they are capable of, but they shouldn't force those opinions on the whole of society unless they are certain of their truth. Mill believes that in order to make good decisions, men must use discussion and experience. Men who are fair keep their mind open to all ideas and search for opposing arguments, realizing the necessity of a devil's advocate. To Mill, a so-called fact must be held up to debate or "it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth." Mill points out that even in the doctrine of Christianity, which is assumed by Christians to be correct, the importance to listening to all sides is expressed. Mill also points out that a man doesn't have to be evil to argue against the basic beliefs upheld by society, invoking Socrates as proof that people can misjudge even the most competent and well-intentioned minds. On the other hand, men can misjudge potential good ideas for society. Mill refers to Marcus Aurelius, who, although a good man, wrongly judged and refuted Christianity. Contrary to popular opinion, Mill states that the truth does not always emerge in the end; men don't necessarily support the truth with more passion than they support falsehoods. Also, Mill points to the fact that a belief in God shouldn't be the litmus test for someone's trustworthiness. If an Atheist tells the truth and admits that he doesn't believe in God, he is not trusted but if he lies and says he has faith, he will be trusted obviously the wrong result. Mill also refutes the importance of doctrine, particularly religious ones. He believes that very few people actually follow the doctrine to its letter, rather they just follow the laws dictated by society, only living up to the standards that society imposes and not the higher ones include in doctrines. Mill points to a final type of dissenting opinion that isn't necessarily right or wrong, but nonetheless helpful. It is the type of opinion that provides part of the truth that is missing in public opinion. This augmentation effect is the most probable state of affairs, states Mill. He says that both popular and opposing opinions are rarely completely right and a balance between the two should be reached in order for the real truth to be found. Too often, says Mill, either opinion is preferred in its entirety and the other opinion that holds part of the truth is neglected. Mill extends this theory to religion, saying that those who adhere to the Bible as the complete truth are misinterpreting its intent to supplement the strong personal ethics and character already assumed to be present. To make his point that morality and religion do not necessarily go hand in hand, Mill asserts that some of the most moral individuals were indeed not Christians.

