ON COMPROMISE

 _'It makes all the difference in the world whether we put Truth in the first place or in the second place. '_

 WHATLEY

ON COMPROMISE

BY

JOHN MORLEY

MACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1908

_This Edition first printed 1886_

NOTE. 

The writer has availed himself of the opportunity of a new edition toadd three or four additional illustrations in the footnotes. Thecriticisms on the first edition call for no remark, excepting this, perhaps, that the present little volume has no pretensions to beanything more than an Essay. To judge such it performance as if itprofessed to be an exhaustive Treatise in casuistry, is to subject it totests which it was never designed to bear. Merely to open questions, toindicate points, to suggest cases, to sketch outlines, --as an Essay doesall these things, --may often be a process not without its own modestusefulness and interest. 

_May 4, 1877. _

CONTENTS. 

 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. 

 Design of this Essay The question stated Suggested by some existing tendencies in England Comparison with other countries Test of this comparison The absent quality specifically defined History and decay of some recent aspirations Illustrations Characteristics of one present mood Analysis of its causes (1) Influence of French examples (2) Influence of the Historic Method (3) Influence of the Newspaper Press (4) Increase of material prosperity (5) Transformation of the spiritual basis of thought (6) Influence of a State Church

 CHAPTER II. OF THE POSSIBLE UTILITY OF ERROR

 Questions of a dual doctrine lies at the outset of our inquiry This doctrine formulated Marks the triumph of _status quo_ Psychological vindication of such a doctrine Answered by assertion of the dogmatic character of popular belief And the pernicious social influence of its priests The root idea of the defenders of a dual doctrine Thesis of the present chapter, against that idea Examination of some of the pleas for error I. That a false opinion may be clothed with good associations II. That all minds are not open to reason III. That a false opinion, considered in relation to the general mental attitude, may be less hurtful than its premature demolition IV. That mere negative truth is not a guide V. That error has been a stepping-stone to truth We cannot tell how much truth has been missed Inevitableness is not utility

 CHAPTER III. INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE POLITICAL SPIRIT. 

 The modern _disciplina arcani_ Hume's immoral advice Evil intellectual effects of immoral compromise Depravation that follows its grosser forms The three provinces of compromise Radical importance of their separation Effects of their confusion in practical politics Economy or management in the Formation of opinion Its lawfulness turns on the claims of majority and minority over one another Thesis of the present chapter Its importance, owing to the supremacy of the political spirit in England Effects of the predominance of this spirit Contrasted with epochs of intellectual responsibility A modern movement against the political spirit An objection considered Importance to character of rationalised conviction, and of ideals The absence of them attenuates conduct Illustrations in modern politics Modern latitudinarianism Illustration in two supreme issues Pascal's remarks upon a state of Doubt Dr. Newman on the same Three ways of dealing with the issues Another illustration of intellectual improbity The Savoyard Vicar Mischievousness of substituting spiritual self-indulgence for reason

 CHAPTER IV. RELIGIOUS CONFORMITY. 

 Compromise in Expression Touches religion rather than politics Hume on non-resistance Reason why rights of free speech do not exactly coincide with rights of free thought Digression into the matter of free speech Dissent no longer railing and vituperative Tendency of modern free thought to assimilate some elements from the old faith A wide breach still remains Heresy, however, no longer traced to depravity Tolerance not necessarily acquiescence in scepticism Object of the foregoing digression The rarity of plain-speaking a reason why it is painful Conformity in the relationship between child and parent Between husband and wife In the education of children The case of an unbelieving priest The case of one who fears to lose his influence Conformity not harmless nor unimportant

 CHAPTER V. THE REALISATION OF OPINION. 

 The application of opinion to conduct Tempering considerations Not to be pressed too far Our action in realising our opinions depends on our social theory Legitimate and illegitimate compromise in view of that The distinction equally sound on the evolutional theory Condition of progressive change A plea for compromise examined A second plea The allegation of provisional usefulness examined Illustrated in religious institutions In political institutions Burke's commendation of political compromise The saying that small reforms may be the worst enemies of great ones In what sense true Illustration in the Elementary Education Act Wisdom of social patience The considerations which apply to political practice do not apply to our own lives Nor to the publication of social opinions The amount of conscience in a community Evil of attenuating this element Historic illustration New side of the discussion Is earnestness of conviction fatal to concession of liberty to others? Two propositions at the base of an affirmative answer Earnestness of conviction consistent with sense of liability to error Belief in one's own infallibility does not necessarily lead to intolerance The contrary notion due to juristic analogies in social discussion Connection between the doctrine of liberty and social evolution The timid compromisers superfluous apprehension Material limits to the effect of moral speculation Illustration from the history of Slavery Illustration from French history Practical influence of a faith in the self-protecting quality of a society Conclusion

 NOTE TO PAGE 242. 

 The Doctrine of Liberty

ON COMPROMISE. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

The design of the following essay is to consider, in a short and directway, some of the limits that are set by sound reason to the practice ofthe various arts of accommodation, economy, management, conformity, orcompromise. The right of thinking freely and acting independently, ofusing our minds without excessive awe of authority, and shaping ourlives without unquestioning obedience to custom, is now a finallyaccepted principle in some sense or other with every school of thoughtthat has the smallest chance of commanding the future. Under whatcircumstances does the exercise and vindication of the right, thusconceded in theory, become a positive duty in practice? If the majorityare bound to tolerate dissent from the ruling opinions and beliefs, under what conditions and within what limitations is the dissentientimperatively bound to avail himself of this toleration? How far, and inwhat way, ought respect either for immediate practical convenience, orfor current prejudices, to weigh against respect for truth? For how muchis it well that the individual should allow the feelings and convictionsof the many to count, when he comes to shape, to express, and to actupon his own feelings and convictions? Are we only to be permitted todefend general principles, on condition that we draw no practicalinferences from them? Is every other idea to yield precedence and empireto existing circumstances, and is the immediate and universalworkableness of a policy to be the main test of its intrinsic fitness?

To attempt to answer all these questions fully would be nothing lessthan to attempt a compendium of life and duty in all their details, aSumma of cases of conscience, a guide to doubters at every point of thecompass. The aim of the present writer is a comparatively modest one;namely, to seek one or two of the most general principles which oughtto regulate the practice of compliance, and to suggest some of thebearings which they may have in their application to certaindifficulties in modern matters of conduct. 

It is pretty plain that an inquiry of this kind needs to be fixed byreference to a given set of social circumstances tolerably wellunderstood. There are some common rules as to the expediency ofcompromise and conformity, but their application is a matter of endlessvariety and the widest elasticity. The interesting and useful thing isto find the relation of these too vague rules to actual conditions; totransform them into practical guides and real interpreters of what isright and best in thought and conduct, in a special and definite kind ofemergency. According to the current assumptions of the writer and thepreacher, the one commanding law is that men should cling to truth andright, if the very heavens fall. In principle this is universallyaccepted. To the partisans of authority and tradition it is as much acommonplace as to the partisans of the most absolute and unflinchingrationalism. Yet in practice all schools alike are forced to admit thenecessity of a measure of accommodation in the very interests of truthitself. Fanatic is a name of such ill repute, exactly because one whodeserves to be called by it injures good causes by refusing timely andharmless concession; by irritating prejudices that a wiser way of urginghis own opinion might have turned aside; by making no allowances, respecting no motives, and recognising none of those qualifyingprinciples, which are nothing less than necessary to make his ownprinciple true and fitting in a given society. The interesting questionin connection with compromise obviously turns upon the placing of theboundary that divides wise suspense in forming opinions, wise reserve inexpressing them, and wise tardiness in trying to realise them, fromunavowed disingenuousness and self-illusion, from voluntarydissimulation, and from indolence and pusillanimity. These are the threedepartments or provinces of compromise. Our subject is a question ofboundaries. [1] And this question, being mainly one of time andcircumstance, may be most satisfactorily discussed in relation to thetime and the circumstances which we know best, or at least whosedeficiencies and requirements are most pressingly visible to us. 

Though England counts her full share of fearless truth-seekers in mostdepartments of inquiry, yet there is on the whole no weakening, but arather marked confirmation, of what has become an inveterate nationalcharacteristic, and has long been recognised as such; a profounddistrust, namely, of all general principles; a profound dislike both ofmuch reference to them, and of any disposition to invest them withpractical authority; and a silent but most pertinacious measurement ofphilosophic truths by political tests. 'It is not at all easy, humanlyspeaking, ' says one who has tried the experiment, 'to wind an Englishmanup to the level of dogma. ' The difficulty has extended further than thedogma of theology. The supposed antagonism between expediency andprinciple has been pressed further and further away from the littlepiece of true meaning that it ever could be rightly allowed to have, until it has now come to signify the paramount wisdom of counting thenarrow, immediate, and personal expediency for everything, and thewhole, general, ultimate, and completed expediency for nothing. Principle is only another name for a proposition stating the terms ofone of these larger expediencies. When principle is held in contempt, orbanished to the far dreamland of the philosopher and the student, withan affectation of reverence that in a materialist generation is in truththe most overweening kind of contempt, this only means that men arethinking much of the interests of to-day, and little of the more ampleinterests of the many days to come. It means that the conditions of thetime are unfriendly to the penetration and the breadth of vision whichdisclose to us the whole range of consequences that follow on certainkinds of action or opinion, and unfriendly to the intrepidity anddisinterestedness which make us willing to sacrifice our own presentease or near convenience, in the hope of securing higher advantages forothers or for ourselves in the future. 

Let us take politics, for example. What is the state of the case withus, if we look at national life in its broadest aspect? A German has hisdream of a great fatherland which shall not only be one andconsolidated, but shall in due season win freedom for itself, and be asa sacred hearth whence others may borrow the warmth of freedom and orderfor themselves. A Spaniard has his vision either of militant loyalty toGod and the saints and the exiled line of his kings, or else of devotionto the newly won liberty and to the raising up of his fallen nation. AnAmerican, in the midst of the political corruption which for the momentobscures the great democratic experiment, yet has his imaginationkindled by the size and resources of his land, and his enthusiasm firedby the high destinies which he believes to await its people in thecenturies to come. A Frenchman, republican or royalist, with all hisfrenzies and 'fool-fury' of red or white, still has his hope and dreamand aspiration, with which to enlarge his life and lift him on an amplepinion out from the circle of a poor egoism. What stirs the hope andmoves the aspiration of our Englishman? Surely nothing either in theheavens above or on the earth beneath. The English are as a peoplelittle susceptible in the region of the imagination. But they have donegood work in the world, acquired a splendid historic tradition of stoutcombat for good causes, founded a mighty and beneficent empire; andthey have done all this notwithstanding their deficiencies ofimagination. Their lands have been the home of great and forlorn causes, though they could not always follow the transcendental flights of theirforeign allies and champions. If Englishmen were not strong inimagination, they were what is better and surer, strong in their hold ofthe great emancipating principles. What great political cause, her ownor another's, is England befriending to-day? To say that no great causeis left, is to tell us that we have reached the final stage of humanprogress, and turned over the last leaf in the volume of humanimprovements. The day when this is said and believed marks the end of anation's life. Is it possible that, after all, our old protestantspirit, with its rationality, its austerity, its steady politicalenergy, has been struck with something of the mortal fatigue that seizescatholic societies after their fits of revolution?

We need not forget either the atrocities or the imbecilities which markthe course of modern politics on the Continent. I am as keenly alive asany one to the levity of France, and the [Greek: hubris] of Germany. Itmay be true that the ordinary Frenchman is in some respects the victimof as poor an egoism as that of the ordinary Englishman; and that theAmerican has no advantage over us in certain kinds of magnanimoussentiment. What is important is the mind and attitude, not of theordinary man, but of those who should be extraordinary. The decisivesign of the elevation of a nation's life is to be sought among those wholead or ought to lead. The test of the health of a people is to be foundin the utterances of those who are its spokesmen, and in the action ofthose whom it accepts or chooses to be its chiefs. We have to look tothe magnitude of the issues and the height of the interests which engageits foremost spirits. What are the best men in a country striving for?And is the struggle pursued intrepidly and with a sense of its size andamplitude, or with creeping foot and blinking eye? The answer to thesequestions is the answer to the other question, whether the best men inthe country are small or great. It is a commonplace that the manner ofdoing things is often as important as the things done. And it has beenpointed out more than once that England's most creditable nationalaction constantly shows itself so poor and mean in expression that therest of Europe can discern nothing in it but craft and sinisterinterest. Our public opinion is often rich in wisdom, but we lack thecourage of our wisdom. We execute noble achievements, and then are bestpleased to find shabby reasons for them. 

There is a certain quality attaching alike to thought and expression andaction, for which we may borrow the name of grandeur. It has beennoticed, for instance, that Bacon strikes and impresses us, not merelyby the substantial merit of what he achieved, but still more by acertain greatness of scheme and conception. This quality is not a mereidle decoration. It is not a theatrical artifice of mask or buskin, toimpose upon us unreal impressions of height and dignity. The addedgreatness is real. Height of aim and nobility of expression are trueforces. They grow to be an obligation upon us. A lofty sense of personalworth is one of the surest elements of greatness. That the lion shouldlove to masquerade in the ass's skin is not modesty and reserve, butimbecility and degradation. And that England should wrap herself in therobe of small causes and mean reasons is the more deplorable, becausethere is no nation in the world the substantial elements of whose powerare so majestic and imperial as our own. Our language is the most widelyspoken of all tongues, its literature is second to none in variety andpower. Our people, whether English or American, have long ago supersededthe barbarous device of dictator and Caesar by the manly arts ofself-government. We understand that peace and industry are the two mostindispensable conditions of modern civilisation, and we draw the linesof our policy in accordance with such a conviction. We have had imposedupon us by the unlucky prowess of our ancestors the task of ruling avast number of millions of alien dependents. We undertake it with adisinterestedness, and execute it with a skill of administration, towhich history supplies no parallel, and which, even if time should showthat the conditions of the problem were insoluble, will still remainfor ever admirable. All these are elements of true pre-eminence. Theyare calculated to inspire us with the loftiest consciousness of nationallife. They ought to clothe our voice with authority, to nerve our actionby generous resolution, and to fill our counsels with weightiness andpower. 

Within the last forty years England has lost one by one each of thoseenthusiasms which may have been illusions, --some of them undoubtedlywere so, --but which at least testified to the existence among us, in avery considerable degree, of a vivid belief in the possibility ofcertain broad general theories being true and right, as well as in theobligation of making them lights to practical conduct and desire. Peoplea generation ago had eager sympathy with Hungary, with Italy, withPoland, because they were deeply impressed by the doctrine ofnationalities. They had again a generous and energetic hatred of such aninstitution as the negro slavery of America, because justice andhumanity and religion were too real and potent forces within theirbreasts to allow them to listen to those political considerations bywhich American statesmen used to justify temporising and compromise. They had strong feelings about Parliamentary Reform, because they werepenetrated by the principle that the possession of political power bythe bulk of a society is the only effective security against sinistergovernment; or else by the principle that participation in publicactivity, even in the modest form of an exercise of the electivefranchise, is an elevating and instructing agency; or perhaps by theprinciple that justice demands that those who are compelled to obey lawsand pay national taxes should have a voice in making the one andimposing the other. 

It may be said that the very fate of these aspirations has had ablighting effect on public enthusiasm and the capacity of feeling it. Not only have most of them now been fulfilled, and so passed fromaspiration to actuality, but the results of their fulfilment have beenso disappointing as to make us wonder whether it is really worth whileto pray, when to have our prayers granted carries the world so veryslight a way forward. The Austrian is no longer in Italy; the Pope hasceased to be master in Rome; the patriots of Hungary are now inpossession of their rights, and have become friends of their oldoppressors; the negro slave has been transformed into an Americancitizen. At home, again, the gods have listened to our vows. Parliamenthas been reformed, and the long-desired mechanical security provided forthe voter's freedom. We no longer aspire after all these things, you maysay, because our hopes have been realised and our dreams have come true. It is possible that the comparatively prosaic results before our eyes atthe end of all have thrown a chill over our political imagination. Whatseemed so glorious when it was far off, seems perhaps a little poor nowthat it is near; and this has damped the wing of political fancy. Theold aspirations have vanished, and no new ones have arisen in theirplace. Be the cause what it may, I should express the change in thisway, that the existing order of facts, whatever it may be, now takes ahardly disputed precedence with us over ideas, and that the coarsestpolitical standard is undoubtingly and finally applied over the wholerealm of human thought. 

The line taken up by the press and the governing classes of Englandduring the American Civil War may serve to illustrate the kind of moodwhich we conceive to be gaining firmer hold than ever of the nationalmind. Those who sympathised with the Southern States listened only topolitical arguments, and very narrow and inefficient politicalarguments, as it happened, when they ought to have seen that here was anissue which involved not only political ideas, but moral and religiousideas as well. That is to say, the ordinary political tests were notenough to reveal the entire significance of the crisis, nor were thepolitical standards proper for measuring the whole of the expediencieshanging in the balance. The conflict could not be adequately gauged bysuch questions as whether the Slave States had or had not aconstitutional right to establish an independent government; whether theFree States were animated by philanthropy or by love of empire; whetherit was to the political advantage of England that the American Unionshould be divided and consequently weakened. Such questions were notnecessarily improper in themselves, and we can imagine circumstances inwhich they might be not only proper but decisive. But, thecircumstances being what they were, the narrower expediencies ofordinary politics were outweighed by one of those supreme andindefeasible expediencies which are classified as moral. These are, inother words, the higher, wider, more binding, and transcendent part ofthe master art of social wellbeing. 

Here was only one illustration of the growing tendency to substitute thenarrowest political point of view for all the other ways of regardingthe course of human affairs, and to raise the limitations whichpractical exigencies may happen to set to the application of generalprinciples, into the very place of the principles themselves. Nor is theprocess of deteriorating conviction confined to the greater or noisiertransactions of nations. It is impossible that it should be so. Thatprocess is due to causes which affect the mental temper an a whole, andpour round us an atmosphere that enervates our judgment from end to end, not more in politics than in morality, and not more in morality than inphilosophy, in art, and in religion. Perhaps this tendency never showeditself more offensively than when the most important newspaper in thecountry criticised our great naturalist's scientific speculations as tothe descent of man, from the point of view of property, intelligence, and a stake in the country, and severely censured him for revealing hisparticular zoological conclusions to the general public, at a momentwhen the sky of Paris was red with the incendiary flames of the Commune. It would be hard to reduce the transformation of all truth into asubordinate department of daily politics, to a more gross and unseemlyabsurdity. 

The consequences of such a transformation, of putting immediate socialconvenience in the first place, and respect for truth in the second, areseen, as we have said, in a distinct and unmistakable lowering of thelevel of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about publicopinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfishaims, over those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; adeadly weakening of intellectual conclusiveness, and clear-shining moralillumination, and, lastly, of a certain stoutness of self-respect forwhich England was once especially famous. A plain categoricalproposition is becoming less and less credible to average minds. Or atleast the slovenly willingness to hold two directly contradictorypropositions at one and the same time is becoming more and more common. In religion, morals, and politics, the suppression of your true opinion, if not the positive profession of what you hold to be a false opinion, is hardly ever counted a vice, and not seldom even goes for virtue andsolid wisdom. One is conjured to respect the beliefs of others, butforbidden to claim the same respect for one's own. 

This dread of the categorical proposition might be creditable, if itsprang from attachment to a very high standard of evidence, or from adeep sense of the relative and provisional quality of truth. There mighteven be a plausible defence set up for it, if it sprang from thatformulated distrust of the energetic rational judgment in comparisonwith the emotional, affective, contemplative parts of man, whichunderlies the various forms of religious mysticism. If you look closelyinto our present mood, it is seen to be the product mainly and above allof a shrinking deference to the _status quo_, not merely as having aclaim not to be lightly dealt with, which every serious man concedes, but as being the last word and final test of truth and justice. Physicalscience is allowed to be the sphere of accurate reasoning and distinctconclusions, but in morals and politics, instead of admitting that thesesubjects have equally a logic of their own, we silently suspect allfirst principles, and practically deny the strict inferences fromdemonstrated premisses. Faith in the soundness of given general theoriesof right and wrong melts away before the first momentary triumph ofwrong, or the first passing discouragement in enforcing right. 

Our robust political sense, which has discovered so many of the secretsof good government, which has given us freedom with order, and popularadministration without corruption, and unalterable respect for law alongwith indelible respect for individual right, this, which has so longbeen our strong point, is fast becoming our weakness and undoing. Forthe extension of the ways of thinking which are proper in politics, toother than political matter, means at the same time the depravation ofthe political sense itself. Not only is social expediency effacing themany other points of view that men ought to take of the various facts oflife and thought: the idea of social expediency itself is becoming adwarfed and pinched idea. Ours is the country where love of constantimprovement ought to be greater than anywhere else, because fear ofrevolution is less. Yet the art of politics is growing to be as meanlyconceived as all the rest At elections the national candidate has notoften a chance against the local candidate, nor the man of a principleagainst the man of a class. In parliament we are admonished on highauthority that 'the policy of a party is not the carrying out of theopinion of any section of it, but the general consensus of the whole, 'which seems to be a hierophantic manner of saying that the policy of aparty is one thing, and the principle which makes it a party is anotherthing, and that men who care very strongly about anything are tosurrender that and the hope of it, for the sake of succeeding insomething about which they care very little or not at all. This is ourmodern way of giving politicians heart for their voyage, of inspiringthem with resoluteness and self-respect, with confidence in the worth oftheir cause and enthusiasm for its success. Thoroughness is a mistake, and nailing your flag to the mast a bit of delusive heroics. Thinkwholly of to-day, and not at all of to-morrow. Beware of the high andhold fast to the safe. Dismiss conviction, and study general consensus. No zeal, no faith, no intellectual trenchancy, but as much low-mindedgeniality and trivial complaisance as you please. 

Of course, all these characteristics of our own society mark tendenciesthat are common enough in all societies. They often spring from anindolence and enervation that besets a certain number of people, howeverinvigorating the general mental climate may be. What we are now sayingis that the general mental climate itself has, outside of the domain ofphysical science, ceased to be invigorating; that, on the contrary, itfosters the more inglorious predispositions of men, and encourages anative willingness, already so strong, to acquiesce in a lazyaccommodation with error, an ignoble economy of truth, and a viciouscompromise of the permanent gains of adhering to a sound generalprinciple, for the sake of the temporary gains of departing from it. 

Without attempting an elaborate analysis of the causes that have broughtabout this debilitation of mental tone, we may shortly remind ourselvesof one or two facts in the political history, in the intellectualhistory, and in the religious history of this generation, which perhapshelp us to understand a phenomenon that we have all so keen an interestboth in understanding and in modifying. 

To begin with what lies nearest to the surface. The most obvious agencyat work in the present exaggeration of the political standard as theuniversal test of truth, is to be found in some contemporary incidents. The influence of France upon England since the revolution of 1848 hastended wholly to the discredit of abstract theory and general reasoningamong us, in all that relates to politics, morals, and religion. In1848, not in 1789, questions affecting the fundamental structure andorganic condition of the social union came for the first time intoformidable prominence. For the first time those questions and theanswers to them were stated in articulate formulas and distincttheories. They were not merely written in books; they so fascinated theimagination and inflamed the hopes of the time, that thousands of menwere willing actually to go down into the streets and to shed theirblood for the realisation of their generous dream of a renovatedsociety. The same sight has been seen since, and even when we do not seeit, we are perfectly aware that the same temper is smouldering. Thosewere premature attempts to convert a crude aspiration into a politicalreality, and to found a new social order on a number of umcompromisingdeductions from abstract principles of the common weal. They have hadthe natural effect of deepening the English dislike of a general theory, even when such a theory did no more than profess to announce a remoteobject of desire, and not the present goal of immediate effort. 

It is not only the Socialists who are responsible for the low esteeminto which a spirit of political generalisation has fallen in othercountries, in consequence of French experience. Mr. Mill has describedin a well-known passage the characteristic vice of the leaders of allFrench parties, and not of the democratic party more than any other. 'The commonplaces of politics in France, ' he says, 'are large andsweeping practical maxims, from which, as ultimate premisses, men reasondownwards to particular applications, and this they call being logicaland consistent. For instance, they are perpetually arguing that such andsuch a measure ought to be adopted, because it is a consequence of theprinciple on which the form of government is founded; of the principleof legitimacy, or the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Towhich it may be answered that if these be really practical principles, they must rest on speculative grounds; the sovereignty of the people(for example) must be a right foundation for government, because agovernment thus constituted tends to produce certain beneficial effects. Inasmuch, however, as no government produces all possible beneficialeffects, but all are attended with more or fewer inconveniences; andsince these cannot be combated by means drawn from the very causes whichproduce them, it would often be a much stronger recommendation of somepractical arrangement that it does not follow from what is called thegeneral principle of the government, than that it does, '[2]

The English feeling for compromise is on its better side the result of ashrewd and practical, though informal, recognition of a truth which thewriter has here expressed in terms of Method. The disregard which thepolitical action of France has repeatedly betrayed of a principle reallyso important has hitherto strengthened our own regard for it, until ithas not only made us look on its importance as exclusive and final, buthas extended our respect for the right kind of compromise to wrong andinjurious kinds. 

A minor event, which now looks much less important than it did not manyyears ago, but which still had real influence in deteriorating moraljudgment, was the career of a late sovereign of France. Some apparentadvantages followed for a season from a rule which had its origin in aviolent and perfidious usurpation, and which was upheld by all the artsof moral corruption, political enervation, and military repression. Theadvantages lasted long enough to create in this country a steady andpowerful opinion that Napoleon the Third's early crime was redeemed bythe seeming prosperity which followed. The shocking prematureness ofthis shallow condonation is now too glaringly visible for any one todeny it. Not often in history has the great truth that 'morality is thenature of things' received corroboration so prompt and timely. We neednot commit ourselves to the optimistic or sentimental hypothesis thatwickedness always fares ill in the world, or on the other hand thatwhoso hearkens diligently to the divine voice, and observes all thecommandments to do them, shall be blessed in his basket and his storeand all the work of his hand. The claims of morality to our allegiance, so far as its precepts are solidly established, rest on the samepositive base as our faith in the truth of physical laws. Moralprinciples, when they are true, are at bottom only registeredgeneralisations from experience. They record certain uniformities ofantecedence and consequence in the region of human conduct Want of faithin the persistency of these uniformities is only a little less fatuousin the moral order than a corresponding want of faith would instantlydisclose itself to be in the purely physical order. In both orders alikethere is only too much of this kind of fatuousness, this readiness tobelieve that for once in our favour the stream shall flow up hill, thatwe may live in miasmatic air unpoisoned, that a government may depressthe energy, the self-reliance, the public spirit of its citizens, andyet be able to count on these qualities whenever the government itselfmay have broken down, and left the country to make the best of suchresources as are left after so severe and prolonged a drain. This is thesense in which morality is the nature of things. The system of theSecond Empire was in the same sense an immoral system. Unless all thelessons of human experience were futile, and all the principles ofpolitical morality mere articles of pedantry, such a system mustinevitably bring disaster, as we might have seen that it was sowing theseeds of disaster. Yet because the catastrophe lingered, opinion inEngland began to admit the possibility of evil being for this once good, and to treat any reference to the moral and political principles whichcondemned the imperial system, and all systems like it, beyond hope orappeal, as simply the pretext of a mutinous or Utopian impatience. 

This, however, is only one of the more superficial influences which havehelped and fallen in with the working of profounder causes of weakenedaspiration and impoverished moral energy, and of the substitution oflatitudinarian acquiescence and faltering conviction for thewhole-hearted assurance of better times. Of these deeper causes, themost important in the intellectual development of the prevailing formsof thought and sentiment is the growth of the Historic Method. Let usconsider very shortly how the abuse of this method, and an unauthorisedextension and interpretation of its conclusions, are likely to have hadsomething to do with the enervation of opinion. 

The Historic Method may be described as the comparison of the forms ofan idea, or a usage, or a belief, at any given time, with the earlierforms from which they were evolved, or the later forms into which theywere developed, and the establishment, from such a comparison, of anascending and descending order among the facts. It consists in theexplanation of existing parts in the frame of society by connecting themwith corresponding parts in some earlier frame; in the identification ofpresent forms in the past, and past forms in the present. Its mainprocess is the detection of corresponding customs, opinions, laws, beliefs, among different communities, and a grouping of them intogeneral classes with reference to some one common feature. It is acertain way of seeking answers to various questions of origin, restingon the same general doctrine of evolution, applied to moral and socialforms, as that which is being applied with so much ingenuity to theseries of organic matter. The historic conception is a reference ofevery state of society to a particular stage in the evolution of itsgeneral conditions. Ideas of law, of virtue, of religion, of thephysical universe, of history, of the social union itself, all march ina harmonious and inter-dependent order. 

Curiosity with reference to origins is for various reasons the mostmarked element among modern scientific tendencies. It covers the wholefield, moral, intellectual, and physical, from the smile or the frown ona man's face, up to the most complex of the ideas in his mind; from theexpression of his emotions, to their root and relations with one anotherin his inmost organisation. As an ingenious writer, too soon lost to ourpolitical literature, has put it:--'If we wanted to describe one of themost marked results, perhaps the most marked result, of late thought, weshould say that by it everything is made _an antiquity_. When in formertimes our ancestors thought of an antiquarian, they described him asoccupied with coins and medals and Druids' stones. But now there areother relics; indeed all matter is become such. Man himself has to theeye of science become an antiquity. She tries to read, is beginning toread, knows she ought to read, in the frame of each man the result of awhole history of all his life, and what he is and what makes him so. '[3]Character is considered less with reference to its absolute qualitiesthan as an interesting scene strewn with scattered rudiments, survivals, inherited predispositions. Opinions are counted rather as phenomena tobe explained than as matters of truth and falsehood. Of usages, we arebeginning first of all to think where they came from, and secondarilywhether they are the most fitting and convenient that men could be gotto accept. In the last century men asked of a belief or a story, Is ittrue? We now ask, How did men come to take it for true? In short therelations among social phenomena which now engage most attention, arerelations of original source, rather than those of actual consistency intheory and actual fitness in practice. The devotees of the currentmethod are more concerned with the pedigree and genealogical connectionsof a custom or an idea than with its own proper goodness or badness, itsstrength or its weakness. 

Though there is no necessary or truly logical association betweensystematic use of this method rightly limited, and a slack and slipshodpreference of vague general forms over definite ideas, yet every one cansee its tendency, if uncorrected, to make men shrink from importinganything like absolute quality into their propositions. We can see also, what is still worse, its tendency to place individual robustness andinitiative in the light of superfluities, with which a world that goesby evolution can very well dispense. Men easily come to considerclearness and positiveness in their opinions, staunchness in holding anddefending them, and fervour in carrying them into action, as equivocalvirtues of very doubtful perfection, in a state of things where everyabuse has after all had a defensible origin; where every error has, wemust confess, once been true relatively to other parts of belief inthose who held the error; and where all parts of life are so bound upwith one another, that it is of no avail to attack one evil, unless youattack many more at the same time. This is a caricature of the realteaching of the Historic Method, of which we shall have to speakpresently; but it is one of those caricatures which the natural sloth insuch matters, and the indigenous intellectual haziness of the majorityof men, make them very willing to take for the true philosophy ofthings. 

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for keepingdiscussion on a low level, and making the political test final. To takeoff the taxes on knowledge was to place a heavy tax on broad andindependent opinion. The multiplication of journals 'delivering brawlingjudgments unashamed on all things all day long, ' has done much to deadenthe small stock of individuality in public verdicts. It has done much tomake vulgar ways of looking at things and vulgar ways of speaking ofthem stronger and stronger, by formulating and repeating andstereotyping them incessantly from morning until afternoon, and fromyear's end to year's end. For a newspaper must live, and to live it mustplease, and its conductors suppose, perhaps not altogether rightly, thatit can only please by being very cheerful towards prejudices, verychilly to general theories, loftily disdainful to the men of aprinciple. Their one cry to an advocate of improvement is some sagacioussilliness about recognising the limits of the practicable in politics, and seeing the necessity of adapting theories to facts. As if the factof taking a broader and wiser view than the common crowd disqualifies aman from knowing what the view of the common crowd happens to be, andfrom estimating it at the proper value for practical purposes. Why arethe men who despair of improvement to be the only persons endowed withthe gift of discerning the practicable? It is, however, only too easy tounderstand how a journal, existing for a day, should limit its view tothe possibilities of the day, and how, being most closely affected bythe particular, it should coldly turn its back upon all that is general. And it is easy, too, to understand the reaction of this intellectualtimorousness upon the minds of ordinary readers, who have too littlenatural force and too little cultivation to be able to resist thenarrowing and deadly effect of the daily iteration of short-sightedcommonplaces. 

Far the most penetrating of all the influences that are impairing themoral and intellectual nerve of our generation, remain still to bementioned. The first of these is the immense increase of materialprosperity, and the second is the immense decline in sincerity ofspiritual interest. The evil wrought by the one fills up the measure ofthe evil wrought by the other. We have been, in spite of momentarydeclensions, on a flood tide of high profits and a roaring trade, andthere is nothing like a roaring trade for engendering latitudinarians. The effect of many possessions, especially if they be newly acquired, inslackening moral vigour, is a proverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavenedby any tradition of public duty such as lingers among the Englishnobles, nor as yet by any common custom of devotion to public causes, such as seems to live and grow in the United States. Under suchconditions, with new wealth come luxury and love of ease and that fatalreadiness to believe that God has placed us in the best of possibleworlds, which so lowers men's aims and unstrings their firmness ofpurpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and the weakening of highinterests leaves more undisputed room for pleasure. Management andcompromise appear among the permitted arts, because they tend tocomfort, and comfort is the end of ends, comprehending all ends. Nottruth is the standard, but the politic and the reputable. Are we tosuppose that it is firm persuasion of the greater scripturalness ofepiscopacy that turns the second generation of dissenting manufacturersin our busy Lancashire into churchmen? Certainly such conversions do noviolence to the conscience of the proselyte, for he is intellectuallyindifferent, a spiritual neuter. 

That brings us to the root of the matter, the serious side of arevolution that in this social consequence is so unspeakably ignoble. This root of the matter is the slow transformation now at work of thewhole spiritual basis of thought. Every age is in some sort an age oftransition, but our own is characteristically and cardinally an epoch oftransition in the very foundations of belief and conduct. The old hopeshave grown pale, the old fears dim; strong sanctions are become weak, and once vivid faiths very numb. Religion, whatever destinies may be instore for it, is at least for the present hardly any longer an organicpower. It is not that supreme, penetrating, controlling, decisive partof a man's life, which it has been, and will be again. The work ofdestruction is all the more perturbing to timorous spirits, and moreharassing even to doughtier spirits, for being done impalpably, indirectly, almost silently and as if by unseen hands. Those who dwellin the tower of ancient faiths look about them in constantapprehension, misgiving, and wonder, with the hurried uneasy mien ofpeople living amid earthquakes. The air seems to their alarms to be fullof missiles, and all is doubt, hesitation, and shivering expectancy. Hence a decisive reluctance to commit one's self. Conscience has lostits strong and on-pressing energy, and the sense of personalresponsibility lacks sharpness of edge. The native hue of spiritualresolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of distracted, wavering, confused thought. The souls of men have become void. Into the void haveentered in triumph the seven devils of Secularity. 

And all this hesitancy, this tampering with conviction for fear of itsconsequences, this want of faithful dealing in the highest matters, isbeing intensified, aggravated, driven inwards like a fatal disordertoward the vital parts, by the existence of a State Church. Whilethought stirs and knowledge extends, she remains fast moored by ancientformularies. While the spirit of man expands in search after new light, and feels energetically for new truth, the spirit of the Church iseternally entombed within the four corners of acts of parliament. Herministers vow almost before they have crossed the threshold of manhoodthat they will search no more. They virtually swear that they will tothe end of their days believe what they believe then, before they havehad time either to think or to know the thoughts of others. They takeoath, in other words, to lead mutilated lives. If they cannot keep thissolemn promise, they have at least every inducement that ordinary humanmotives can supply, to conceal their breach of it. The same system whichbegins by making mental indolence a virtue and intellectual narrowness apart of sanctity, ends by putting a premium on something too likehypocrisy. Consider the seriousness of fastening up in these bonds somethousands of the most instructed and intelligent classes in the country, the very men who would otherwise be best fitted from position andopportunities for aiding a little in the long, difficult, and plainlyinevitable work of transforming opinion. Consider the waste ofintelligence, and what is assuredly not less grave, the positivedead-weight and thick obstruction, by which an official hierarchy soorganised must paralyse mental independence in a community. 

We know the kind of man whom this system delights to honour. He wasdescribed for us five and thirty years ago by a master hand. 'Mistinessis the mother of wisdom. A man who can set down half a dozen generalpropositions which escape from destroying one another only by beingdiluted into truisms; who can hold the balance between opposites soskilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam; who never enunciates a truthwithout guarding himself against being supposed to exclude thecontradictory, --who holds that scripture is the only authority, yet thatthe Church is to be deferred to, that faith only justifies, yet that itdoes not justify without works, that grace does not depend upon thesacraments, yet is not given without them, that bishops are a divineordinance, yet that those who have them not are in the same religiouscondition as those who have, --this is your safe man and the hope of theChurch; this is what the Church is said to want, not party men, butsensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it throughthe channel of no meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye andNo. '[4] The writer then thought that such a type could not endure, andthat the Church must become more real. On the contrary, her reality ismore phantom-like now than it was then. She is the sovereign pattern andexemplar of management, of the triumph of the political method inspiritual things, and of the subordination of ideas to the _status quo_. 

It is true that all other organised priesthoods are also bodies whichmove within formularies even more inelastic than those of theEstablishment. But then they have not the same immense social power, northe same temptations to make all sacrifices to preserve it. They affectthe intellectual temper of large numbers of people, but the people whomthey affect are not so strongly identified with the greater organs ofthe national life. The State Church is bound up in the minds of the mostpowerful classes with a given ordering of social arrangements, and theconsequence of this is that the teachers of the Church have reflectedback upon thorn a sense of responsibility for these arrangements, whichobscures their spirituality, clogs their intellectual energy and mentalopenness, and turns them into a political army of obstruction to newideas. They feel themselves to a certain extent discharged from thenecessity of recognising the tremendous conflict in the region of beliefthat goes on around them, just as if they were purely civiladministrators, concerned only with the maintenance of the presentorder. None of this is true of the private Churches. Their teachers andmembers regard belief as something wholly independent of the civilordering of things. However little enlightened in some respects, howeverhostile to certain of the ideas by which it is sought to replace theirown, they are at least representatives of the momentous principle of ourindividual responsibility for the truth of our opinions. They may bringtheir judgments to conclusions that are less in accord with moderntendencies than those of one or two schools that still see their way tosubscribing Anglican articles and administering Anglican rites. At anyrate, they admit that the use of his judgment is a duty incumbent on theindividual, and a duty to be discharged without reference to anyexternal considerations whatever, political or otherwise. This is anelevating, an exhilarating principle, however deficiencies of culturemay have narrowed the sphere of its operations. It is because a StateChurch is by its very conception hostile to such a principle, that weare justified in counting it apart from the private Churches with alltheir faults, and placing it among the agencies that weaken the vigourof a national conscience and check the free play and access ofintellectual light. 

Here we may leave the conditions that have made an inquiry as to some ofthe limits of compromise, which must always be an interesting andimportant subject, one of especial interest and importance to ourselvesat present. Is any renovation of the sacredness of principle a possibleremedy for some of these elements of national deterioration? They willnot disappear until the world has grown into possession of a newdoctrine. When that comes, all other good things will follow. What wehave to remember is that the new doctrine itself will never come, exceptto spirits predisposed to their own liberation. Our day of smallcalculations and petty utilities must first pass away; our vision of thetrue expediencies must reach further and deeper; our resolution tosearch for the highest verities, to give up all and follow them, mustfirst become the supreme part of ourselves. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See below, ch. Iii. ]

[Footnote 2: _System of Logic_, bk. Vi. Ch. Xi. ]

[Footnote 3: Bagehot. ]

[Footnote 4: Dr. J. H. Newman's _Essays Critical and Historical_, vol. I. P. 301. ]

CHAPTER II. 

OF THE POSSIBLE UTILITY OF ERROR. 

 _Das Wahre fördert; aus dem Irrthum entwickelt sich nichts, er verwickeltuns nur. --_ GOETHE. 

At the outset of an inquiry how far existing facts ought to be allowedto overrule ideas and principles that are at variance with them, apreliminary question lies in our way, about which it may be well to saysomething. This is the question of a dual doctrine. In plainer words, the question whether it is expedient that the more enlightened classesin a community should upon system not only possess their light insilence, but whether they should openly encourage a doctrine for theless enlightened classes which they do not believe to be true forthemselves, while they regard it as indispensably useful in the case ofless fortunate people. An eminent teacher tells us how after he hadonce succeeded in presenting the principle of Necessity to his own mindin a shape which seemed to bring with it all the advantages of theprinciple of Free Will, he 'no longer suffered under the burden so heavyto one who aims at being a reformer in opinions, of thinking onedoctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally beneficial. '[5] Thediscrepancy which this writer thought a heavy burden has struck othersas the basis of a satisfactory solution. 

 Nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palantes quaerere vitae. 

The learned are to hold the true doctrine; the unlearned are to betaught its morally beneficial contrary. 'Let the Church, ' it has beensaid, 'admit two descriptions of believers, those who are for theletter, and those who hold by the spirit. At a certain point in rationalculture, belief in the supernatural becomes for many an impossibility;do not force such persons to wear a cowl of lead. Do not you meddle withwhat we teach or write, and then we will not dispute the common peoplewith you; do not contest our place in the school and the academy, andthen we will surrender to your hands the country school. '[6] This isonly a very courageous and definite way of saying what a great many lessaccomplished persons than M. Renan have silently in their hearts, and inEngland quite as extensively as in France. They do not believe in hell, for instance, but they think hell a useful fiction for the lowerclasses. They would deeply regret any change in the spirit or themachinery of public instruction which would release the lower classesfrom so wholesome an error. And as with hell, so with other articles ofthe supernatural system; the existence of a Being who will distributerewards and penalties in a future state, the permanent sentience of eachhuman personality, the vigilant supervision of our conduct, as well asour inmost thoughts and desires, by the heavenly powers; and so forth. 

Let us discuss this matter impersonally, without reference to our ownopinions and without reference to the evidence for or against theirtruth. I am not speaking now of those who hold all these ideas to becertainly true, or highly probable, and who at the same timeincidentally insist on the great usefulness of such ideas in confirmingmorality and producing virtuous types of character. With such persons, of course, there is no question of a dual doctrine. They entertaincertain convictions themselves, and naturally desire to have theirinfluence extended over others. The proposition which we have toconsider is of another kind. It expresses the notions of those who--totake the most important kind of illustration--think untrue the popularideas of supernatural interference in our obscure human affairs; whothink untrue the notion of the prolongation of our existence after deathto fulfil the purpose of the supernatural powers; or at least who thinkthem so extremely improbable that no reasonable man or woman, onceawakened to a conviction of this improbability, would thenceforth becapable of receiving effective check or guidance from beliefs, thatwould have sunk slowly down to the level of doubtful guesses. We havenow to deal with those who while taking this view of certain doctrines, still declare them to be indispensable for restraining from anti-socialconduct all who are not acute or instructed enough to see through them. In other words, they think error useful, and that it may be the bestthing for society that masses of men should cheat and deceive themselvesin their most fervent aspirations and their deepest assurances. This isthe furthest extreme to which the empire of existing facts overprinciples can well be imagined to go. It lies at the root of everydiscussion upon the limits which separate lawful compromise oraccommodation from palpable hypocrisy. 

It will probably be said that according to the theory of the school ofwhich M. Renan is the most eloquent representative, the common peopleare not really cheating themselves or being cheated. Indeed M. Renanhimself has expatiated on the charm of seeing figures of the ideal inthe cottages of the poor, images representing no reality, and so forth. 'What a delight, ' he cries, 'for the man who is borne down by six daysof toil to come on the seventh to rest upon his knees, to contemplatethe tall columns, a vault, arches, an altar; to listen to the chanting, to hear moral and consoling words!'[7] The dogmas which criticismattacks are not for these poor people 'the object of an explicitaffirmation, ' and therefore there is no harm in them; 'it is theprivilege of pure sentiment to be invulnerable, and to play with poisonwithout being hurt by it. ' In other words, the dogmas are false, but theliturgy, as a performance stirring the senses of awe, reverence, susceptibility to beauty of various kinds, appeals to and satisfies asentiment that is both true and indispensable in the human mind. Morethan this, in the two or three supreme moments of life to which men lookforward and on which they look back, --at birth, at the passing of thethreshold into fulness of life, at marriage, at death, --the Church ispresent to invest the hour with a certain solemn and dignified charm. That is the way in which the instructed are to look at the services of aChurch, after they have themselves ceased to believe its faith, us atrue account of various matters which it professes to account fortruly. 

It will be perceived that this is not exactly the ground of those whothink a number of what they confess to be untruths, wholesome for thecommon people for reasons of police, and who would maintain churches onthe same principle on which they maintain the county constabulary. It isa psychological, not a political ground. It is on the whole a more true, as well as a far more exalted position. The human soul, they say, hasthese lovely and elevating aspirations; not to satisfy them is to leaveman a dwarfed creature. Why quarrel with a system that leaves you tosatisfy them in the true way, and does much to satisfy thorn in a falsebut not very harmful way among those who unfortunately have to sit inthe darkness of the outer court?

This is not a proper occasion for saying anything about the adequatenessof the catholic, or any other special manner of fostering and solacingthe religious impulses of men. We have to assume that the instructedclass believe the catholic dogmas to be untrue, and yet wishes theuninstructed to be handed over to a system that reposes on the theorythat these dogmas are superlatively true. What then is to be said of thetenableness of such a position? To the plain man it looks like adeliberate connivance at a plan for the propagation of error--assuming, as I say, for the moment, that these articles of belief are erroneousand contrary to fact and evidence. Ah, but, we are told, the people makeno explicit affirmation of dogma; that does nothing for them; they areindifferent to it. A great variety of things might be said to thisstatement. We might ask, for instance, whether the people ever made anexplicit affirmation of dogma in the past, or whether it was always thehazy indifferent matter which it is supposed to be now. If so, whetherwe shall not have to re-cast our most fundamental notions of the way inwhich Christian civilisation has been evolved. If not, and if people didonce explicitly affirm dogma, when exactly was it that they ceased to doso?

The answers to these questions would all go to show that at the timewhen religion was the great controlling and organising force in conduct, the prime elemental dogmas were accepted with the most vivid convictionof reality. I do not pretend that the common people followed all theinferences which the intellectual subtlety of the master-spirits oftheology drew so industriously from the simple premisses of scriptureand tradition. But assuredly dogma was at the foundation of the wholestructure. When did it cease to be so? How was the structure supported, after you had altered this condition of things?

Apart from this historic issue, the main question one would like to putto the upholder of duality of religion on this plea, is the simple one, whether the power of the ceremonial which charms him so much is notactually at this moment drawn wholly from dogma and the tradition ofdogma; whether its truth is not explicitly affirmed to the unletteredman, and whether the inseparable connection between the dogma and theceremonial is not constantly impressed upon him by the spiritualteachers to whom the dual system hands him and his order over for alltime? If any one of those philosophic critics will take the trouble tolisten to a few courses of sermons at the present day, and the remarkapplies not less to protestant than to catholic churches, he will findthat instead of that '_parole morale et consolante_' which is sosoothing to think of, the pulpit is now the home of fervid controversyand often exacerbated declamation in favour of ancient dogma againstmodern science. We do not say whether this is or is not the wisest linefor the clergy to follow. We only press the fact against those who wishus to believe that dogma counts for nothing in the popular faith, andthat therefore we need not be uneasy as to its effects. 

Next, one would say to those who think that all will go well if youdivide the community into two classes, one privileged to use its ownmind, the other privileged to have its mind used by a priesthood, thatthey overlook the momentous circumstance of these professional upholdersof dogmatic systems being also possessed of a vast social influence inquestions that naturally belong to another sphere. There is hardly asingle great controversy in modern politics, where the statesman doesnot find himself in immediate contact with the real or supposedinterests, and with the active or passive sentiment, of one of thesereligious systems. Therefore if the instructed or intellectuallyprivileged class cheerfully leave the field open to men who, _exhypothesi_, are presumed to be less instructed, narrower, moreimpenetrable by reason, and the partisans of the letter against thespirit, then this result follows. They are deliberately strengtheningthe hands of the persons least fitted by judgment, experience, andtemper, for using such power rightly. And they are strengthening themnot merely in dealing with religious matters, but, what is of moreimportance, in dealing with an endless variety of the gravest social andpolitical matters. It is impossible to map out the exact dimensions ofthe field in which a man shall exercise his influence, and to which heis to be rigorously confined. Give men influence in one matter, especially if that be such a matter as religious belief and ceremonial, and it is simply impossible that this influence shall not extend withmore or less effect over as much of the whole sphere of conduct as theymay choose surrendering the common people without dispute or effort toorganised priesthoods for religious purposes, you would be inevitablyincluding a vast number of other purposes in the self-same destination. This does not in the least prejudice practical ways of dealing withcertain existing circumstances, such as the propriety or justice ofallowing a catholic people to have a catholic university. It is only anargument against erecting into a complete and definite formula thedivision of a society into two great castes, the one with a religion ofthe spirit, the other with a creed of the letter. 

Again, supposing that the enlightened caste were to consent to abandonthe common people to what are assumed to be lower and narrower forms oftruth, --which is after all little more than a fine phrase for forms offalsehood, --what can be more futile than to suppose that such acompromise will be listened to for a single moment by a caste whosefirst principle is that they are the possessors and ministers, not of aninferior or superior form of truth, but of the very truth itself, absolute, final, complete, divinely sent, infallibly interpreted? Thedisciples of the relative may afford to compromise. The disciples of theabsolute, never. 

We shall see other objections as we go on to this state of things, inwhich a minority holds true opinions and abandons the majority to falseones. At the bottom of the advocacy of a dual doctrine slumbers the ideathat there is no harm in men being mistaken, or at least only so littleharm as is more than compensated for by the marked tranquillity in whichtheir mistake may wrap them. This is not an idea merely thatintellectual error is a pathological necessity of the mind, no more tobe escaped than the pathological necessities which afflict and finallydissolve the body. That is historically true. It is an idea that errorsomehow in certain stages, where there is enough of it, actually doesgood, like vaccination. Well, the thesis of the present chapter is thaterroneous opinion or belief, in itself and as such, can never be useful. This may seem a truism which everybody is willing to accept withoutdemur. But it is one of those truisms which persons habitually forgetand repudiate in practice, just because they have never made it real tothemselves by considering and answering the objections that may bebrought against it. We see this repudiation before our eyes every day. Thus for instance, parents theoretically take it for granted that errorcannot be useful, while they are teaching or allowing others to teachtheir children what they, the parents, believe to be untrue. Thushusbands who think the common theology baseless and unmeaning, are foundto prefer that their wives shall not question this theology nor neglectits rites. These are only two out of a hundred examples of the dailyadmission that error may be very useful to other people. I need hardlysay that to deny this, as the commonplace to which this chapter isdevoted denies it, is a different thing from denying the expediency ofletting errors alone at a given time. That is another question, to bediscussed afterwards. You may have a thoroughly vicious and dangerousenemy, and yet it may be expedient to choose your own hour and occasionfor attacking him. 'The passage from error to truth, ' in the words ofCondorcet, 'may be accompanied by certain evils. Every great changenecessarily brings some of these in its train; and though they may bealways far below the evil you are for destroying, yet it ought to dowhat is possible to diminish them. It is not enough to do good; one mustdo it in a good way. No doubt we should destroy all errors, but as it isimpossible to destroy them all in an instant, we should imitate aprudent architect who, when obliged to destroy a building, and knowinghow its parts are united together, sets about its demolition in such away as to prevent its fall from being dangerous. '[8]

Those, let us note by the way, who are accustomed to think the moraltone of the eighteenth century low and gross compared with that of thenineteenth, may usefully contrast these just and prudent word? ofcaution in extirpating error, with M. Renan's invitation to men whom heconsiders wrong in their interpretation of religion, to plant theirerror as widely and deeply as they can; and who are moreover themselvessupposed to be demoralised, or else they would not be likely toacquiesce in a previous surrender of the universities to men whom theythink in mortal error. Apart however from M. Renan, Condorcet's wordsmerely assert the duty of setting to work to help on the change fromfalse to true opinions with prudence, and this every sensible manadmits. Our position is that in estimating the situation, in counting upand balancing the expediencies of an attack upon error at this or thatpoint, nothing is to be set to the credit of error as such, nor is thereanything in its own operations or effects to entitle it to a moment'srespite. Every one would admit this at once in the case of physicaltruths, though there are those who say that some of the time spent inthe investigation of physical truths might be more advantageouslydevoted to social problems. But in the case of moral and religioustruths or errors, people, if they admit that nothing is to be set to thecredit of error as such, still constantly have a subtle and practicallymischievous confusion in their minds between the possible usefulness oferror, and the possible expediency of leaving it temporarilyundisturbed. What happens in consequence of such a confusion is this. Men leave error undisturbed, because they accept in a loose way theproposition that a belief may be 'morally useful without beingintellectually sustainable, ' They disguise their own dissent frompopular opinions, because they regard such opinions as useful to otherpeople. We are not now discussing the case of those who embrace a creedfor themselves, on the ground that, though they cannot demonstrate itstruth to the understanding, yet they find it pregnant with moralisingand elevating characteristics. We are thinking of a very differentattitude--that, namely, of persons who believe a creed to be not moremorally useful than it is intellectually sustainable, so far as theythemselves are concerned. To them it is pure and uncompensated error. Yet from a vague and general idea that what is useless error to them maybe useful to others, they insist on doing their best to perpetuate thesystem which spreads and consecrates the error. And how do they settlethe question? They reckon up the advantages, and forget the drawbacks. They detect and dwell on one or two elements of utility in the falsebelief or the worn-out institution, and leave out of all account theelements that make in the other direction. 

Considering how much influence this vague persuasion has in encouraginga well-meaning hypocrisy in individuals, and a profound stagnation insocieties, it may be well to examine the matter somewhat generally. Letus try to measure the force of some of the most usual pleas for error. 

I. A false opinion, it may be said, is frequently found to haveclustering around it a multitude of excellent associations, which do farmore good than the false opinion that supports them, does harm. In themiddle ages, for instance, there was a belief that a holy man had thegift of routing demons, of healing the sick, and of working divers othermiracles. Supposing that this belief was untrue, supposing that it wasan error to attribute the sudden death of an incredible multitude oftroublesome flies in a church to the fact of Saint Bernard havingexcommunicated them, what then? The mistaken opinion was stillassociated with a deep reverence for virtue and sanctity, and this wasmore valuable, than the error of the explanation of the death of theflies was noxious or degrading. 

The answer to this seems to be as follows. First, in making falsenotions the proofs or close associates of true ones, you are exposingthe latter to the ruin which awaits the former. For example, if you havein the minds of children or servants associated honesty, industry, truthfulness, with the fear of hell-fire, then supposing this fear tobecome extinct in their minds, --which, being unfounded in truth, it isin constant risk of doing--the virtues associated with it are likely tobe weakened exactly in proportion as that association was strong. 

Second, for all good habits in thought or conduct there are good andreal reasons in the nature of things. To leave such habits attached tofalse opinions is to lessen the weight of these natural or spontaneousreasons, and so to do more harm in the long run than effacement of themseems for a time to do good. Most excellences in human character have aspontaneous root in our nature. Moreover if they had not, and where theyhave not, there is always a valid and real external defence for them. The unreal defence must be weaker than the real one, and thesubstitution of a weak for a strong defence, where both are to be had, is not useful but the very opposite. 

II. It is true, the objector would probably continue, that there is arational defence for all excellences of conduct, as there is for allthat is worthy and fitting in institutions. But the force of a rationaldefence lies in the rationality of the man to whom it is proffered. Thearguments which persuade one trained in scientific habits of thought, only touch persons of the same kind. Character is not all pure reason. That fitness of things which you pronounce to be the foundation of goodhabits, may be borne in upon men, and may speak to them, through otherchannels than the syllogism. You assume a community of highly-trainedwranglers and proficient sophisters. The plain fact is that, for themass of men, use and wont, rude or gracious symbols, blind custom, prejudices, superstitions, --however erroneous in themselves, howeverinadequate to the conveyance of the best truth, --are the only safeguardians of the common virtues. In this sense, then, error may have itsusefulness. 

A hundred years ago this apology for error was met by those high-mindedand interesting men, the French believers in human perfectibility, withtheir characteristic dogma, --of which Rousseau was the ardentexpounder, --that man is born with a clear and unsophisticated spirit, perfectly able to discern all the simple truths necessary for commonconduct by its own unaided light. His motives are all pure and unselfishand his intelligence is unclouded, until priests and tyrants mutilatethe one and corrupt the other. We who have the benefit of the historicmethod, and have to take into account the medium that surrounds a humancreature the moment it comes into the world, to say nothing of all theinheritance from the past which it brings within it into the world atthe same moment, cannot take up this ground. We cannot maintain thateverybody is born with light enough to see the rational defences ofthings for himself, without the education of institutions. What we domaintain is--and this is the answer to the plea for error at presentunder consideration--that whatever impairs the brightness of such lightas a man has, is not useful but hurtful. Our reply to those who contendfor the usefulness of error on the ground of the comparative impotenceof rationality over ordinary minds, is something of this kind. Superstition, blind obedience to custom, and the other substitutes for aright and independent use of the mind, may accidentally and in some fewrespects impress good ideas upon persons who are too darkened to acceptthose ideas on their real merits. But then superstition itself is themain cause of this very darkness. To hold error is in so far to fostererroneous ways of thinking on all subjects; is to make the intelligenceless and less ready to receive truth in all matters whatever. Men aremade incapable of perceiving the rational defences, and of feelingrational motives, for good habits, --so far as they are thusincapable, --by the very errors which we are asked silently tocountenance as useful substitutes for right reason. 'Erroneous motives, 'as Condorcet has expressed this matter, 'have an additional drawbackattached to them, the habit which they strengthen of reasoning ill. Themore important the subject on which you reason ill, and the more youbusy yourself about it, by so much the more dangerous do the influencesof such a habit become. It is especially on subjects analogous to thaton which you reason wrongly, or which you connect with it by habit, thatsuch a defect extends most powerfully and most rapidly. Hence it isextremely hard for the man who believes himself obliged to conform inhis conduct to what he considers truths useful to men, but whoattributes the obligation to erroneous motives, to reason very correctlyon the truths themselves; the more attention he pays to such motives, and the more importance he comes to attach to them, the more likely hewill be to go wrong. '[9] So, in short, superstition does an immense harmby enfeebling rational ways of thinking; it does a little good byaccidentally endorsing rational conclusions in one or two matters. Andyet, though the evil which it is said to repair is a trifle beside theevil which it is admitted to inflict, the balance of expediencies isafter all declared to be such as to warrant us in calling errors useful!

III. A third objection now presents itself to me, which I wish to stateas strongly as possible. 'Even if a false opinion cannot in itself bemore useful than a true one, whatever good habits may seem to beconnected with it, yet, ' it may be contended, 'relatively to the generalmental attitude of a set of men, to their other notions and maxims, thefalse opinion may entail less harm than would be wrought by its meredemolition. There are false opinions so intimately bound up with thewhole way of thinking and feeling, that to introduce one or two detachedtrue opinions in their stead, would, even if it were possible, onlyserve to break up that coherency of character and conduct which it isone of the chief objects of moralists and the great art of living toproduce. For a true opinion does not necessarily bring in its train allthe other true opinions that are logically connected with it. On thecontrary, it is only too notorious a fact in the history of belief, thatnot merely individuals but whole societies are capable of holding at oneand the same time contradictory opinions and mutually destructiveprinciples. On the other hand, neither does a false opinion involvepractically all the evil consequences deducible from it. For the resultsof human inconsistency are not all unhappy, and if we do not always actup to virtuous principle, no more do we always work out to its remotestinference every vicious principle. Not insincerity, but inconsistency, has constantly turned the adherents of persecuting precepts into friendsof tolerant practice. '

'It is a comparatively small thing to persuade a superstitious person toabandon this or that article of his superstition. You have no securitythat the rejection of the one article which you have displaced will leadto the rejection of any other, and it is quite possible that it may leadto all the more fervid an adhesion to what remains behind. Error, therefore, in view of such considerations may surely be allowed to haveat least a provisional utility. '

Now undoubtedly the repudiation of error is not at all the same thingas embracing truth. People are often able to see the force of argumentsthat destroy a given opinion, without being able to see the force ofarguments for the positive opinion that ought to replace it. They canonly be quite sure of seeing both, when they have acquired not merely aconviction that one notion is false and another true, but havefurthermore exchanged a generally erroneous way of thinking for agenerally correct way. Hence the truly important object with every onewho holds opinions which he deems it of the highest moment that othersshould accept, must obviously be to reach people's general ways ofthinking; to stir their love of truth; to penetrate them with a sense ofthe difference in the quality of evidence; to make them willing tolisten to criticism and new opinion; and perhaps above all to teach themto take ungrudging and daily trouble to clear up in their minds theexact sense of the terms they use. 

If this be so, a false opinion, like an erroneous motive, can hardlyhave even a provisional usefulness. For how can you attack an erroneousway of thinking except in detail, that is to say through the sides ofthis or that single wrong opinion? Each of these wrong opinions is anillustration and type, as it is a standing support and abettor, of somekind of wrong reasoning, though they are not all on the same scale norall of them equally instructive. It is precisely by this method ofgradual displacement of error step by step, that the few stages ofprogress which the race has yet traversed, have been actually achieved. Even if the place of the erroneous idea is not immediately taken by thecorresponding true one, or by the idea which is at least one or twodegrees nearer to the true one, still the removal of error in thispurely negative way amounts to a positive gain. Why? For the excellentreason that it is the removal of a bad element which otherwise tends topropagate itself, or even if it fails to do that, tends at the best tomake the surrounding mass of error more inveterate. All error is whatphysiologists term fissiparous, and in exterminating one false opinionyou may be hindering the growth of an uncounted brood of false opinions. 

Then as to the maintenance of that coherency, interdependence, andsystematisation of opinions and motives, which is said to make characterorganic, and is therefore so highly prized by some schools of thought. No doubt the loosening of this or that part of the fabric ofheterogeneous origin, which constitutes the character of a man or woman, tends to loosen the whole. But do not let us feed ourselves uponphrases. This organic coherency, what does it come to? It signifies in ageneral way, to describe it briefly, a harmony between the intellectual, the moral, and the practical parts of human nature; an undisturbedcooperation between reason, affection, and will; the reason prescribingnothing against which the affections revolt, and proscribing nothingwhich they crave; and the will obeying the joint impulses of these twodirecting forces, without liability to capricious or extravagantdisturbance of their direction. Well, if the reason were perfect ininformation and method, and the affections faultless in their impulse, then organic unity of character would be the final consummation of allhuman improvement, and it would be criminal, even if it were possible, to undermine a structure of such priceless value. But short of thisthere can be no value in coherency and harmonious consistency as such. So long as error is an element in it, then for so long the whole productis vitiated. Undeniably and most fortunately, social virtues are foundside by side with speculative mistakes and the gravest intellectualimperfections. We may apply to humanity the idea which, as Hebrewstudents tell us, is imputed in the Talmud to the Supreme Being. _Godprays_, the Talmud says; and his prayer is this, --'Be it my will that mymercy overpower my justice. ' And so with men, with or without theirwill, their mercifulness overpowers their logic. And not theirmercifulness only, but all their good impulses overpower their logic. Torepeat the words which I have put into the objector's mouth, we do notalways work out every vicious principle to its remotest inference. What, however, is this but to say that in such cases character is saved, notby its coherency, but by the opposite; to say not that error is useful, but what is a very different thing, that its mischievousness issometimes capable of being averted or minimised?

The apologist may retort that he did not mean answer to the argumentfrom coherency of conduct. In measuring utility you have to take intoaccount not merely the service rendered to the objects of the presenthour, but the contribution to growth, progress, and the future. Fromthis point of view most of the talk about unity of character is not muchmore than a glorifying of stagnation. It leaves out of sight theconditions necessary for the continuance of the unending task of humanimprovement. Now whatever ease may be given to an individual or ageneration by social or religious error, such error at any rate canconduce nothing to further advancement That, at least, is not one of itspossible utilities. 

This is also one of the answers to the following plea. 'Though theknowledge of every positive truth is an useful acquisition, thisdoctrine cannot without reservation he applied to negative truth. Whenthe only truth ascertainable is that nothing can be known, we do not, bythis knowledge, gain any new fact by which to guide ourselves. '[10] Butlogical coherency, but a kind of practical everyday coherency, whichmay be open to a thousand abstract objections, yet which still securesboth to the individual and to society a number of advantages that mightbe endangered by any disturbance of opinion or motive. No doubt, and themethod and season of chasing erroneous opinions and motives out of themind must always be a matter of much careful and far-seeingconsideration. Only in the course of such consideration, let us notadmit the notion in any form that error can have even provisionalutility. For it is not the error which confers the advantages that wedesire to preserve, but some true opinion or just motive or high orhonest sentiment, which exists and thrives and operates in spite of theerror and in face of it, springing from man's spontaneous andunformulated recognition of the real relations of things. Thisrecognition is very faint in the beginnings of society. It grows clearerand firmer with each step forward. And in a tolerably civilised age ithas become a force on which you can fairly lean with a considerabledegree of assurance. 

And this leads to the central point of the the negative truth thatnothing can be known is in fact a truth that guides us. [Transcriber'snote: sic. ] It leads us away from sterile and irreclaimable tractsof thought and emotion, and so inevitably compels the energies whichwould otherwise have been wasted, to feel after a more profitabledirection. By leaving the old guide-marks undisturbed, you may giveease to an existing generation, but the present ease is purchased atthe cost of future growth. To have been deprived of the faith of theold dispensation, is the first condition of strenuous endeavour afterthe new. 

No doubt history abounds with cases in which a false opinion on moral orreligious subjects, or an erroneous motive in conduct, has seemed to bea stepping-stone to truth. But this is in no sense a demonstration ofthe utility of error. For in all such cases the erroneous opinion ormotive was far from being wholly erroneous, or wholly without elementsof truth and reality. If it helped to quicken the speed or mend thedirection of progress, that must have been by virtue of some suchelements within it. All that was error in it was pure waste, or worsethan waste. It is true that the religious sentiment has clothed itselfin a great number of unworthy, inadequate, depressing, and otherwisemisleading shapes, dogmatic and liturgic. Yet on the whole the religioussentiment has conferred enormous benefits on civilisation. This is noproof of the utility of the mistaken direction which these dogmatic orliturgic shapes imposed upon it. On the contrary, the effect of thefalse dogmas and enervating liturgies is so much that has to be deductedfrom the advantages conferred by a sentiment in itself valuable and ofpriceless capability. [11]

Yes, it will be urged, but from the historic conditions of the time, truth could only be conveyed in erroneous forms, and motives ofpermanent price for humanity could only be secured in these mistakenexpressions. Here I would again press the point of this necessity forerroneous forms and mistaken expressions being, in a great many of themost important instances, itself derivative, one among other illconsequences of previous moral and religious error. 'It was gravelysaid, ' Bacon tells us, 'by some of the prelates in the Council of Trent, where the doctrines of the Schoolmen have great sway; that the schoolmenwere like Astronomers, which did faigne Eccentricks and Epicycles andEngines of Orbs to save the Phenomena; though they know there were nosuch Things; and in like manner that the Schoolmen had framed a numberof subtile and intricate Axioms and Theorems, to save the practice ofthe Church. ' This is true of much else besides scholastic axioms andtheorems. Subordinate error was made necessary and invented, by reasonof some pro-existent main stock of error, and to save the practice ofthe Church. Thus we are often referred to the consolation which this orthat doctrine has brought to the human spirit. But what if the samesystem had produced the terror which made absence of consolationintolerable? How much of the necessity for expressing the enlargedhumanity of the Church in the doctrine of purgatory, arose from theexistence of the older unsoftened doctrine of eternal hell?

Again, how much of this alleged necessity of error, as alloy for the toopure metal of sterling truth, is to be explained by the interest whichpowerful castes or corporations have had in preserving the erroneousforms, even when they could not resist, or did not wish to resist, theirimpregnation by newer and better doctrine? This interest was notdeliberately sinister or malignant. It may be more correctly as well asmore charitably explained by that infirmity of human nature, which makesus very ready to believe what it is on other grounds convenient to us tobelieve. Nobody attributes to pure malevolence the heartiness with whichthe great corporation of lawyers, for example, resist the removal ofsuperfluous and obstructive forms in their practice; they have come tolook on such forms as indispensable safeguards. Hence powerful teachersand preachers of all kinds have been spontaneously inclined to supposea necessity, which had no real existence, of preserving as much as waspossible of what we know to be error, even while introducing wholesomemodification of it. This is the honest, though mischievous, conservatismof the human mind. We have no right to condemn our foregoers; far lessto lavish on them the evil names of impostor, charlatan, and brigand, which the zealous unhistoric school of the last century used soprofusely. But we have a right to say of them, as we say of those whoimitate their policy now, that their conservatism is no additional proofof the utility of error. Least of all is it any justification for thosewho wish to have impressed upon the people a complete system ofreligious opinion which men of culture have avowedly put away. And, moreover, the very priests must, I should think, be supposed to have putit away also. Else they would hardly be invited deliberately to abdicatetheir teaching functions in the very seats where teaching is of theweightiest and most far-spreading influence. 

Meanwhile our point is that the reforms in opinion which have beeneffected on the plan of pouring the new wine of truth into the oldbottles of superstition--though not dishonourable to the sincerity ofthe reformers--are no testimony to even the temporary usefulness oferror. Those who think otherwise do not look far enough in front of theevent. They forget the evil wrought by the prolonged duration of theerror, to which the added particle of truth may have given new vitality. They overlook the ultimate enervation that is so often the price paidfor the temporary exaltation. 

Nor, finally, can they know the truths which the error thus prolongedhas hindered from coming to the birth. A strenuous disputant hasrecently asserted against me that 'the region of the _might have been_lies beyond the limits of sane speculation. '[12] It in surely extendingoptimism too far to insist on carrying it back right through the ages. To me at any rate the history of mankind is a huge _pis-aller_, just asour present society is; a prodigious wasteful experiment, from which acertain number of precious results have been extracted, but which isnot now, nor ever has been at any other time, a final measure of all thepossibilities of the time. This is not inconsistent with the scientificconception of history; it is not to deny the great law that society hasa certain order of progress; but only to urge that within that, the onlypossible order, there is always room for all kinds and degrees ofinvention, improvement, and happy or unhappy accident. There is nodiscoverable law fixing precisely the more or the less of these; nor howmuch of each of them a community shall meet with, nor exactly when itshall meet with them. We have to distinguish between possibility andnecessity. Only certain steps in advance are possible at a given time;but it is not inevitable that those potential advances should all berealised. Does anybody suppose that humanity has had the profit of allthe inventive and improving capacity born into the world? That Turgot, for example, was the only man that ever lived who might have done morefor society than he was allowed to do, and spared society a cataclysm?No, --history is a _pis-aller_. It has assuredly not moved without therelation of cause and effect; it is a record of social growth and itsconditions; but it is also a record of interruption and misadventure andperturbation. You trace the long chain which has made us what we are inthis aspect and that. But where are the dropped links that might havemade all the difference? _Ubi sunt eorum tabulae qui post vota nuncupateperierunt_? Where is the fruit of those multitudinous gifts which cameinto the world in untimely seasons? We accept the past for the samereason that we accept the laws of the solar system, though, as Comtesays, 'we can easily conceive them improved in certain respects. ' Thepast, like the solar system, is beyond reach of modification at ourhands, and we cannot help it. But it is surely the mere midsummermadness of philosophic complacency to think that we have come by theshortest and easiest of all imaginable routes to our present point inthe march; to suppose that we have wasted nothing, lost nothing, cruellydestroyed nothing, on the road. What we have lost is all in the regionof the 'might have been, ' and we are justified in taking this intoaccount, and thinking much of it, and in trying to find causes for theloss. One of them has been want of liberty for the human intelligence;and another, to return to our proper subject, has been the prolongedexistence of superstition, of false opinions, and of attachment to grosssymbols, beyond the time when they might have been successfullyattacked, and would have fallen into decay but for the mistakenpolitical notion of their utility. In making a just estimate of thisutility, if we see reason to believe that these false opinions, narrowsuperstitions, gross symbols, have been an impediment to the freeexercise of the intelligence and a worthier culture of the emotions, then we are justified in placing the unknown loss as a real and mostweighty item in the account against them. 

In short, then, the utmost that can be said on behalf of errors inopinion and motive, is that they are inevitable elements in humangrowth. But the inevitable does not coincide with the useful. Pain canbe avoided by none of the sons of men, yet the horrible anduncompensated subtraction which it makes from the value and usefulnessof human life, is one of the most formidable obstacles to the smootherprogress of the world. And as with pain, so with error. The moral of ourcontention has reference to the temper in which practically we ought toregard false doctrine and ill-directed motive. It goes to show that ifwe have satisfied ourselves on good grounds that the doctrine is false, or the motive ill directed, then the only question that we need askourselves turns solely upon the possibility of breaking it up anddispersing it, by methods compatible with the doctrine of liberty. Anyembarrassment in dealing with it, due to a semi-latent notion that itmay be useful to some one else is a weakness that hinders socialprogress. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Mill's _Autobiography_ p. 170. ]

[Footnote 6: M. Renan's _Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale de la France_, p. 98. ]

[Footnote 7: _Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse_, Preface, p. Xvi. ]

[Footnote 8: In 1779 the Academy of Prussia announced this as thequestion for their annual prize essay:--'_S'il est utile au peupled'être trompé_. ' They received thirty-three essays; twenty showing thatit is not useful, thirteen showing that it is. The Academy, with animpartiality that caused much amusement in Paris and Berlin, awarded twoprizes, one to the best proof of the negative answer, another to thebest proof of the affirmative. See Bartholmess, _Hist. Philosophique del'Académie de Prusse_, i. 281, and ii. 278. Condorcet did not actuallycompete for the prize, but he wrote a very acute piece, suggested by thetheme, which was printed in 1790. _Oeuv. _ v. 343. 

To illustrate the common fact of certain currents of thought being inthe air at given times, we may mention that in 1770 was published theposthumous work of another Frenchman, Chesneau du Marsais (1676-1756)entitled:--'_Essai sur les Préjugés; ou de l'influence des Opinions surles Moeurs et sur le Bonheur des Hommes_. ' The principal prejudices towhich he refers are classed under Antiquity--Ancestry--NativeCountry--Religion--Respect for Wealth. Some of the reasoning is almostverbally identical with Condorcet's. For an account of Du Marsais, seeD'Alembert, _Oeuv. _ iii 481. ]

[Footnote 9: _Oeuv. _ v. 354. ]

[Footnote 10: Mill's _Three Essays on Religion_, p. 73. I have offeredsome criticisms on the whole passage in _Critical Miscellanies, SecondSeries_, pp. 300-304. ]

[Footnote 11: 'Enfin, supposons pour un instant que le dogme de l'autrevie soit de quelqu'utilité, et qu'il retienne vraiment un petit nombred'individus, qu'est-ce que ces foibles avantages comparés à la foule demaux que l'on en voir découler? Contre un homme timide que cette idéecontient, il en est des millions qu'elle ne peut contenir; il en desmillions qu'elle rend insensés, farouches, fanatiques, inutiles etméchants; il en est des millions qu'elle détourne de leurs devoirsenvers la société; il en est une infinité qu'elle afflige et qu'elletrouble, sans aucun bien réel pour leurs associés. --_Système de laNature_, i. Xiii. ]

[Footnote 12: Sir J. F. Stephen's _Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity_, 2d. Ed. , p. 19, _note_. ]

CHAPTER III. 

INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE POLITICAL SPIRIT. 

We have been considering the position of those who would fain divide thecommunity into two great castes; the one of thoughtful and instructedpersons using their minds freely, but guarding their conclusions instrict reserve; the other of the illiterate or unreflecting, who shouldhave certain opinions and practices taught them, not because they aretrue or are really what their votaries are made to believe them to be, but because the intellectual superiors of the community think theinculcation of such a belief useful in all cases save their own. Nor isthis a mere theory. On the contrary, it is a fair description of anexisting state of things. We have the old _disciplina arcani_ among usin as full force as in the primitive church, but with an all-importantdifference. The Christian fathers practised reserve for the sake ofleading the acolyte the more surely to the fulness of truth. The moderneconomiser keeps back his opinions, or dissembles the grounds of them, for the sake of leaving his neighbours the more at their ease in thepeaceful sloughs of prejudice and superstition and low ideals. We quoteSaint Paul when he talked of making himself all things to all men, andof becoming to the Jews a Jew, and as without the Law to the heathen. But then we do so with a view to justifying ourselves for leaving theJew to remain a Jew, and the heathen to remain heathen. We imitate thesame apostle in accepting old time-worn altars dedicated to the UnknownGod. We forget that he made the ancient symbol the starting-point of arevolutionised doctrine. There is, as anybody can see, a whole world ofdifference between the reserve of sagacious apostleship, on the onehand, dealing tenderly with scruple and tearfulness and fine sensibilityof conscience, and the reserve of intellectual cowardice on the otherhand, dealing hypocritically with narrow minds in the supposed interestsof social peace and quietness. The old _disciplina arcani_ signifiedthe disclosure of a little light with a view to the disclosure of more. The new means the dissimulation of truth with a view to the perpetuationof error. Consider the difference between these two fashions ofcompromise, in their effects upon the mind and character of the personcompromising. The one is fully compatible with fervour and hopefulnessand devotion to great causes. The other stamps a man with artifice, andhinders the free eagerness of his vision, and wraps him about withmediocrity, --not always of understanding, but that still worse thing, mediocrity of aspiration and purpose. 

The coarsest and most revolting shape which the doctrine of conformitycan assume, and its degrading consequences to the character of theconformer, may be conveniently illustrated by a passage in the life ofHume. He looked at things in a more practical manner than would findfavour with the sentimental champions of compromise in nearer times. There is a well-known letter of Hume's, in which he recommends a youngman to become a clergyman, on the ground that it was very hard to gotany tolerable civil employment, and that as Lord Bute was then allpowerful, his friend would be certain of preferment. In answer to theyoung man's scruples as to the Articles and the rest, Hume says:--

'It is putting too great a respect on the vulgar and their superstitionsto pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. If the thing wereworthy of being treated gravely, I should tell him [the young man] thatthe Pythian oracle with the approbation of Xenophon advised every one toworship the gods--[Greek: nhomô pholeôs]. I wish it were still in mypower to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common duties of societyusually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a littlemore to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without whichit is impossible to pass through the world. '[13]

This is a singularly straightforward way of stating a view whichsilently influences a much greater number of men than it is pleasant tothink of. They would shrink from throwing their conduct into so gross aformula. They will lift up their hands at this quotation, so strangelyblind are we to the hiding-places of our own hearts, even when othersflash upon them the terrible illumination that comes of calling conductand motives by plain names. Now it is not merely the moral improbity ofthese cases which revolts us--the improbity of making in solemn form anumber of false statements for the sake of earning a livelihood; ofsaying in order to get money or social position that you accept a numberof propositions which in fact you utterly reject; of declaring expresslythat you trust you are inwardly moved to take upon you this office andministration by the Holy Ghost, when the real motive is a desire not tomiss the chance of making something out of the Earl of Bute. This sideof such dissimulation is shocking enough. And it is not any moreshocking to the most devout believer than it is to people who doubtwhether there be any Holy Ghost or not. Those who no longer place theirhighest faith in powers above and beyond men, are for that very reasonmore deeply interested than others in cherishing the integrity andworthiness of man himself. Apart, however, from the immorality of suchreasoned hypocrisy, which no man with a particle of honesty willattempt to blink, there is the intellectual improbity which it brings inits train, the infidelity to truth, the disloyalty to one's ownintelligence. Gifts of understanding are numbed and enfeebled in a man, who has once played such a trick with his own conscience as to persuadehimself that, because the vulgar are superstitious, it is right for thelearned to earn money by turning themselves into the ministers andaccomplices of superstition. If he is clever enough to see through thevulgar and their beliefs, he is tolerably sure to be clever enough fromtime to time and in his better moments to see through himself. He beginsto suspect himself of being an impostor. That suspicion gradually unmanshim when he comes to use his mind in the sphere of his ownenlightenment. One of really superior power cannot escape these bettermoments and the remorse that they bring. As he advances in life, as hispowers ought to be coming to fuller maturity and his intellectualproductiveness to its prime, just in the same degree the increasingseriousness of life multiplies such moments and deepens their remorse, and so the light of intellectual promise slowly goes out in impotentendeavour, or else in taking comfort that much goods are laid up, or, what is deadliest of all, in a soulless cynicism. 

We do not find out until it is too late that the intellect too, at leastwhere it is capable of being exercised on the higher objects, has itssensitiveness. It loses its colour and potency and finer fragrance in anatmosphere of mean purpose and low conception of the sacredness of factand reality. Who has not observed inferior original power achievinggreater results even in the intellectual field itself, where thesuperior understanding happens to have been unequally yoked with aself-seeking character, over scenting the expedient? If Hume had been inthe early productive part of his life the hypocrite which he wished itwere in his power to show himself in its latter part, we may betolerably sure that European philosophy would have missed one of itsforemost figures. It has been often said that he who begins life bystifling his convictions is in a fair way for ending it without anyconvictions to stifle. We may, perhaps, add that he who sets out withthe notion that the difference between truth and falsehood is a thing ofno concern to the vulgar, is very likely sooner or later to come to thekindred notion that it is not a thing of any supreme concern to himself. 

Let thus much have been said as to those who deliberately and knowinglysell their intellectual birthright for a mess of pottage, making abrazen compromise with what they hold despicable, lest they should haveto win their bread honourably. Men need to expend no declamatoryindignation upon them. They have a hell of their own; words can add nobitterness to it. It is no light thing to have secured a livelihood oncondition of going through life masked and gagged. To be compelled, weekafter week, and year after year, to recite the symbols of ancient faithand lift up his voice in the echoes of old hopes, with the blightingthought in his soul that the faith is a lie, and the hope no more thanthe folly of the crowd; to read hundreds of times in a twelvemonth withsolemn unction as the inspired word of the Supreme what to him aremeaningless as the Abracadabras of the conjuror in a booth; to go on tothe end of his days administering to simple folk holy rites ofcommemoration and solace, when he has in his mind at each phrase whatdupes are those simple folk and how wearisomely counterfeit their rites:and to know through all that this is really to be the one business ofhis prostituted life, that so dreary and hateful a piece of play-actingwill make the desperate retrospect of his last hours--of a truth here isthe very [Greek: bdhelygma tês erêmhôseôs], the abomination ofdesolation of the human spirit indeed. 

No one will suppose that this is designed for the normal type of priest. But it is well to study tendencies in their extreme catastrophe. This isonly the catastrophe, in one of its many shapes, of the fatal doctrinethat money, position, power, philanthropy, or any of the thousandseductive masks of the pseudo-expedient, may carry a man away from loveof truth and yet leave him internally unharmed. The depravation thatfollows the trucking for money of intellectual freedom and self-respect, attends in its degree each other departure from disinterested followingof truth, and each other substitution of convenience, whether public orprivate, in its place. And both parties to such a compromise are losers. The world which offers gifts and tacitly undertakes to ask no questionsas to the real state of the timeserver's inner mind, loses no less thanthe timeserver himself who receives the gifts and promises to hold hispeace. It is as though a society placed penalties on mechanicalinventions and the exploration of new material resources, and offeredbounties for the steadiest adherence to all ancient processes in cultureand production. The injury to wealth in the one case would not be anydeeper than the injury to morality is in the other. 

To pass on to less sinister forms of this abnegation of intellectualresponsibility. In the opening sentences of the first chapter we spokeof a wise suspense in forming opinions, a wise reserve in expressingthem, and a wise tardiness in trying to realise them. Thus we meant tomark out the three independent provinces of compromise, each of thembeing the subject of considerations that either do not apply at all tothe other two, or else apply in a different degree. Disingenuousness orself-illusion, arising from a depressing deference to the existing stateof things, or to what is immediately practicable, or to what otherpeople would think of us if they knew our thoughts, is the result ofcompromising truth in the matter of forming and holding opinions. Secondly, positive simulation is what comes of an unlawful willingnessto compromise in the matter of avowing and publishing them. Finally, pusillanimity or want of faith is the vice that belongs to unlawfulcompromise in the department of action and realisation. This is notmerely a division arranged for convenience of discussion. It goes to theroot of conduct and character, and is the key to the present mood of oursociety. It is always a hardy thing to attempt to throw a complex matterinto very simple form, but we should say that the want of energy anddefiniteness in contemporary opinions, of which we first complained, isdue mainly to the following notion; that if a subject is not ripe forpractical treatment, you and I are therefore entirely relieved from theduty of having clear ideas about it. If the majority cling to anopinion, why should we ask whether that is the sound and right opinionor the reverse? Now this notion, which springs from a confusion of thethree fields of compromise with one another, quietly reigns almostwithout dispute. The devotion to the practical aspect of truth is insuch excess, as to make people habitually deny that it can be worthwhile to form an opinion, when it happens at the moment to be incapableof realisation, for the reason that there is no direct prospect ofinducing a sufficient number of persons to share it. 'We are quitewilling to think that your view is the right one, and would produce allthe improvements for which you hope; but then there is not the smallestchance of persuading the only persons able to carry out such a view; whytherefore discuss it?' No talk is more familiar to us than this. As ifthe mere possibility of the view being a right one did not obviouslyentitle it to discussion; discussion being the only process by whichpeople are likely to be induced to accept it, or else to find goodgrounds for finally dismissing it. 

It is precisely because we believe that opinion, and nothing butopinion, can effect great permanent changes, that we ought to becareful to keep this most potent force honest, wholesome, fearless, andindependent. Take the political field. Politicians and newspapers almostsystematically refuse to talk about a new idea, which is not capable ofbeing at once embodied in a bill, and receiving the royal assent beforethe following August. There is something rather contemptible, seen fromthe ordinary standards of intellectual integrity, in the position of aminister who waits to make up his mind whether a given measure, say thedisestablishment of the Irish Church, is in itself and on the meritsdesirable, until the official who runs diligently up and down thebackstairs of the party, tells him that the measure is practicable andrequired in the interests of the band. On the one hand, a leader islavishly panegyrised for his highmindedness, in suffering himself to bedriven into his convictions by his party. On the other, a party isextolled for its political tact, in suffering itself to be forced out ofits convictions by its leader. It is hard to decide which is the morediscreditable and demoralising sight. The education of chiefs byfollowers, and of followers by chiefs, into the abandonment in a monthof the traditions of centuries or the principles of a lifetime mayconduce to the rapid and easy working of the machine. It certainly marksa triumph of the political spirit which the author of _The Prince_ mighthave admired. It is assuredly mortal to habits of intellectualself-respect in the society which allows itself to be amused by thecajolery and legerdemain and self-sophistication of its rulers. 

Of course there are excellent reasons why a statesman immersed in theactual conduct of affairs, should confine his attention to the workwhich his hands find to do. But the fact that leading statesmen are ofnecessity so absorbed in the tasks of the hour furnishes all the betterreason why as many other people as possible should busy themselves inhelping to prepare opinion for the practical application of unfamiliarbut weighty and promising suggestions, by constant and ready discussionof them upon their merits. As a matter of fact it is not the men mostoccupied who are usually most deaf to new ideas. It is the loungers ofpolitics, the quidnuncs, gossips, bustling idlers, who are mostindustrious in stifling discussion by protests against the waste oftime and the loss of force involved in talking about proposals which arenot exactly ready to be voted on. As it is, everybody knows thatquestions are inadequately discussed, or often not discussed at all, onthe ground that the time is not yet come for their solution. Then whensome unforeseen perturbation, or the natural course of things, forces onthe time for their resolution, they are settled in a slovenly, imperfect, and often downright vicious manner, from the fact thatopinion has not been prepared for solving them in an efficient andperfect manner. The so-called settlement of the question of nationaleducation is the most recent and most deplorable illustration of whatcomes of refusing to examine ideas alleged to be impracticable. Perhapswe may venture to prophesy that the disendowment of the national churchwill supply the next illustration on an imposing scale. Gratuitousprimary instruction, and the redistribution of electoral power, areother matters of signal importance, which comparatively few men willconsent to discuss seriously and patiently, and for our indifference towhich we shall one day surely smart. A judicious and cool writer hassaid that 'an opinion gravely professed by a man of sense and educationdemands always respectful consideration--demands and actually receivesit from those whose own sense and education give them a correlativeright; and whoever offends against this sort of courtesy may fairly bedeemed to have forfeited the privileges it secures. '[14] That is theleast part of the matter. The serious mischief is the eventualmiscarriage and loss and prodigal waste of good ideas. 

The evil of which we have been speaking comes of not seeing the greattruth, that it is worth while to take pains to find out the best way ofdoing a given task, even if you have strong grounds for suspecting thatit will ultimately be done in a worse way. And so also in spheres ofthought away from the political sphere, it is worth while 'to scorndelights and live laborious days' in order to make as sure as we can ofhaving the best opinion, even if we know that this opinion has aninfinitely small chance of being speedily or ever accepted by themajority, or by anybody but ourselves. Truth and wisdom have to bidetheir time, and then take their chance after all. The most that theindividual can do is to seek them for himself, even if he seek alone. And if it is the most, it is also the least. Yet in our present mood weseem not to feel this. We misunderstand the considerations which shouldrightly lead us in practice to surrender some of what we desire, inorder to secure the rest; and rightly make us acquiesce in a second-bestcourse of action, in order to avoid stagnation or retrogression. Wemisunderstand all this, and go on to suppose that there are the samegrounds why we should in our own minds acquiesce in second-bestopinions; why we should mix a little alloy of conventional expressionwith the too fine ore of conviction; why we should adopt beliefs that wesuspect in our hearts to be of more than equivocal authenticity, butinto whose antecedents we do not greatly care to inquire, because theystand so well with the general public. This is compromise or economy ormanagement of the first of the three kinds of which we are talking. Itis economy applied to the formation of opinion; compromise or managementin making up one's mind. 

The lawfulness or expediency of it turns mainly, as with the other twokinds of compromise, upon the relative rights of the majority and theminority, and upon the respect which is owing from the latter to theformer. It is a very easy thing for people endowed with the fanaticaltemperament, or demoralised by the habit of looking at societyexclusively from the juridical point of view, to insist that no respectat all, except the respect that arises from being too weak to have yourown way, is due from either to the other. This shallow and mischievousnotion rests either on a misinterpretation of the experience ofcivilised societies, or else on nothing more creditable than anarbitrary and unreflecting temper. Those who have thought most carefullyand disinterestedly about the matter, are agreed that in advancedsocieties the expedient course is that no portion of the communityshould insist on imposing its own will upon any other portion, except inmatters which are vitally connected with the maintenance of the socialunion. The question where this vital connection begins is open to muchdiscussion. The line defining the sphere of legitimate interference maybe drawn variously, whether at self-regarding acts, or in some othercondition and element of conduct. Wherever this line may be best taken, not only abstract speculation, but the practical and spontaneous tact ofthe world, has decided that there are limits, alike in the interest ofmajority and minority, to the rights of either to disturb the other. Inother words, it is expedient in certain affairs that the will of themajority should be absolutely binding, while in affairs of a differentorder it should count for nothing, or as nearly nothing, as the sociabledependence of a man on his fellows will permit. 

Our thesis is this. In the positive endeavour to realise an opinion, toconvert a theory into practice, it may be, and very often is, highlyexpedient to defer to the prejudices of the majority, to move veryslowly, to bow to the conditions of the _status quo_, to practise thevery utmost sobriety, self-restraint, and conciliatoriness. The mereexpression of opinion, in the next place, the avowal of dissent fromreceived notions, the refusal to conform to language which implies theacceptance of such notions, --this rests on a different footing. Herethe reasons for respecting the wishes and sentiments of the majority arefar less strong, though, as we shall presently see, such reasonscertainly exist, and will weigh with all well-considering men. Finally, in the formation of an opinion as to the abstract preferableness of onecourse of action over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or rightsignificance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of one'scontemporaries lean in the other direction is naught, and no more thandust in the balance. In making up our minds as to what would be thewisest line of policy if it were practicable, we have nothing to do withthe circumstance that it is not practicable. And in settling withourselves whether propositions purporting to state matters of fact aretrim or not, we have to consider how far they are conformable to theevidence. We have nothing to do with the comfort and solace which theywould be likely to bring to others or ourselves, if they were taken astrue. 

A nominal assent to this truth will be instantly given even by those whoin practice systematically disregard it. The difficulty of transformingthat nominal assent into a reality is enormous in such a community asours. Of all societies since the Roman Republic, and not even exceptingthe Roman Republic, England has been the most emphatically andessentially political. She has passed through military phases andthrough religious phases, but they have been transitory, and the greatcentral stream of national life has flowed in political channels. Thepolitical life has been stronger than any other, deeper, wider, morepersistent, more successful. The wars which built up our far-spreadingempire were not waged with designs of military conquest; they weremostly wars for a market. The great spiritual emancipation of thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries figures in our history partly as anaccident, partly as an intrigue, partly as a raid of nobles in search ofspoil. It was hardly until the reformed doctrine became associated withanalogous ideas and corresponding precepts in government, that peoplefelt at home with it, and became really interested in it. 

One great tap-root of our national increase has been the growth ofself-government, or government by deliberative bodies, representingopposed principles and conflicting interests. With the system ofself-government has grown the habit--not of tolerance precisely, forEnglishmen when in earnest are as little in love with tolerance asFrenchmen or any other people, but--of giving way to the will of themajority, so long as they remain a majority. This has come to pass forthe simple reason that, on any other terms, the participation of largenumbers of people in the control and arrangement of public affairsimmediately becomes unworkable. The gradual concentration of power inthe hands of a supreme deliberative body, the active share of so manythousands of persons in choosing and controlling its members, the closeattention with which the proceedings of parliament are followed andwatched, the kind of dignity that has been lent to parliamentary methodsby the great importance of the transactions, have all tended in the samedirection. They have all helped both to fix our strongest and mostconstant interests upon politics, and to ingrain the mental habitsproper to politics, far more deeply than any other, into our generalconstitution and inmost character. 

Thus the political spirit has grown to be the strongest element in ournational life; the dominant force, extending its influence over all ourways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics, or evennothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engendered among usthe real sense of political responsibility. In a corresponding degreehas been discouraged, what it is the object of the present chapter tourge, the sense of intellectual responsibility. If it were inevitablethat one of these two should always enfeeble or exclude the other, ifthe price of the mental alacrity and open-mindedness of the age ofPericles must always be paid in the political incompetence of the age ofDemosthenes, it would be hard to settle which quality ought to be mosteagerly encouraged by those who have most to do with the spiritualdirection of a community. No doubt the tone of a long-enduring andimperial society, such as Rome was, must be conservative, drastic, positive, hostile to the death to every speculative novelty. But then, after all, the permanence of Roman power was only valuable to mankindbecause it ensured the spread of certain civilising ideas. And theseideas had originated among people so characteristically devoid of thesovereign faculty of political coherency as were the Greeks and theJews. In the Greeks, it is true, we find not only ideas of the highestspeculative fertility, but actual political institutions. Still weshould hardly point to Greek history for the most favourable examples oftheir stable working. Practically and as a matter of history, a societyis seldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals andspirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth andnursing the political spirit. There is a decisive preponderance in onedirection or the other, and the equal balance between free and activethinking, and coherent practical energy in a community, seems too hardto sustain. The vast military and political strength of Germany, forinstance, did not exist, and was scarcely anticipated in men's minds, during the time of her most strenuous passion for abstract truth anddeeper learning and new criticism. In France never was political andnational interest so debilitated, so extinct, as it was during the reignof Lewis the Fifteenth: her intellectual interest was never so vivid, so fruitful, or so widely felt. 

Yet it is at least well, and more than that, it is an indispensablecondition of social wellbeing, that the divorce between politicalresponsibility and intellectual responsibility, between respect for whatis instantly practicable and search after what is only important inthought, should not be too complete and universal. Even if there were noother objection, the undisputed predominance of the political spirit hasa plain tendency to limit the subjects in which the men animated by itcan take a real interest. All matters fall out of sight, or at leastfall into a secondary place, which do not bear more or less directly andpatently upon the material and structural welfare of the community. Inthis way the members of the community miss the most bracing, widening, and elevated of the whole range of influences that create greatcharacters. First, they lose sincere concern about the larger questionswhich the human mind has raised up for itself. Second, they lose afearless desire to reach the true answers to them, or if no certainanswers should prove to be within reach, then at any rate to besatisfied on good grounds that this is so. Such questions are notimmediately discerned by commonplace minds to be of social import. Consequently they, and all else that is not obviously connected with themachinery of society, give way in the public consideration to what is soconnected with it, in a manner that cannot be mistaken. 

Again, even minds that are not commonplace are affected for the worse bythe same spirit. They are aware of the existence of the greatspeculative subjects and of their importance, but the pressure of thepolitical spirit on such men makes them afraid of the conclusions towhich free inquiry might bring them. Accordingly they abstain frominquiry, and dread nothing so much as making up their minds. They seereasons for thinking that, if they applied themselves seriously to theformation of true opinions in this or that department, they would cometo conclusions which, though likely to make their way in the course ofsome centuries, are wholly unpopular now, and which might ruin theinfluence of anybody suspected of accepting, or even of so much asleaning towards, them. Life, they reflect, is short; missionaries donot pass for a very agreeable class, nor martyrs for a very sensibleclass; one can only do a trifling amount of good in the world, at best;it is moral suicide to throw away any chance of achieving even thattrifle; and therefore it is best not only not to express, but not totake the trouble to acquire, right views in this quarter or that, and todraw clear away from such or such a region of thought, for the sake ofkeeping peace on earth and superficial good will among men. 

It would be too harsh to stigmatise such a train of thought asself-seeking and hypocritical. It is the natural product of thepolitical spirit, which is incessantly thinking of present consequencesand the immediately feasible. There is nothing in the mere dread oflosing it, to hinder influence from being well employed, so far as itgoes. But one can hardly overrate the ill consequences of thisparticular kind of management, this unspoken bargaining with the littlecircle of his fellows which constitutes the world of a man. If he mayretain his place among them as preacher or teacher, he is willing toforego his birthright of free explanation; he consents to be blind tothe duty which attaches to every intelligent man of having some clearideas, even though only provisional ones, upon the greatest subjects ofhuman interest, and of deliberately preferring these, whatever they maybe, to their opposites. Either an individual or a community is fatallydwarfed by any such limitation of the field in which one is free to usehis mind. For it is a limitation, not prescribed by absorption in oneset of subjects rather than another, nor by insufficient preparation forthe discussion of certain subjects, nor by indolence nor incuriousness, but solely by apprehension of the conclusions to which such use of themind might bring the too courageous seeker. If there were no other illeffect, this kind of limitation would at least have the radicaldisadvantage of dulling the edge of responsibility, of deadening thesharp sense of personal answerableness either to a God, or to society, or to a man's own conscience and intellectual self-respect. 

How momentous a disadvantage this is, we can best know by contemplatingthe characters which have sometimes lighted up the old times. Men werethen devoutly persuaded that their eternal salvation depended on theirhaving true beliefs. Any slackness in finding out which beliefs are thetrue ones would have to be answered for before the throne of AlmightyGod, at the sure risk and peril of everlasting damnation. To whatquarter in the large historic firmament can we turn our eyes with suchcertainty of being stirred and elevated, of thinking better of humanlife and the worth of those who have been most deeply penetrated by itsseriousness, as to the annals of the intrepid spirits whom theprotestant doctrine of indefeasible personal responsibility brought tothe front in Germany in the sixteenth century, and in England andScotland in the seventeenth? It is not their fanaticism, still less isit their theology, which makes the great Puritan chiefs of England andthe stern Covenanters of Scotland so heroic in our sight. It is the factthat they sought truth and ensued it, not thinking of the practicablenor cautiously counting majorities and minorities, but each manpondering and searching so 'as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye. '

It is no adequate answer to urge that this awful consciousness of adivine presence and supervision has ceased to be the living fact it oncewas. That partly explains, but it certainly does not justify, ourpresent lassitude. For the ever-wakeful eye of celestial power is notthe only conceivable stimulus to responsibility. To pass from those grimheroes of protestantism to the French philosophers of the last centuryis a wide leap in a hundred respects, yet they too were pricked by theoestrus of intellectual responsibility. Their doctrine was dismallyinsufficient, and sometimes, as the present writer has often pointedout, it was directly vicious. Their daily lives were surrounded by muchshabbiness and many meannesses. But, after all, no temptation and nomenace, no pains or penalties for thinking about certain subjects, andno rewards for turning to think about something else, could divert suchmen as Voltaire and Diderot from their alert and strenuous search aftersuch truth as could be vouchsafed to their imperfect lights. Acatastrophe followed, it is true, but the misfortunes which attended itwere due more to the champions of tradition and authority than to thesoldiers of emancipation. Even in the case of the latter, they were dueto an inadequate doctrine, and not at all either to their sense of thenecessity of free speculation and inquiry, or to the intrepidity withwhich they obeyed the promptings of that ennobling sense. 

Perhaps the latest attempt of a considerable kind to suppress thepolitical spirit in non-political concerns was the famous movement whichhad its birth a generation ago among the gray quadrangles and ancientgardens of Oxford, 'the sweet city with her dreaming spires, ' wherethere has ever been so much detachment from the world, alongside of thecoarsest and fiercest hunt after the grosser prizes of the world. No onehas much less sympathy with the direction of the tractarian revival thanthe present writer, in whose Oxford days the star of Newman had set, andthe sun of Mill had risen in its stead. And it is needful to distinguishthe fervid and strong spirits with whom the revival began from themimics of our later day. No doubt the mere occasion of tractarianism waspolitical. Its leaders were alarmed at the designs imputed to the newlyreformed parliament of disestablishing the Anglican Church. They askedthemselves the question, which I will put in their own words (_Tract_i. )--'Should the government of the country so far forget their God as tocut off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claims to respect and attention which you makeupon your flock? In answering this question they speedily foundthemselves, as might have been expected, at the opposite pole of thoughtfrom things political. The whole strength of their appeal to members ofthe Church lay in men's weariness of the high and dry optimism, whichpresents the existing order of things as the noblest possible, and theundisturbed way of the majority as the way of salvation. Apostolicalsuccession and Sacramentalism may not have been in themselvesprogressive ideas. The spirit which welcomed them had at least thevirtue of taking away from Caesar the things that are not Caesar's. 

Glaring as were the intellectual faults of the Oxford movement, it wasat any rate a recognition in a very forcible way of the doctrine thatspiritual matters are not to be settled by the dicta of a politicalcouncil. It acknowledged that a man is answerable at his own peril forhaving found or lost the truth. It was a warning that he must reckonwith a judge who will not account the _status quo_, nor the convenienceof a cabinet, a good plea for indolent acquiescence in theologicalerror. It ended, in the case of its most vigorous champions, in a finaland deliberate putting out of the eyes of the understanding. The lastact of assertion of personal responsibility was a headlong acceptance ofthe responsibility of tradition and the Church. This was deplorableenough. But apart from other advantages incidental to the tractarianmovement, such as the attention which it was the means of drawing tohistory and the organic connection between present and past, it had, werepeat, the merit of being an effective protest against what may becalled the House of Commons' view of human life--a view excellent in itsplace, but most blighting and dwarfing out of it. It was, what everysincere uprising of the better spirit in men and women must always be, an effective protest against the leaden tyranny of the man of the worldand the so-called practical person. The man of the world despisescatholics for taking their religious opinions on trust and being theslaves of tradition. As if he had himself formed his own most importantopinions either in religion or anything else. He laughs at them fortheir superstitious awe of the Church. As if his own inward awe of theGreater Number were one whit less of a superstition. He mocks theirdeference for the past. As if his own absorbing deference to the presentwere one tittle better bottomed or a jot more respectable. The modernemancipation will profit us very little if the _status quo_ is to befastened round our necks with the despotic authority of a heavenlydispensation, and if in the stead of ancient Scriptures we are to acceptthe plenary inspiration of Majorities. 

It may be urged that if, as it is the object of the present chapter tostate, there are opinions which a man should form for himself, and whichit may yet be expedient that he should not only be slow to attempt torealise in practical life, but sometimes even slow to express, --then weare demanding from him the performance of a troublesome duty, while weare taking from him the only motives which could really induce him toperform it. If, it may be asked, I am not to carry my notions intopractice, nor try to induce others to accept them, nor even boldlypublish them, why in the name of all economy of force should I take somuch pains in forming opinions which are, after all, on these conditionsso very likely to come to naught? The answer to this is that opinions donot come to naught, even if the man who holds them should never thinkfit to publish them. For one thing, as we shall see in our nextdivision, the conditions which make against frank declaration of ourconvictions are of rare occurrence. And, apart from this, convictionsmay well exert a most decisive influence over our conduct, even ifreasons exist, or seem to exist, for not pressing them on others. Thoughthemselves invisible to the outer world, they may yet operate withmagnetic force both upon other parts of our belief which the outer worlddoes see, and upon the whole of our dealings with it. Whether we aregood or bad, it is only a broken and incoherent fragment of our wholepersonality that even those who are intimate with us, much less thecommon world, can ever come into contact with. The important thing isthat the personality itself should be as little as possible broken, incoherent, and fragmentary; that reasoned and consistent opinionsshould back a firm will, and independent convictions inspire theintellectual self-respect and strenuous self-possession which theclamour of majorities and the silent yet ever-pressing force of the_status quo_ are equally powerless to shake. 

Character is doubtless of far more importance than mere intellectualopinion. We only too often see highly rationalised convictions inpersons of weak purpose or low motives. But while fully recognisingthis, and the sort of possible reality which lies at the root of such aphrase as 'godless intellect' or 'intellectual devils'--though thephrase has no reality when it is used by self-seeking politicians orprelates--yet it is well to remember the very obvious truth thatopinions are at least an extremely important part of character. As it issometimes put, what we think has a prodigiously close connection withwhat we are. The consciousness of having reflected seriously andconclusively on important questions, whether social or spiritual, augments dignity while it does not lessen humility. In this sense, taking thought can and does add a cubit to our stature. Opinions whichwe may not feel bound or even permitted to press on other people, arenot the less forces for being latent. They shape ideals, and it isideals that inspire conduct. They do this, though from afar, and thoughhe who possesses them may not presume to take the world into hisconfidence. Finally, unless a man follows out ideas to their fullconclusion without fear what the conclusion may be, whether he thinks itexpedient to make his thought and its goal fully known or not, it isimpossible that he should acquire a commanding grasp of principles. Anda commanding grasp of principles, whether they are public or not, is atthe very root of coherency of character. It raises mediocrity near to alevel with the highest talents, if those talents are in company with adisposition that allows the little prudences of the hour incessantly toobscure the persistent laws of things. These persistencies, if a manhas once satisfied himself of their direction and mastered theirbearings and application, are just as cogent and valuable a guide toconduct, whether he publishes them _ad urbem et orbem_, or esteems themtoo strong meat for people who have, through indurated use and wont, lost the courage of facing unexpected truths. 

One conspicuous result of the failure to see that our opinions haveroots to them, independently of the feelings which either majorities orother portions of the people around us may entertain about them, is thatneither political matters nor any other serious branches of opinion, engage us in their loftiest or most deep-reaching forms. The advocate ofa given theory of government or society is so misled by a wrongunderstanding of the practice of just and wise compromise in applyingit, as to forget the noblest and most inspiring shape which his theorycan be made to assume. It is the worst of political blunders to insiston carrying an ideal set of principles into execution, where others haverights of dissent, and those others persons whose assent is asindispensable to success, as it is impossible to attain. But to beafraid or ashamed of holding such an ideal set of principles in one'smind in their highest and most abstract expression, does more than anyone other cause to stunt or petrify those elements in character to whichlife should owe most of its savour. 

If a man happens to be a Conservative, for instance, it is pitiful thathe should think so much more of what other people on his side or theother think, than of the widest and highest of the ideas on which aconservative philosophy of life and human society reposes. Such ideasare these, --that the social union is the express creation and orderingof the Deity: that its movements follow his mysterious and fixeddispensation: that the church and the state are convertible terms, andeach citizen of the latter is an incorporated member of the former: thatconscience, if perversely and misguidedly self-asserting, has no rightsagainst the decrees of the conscience of the nation: that it is the mostdetestable of crimes to perturb the pacific order of society either byactive agitation or speculative restlessness; that descent from a longline of ancestors in great station adds an element of dignity to life, and imposes many high obligations. We do not say that these and therest of the propositions which make up the true theoretic basis of aconservative creed, are proper for the hustings, or expedient in anelection address or a speech in parliament. We do say that if these highand not unintelligible principles, which alone can give to reactionaryprofessions any worth or significance, were present in the minds of menwho speak reactionary language, the country would be spared the ignominyof seeing certain real truths of society degraded at the hands ofaristocratic adventurers and plutocratic parasites into some miserableprocess of 'dishing Whigs. '

This impoverishment of aims and depravation of principles by the triumphof the political spirit outside of its proper sphere, cannotunfortunately be restricted to any one set of people in the state. It issomething in the very atmosphere, which no sanitary cordon can limit. Liberalism, too, would be something more generous, more attractive--yes, and more practically effective, if its professors and champions couldallow their sense of what is feasible to be refreshed and widened by amore free recognition, however private and undemonstrative, of thetheoretic ideas which give their social creed whatever life andconsistency it may have. Such ideas are these: That the conditions ofthe social union are not a mystery, only to be touched by miracle, butthe results of explicable causes, and susceptible of constantmodification: that the thoughts of wise and patriotic men should beperpetually turned towards the improvement of these conditions in everydirection: that contented acquiescence in the ordering that has comedown to us from the past is selfish and anti-social, because amid theceaseless change that is inevitable in a growing organism, theinstitutions of the past demand progressive re-adaptations: that suchimprovements are most likely to be secured in the greatest abundance bylimiting the sphere of authority, extending that of free individuality, and steadily striving after the bestowal, so far as the nature of thingswill ever permit it, of equality of opportunity: that while there isdignity in ancestry, a modern society is only safe in proportion as itsummons capacity to its public counsels and enterprises; that such asociety to endure must progress: that progress on its political sidemeans more than anything else the substitution of Justice as a governingidea, instead of Privilege, and that the best guarantee for justice inpublic dealings is the participation in their own government of thepeople most likely to suffer from injustice. This is not an exhaustiveaccount of the progressive doctrine, and we have here nothing to say asto its soundness. We only submit that if those who use the watchwords ofLiberalism were to return upon its principles, instead of dwellingexclusively on practical compromises, the tone of public life would beimmeasurably raised. The cause of social improvement would be lesssystematically balked of the victories that are best worth gaining. Progress would mean something more than mere entrances and exits on thetheatre of office. We should not see in the mass of parliamentarycandidates--and they are important people, because nearly everyEnglishman with any ambition is a parliamentary candidate, actual orpotential--that grave anxiety, that sober rigour, that immense caution, which are all so really laughable, because so many of those men are onlyanxious lest they should make a mistake in finding out what themajority of their constituents would like them to think; only rigorousagainst those who are indiscreet enough to press a principle against thebeck of a whip or a wire-puller; and only very cautious not so much lesttheir opinion should be wrong, as lest it should not pay. 

Indolence and timidity have united to popularise among us a flaccidlatitudinarianism, which thinks itself a benign tolerance for theopinions of others. It is in truth only a pretentious form of beingwithout settled opinions of our own, and without any desire to settlethem. No one can complain of the want of speculative activity at thepresent time in a certain way. The air, at a certain social elevation, is as full as it has ever been of ideas, theories, problems, possiblesolutions, suggested questions, and proffered answers. But then they areat large, without cohesion, and very apt to be the objects even in themore instructed minds of not much more than dilettante interest. We seein solution an immense number of notions, which people think it quiteunnecessary to precipitate in the form of convictions. We constantlyhear the age lauded for its tolerance, for its candour, for its opennessof mind, for the readiness with which a hearing is given to ideas thatforty years ago, or even less than that, would have excluded personssuspected of holding them from decent society, and in fact did soexclude them. Before, however, we congratulate ourselves too warmly onthis, let us be quite sure that we are not mistaking for tolerance whatis really nothing more creditable than indifference. These two attitudesof mind, which are so vitally unlike in their real quality, are so hardto distinguish in their outer seeming. 

One is led to suspect that carelessness is the right name for what lookslike reasoned toleration, by such a line of consideration as thefollowing. It is justly said that at the bottom of all the greatdiscussions of modern society lie the two momentous questions, firstwhether there is a God, and second whether the soul is immortal. Inother words, whether our fellow-creatures are the highest beings whotake an interest in us, or in whom we need take an interest; and, then, whether life in this world is the only life of which we shall ever beconscious. It is true of most people that when they are talking ofevolution, and the origin of species, and the experiential orintuitional source of ideas, and the utilitarian or transcendental basisof moral obligation, these are the questions which they really have intheir minds. Now, in spite of the scientific activity of the day, nobodyis likely to contend that men are pressed keenly in their souls by anypoignant stress of spiritual tribulation in the face of the two supremeenigmas. Nobody will say that there is much of that striving andwrestling and bitter agonising, which whole societies of men have feltbefore now on questions of far less tremendous import. Ours, as has beentruly said, is 'a time of loud disputes and weak convictions, ' In ageneration deeply impressed by a sense of intellectual responsibilitythis could not be. As it is, even superior men are better pleased toplay about the height of these great arguments, to fly in busyintellectual sport from side to side, from aspect to aspect, than theyare intent on resolving what it is, after all, that the discussion comesto and to which solution, when everything has been said and heard, thebalance of truth really to incline. There are too many gigglingepigrams; people are too willing to look on collections of mutuallyhostile opinions with the same kind of curiosity which they bestow on acollection of mutually hostile beasts in a menagerie. They have veryfaint predilections for one rather than another. If they were trulyalive to the duty of conclusiveness, or to the inexpressible magnitudeof the subjects which nominally occupy their minds, but really onlyexercise their tongues, this elegant Pyrrhonism would be impossible, andthis light-hearted neutrality most unendurable. 

Well has the illustrious Pascal said with reference to one of the twogreat issues of the modern controversy:--'The immortality of the soul isa thing that concerns us so closely and touches us so profoundly, thatone must have lost all feeling to be indifferent as to knowing how thematter is. All our actions and all our thoughts must follow suchdifferent paths, according as there are eternal goods to hope for or arenot, that it is impossible to take a step with sense and judgment, without regulating it in view of this point, which ought to be our firstobject. . . . I can have nothing but compassion for those who groan andtravail in this doubt with all sincerity, who look on it as the worst ofmisfortunes, and who, sparing no pains to escape from it, make of thissearch their chief and most serious employment. . . . But he who doubts andsearches not is at the same time a grievous wrongdoer, and a grievouslyunfortunate man. If along with this he is tranquil and self-satisfied, if he publishes his contentment to the world and plumes himself upon it, and if it is this very state of doubt which he makes the subject of hisjoy and vanity--I have no terms in which to describe so extravagant acreature. '[15] Who, except a member of the school of extravagantcreatures themselves, would deny that Pascal's irritation is mostwholesome and righteous?

Perhaps in reply to this, we may be confronted by our own doctrine ofintellectual responsibility interpreted in a directly opposite sense. Wemay be reminded of the long array of difficulties that interfere betweenus and knowledge in that tremendous matter, and of objections that risein such perplexing force to an answer either one way or the other. Andfinally we may be despatched with a eulogy of caution and a censure oftoo great heat after certainty. The answer is that there is a kind ofDoubt not without search, but after and at the end of search, which isnot open to Pascal's just reproaches against the more ignoble andfrivolous kind. And this too has been described for us by a subtledoctor of Pascal's communion. 'Are there pleasures of Doubt, as well asof Inference and Assent? In one sense there are. Not indeed if doubtmeans ignorance, uncertainty, or hopeless suspense; but there is acertain grave acquiescence in ignorance, a recognition of our impotenceto solve momentous and urgent questions, which has a satisfaction of itsown. After high aspirations, after renewed endeavours, after bootlesstoil, after long wanderings, after hope, effort, weariness, failure, painfully alternating and recurring, it is an immense relief to theexhausted mind to be able to say, "At length I know that I can knownothing about anything. " . . . Ignorance remains the evil which it everwas, but something of the peace of certitude is gained in knowing theworst, and in having reconciled the mind to the endurance of it. '[16]Precisely, and what one would say of our own age is that it will notdeliberately face this knowledge of the worst. So it misses the peace ofcertitude, and not only its peace, but the strength and coherency thatfollow strict acceptance of the worst, when the worst is after all thebest within reach. 

Those who are in earnest when they blame too great haste aftercertainty, do in reality mean us to embrace certainty, but in favour ofthe vulgar opinions. They only see the prodigious difficulties of thecontroversy when you do not incline to their own side in it. They onlypanegyrise caution and the strictly provisional when they suspect thatintrepidity and love of the conclusive would lead them to unwelcomeshores. These persons, however, whether fortunately or unfortunately, have no longer much influence over the most active part of the nationalintelligence. Whether permanently or not, resolute orthodoxy, howeverprosperous it may seem among many of the uncultivated rich, has lost itshold upon thought. For thought has become dispersive, and thecentrifugal forces of the human mind, among those who think seriously, have for the time become dominant and supreme. No one, I suppose, imagines that the singular ecclesiastical revival which is now going on, is accompanied by any revival of real and reasoned belief; or that theopulent manufacturers who subscribe so generously for restored cathedralfabrics and the like, have been moved by the apologetics of _Aids toFaith_ and the Christian Evidence Society. 

Obviously only three ways of dealing with the great problems of which wehave spoken are compatible with a strong and well-bottomed character. Wemay affirm that there is a deity with definable attributes; and thatthere is a conscious state and continued personality after thedissolution of the body. Or we may deny. Or we may assure ourselves thatwe have no faculties enabling us on good evidence either to deny oraffirm. Intellectual self-respect and all the qualities that are derivedfrom that, may well go with any one of these three courses, decisivelyfollowed and consistently applied in framing a rule of life and asettled scheme of its aims and motives. Why do we say that intellectualself-respect is not vigorous, nor the sense of intellectualresponsibility and truthfulness and coherency quick and wakeful amongus? Because so many people, even among those who might be expected toknow better, insist on the futile attempt to reconcile all thosecourses, instead of fixing on one and steadily abiding in it. They speakas if they affirmed, and they act as if they denied, and in their heartsthey cherish a slovenly sort of suspicion that we can neither deny noraffirm. It may be said that this comes to much the same thing as if theyhad formally decided in the last or neutral sense. It is not so. Thisillegitimate union of three contradictories fritters character away, breaks it up into discordant parts, and dissolves into mercurialfluidity that leavening sincerity and free and cheerful boldness, whichcome of harmonious principles of faith and action, and without which mencan never walk as confident lovers of justice and truth. 

Ambrose's famous saying, that 'it hath not pleased the Lord to give hispeople salvation in dialectic, ' has a profound meaning far beyond itsapplication to theology. It is deeply true that our ruling convictionsare less the product of ratiocination than of sympathy, imagination, usage, tradition. But from this it does not follow that the reasoningfaculties are to be further discouraged. On the contrary, just becausethe other elements are so strong that they can be trusted to take careof themselves, it is expedient to give special countenance to theintellectual habits, which alone can check and rectify the constantlyaberrating tendencies of sentiment on the one side, and custom on theother. This remark brings us to another type, of whom it is notirrelevant to speak shortly in this place. The consequences of thestrength of the political spirit are not all direct, nor does itsstrength by any means spring solely from its indulgence to the lessrespectable elements of character, such as languor, extreme pliableness, superficiality. On the contrary, it has an indirect influence inremoving the only effective restraint on the excesses of some qualitieswhich, when duly directed and limited, are among the most precious partsof our mental constitution. The political spirit is the great force inthrowing love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place. The evil does not stop here. This achievement has indirectlycountenanced the postponement of intellectual methods, and thediminution of the sense of intellectual responsibility, by a school thatis anything rather than political. 

Theology has borrowed, and coloured for her own use, the principleswhich were first brought into vogue in politics. If in the one field itis the fashion to consider convenience first and truth second, in theother there is a corresponding fashion of placing truth second andemotional comfort first. If there are some who compromise their realopinions, or the chance of reaching truth, for the sake of gain, thereare far more who shrink from giving their intelligence free play, forthe sake of keeping undisturbed certain luxurious spiritualsensibilities. This choice of emotional gratification before truth andupright dealing with one's own understanding, creates a character thatis certainly far less unlovely than those who sacrifice theirintellectual integrity to more material convenience. The moral flaw isless palpable and less gross. Yet here too there is the stain ofintellectual improbity, and it is perhaps all the more mischievous forbeing partly hidden under the mien of spiritual exaltation. 

There is in literature no more seductive illustration of this seductivetype than Rousseau's renowned character of the SavoyardVicar--penetrated with scepticism as to the attributes of the deity, themeaning of the holy rites, the authenticity of the sacred documents; yetfull of reverence, and ever respecting in silence what he could neitherreject nor understand. 'The essential worship, ' he says, 'is the worshipof the heart. God never rejects this homage, under whatever form it beoffered to him. In old days I used to say mass with the levity which intime infects even the gravest things when we do them too often. Sinceacquiring my new principles [of reverential scepticism] I celebrate itwith more veneration: I am overcome by the majesty of the Supreme Being, by his presence, by the insufficiency of the human mind, which conceivesso ill what pertains to its author. When I approach the moment ofconsecration, I collect myself for performing the act with all thefeelings required by the church and the majesty of the sacrament. Istrive to annihilate my reason before the Supreme Intelligence, saying, Who art thou that thou shouldst measure infinite power?'[17]

The Savoyard Vicar is not imaginary. The acquiescence in indefiniteideas for the sake of comforted emotions, and the abnegation of strongconvictions in order to make room for free and plenteous effusion, havefor us all the marks of a too familiar reality. Such a doctrine is aneveryday plea for self-deception, and a current justification forillusion even among some of the finer spirits. They have persuadedthemselves not only that the life of the religious emotions is thehighest life, but that it is independent of the intellectual forms withwhich history happens to have associated it. And so they refine andsophisticate and make havoc with plain and honest interpretation, inorder to preserve a soft serenity of soul unperturbed. 

Now, we are not at all concerned to dispute such positions as thatFeeling is the right starting-point of moral education; that in formingcharacter appeal should be to the heart rather than to theunderstanding; that the only basis on which our faculties can beharmoniously ordered is the preponderance of affection over reason. These propositions open much grave and complex discussion, and they arenot to our present purpose. We only desire to state the evil of thenotion that a man is warranted in comforting himself with dogmas andformularies, which he has first to empty of all definite, precise, andclearly determinable significance, before he can get them out of the wayof his religious sensibilities. Whether Reason or Affection is to havethe empire in the society of the future, when Reason may possibly haveno more to discover for us in the region of morals and religion, and sowill have become _emeritus_ and taken a lower place, as of a tutor whoseservices the human family, being now grown up, no longerrequires, --however this may be, it is at least certain that in themeantime the spiritual life of man needs direction quite as much as itneeds impulse, and light quite as much as force. This direction andlight can only be safely procured by the free and vigorous use of theintelligence. But the intelligence is not free in the presence of amortal fear lest its conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity ofspirit. There is always hope of a man so long as he dwells in the regionof the direct categorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so longas he does not deny the rightly drawn conclusion after accepting themajor and minor premisses. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easygrace. Yet experience shows it to be too hard of attainment for thosewho tamper with disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake ofluxuriating in the softness of spiritual transport without interruptionfrom a syllogism. It is true that there are now and then in life as inhistory noble and fair natures, that by the silent teaching andunconscious example of their inborn purity, star-like constancy, andgreat devotion, do carry the world about them to further heights ofliving than can be attained by ratiocination. But these, the blamelessand loved saints of the earth, rise too rarely on our dull horizons tomake a rule for the world. The law of things is that they who tamperwith veracity, from whatever motive, are tampering with the vital forceof human progress. Our comfort and the delight of the religiousimagination are no better than forms of self-indulgence, when they aresecured at the cost of that love of truth on which, more than onanything else, the increase of light and happiness among men mustdepend. We have to fight and do lifelong battle against the forces ofdarkness, and anything that turns the edge of reason blunts the surestand most potent of our weapons. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Burton's _Lift of Hume, _ ii. 186-188]

[Footnote 14: Isaac Taylor's _Natural History of Enthusiasm_, p. 226. ]

[Footnote 15: _Pensées_, II. Art ii. ]

[Footnote 16: Dr. Newman's _Grammar of Assent_, p. 201. ]

[Footnote 17: _Emile_, bk. Iv. ]

CHAPTER IV. 

RELIGIOUS CONFORMITY. 

The main field of discussion touching Compromise in expression andavowal lies in the region of religious belief. In politics no oneseriously contends that respect for the feelings and prejudices of otherpeople requires us to be silent about our opinions. A republican, forinstance, is at perfect liberty to declare himself so. Nobody will saythat he is not within his rights if he should think it worth while topractise this liberty, though of course he will have to face the obloquywhich attends all opinion that is not shared by the more demonstrativeand vocal portions of the public. It is true that in every stablesociety a general conviction prevails of the extreme undesirableness ofconstantly laying bare the foundations of government. Incessantdiscussion of the theoretical bases of the social union is naturallyconsidered worse than idle. It is felt by many wise men that the chiefbusiness of the political thinker is to interest himself ingeneralisations of such a sort as leads with tolerable straightness topractical improvements of a far-reaching and durable kind. Even amongthose, however, who thus feel it not to be worth while to be for everhandling the abstract principles which are, after all, only clumsyexpressions of the real conditions that bring and keep men together insociety, yet nobody of any consideration pretends to silence or limitthe free discussion of these principles. Although a man is not likely tobe thanked who calls attention to the vast discrepancies between thetheory and practice of the constitution, yet nobody now wouldcountenance the notion of an inner doctrine in politics. We smile at theline that Hume took in speaking of the doctrine of non-resistance. Hedid not deny that the right of resistance to a tyrannical sovereign doesactually belong to a nation. But, he said, 'if ever on any occasion itwere laudable to conceal truth from the populace, it must be confessedthat the doctrine of resistance affords such an example; and that allspeculative reasoners ought to observe with regard to this principlethe same cautious silence which the laws, in every species ofgovernment, have ever prescribed to themselves. ' As if the cautioussilence of the political writer could prevent a populace from feelingthe heaviness of an oppressor's hand, and striving to find relief fromunjust burdens. As if any nation endowed with enough of the spirit ofindependence to assent to the right of resistance when offered to themas a speculative theorem, would not infallibly be led by the same spiritto assert the right without the speculative theorem. That so acute ahead as Hume's should have failed to perceive these very plainconsiderations, and that he should moreover have perpetrated theabsurdity of declaring the right of resistance, in the same breath inwhich he declares the laudableness of keeping it a secret, only allowshow carefully a man need steer after he has once involved himself in thelabyrinths of Economy. [18]

In religion the unreasonableness of imposing a similar cautious silenceis not yet fully established, nor the vicious effects of practising itclearly recognised. In these high matters an amount of economy andmanagement is held praiseworthy, which in any other subject would beuniversally condemned as cowardly and ignoble. Indeed the preliminarystage has scarcely been reached--the stage in which public opiniongrants to every one the unrestricted right of shaping his own beliefs, independently of those of the people who surround him. Any woman, forinstance, suspected of having cast behind her the Bible and allpractices of devotion and the elementary articles of the common creed, would be distrustfully regarded even by those who wink at the same kindof mental boldness in men. Nay, she would be so regarded even by some ofthe very men who have themselves discarded as superstition what theystill wish women to retain for law and gospel. So long as any class ofadults are effectually discouraged in the free use of their minds uponthe most important subjects, we are warranted in saying that the era offree thought, which naturally precedes the era of free speech, is stillimperfectly developed. 

The duties and rights of free speech are by no means identical withthose of independent thought. One general reason for this is tolerablyplain. The expression of opinion directly affects other people, whileits mere formation directly affects no one but ourselves. Therefore thelimits of compromise in expression are less widely and freely placed, because the rights and interests of all who may be made listeners to ourspoken or written words are immediately concerned. In forming opinions, a man or woman owes no consideration to any person or persons whatever. Truth is the single object. It is truth that in the forum of conscienceclaims an undivided allegiance. The publication of opinion stands onanother footing. That is an external act, with possible consequences, like all other external acts, both to the doer and to every one withinthe sphere of his influence. And, besides these, it has possibleconsequences to the prosperity of the opinion itself. [19]

A hundred questions of fitness, of seasonableness, of conflictingexpediencies, present themselves in this connection, and nothing givesmore anxiety to a sensible man who holds notions opposed to the currentprejudices, than to hit the right mark where intellectual integrity andprudence, firmness and wise reserve, are in exact accord. When we cometo declaring opinions that are, however foolishly and unreasonably, associated with pain and even a kind of turpitude in the minds of thosewho strongly object to them, then some of our most powerful sympathiesare naturally engaged. We wonder whether duty to truth can possiblyrequire us to inflict keen distress on those to whom we are bound by thetenderest and most consecrated ties. This is so wholly honourable asentiment, that no one who has not made himself drunk with the thin sourwine of a crude and absolute logic will refuse to consider it. Before, however, attempting to illustrate cases of conscience in this order, weventure to make a short digression into the region of the matter, asdistinct from the manner of free speech. One or two changes of greatimportance in the way in which men think about religion, bear directlyupon the conditions on which they may permit themselves and others tospeak about it. 

The peculiar character of all the best kinds of dissent from the nominalcreed of the time, makes it rather less difficult for us to try toreconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for thefeelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would havebeen the case a hundred years ago. 'It is not now with a polite sneer, 'as a high ecclesiastical authority lately admitted, 'still less with arude buffet or coarse words, that Christianity is assailed. ' Beforechurchmen congratulate themselves too warmly on this improvement in thenature of the attack, perhaps they ought to ask themselves how far it isdue to the change in the position of the defending party. The truth isthat the coarse and realistic criticism of which Voltaire was theconsummate master, has done its work. It has driven the defenders of theold faith into the milder and more genial climate of non-naturalinterpretations, and the historic sense, and a certain elasticrelativity of dogma. The old criticism was victorious, but after victoryit vanished. One reason of this was that the coarse and realistic formsof belief had either vanished before it, or else they forsook theirancient pretensions and clothed themselves in more modest robes. Theconsequence of this, and of other causes which might be named, is thatthe modern attack, while fully as serious and much more radical, has acertain gravity, decorum, and worthiness of form. No one of any sense orknowledge now thinks the Christian religion had its origin indeliberate imposture. The modern freethinker does not attack it; heexplains it. And what is more, he explains it by referring its growth tothe better, and not to the worse part of human nature. He traces it tomen's cravings for a higher morality. He finds its source in theiraspirations after nobler expression of that feeling for theincommensurable things, which is in truth under so many varieties ofinwoven pattern the common universal web of religious faith. 

The result of this way of looking at a creed which a man no longeraccepts, is that he is able to speak of it with patience and historicrespect. He can openly mark his dissent from it, without exacerbatingthe orthodox sentiment by galling pleasantries or bitter animadversionupon details. We are now awake to the all-important truth that belief inthis or that detail of superstition is the result of an irrational stateof mind, and flows logically from superstitious premisses. We see thatit is to begin at the wrong end, to assail the deductions as impossible, instead of sedulously building up a state of mind in which theirimpossibility would become spontaneously visible. 

Besides the great change which such a point of view makes in men's wayof speaking of a religion, whose dogmas and documents they reject, thereis this further consideration leaning in the same direction. Thetendency of modern free thought is more and more visibly towards theextraction of the first and more permanent elements of the old faith, tomake the purified material of the new. When Dr. Congreve met the famousepigram about Comte's system being Catholicism minus Christianity, bythe reply that it is Catholicism plus Science, he gave an ingeniousexpression to the direction which is almost necessarily taken by all whoattempt, in however informal a manner, to construct for themselves someworking system of faith, in place of the faith which science andcriticism have sapped. In what ultimate form, acceptable to greatmultitudes of men, these attempts will at last issue, no one can nowtell. For we, like the Hebrews of old, shall all have to live and die infaith, 'not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and being persuaded of them, and embracing them, and confessing that weare strangers and pilgrims on the earth. ' Meanwhile, after the firstgreat glow and passion of the just and necessary revolt of reasonagainst superstition have slowly lost the exciting splendour of thedawn, and become diffused in the colourless space of a rather bleaknoonday, the mind gradually collects again some of the ideas of the oldreligion of the West, and willingly, or even joyfully, suffers itself tobe once more breathed upon by something of its spirit. Christianity wasthe last great religious synthesis. It is the one nearest to us. Nothingis more natural than that those who cannot rest content withintellectual analysis, while awaiting the advent of the Saint Paul ofthe humanitarian faith of the future, should gather up provisionallysuch fragmentary illustrations of this new faith as are to be found inthe records of the old. Whatever form may be ultimately imposed on ourvague religious aspirations by some prophet to come, who shall unitesublime depth of feeling and lofty purity of life with strongintellectual grasp and the gift of a noble eloquence, we may at least besure of this, that it will stand as closely related to Christianity asChristianity stood closely related to the old Judaic dispensation. It iscommonly assumed that the rejecters of the popular religion stand inface of it, as the Christians stood in face of the pagan belief andpagan rites in the Empire. The analogy is inexact. The modern denier, ifhe is anything better than that, or entertains hopes of a creed to come, is nearer to the position of the Christianising Jew. [20] Science, whenshe has accomplished all her triumphs in her own order, will still haveto go back, when the time comes, to assist in the building up of a newcreed by which men can live. The builders will have to seek material inthe purified and sublimated ideas, of which the confessions and rites ofthe Christian churches have been the grosser expression. Just as whatwas once the new dispensation was preached _a Judaeos ad Judaeos apudJudaeos_, so must the new, that is to be, find a Christian teacher andChristian hearers. It can hardly be other than an expansion, adevelopment, a readaptation, of all the moral and spiritual truth thatlay hidden under the worn-out forms. It must be such a harmonising ofthe truth with our intellectual conceptions as shall fit it to be anactive guide to conduct. In a world '_where men sit and hear each othergroan, where but to think is to be full of sorrow_, ' it is hard toimagine a time when we shall be indifferent to that sovereign legend ofPity. We have to incorporate it in some wider gospel of Justice andProgress. 

I shall not, I hope, be suspected of any desire to prophesy too smooththings. It is no object of ours to bridge over the gulf between beliefin the vulgar theology and disbelief. Nor for a single moment do wepretend that, when all the points of contact between virtuous belief andvirtuous disbelief are made the most of that good faith will allow, there will not still and after all remain a terrible controversy betweenthose who cling passionately to all the consolations, mysteries, personalities, of the orthodox faith, and us who have made up our mindsto face the worst, and to shape, as best we can, a life in which thecardinal verities of the common creed shall have no place. The futurefaith, like the faith of the past, brings not peace but a sword. It is atale not of concord, but of households divided against themselves. Thosewho are incessantly striving to make the old bottles hold the new wine, to reconcile the irreconcilable, to bring the Bible and the dogmas ofthe churches to be good friends with history and criticism, are promptedby the humanest intention. [21] One sympathises with this amiable anxietyto soften shocks, and break the rudeness of a vital transition. In thisessay, at any rate, there is no such attempt. We know that it is the sonagainst the father, and the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law. No softness of speech will disguise the portentous differences betweenthose who admit a supernatural revelation and those who deny it. Nocharity nor goodwill can narrow the intellectual breach between thosewho declare that a world without an ever-present Creator withintelligible attributes would be to them empty and void, and those whoinsist that none of the attributes of a Creator can ever be grasped bythe finite intelligence of men. [22] Our object in urging the historic, semi-conservative, and almost sympathetic quality, which distinguishesthe unbelief of to-day from the unbelief of a hundred years ago, is onlyto show that the most strenuous and upright of plain-speakers is lesslikely to shock and wound the lawful sensibilities of devout personsthan he would have been so long as unbelief went no further than bitterattack on small details. In short, all save the purely negative andpurely destructive school of freethinkers, are now able to deal withthe beliefs from which they dissent, in a way which makes patient anddisinterested controversy not wholly impossible. 

One more point of much importance ought to be mentioned. The belief thatheresy is the result of wilful depravity is fast dying out. People nolonger seriously think that speculative error is bound up with moraliniquity, or that mistaken thinking is either the result or the cause ofwicked living. Even the official mouthpieces of established beliefs nowusually represent a bad heart as only one among other possible causes ofunbelief. It divides the curse with ignorance, intellectual shallowness, the unfortunate influence of plausible heresiarchs, and otheralternative roots of evil. They thus leave a way of escape, by which theperson who does not share their own convictions may still be creditedwith a good moral character. Some persons, it is true, 'cannot see how aman who deliberately rejects the Roman Catholic religion can, in theeyes of those who earnestly believe it, be other than a rebel againstGod. ' They assure us that, 'as opinions become better marked and moredistinctly connected with action, the truth that decided dissent fromthem implies more or less of a reproach upon those who hold themdecidedly, becomes so obvious that every one perceives it. ' No doubt aprotestant or a sceptic regards the beliefs of a catholic as a reproachupon the believer's understanding. So the man whose whole faith rests onthe miraculous and on acts of special intervention, regards the strictlypositive and scientific thinker as the dupe of a crude and narrow logic. But this now carries with it no implication of moral obliquity. DeMaistre's rather grotesque conviction that infidels always die ofhorrible diseases with special names, could now only be held among thevery dregs of the ecclesiastical world. 

Nor is it correct to say that 'when religious differences come to be, and are regarded as, mere differences of opinion, it is because thecontroversy is really decided in the sceptical sense. ' Those who agreewith the present writer, for example, are not sceptics. They positively, absolutely, and without reserve, reject as false the whole system ofobjective propositions which make up the popular belief of the day, inone and all of its theological expressions. They look upon that systemas mischievous in its consequences to society, for many reasons, --amongothers because it tends to divert and misdirect the most energeticfaculties of human nature. This, however, does not make them suspect themotives or the habitual morality of those who remain in the creed inwhich they were nurtured. The difference is a difference of opinion, aspurely as if we refused to accept the undulatory theory of light; and wetreat it as such. Then reverse this. Why is it any more impossible forthose who remain in the theological stage, who are not in the smallestdegree sceptical, who in their heart of hearts embrace without a shadowof misgiving all the mysteries of the faith, why is it any moreimpossible for them than for us, whose convictions are as strong astheirs, to treat the most radical dissidence as that and nothing otheror worse? Logically, it perhaps might not be hard to convict them ofinconsistency, but then, as has been so often said, inconsistency is atotally different thing from insincerity, or doubting adherence, orsilent scepticism. The beliefs of an ordinary man are a complexstructure of very subtle materials, all compacted into a whole, not bylogic, but by lack of logic; not by syllogism or sorites, but by thevague. 

As a plain matter of fact and observation, we may all perceive thatdissent from religious opinion less and less implies reproach in anyserious sense. We all of us know in the flesh liberal catholics andlatitudinarian protestants, who hold the very considerable number ofbeliefs that remain to them, quite as firmly and undoubtingly asbelievers who are neither liberal nor latitudinarian. The compatibilityof error in faith with virtue in conduct is to them only a mystery themore, a branch of the insoluble problem of Evil, permitted by a Being atonce all-powerful and all-benevolent. Stringent logic may make shortwork of either fact, --a benevolent author of evil, or a virtuousdespiser of divine truth. But in an atmosphere of mystery, logicalcontradictions melt away. Faith gives a sanction to that tolerant andcharitable judgment of the character of heretics, which has its realsprings partly in common human sympathy whereby we are all bound to oneanother, and partly in experience, which teaches us that practicalrighteousness and speculative orthodoxy do not always have their rootsin the same soil. The world is every day growing larger. The range ofthe facts of the human race is being enormously extended by naturalists, by historians, by philologists, by travellers, by critics. The manifoldpast experiences of humanity are daily opening out to us in vaster andat the same time more ordered proportions. And so even those who holdfast to Christianity as the noblest, strongest, and only finalconclusion of these experiences, are yet constrained to admit that it isno more than a single term in a very long and intricate series. 

The object of the foregoing digression is to show some cause forthinking that dissent from the current beliefs is less and less likelyto inflict upon those who retain them any very intolerable kind ordegree of mental pain. Therefore it is in so far all the plainer, aswell as easier, a duty not to conceal such dissent. What we have beensaying comes to this. If a believer finds that his son, for instance, has ceased to believe, he no longer has this disbelief thrust upon himin gross and irreverent forms. Nor does he any longer suppose that theunbelieving son must necessarily be a profligate. And moreover, inninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he no longer supposes that infidels, of his own family or acquaintance at any rate, will consume for eternalages in lakes of burning marl. 

Let us add another consideration. One reason why so many persons arereally shocked and pained by the avowal of heretical opinions is thevery fact that such avowal is uncommon. If unbelievers and doubters weremore courageous, believers would be less timorous. It is because theylive in an enervating fool's paradise of seeming assent and conformity, that the breath of an honest and outspoken word strikes so eager andnipping on their sensibilities. If they were not encouraged to supposethat all the world is of their own mind, if they were forced out of thatatmosphere of self-indulgent silences and hypocritical reserves, whichis systematically poured round them, they would acquire a robustermental habit. They would learn to take dissents for what they are worth. They would be led either to strengthen or to discard their ownopinions, if the dissents happened to be weighty or instructive; eitherto refute or neglect such dissents as should be ill-founded orinsignificant. They will remain valetudinarians, so long as a curtain ofcompromise shelters them from the real belief of those of theirneighbours who have ventured to use their minds with some measure ofindependence. A very brief contact with people who, when the occasioncomes, do not shrink from saying what they think, is enough to modifythat excessive liability to be shocked at truth-speaking, which is onlyso common because truth-speaking itself is so unfamiliar. 

Now, however great the pain inflicted by the avowal of unbelief, itseems to the present writer that one relationship in life, and one only, justifies us in being silent where otherwise it would be right to speak. This relationship is that between child and parents. Those parents arewisest who train their sons and daughters in the utmost liberty both ofthought and speech; who do not instill dogmas into them, but inculcateupon them the sovereign importance of correct ways of forming opinions;who, while never dissembling the great fact that if one opinion istrue, its contradictory cannot be true also, but must be a lie and mustpartake of all the evil qualities of a lie, yet always set them theexample of listening to unwelcome opinions with patience and candour. Still all parents are not wise. They cannot all endure to hear of anyreligious opinions except their own. Where it would give them sincereand deep pain to hear a son or daughter avow disbelief in theinspiration of the Bible and so forth, then it seems that the youngerperson is warranted in refraining from saying that he or she does notaccept such and such doctrines. This, of course, only where the son ordaughter feels a tender and genuine attachment to the parent. Where theparent has not earned this attachment, has been selfish, indifferent, orcruel, the title to the special kind of forbearance of which we arespeaking can hardly exist. In an ordinary way, however, a parent has aclaim on us which no other person in the world can have, and a man'sself-respect ought scarcely to be injured if he finds himself shrinkingfrom playing the apostle to his own father and mother. 

One can indeed imagine circumstances where this would not be true. Ifyou are persuaded that you have had revealed to you a glorious gospel oflight and blessedness, it is impossible not to thirst to impart suchtidings most eagerly to those who are closest about your heart. We arenot in that position. We have as yet no magnificent vision, so definite, so touching, so 'clothed with the beauty of a thousand stars, ' as tomake us eager, for the sake of it, to murder all the sweetnesses offilial piety in an aggressive eristic. This much one concedes. Yet letus ever remember that those elders are of nobler type who have kepttheir minds in a generous freedom, and have made themselves strong withthat magnanimous confidence in truth, which the Hebrew expressed in oldphrase, that if counsel or work be of men it will come to nought, but ifit be of God ye cannot overthrow it. 

Even in the case of parents, and even though our new creed is butrudimentary, there can be no good reason why we should go further in theway of economy than mere silence. Neither they nor any other human beingcan possibly have a right to expect us, not merely to abstain from theopen expression of dissents, but positively to profess unreal andfeigned assents. No fear of giving pain, no wish to soothe the alarms ofthose to whom we owe much, no respect for the natural clinging of theold to the faith which has accompanied them through honourable lives, can warrant us in saying that we believe to be true what we areconvinced is false. The most lax moralist counts a lie wrong, even whenthe motive is unselfish, and springs from the desire to give pleasure tothose whom it is our duty to please. A deliberate lie avowedly does notcease to be one because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the lesswrong because it is uttered by one to whom all spiritual things havebecome indifferent. Filial affection is a motive which would, if anymotive could, remove some of the taint of meanness with which piouslying, like every other kind of lying, tends to infect character. Themotive may no doubt ennoble the act, though the act remains in thecategory of forbidden things. But the motive of these complaisantassents and false affirmations, taken at their very best, is stillcomparatively a poor motive. No real elevation of spirit is possible fora man who is willing to subordinate his convictions to his domesticaffections, and to bring himself to a habit of viewing falsehoodlightly, lest the truth should shock the illegitimate and over-exactingsensibilities either of his parents or any one else. We may understandwhat is meant by the logic of the feelings, and accept it as the propercorrective for a too intense egoism. But when the logic of the feelingsis invoked to substitute the egoism of the family for the slightlynarrower egoism of the individual, it can hardly be more than a finename for self-indulgence and a callous indifference to all the largesthuman interests. 

This brings us to consider the case of another no less momentousrelationship, and the kind of compromise in the matter of religiousconformity which it justifies or imposes. It constantly happens that thehusband has wholly ceased to believe the religion to which his wifeclings with unshaken faith. We need not enter into the causes why womenremain in bondage to opinions which so many cultivated men either rejector else hold in a transcendental and non-natural sense. The onlyquestion with which we are concerned is the amount of free assertion ofhis own convictions which a man should claim and practise, when he knowsthat such convictions are distasteful to his wife. Is it lawful, as itseems to be in dealing with parents, to hold his conviction silently? Isit lawful either positively or by implication to lead his wife tosuppose that he shares her opinions, when in truth he rejects them?

If it were not for the maxims and practice in daily use among menotherwise honourable, one would not suppose it possible that two answerscould be given to these questions by any one with the smallest pretenceof principle or self-respect. As it is, we all of us know men whodeliberately reject the entire Christian system, and still think itcompatible with uprightness to summon their whole establishments roundthem at morning and evening, and on their knees to offer up elaboratelyformulated prayers, which have just as much meaning to them as theentrails of the sacrificial victim had to an infidel haruspex. We seethe same men diligently attending religious services; uttering assentsto confessions of which they really reject every syllable; kneeling, rising, bowing, with deceptive solemnity; even partaking of thesacrament with a consummate devoutness that is very edifying to all whoare not in the secret, and who do not know that they are acting a part, and making a mock both of their own reason and their own probity, merelyto please persons whose delusions they pity and despise from the bottomof their hearts. 

On the surface there is certainly nothing to distinguish this kind ofconduct from the grossest hypocrisy. Is there anything under the surfaceto relieve it from this complexion? Is there any weight in the sort ofanswer which such men make to the accusation that their conformity is avery degrading form of deceit, and a singularly mischievous kind oftreachery? Is the plea of a wish to spare mental discomfort to others anadmissible and valid plea? It seems to us to be none of these things, and for the following among other reasons. 

If a man drew his wife by lot, or by any other method over which neitherhe nor she has any control, as in the case of parents, perhaps he mightwith some plausibleness contend that he owed her certain limiteddeferences and reserves, just as we admit that he may owe them to hisparents. But this is not the case. Marriage, in this country at least, is the result of mutual choice. If men and women do as a matter of factusually make this choice hastily and on wofully imperfect information ofone another's characters, that is no warrant for a resort to unlawfulexpedients to remedy the blunder. If a woman cares ardently enough aboutreligion to feel keen distress at the idea of dissent from it on thepart of those closely connected with her, she surely may be expected totake reasonable pains to ascertain beforehand the religious attitude ofone with whom she is about to unite herself for life. On the other hand, if a man sets any value on his own opinions, if they are in any realsense a part of himself, he must be guilty of something like deliberateand systematic duplicity during the acquaintance preceding marriage, ifhis dissent has remained unsuspected. Certainly if men go throughsociety before marriage under false colours, and feign beliefs whichthey do not hold, they have only themselves to thank for the degradationof having to keep up the imposture afterwards. Suppose a protestantwere to pass himself off for a catholic because he happened to meet acatholic lady whom he desired to marry. Everybody would agree in callingsuch a man by a very harsh name. It is hard to see why a freethinker, who by reticence and conformity passes himself off for a believer, should be more leniently judged. The differences between a catholic anda protestant are assuredly not any greater than those between a believerand an unbeliever. We all admit the baseness of dissimulation in theformer case. Why is it any less base in the latter?

Marriages, however, are often made in haste, or heedlessly, or early inlife, before either man or woman has come to feel very deeply aboutreligion either one way or another. The woman does not know how much shewill need religion, nor what comfort it may bring to her. The man doesnot know all the objections to it which may disclose themselves to hisunderstanding as the years ripen. There is always at work that mostunfortunate maxim, tacitly held and acted upon in ninety-nine marriagesout of a hundred, that money is of importance, and social position is ofimportance, and good connections are of importance, and health andmanners and comely looks, and that the only thing which is of noimportance whatever is opinion and intellectual quality and temper. Nowgranting that both man and woman are indifferent at the time of theirunion, is that any reason why upon either of them acquiring seriousconvictions, the other should be expected, out of mere complaisance, tomake a false and hypocritical pretence of sharing them? To see howflimsy is this plea of fearing to give pain to the religioussensitiveness of women, we have only to imagine one or two cases whichgo beyond the common experience, yet which ought not to strain the plea, if it be valid. 

Thus, if my wife turns catholic, am I to pretend to turn catholic too, to save her the horrible distress of thinking that I am doomed toeternal perdition? Or if she chooses to embrace the doctrine of directillumination from heaven, and to hear voices bidding her to go or come, to do or abstain from doing, am I too to shape my conduct after thesefancied monitions? Or if it comes into her mind to serve tables, and tolisten in all faith to the miracles of spiritualism, am I, lest Ishould pain her, to feign a surrender of all my notions of evidence, topretend a transformation of all my ideas of worthiness in life andbeyond life, and to go to séances with the same regularity andseriousness with which you go to church? Of course in each of thesecases everybody who does not happen to share the given peculiarity ofbelief, will agree that however severely a husband's dissent might painthe wife, whatever distress and discomfort it might inflict upon her, yet he would be bound to let her suffer, rather than sacrifice hisveracity and self-respect. Why then is it any less discreditable topractise an insincere conformity in more ordinary circumstances? If theprinciple of such conformity is good for anything at all, it ought tocover these less usual cases as completely as the others which are moreusual. Indeed there would be more to be said on behalf of conformity forpoliteness' sake, where the woman had gone through some great process ofchange, for then one might suppose that her heart was deeply set on thematter. Even then the plea would be worthless, but it is moreindisputably worthless still where the sentiment which we are bidden torespect at the cost of our own freedom of speech is nothing morelaudable than a fear of moving out of the common groove of religiousopinion, or an intolerant and unreasoned bigotry, or mere stupidity andsilliness of the vulgarest type. [23]

Ah, it is said, you forget that women cannot live without religion. Thepresent writer is equally of this opinion that women cannot be happywithout a religion, nor men either. That is not the question. It doesnot follow because a woman cannot be happy without a religion, thattherefore she cannot be happy unless her husband is of the samereligion. Still less, that she would be made happy by his insincerelypretending to be of the same religion. And least of all is it true, ifboth these propositions were credible, that even then for the sake ofher happiness he is bound not merely to live a life of imposture, but inso doing to augment the general forces of imposture in the world, and tomake the chances of truth, light, and human improvement more and moreunfavourable. Women are at present far less likely than men to possess asound intelligence and a habit of correct judgment. They will remain so, while they have less ready access than men to the best kinds of literaryand scientific training, and--what is far more important--while socialarrangements exclude them from all those kinds of public activity, whichare such powerful agents both in fitting men to judge soundly, and informing in them the sense of responsibility for their judgments beingsound. 

It may be contended that this alleged stronger religiosity of women, however coarse and poor in its formulae, is yet of constant value as aprotest in favour of the maintenance of the religious element in humancharacter and life, and that this is a far more important thing for usall than the greater or less truth of the dogmas with which suchreligiosity happens to be associated. In reply to this, withouttediously labouring the argument, I venture to make the followingobservations. In the first place, it is an untenable idea thatreligiosity or devoutness of spirit is valuable in itself, withoutreference to the goodness or badness of the dogmatic forms and thepractices in which it clothes itself. A fakir would hardly be anestimable figure in our society, merely because his way of livinghappens to be a manifestation of the religious spirit. If the religiousspirit leads to a worthy and beautiful life, if it shows itself incheerfulness, in pity, in charity and tolerance, in forgiveness, in asense of the largeness and the mystery of things, in a lifting up of thesoul in gratitude and awe to some supreme power and sovereign force, then whatever drawback there may be in the way of superstitious dogma, still such a spirit is on the whole a good thing. If not, not. It wouldbe better without the superstition: even with the superstition it isgood. But if the religious spirit is only a fine name for narrowness ofunderstanding, for stubborn intolerance, for mere social formality, fora dread of losing that poor respectability which means thinking anddoing exactly as the people around us think and do, then the religiousspirit is not a good thing, but a thoroughly bad and hateful thing. Tothat we owe no management of any kind. Any one who suppresses his realopinions, and feigns others, out of deference to such a spirit as thisin his household, ought to say plainly both to himself and to us that hecares more for his own ease and undisturbed comfort than he cares fortruth and uprightness. For it is that, and not any tenderness for holythings, which is the real ground of his hypocrisy. 

Now with reference to the religious spirit in its nobler form, it isdifficult to believe that any one genuinely animated by it would besoothed by the knowledge that her dearest companion is going throughlife with a mask on, quietly playing a part, uttering untrueprofessions, doing his best to cheat her and the rest of the world by amonstrous spiritual make-believe. One would suppose that instead ofhaving her religious feeling gratified by conformity on these terms, nothing could wound it so bitterly nor outrage it so unpardonably. Toknow that her sensibility is destroying the entireness of the man'snature, its loyalty alike to herself and to truth, its freedom andsingleness and courage--surely this can hardly be less distressing to afine spirit than the suspicion that his heresies may bring him to thepit, or than the void of going through life without even the semblanceof religious sympathy between them. If it be urged that the woman wouldnever discover the piety of the man to be a counterfeit, we reply thatunless her own piety were of the merely formal kind, she would be sureto make the discovery. The congregation in the old story were untouchedby the disguised devil's eloquence on behalf of religion: it lackedunction. The verbal conformity of the unbeliever lacks unction, and itshollowness is speedily revealed to the quick apprehension of truefaith. [24]

Let us not be supposed to be arguing in favour of incessant battle ofhigh dialectic in the household. Nothing could be more destructive ofthe gracious composure and mental harmony, of which household life oughtto be, but perhaps seldom is, the great organ and instrument. Still lessare we pleading for the freethinker's right at every hour of day ornight to mock, sneer, and gibe at the sincere beliefs andconscientiously performed rites of those, whether men or women, whetherstrangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is notancient impressions only, ' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusingus. The charm of novelty has the same power. ' The prate of new-bornscepticism may be as tiresome and as odious as the cant of grayorthodoxy. Religious discussion is not to be foisted upon us at everyturn either by defenders or assailants. All we plead for is that whenthe opportunity meets the freethinker full in front, he is called uponto speak as freely as he thinks. Not more than this. A plain man has notrouble in acquiring this tact of reasonableness. We may all write whatwe please, because it is in the discretion of the rest of the worldwhether they will hearken or not. But in the family this is not so. If aman systematically intrudes disrespectful and unwelcome criticism upon awoman who retains the ancient belief, he is only showing thatfreethinker may be no more than bigot differently writ. It ought to beessential to no one's self-respect that he cannot consent to live withpeople who do not think as he thinks. We may be sure that there issomething shallow and convulsive about the beliefs of a man who cannotallow his house-mates to possess their own beliefs in peace. 

On the other hand, it is essential to the self-respect of every onewith the least love of truth that he should be free to express hisopinions on every occasion, where silence would be taken for an assentwhich he does not really give. Still more unquestionably, he should befree from any obligation to forswear himself either directly, as byfalse professions, or by implication, as when he attend services, publicor private, which are to him the symbol of superstition and merespiritual phantasmagoria. The vindication of this simple right of livingone's life honestly can hardly demand any heroic virtue. A little of thestraightforwardness which men are accustomed to call manly, is the onlyquality that is needed; a little of that frank courage and determinationin spiritual things, which men are usually so ready to practise towardstheir wives in temporal things. It must be a keen delight to a cynic tosee a man who owns that he cannot bear to pain his wife by not going tochurch and saying prayers, yet insisting on having his own way, fearlessly thwarting her wishes, and contradicting her opinions, inevery other detail, small and great, of the domestic economy. 

The truth of the matter is that the painful element in companionship isnot difference of opinion, but discord of temperament. The importantthing is not that two people should be inspired by the same convictions, but rather that each of them should hold his and her own convictions ina high and worthy spirit. Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, isthe secret of the sympathetic life; to stand on the same moral plane, and that, if possible, a high one; to find satisfaction in differentexplanations of the purpose and significance of life and the universe, and yet the same satisfaction. It is certainly not less possible todisbelieve religiously than to believe religiously. This accord of mind, this emulation in freedom and loftiness of soul, this kindred sense ofthe awful depth of the enigma which the one believes to be answered, andthe other suspects to be for ever unanswerable--here, and not in adegrading and hypocritical conformity, is the true gratification ofthose spiritual sensibilities which are alleged to be so much higher inwomen than in men. Where such an accord exists, there may still besolicitude left in the mind of either at the superstition or theincredulity of the other, but it will be solicitude of that magnanimoussort which is in some shape or other the inevitable and not unfruitfulportion of every better nature. 

If there are women who petulantly or sourly insist on more than thiskind of harmony, it is probable that their system of divinity is littlebetter than a special manifestation of shrewishness. The man is as muchbound to resist that, as he is bound to resist extravagance in spendingmoney, or any other vice of character. If he does not resist it, if hesuppresses his opinions, and practices a hypocritical conformity, itmust be from weakness of will and principle. Against this we havenothing to say. A considerable proportion of people, men no less thanwomen, are born invertebrate, and they must got on as they best can. Butlet us at least bargain that they shall not erect the maxims of theirown feebleness into a rule for those who are braver and of strongerprinciple than themselves. And do not let the accidental exigencies of apersonal mistake be made the foundation of a general doctrine. It is apoor saying, that the world is to become void of spiritual sincerity, because Xanthippe has a turn for respectable theology. 

One or two words should perhaps be said in this place as to conformityto common religious belief in the education of children. Where theparents differ, the one being an unbeliever, the other a believer, it isalmost impossible for anybody to lay down a general rule. The presentwriter certainly has no ambition to attempt the thorny task of compilinga manual for mixed marriages. It is perhaps enough to say that all woulddepend upon the nature of the beliefs which the religious person wishedto inculcate. Considering that the woman has an absolutely equal moralright with the man to decide in what faith the child shall be broughtup, and considering how important it is that the mother should take anactive part in the development of the child's affections and impulses, the most resolute of deniers may perhaps think that the advantages ofleaving the matter to her, outweigh the disadvantages of having asuperstitious bias given to the young mind. In these complex cases anhonest and fair-minded man's own instincts are more likely to lead himright than any hard and fast rule. Two reserves in assenting to thewife's control of early teaching will probably suggest themselves toeverybody who is in earnest about religion. First, if the theology whichthe woman desires to instill contains any of those wicked and depravingdoctrines which neither Catholicism nor Calvinism is without, in thehands of some professors, the husband is as much justified in pressinghis legal rights over the child to the uttermost, as he would be if theproposed religion demanded physical mutilation. Secondly, he will nothimself take part in baptismal or other ceremonies which are to him nobetter than mere mummeries, nor will he ever do anything to lead hischildren at any age to suppose that he believes what he does notbelieve. Such limitations as these are commanded by all considerationsalike of morality and good sense. 

To turn to the more normal case where either the man has had the wiseforethought not to yoke himself unequally with a person of ardent beliefwhich he does not share, or where both parents dissent from the popularcreed. Here, whatever difficulties may attend its application, theprinciple is surely as clear as the sun at noonday. There can be no goodplea for the deliberate and formal inculcation upon the young of anumber of propositions which you believe to be false. To do this is tosow tares not in your enemy's field, but in the very ground which ismost precious of all others to you and most full of hope for the future. To allow it to be done merely that children may grow up in thestereotyped mould, is simply to perpetuate in new generations thepresent thick-sighted and dead-heavy state of our spirits. It is to doone's best to keep society for an indefinite time sapped by hollow andvoid professions, instead of being nourished by sincerity andwhole-heartedness. [25]

Nor here, more than elsewhere in this chapter, are we trying to turnthe family into a field of ceaseless polemic. No one who knows the stuffof which life is made, the pressure of material cares, the play ofpassion, the busy energising of the affections, the anxieties of health, and all the other solicitudes, generous or ignoble, which naturallyabsorb the days of the common multitude of men--is likely to think suchan ideal either desirable or attainable. Least of all is it desirableto give character a strong set in this polemical direction in its mostplastic days. The controversial and denying humour is a different thingfrom the habit of being careful to know what we mean by the words weuse, and what evidence there is for the beliefs we hold. It is possibleto foster the latter habit without creating the former. And it ispossible to bring up the young in dissent from the common beliefs aroundthem, or in indifference to them, without engendering any of that pridein eccentricity for its own sake, which is so little likeable a qualityin either young or old. There is, however, little risk of an excess inthis direction. The young tremble even more than the old at thepenalties of nonconformity. There is more excuse for them in this. Suchpenalties in their case usually come closer and in more stringent forms. Neither have they had time to find out, as their elders have or ought tohave found out, what a very moderate degree of fortitude enables us tobear up against social disapproval, when we know that it is nothing morethan the common form of convention. 

The great object is to keep the minds of the young as open as possiblein the matter of religion; to breed in them a certain simplicity andfreedom from self-consciousness, in finding themselves without thereligious beliefs and customs of those around them; to make them regarddifferences in these respects as very natural and ordinary matters, susceptible of an easy explanation. It is of course inevitable, unlessthey are brought up in cloistered seclusion, that they should hear muchof the various articles of belief which we are anxious that they shouldnot share. They will ask you whether the story of the creation of theuniverse is true; whether such and such miracles really happened;whether this person or that actually lived, and actually did all that heis said to have done. Plainly the right course is to tell them, withoutany agitation or excess or vehemence or too much elaboration, the simpletruth in such matters exactly as it appears to one's own mind. There isno reason why they should not know the best parts of the Bible as wellas they know the Iliad or Herodotus. There are many reasons why theyshould know them better. But one most important condition of this isconstantly overlooked by people, who like to satisfy their intellectualvanity by scepticism, and at the same time to make their comfort safe byexternal conformity. If the Bible is to be taught only because it is anoble and most majestic monument of literature, it should be taught asthat and no more. That a man who regards it solely us supremeliterature, should impress it upon the young as the supernaturallyinspired word of God and the accurate record of objective occurrences, is a piece of the plainest and most shocking dishonesty. Let a youth betrained in simple and straightforward recognition of the truth that wecan know, and can conjecture, nothing with any assurance as to theultimate mysteries of things. Let his imagination and his sense of awebe fed from those springs, which are none the less bounteous becausethey flow in natural rather than supernatural channels. Let him betaught the historic place and source of the religions which he is notbound to accept, unless the evidence for their authority by and bybrings him to another mind. A boy or girl trained in this way has aninfinitely better chance of growing up with the true spirit andleanings of religion implanted in the character, than if they had beeneducated in formulae which they could not understand, by people who donot believe them. 

The most common illustration of a personal mistake being made the baseof a general doctrine, is found in the case of those who, aftercommitting themselves for life to the profession of a given creed, awaketo the shocking discovery that the creed has ceased to be true for them. The action of a popular modern story, Mrs. Gaskell's _North and South_, turns upon the case of a clergyman whoso faith is overthrown, and who inconsequence abandons his calling, to his own serious material detrimentand under circumstances of severe suffering to his family. I am afraidthat current opinion, especially among the cultivated class, wouldcondemn such a sacrifice as a piece of misplaced scrupulosity. No man, it would be said, is called upon to proclaim his opinions, when to do sowill cost him the means of subsistence. This will depend upon the valuewhich he sets upon the opinions that be has to proclaim. If such aproposition is true, the world must efface its habit of admiration forthe martyrs and heroes of the past, who embraced violent death ratherthan defile themselves by a lying confession. Or is present heroismridiculous, and only past heroism admirable? However, nobody has a rightto demand the heroic from all the world; and if to publish his dissentfrom the opinions which he nominally holds would reduce a man tobeggary, human charity bids us say as little as may be. We may leavesuch men to their unfortunate destiny, hoping that they will make whatgood use of it may be possible. _Non ragioniam di lor_. These cases onlyshow the essential and profound immorality of the priestlyprofession--in all its forms, and no matter in connection with whatchurch or what dogma--which makes a man's living depend on hisabstaining from using his mind, or concealing the conclusions to whichuse of his mind has brought him. The time will come when society willlook back on the doctrine, that they who serve the altar should live bythe altar, as a doctrine of barbarism and degradation. 

But if one, by refusing to offer a pinch of incense to the elder gods, should thus strip himself of a marked opportunity of exerting anundoubtedly useful influence over public opinion, or over a certainsection of society, is he not justified in compromising to the extentnecessary to preserve this influence? Instead of answering thisdirectly, we would make the following remarks. First, it can seldom beclear in times like our own that religious heterodoxy must involve theloss of influence in other than religious spheres. The apprehension thatit will do so is due rather to timorousness and a desire to find a fairreason for the comforts of silence and reserve. If a teacher hasanything to tell the world in science, philosophy, history, the worldwill not be deterred from listening to him by knowing that he does notwalk in the paths of conventional theology. Second, what influence can aman exert, that should seem to him more useful than that of a protesteragainst what he counts false opinions, in the most decisive andimportant of all regions of thought? Surely if any one is persuaded, whether rightly or wrongly, that his fellows are expending the best partof their imaginations and feelings on a dream and a delusion, and thatby so doing moreover they are retarding to an indefinite degree thewider spread of light and happiness, then nothing that he can tell themabout chemistry or psychology or history can in his eyes be comparablein importance to the duty of telling them this. There is no advantagenor honest delight in influence, if it is only to be exerted in thesphere of secondary objects, and at the cost of the objects which oughtto be foremost in the eyes of serious people. In truth the men who havedone most for the world have taken very little heed of influence. Theyhave sought light, and left their influence to fare as it might list. Can we not imagine the mingled mystification and disdain with which aSpinosa or a Descartes, a Luther or a Pascal, would have listened to anexhortation in our persuasive modern manner on the niceties of thepolitic and the social obligation of pious fraud? It is not given tomany to perform the achievements of such giants as these, but every onemay help to keep the standard of intellectual honesty at a lofty pitch, and what better service can a man render than to furnish the world withan example of faithful dealing with his own conscience and with hisfellows? This at least is the one talent that is placed in the hands ofthe obscurest of us all. [26]

And what is this smile of the world, to win which we are bidden tosacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors aremore awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out oflight within the souls of us? Consider the triviality of life andconversation and purpose, in the bulk of those whose approval is heldout for our prize and the mark of our high calling. Measure, if you can, the empire over them of prejudice unadulterated by a single element ofrationality, and weigh, if you can, the huge burden of custom, unrelieved by a single leavening particle of fresh thought. Ponder theshare which selfishness and love of ease have in the vitality and themaintenance of the opinions that we are forbidden to dispute. Then howpitiful a thing seems the approval or disapproval of these creatures ofthe conventions of the hour, as one figures the merciless vastness ofthe universe of matter sweeping us headlong through viewless space; asone hears the wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deafgods; as one counts the little tale of the years that separate us frometernal silence. In the light of these things, a man should surely dareto live his small span of life with little heed of the common speechupon him or his life, only caring that his days may be full of reality, and his conversation of truth-speaking and wholeness. 

Those who think conformity in the matters of which we have beenspeaking harmless and unimportant, must do so either from indifferenceor else from despair. It is difficult to convince any one who ispossessed by either one or other of these two evil spirits. Men who haveonce accepted them, do not easily relinquish philosophies that relievetheir professors from disagreeable obligations of courage and endeavour. To the indifferent person one can say nothing. We can only acquiesce inthat deep and terrible scripture, 'He that is filthy, let him be filthystill. ' To those who despair of human improvement or the spread of lightin the face of the huge mass of brute prejudice, we can only urge thatthe enormous weight and the firm hold of baseless prejudice and falsecommonplace are the very reasons which make it so important that thosewho are not of the night nor of the darkness should the more strenuouslyinsist on living their own lives in the daylight. To those, finally, whodo not despair, but think that the new faith will come so slowly that itis not worth while for the poor mortal of a day to make himself amartyr, we may suggest that the new faith when it comes will be oflittle worth, unless it has been shaped by generations of honest andfearless men, and unless it finds in those who are to receive it anhonest and fearless temper. Our plea is not for a life of perversedisputings or busy proselytising, but only that we should learn to lookat one another with a clear and steadfast eye, and march forward alongthe paths we choose with firm step and erect front. The first advancetowards either the renovation of one faith or the growth of another, must be the abandonment of those habits of hypocritical conformity andcompliance which have filled the air of the England of to-day with grossand obscuring mists. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: It may be said that Hume meant no more than this: that oftwo equally oppressed nations, the one which had been taught to assentto the doctrine of resistance would be more likely to practise 'thesacred duty of insurrection' than the other, from whom the doctrine hadbeen concealed. Or, in other words, that the first would rise againstoppression, when the oppression had reached a pitch which to the secondwould still seem bearable. The answer to Hume's proposition, interpretedin this way, would be that if the doctrine of resistance be presented tothe populace in its true shape, --if it be 'truth, ' as he admits, --thenthe application of it in practice should be as little likely to provemischievous as that of any other truth. If the gist of the remark bethat this is a truth which the populace is especially likely to applywrongly, in consequence of its ignorance, passion, and heedlessness, wemay answer by appealing to history, which is rather a record ofexcessive patience in the various nations of the earth than of excessivepetulance. ]

[Footnote 19: There is another ground for the distinction between theconditions of holding and those of expressing opinion. This depends uponthe psychological proposition that belief is independent of the will. Though this or any other state of the understanding may be involuntary, the manifestation of such a state is not so, but is a voluntary act, and, 'being neutral in itself, may be commendable or reprehensibleaccording to the circumstances in which it takes place. ' (Bailey's_Essay on Formation of Opinion_, § 7). ]

[Footnote 20: The following words, illustrating the continuity betweenthe Christian and Jewish churches, are not without instruction to thosewho meditate on the possible continuity between the Christian church andthat which is one day to grow into the place of it:--'Not only do formsand ordinances remain under the Gospel equally as before; but, what wasin use before is not so much superseded by the Gospel ordinances aschanged into them. What took place under the Law is a pattern, what wascommanded is a rule, under the Gospel. The substance remains, the use, the meaning, the circumstances, the benefit is changed; grace is added, life is infused: "the body is of Christ;" but it is in great measurethat same body which was in being before He came. The Gospel has not putaside, it has incorporated into itself the revelation which went beforeit. It avails itself of the Old Testament, as a great gift to Christianas well as to Jew. It does not dispense with it, but it dispenses it. Persons sometimes urge that there is no code of duty in the NewTestament, no ceremonial, no rules for Church polity. Certainly not;they are unnecessary; they are already given in the Old. Why should theOld Testament remain in the Christian church but to be used? _There_ weare to look for our forms, our rites, our polity; only illustrated, tempered, spiritualised by the Gospel. The preempts remain, theobservance of them is changed, '--Dr. J. H. Newman; _Sermon on Subjects ofthe Day_, p. 205. ]

[Footnote 21: There is a set of most acute and searching criticisms onthis matter in Mr. Leslie Stephen's _Essays on Free-Thinking andPlain-Speaking_ (Longmans, 1873). The last essay in the volume, _AnApology for Plain-Speaking_, is a decisive and remarkable exposition ofthe treacherous playing with words, which underlies even the mostvigorous efforts to make the phrases and formula of the old creed holdthe reality of new faith. ]

[Footnote 22: Upon this sentence the following criticism has beenmade:--'Surely both of these so-called contradictions are deliberatelyaffirmed by the vast majority of all thinkers upon the subject. Whatorthodox asserter of the omnipresence of a "Creator with intelligibleattributes" ever maintained that these attributes could be "grasped bymen"?'--The orthodox asserter, no doubt, _says_ that he does notmaintain that the divine attributes can be grasped by men; but hishabitual treatment of them as intelligible, and as the subjects ofpropositions made in languages that is designed to be intelligible, shows that his first reservation is merely nominal, as it is certainlyinconsistent with his general position. Religious people who warn youmost solemnly that man who is a worm and the son of a worm cannotpossibly compass in his puny understanding the attributes of the DivineBeing, will yet--as an eminent divine not in holy orders has trulysaid--tell you all about him, as if he were the man who lives in thenext street. ]

[Footnote 23: That able man, the late J. E. Cairnes, suggested thefollowing objection to this paragraph. When two persons marry, there isa reasonable expectation, almost amounting to an understanding, thatthey will both of them adhere to their religion, just as both of themtacitly agree to follow the ways of the world in the host of minorsocial matters. If, therefore, either of them turns to some other creed, the person so turning has, so to speak, broken the contract. The utmosthe or she can contend for is forbearance. If a woman embracescatholicism, she may seek tolerance, but she has no right to exactconformity. If the man becomes an unbeliever, he in like manner breaksthe bargain, and may be justly asked not to flaunt his misdemeanour. 

My answer to this would turn upon the absolute inexpediency of suchsilent bargains being assumed by public opinion. In the present state ofopinion, where the whole air is alive with the spirit of change, nobodywho takes his life or her life seriously, could allow an assumptionwhich means reduction of one of the most important parts of character, the love of truth, to a nullity. ]

[Footnote 24: The reader remembers how Wolmar, the atheistic husband ofJulie in Rousseau's _New Heloïsa_, is distressed by the chagrin whichhis unbelief inflicts on the piety of his wife. 'He told me that he hadbeen frequently tempted to make a feint of yielding to her arguments, and to pretend, for the sake of calming her sentiments that he did notreally hold. But such baseness of soul is too far from him. Without fora moment imposing on Julie, such dissimulation would only have been anew torment to her. The good faith, the frankness, the union of heart, that console for so many troubles, would have been eclipsed betweenthem. Was it by lessening his wife's esteem for him that he couldreassure her? Instead of using any disguise, he tells her sincerely whathe thinks, but he says it in so simple a tone, etc. --V. V. 126. ]

[Footnote 25: The common reason alleged by freethinkers for having theirchildren brought up in the orthodox ways is that, if they were not sobrought up, they would be looked on as contaminating agents whom otherparents would take care to keep away from the companionship of theirchildren. This excuse may have had some force at another time. At thepresent day, when belief is so weak, we doubt whether the young would beexcluded from the companionship of their equals in age, merely becausethey had not been trained in some of the conventional shibboleths. Evenif it were so, there are certainly some ways of compensating for thedisadvantages of exclusion from orthodox circles. 

I have heard of a more interesting reason; namely, that the historicposition of the young, relatively to the time in which they are placed, is in some sort falsified, unless they have gone through a training inthe current beliefs of their age: unless they have undergone that, theymiss, as it were, some of the normal antecedents. I do not think thisplea will hold good. However desirable it may be that the young shouldknow all sorts of erroneous beliefs and opinions as products of thepast, it can hardly be in any degree desirable that they should takethem for truths. If there were no other objection, there would be this, that the disturbance and waste of force involved in shaking off in theirriper years the erroneous opinions which had been instilled into themin childhood, would more than counter-balance any advantages, whatevertheir precise nature may be, to be derived from having shared in theirown proper persons the ungrounded notions of others. ]

[Footnote 26: Miss Martineau has an excellent protest against 'thedereliction of principle shown in supposing that any "Cause" can be ofso much importance as fidelity to truth, or can be important at allotherwise than in its relation to truth which wants vindicating. Itreminds me of an incident which happened when I was in America, at thetime of the severest trials of the Abolitionists. A pastor from thesouthern States lamented to a brother clergyman in the North theintroduction of the Anti-slavery question, because the views of theirsect were "getting on so well before!" "Getting on!" cried the northernminister. "What is the use of getting your vessel on when you havethrown both captain and cargo overboard?" Thus, what signifies thepursuit of any one reform, like those specified, --Anti-slavery and theWoman question, --when the freedom which is the very soul of thecontroversy, the very principle of the movement, --is mourned over in anyother of its many manifestations? The only effectual advocates of suchreforms as those are people who follow truth wherever itleads. '--_Autobiography_, ii. 442. ]

CHAPTER V. 

THE REALISATION OF OPINION. 

A person who takes the trouble to form his own opinions and beliefs willfeel that he owes no responsibility to the majority for his conclusions. If he is a genuine lover of truth, if he is inspired by the divinepassion for seeing things as they are, and a divine abhorrence ofholding ideas which do not conform to the facts, he will be whollyindependent of the approval or assent of the persons around him. When heproceeds to apply his beliefs in the practical conduct of life, theposition is different. There are now good reasons why his attitudeshould be in some ways less inflexible. The society in which he isplaced is a very ancient and composite growth. The people from whom hedissents have not come by their opinions, customs, and institutions by aprocess of mere haphazard. These opinions and customs all had theirorigin in a certain real or supposed fitness. They have a certain depthof root in the lives of a proportion of the existing generation. Theirfitness for satisfying human needs may have vanished, and theircongruity with one another may have come to an end. That is only oneside of the truth. The most zealous propagandism cannot penetrate tothem. The quality of bearing to be transplanted from one kind of soiland climate to another is not very common, and it is far from beinginexhaustible even where it exists. 

In common language we speak of a generation as something possessed of akind of exact unity, with all its parts and members one and homogeneous. Yet very plainly it is not this. It is a whole, but a whole in a stateof constant flux. Its factors and elements are eternally shifting. It isnot one, but many generations. Each of the seven ages of man isneighbour to all the rest. The column of the veterans is alreadystaggering over into the last abyss, while the column of the newestrecruits is forming with all its nameless and uncounted hopes. To eachits tradition, its tendency, its possibilities. Only a proportion ofeach in one society can have nerve enough to grasp the banner of a newtruth, and endurance enough to bear it along rugged and untrodden ways. 

And then, as we have said, one must remember the stuff of which life ismade. One must consider what an overwhelming preponderance of the mosttenacious energies and most concentrated interests of a society must beabsorbed between material cares and the solicitude of the affections. Itis obviously unreasonable to lose patience and quarrel with one's time, because it is tardy in throwing off its institutions and beliefs, andslow to achieve the transformation which is the problem in front of it. Men and women have to live. The task for most of them is arduous enoughto make them well pleased with even such imperfect shelter as they findin the use and wont of daily existence. To insist on a whole communitybeing made at once to submit to the reign of new practices and newideas, which have just begun to commend themselves to the most advancedspeculative intelligence of the time, --this, even if it were a possibleprocess, would do much to make life impracticable and to hurry on socialdissolution. 

'It cannot be too emphatically asserted, ' as has been said by one ofthe most influential of modern thinkers, 'that this policy ofcompromise, alike in institutions, in actions, and in beliefs, whichespecially characterises English life, is a policy essential to asociety going through the transitions caused by continued growth anddevelopment. Ideas and institutions proper to a past social state, butincongruous with the new social state that has grown out of it, surviving into this new social state they have made possible, anddisappearing only as this new social state establishes its own ideas andinstitutions, are necessarily, during their survival, in conflict withthese new ideas and institutions--necessarily furnish elements ofcontradiction in men's thoughts and deeds. And yet, as for the carryingon of social life, the old must continue so long as the new is notready, this perpetual compromise is an indispensable accompaniment of anormal development. '[27]

Yet we must not press this argument, and the state of feeling thatbelongs to it, further than they may be fairly made to go. The danger inmost natures lies on this side, for on this side our love of easeworks, and our prejudices. The writer in the passage we have just quotedis describing compromise as a natural state of things, the resultant ofdivergent forces. He is not professing to define its conditions orlimits as a practical duty. Nor is there anything in his words, or inthe doctrine of social evolution of which he is the most elaborate andsystematic expounder, to favour that deliberate sacrifice of truth, either in search or in expression, against which our two previouschapters were meant to protest. [28] When Mr. Spencer talks of a newsocial state establishing its own ideas, of course he means, and canonly mean, that men and women establish their own ideas, and to do that, it is obvious that they must at one time or another have conceived themwithout any special friendliness of reference to the old ideas, whichthey were in the fulness of time to supersede. Still less, of course, can a new social state ever establish its ideas, unless the persons whohold them confess them openly, and give to them an honest and effectiveadherence. 

Every discussion of the more fundamental principles of conduct mustcontain, expressly or by implication, some general theory of the natureand constitution of the social union. Let us state in a few words thatwhich seems to command the greatest amount both of direct and analogicalevidence in our time. It is perhaps all the more important to discussour subject with immediate and express reference to this theory, becauseit has become in some minds a plea for a kind of philosophicindifference towards any policy of Thorough, as well as an excuse forsystematic abstention from vigorous and downright courses of action. 

A progressive society is now constantly and justly compared to a growingorganism. Its vitality in this aspect consists of a series of changes inideas and institutions. These changes arise spontaneously from theoperation of the whole body of social conditions, external andinternal. The understanding and the affections and desires are alwaysacting on the domestic, political, and economic ordering. They influencethe religious sentiment. They touch relations with societies outside. Inturn they are constantly being acted on by all these elements. In asociety progressing in a normal and uninterrupted course, this play andinteraction is the sign and essence of life. It is, as we are so oftentold, a long process of new adaptations and re-adaptations; of themodification of tradition and usage by truer ideas and improvedinstitutions. There may be, and there are, epochs of rest, when thismodification in its active and demonstrative shape slackens or ceases tobe visible. But even then the modifying forces are only latent. Furtherprogress depends on the revival of their energy, before there has beentime for the social structure to become ossified and inelastic. Thehistory of civilisation is the history of the displacement of oldconceptions by new ones more conformable to the facts. It is the recordof the removal of old institutions and ways of living, in favour ofothers of greater convenience and ampler capacity, at once multiplyingand satisfying human requirements. 

Now compromise, in view of the foregoing theory of social advance, maybe of two kinds, and of these two kinds one is legitimate and the othernot. It may stand for two distinct attitudes of mind, one of themobstructive and the other not. It may mean the deliberate suppression ormutilation of an idea, in order to make it congruous with thetraditional idea or the current prejudice on the given subject, whateverthat may be. Or else it may mean a rational acquiescence in the factthat the bulk of your contemporaries are not yet prepared either toembrace the new idea, or to change their ways of living in conformity toit. In the one case, the compromiser rejects the highest truth, ordissembles his own acceptance of it. In the other, he holds itcourageously for his ensign and device, but neither forces nor expectsthe whole world straightway to follow. The first prolongs the durationof the empire of prejudice, and retards the arrival of improvement. Thesecond does his best to abbreviate the one, and to hasten and makedefinite the other, yet he does not insist on hurrying changes which, to be effective, would require the active support of numbers of personsnot yet ripe for them. It is legitimate compromise to say:--'I do notexpect you to execute this improvement, or to surrender that prejudice, in my time. But at any rate it shall not be my fault if the improvementremains unknown or rejected. There shall be one man at least who hassurrendered the prejudice, and who does not hide that fact. ' It isillegitimate compromise to say:--'I cannot persuade you to accept mytruth; therefore I will pretend to accept your falsehood. '

That this distinction is as sound on the evolutional theory of societyas on any other is quite evident. It would be odd if the theory whichmakes progress depend on modification forbade us to attempt to modify. When it is said that the various successive changes in thought andinstitution present and consummate themselves spontaneously, no onemeans by spontaneity that they come to pass independently of humaneffort and volition. On the contrary, this energy of the members of thesociety is one of the spontaneous elements. It is quite asindispensable as any other of them, if indeed it be not more so. Progress depends upon tendencies and forces in a community. But of thesetendencies and forces, the organs and representatives must plainly befound among the men and women of the community, and cannot possibly befound anywhere else. Progress is not automatic, in the sense that if wewere all to be cast into a deep slumber for the space of a generation, we should awake to find ourselves in a greatly improved social state. The world only grows better, even in the moderate degree in which itdoes grow better, because people wish that it should, and take the rightsteps to make it better. Evolution is not a force, but a process; not acause, but a law. It explains the source, and marks the immovablelimitations, of social energy. But social energy itself can never besuperseded either by evolution or by anything else. 

The reproach of being impracticable and artificial attaches by rightsnot to those who insist on resolute, persistent, and uncompromisingefforts to remove abuses, but to a very different class--to those, namely, who are credulous enough to suppose that abuses and bad customsand wasteful ways of doing things will remove themselves. Thiscredulity, which is a cloak for indolence or ignorance or stupidity, overlooks the fact that there are bodies of men, more or less numerous, attached by every selfish interest they have to the maintenance of theseabusive customs. 'A plan, ' says Bentham, 'may be said to be too good tobe practicable, where, without adequate inducement in the shape ofpersonal interest, it requires for its accomplishment that someindividual or class of individuals shall have made a sacrifice of his ortheir personal interest to the interest of the whole. When it is on thepart of a body of men or a multitude of individuals taken at random thatany such sacrifice is reckoned upon, then it is that in speaking of theplan the term _Utopian_ may without impropriety be applied. ' And this isthe very kind of sacrifice which must be anticipated by those who somisunderstand the doctrine of evolution as to believe that the world isimproved by some mystic and self-acting social discipline, whichdispenses with the necessity of pertinacious attack upon institutionsthat have outlived their time, and interests that have lost theirjustification. 

We are thus brought to the position--to which, indeed, bare observationof actual occurrences might well bring us, if it were not for theclouding disturbances of selfishness, or of a true philosophy of societywrongly applied--that a society can only pursue its normal course bymeans of a certain progression of changes, and that these changes canonly be initiated by individuals or very small groups of individuals. The progressive tendency can only be a tendency, it can only work itsway through the inevitable obstructions around it, by means of personswho are possessed by the special progressive idea. Such ideas do notspring up uncaused and unconditioned in vacant space. They have had adefinite origin and ordered antecedents. They are in direct relationwith the past. They present themselves to one person or little group ofpersons rather than to another, because circumstances, or the accidentof a superior faculty of penetration, have placed the person or group inthe way of such ideas. In matters of social improvement the most commonreason why one hits upon a point of progress and not another, is thatthe one happens to be more directly touched than the other by theunimproved practice. Or he is one of those rare intelligences, active, alert, inventive, which by constitution or training find their chiefhappiness in thinking in a disciplined and serious manner how things canbe better done. In all cases the possession of a new idea, whetherpractical or speculative, only raises into definite speech what othershave needed without being able to make their need articulate. This isthe principle on which experience shows us that fame and popularity aredistributed. A man does not become celebrated in proportion to hisgeneral capacity, but because he does or says something which happenedto need doing or saying at the moment. 

This brings us directly to our immediate subject. For such a man is theholder of a trust It is upon him and those who are like him that theadvance of a community depends. If he is silent, then repair is checked, and the hurtful elements of worn-out beliefs and waste institutionsremain to enfeeble the society, just as the retention of waste productsenfeebles or poisons the body. If in a spirit of modesty which is oftengenuine, though it is often only a veil for love of ease, he asks why herather than another should speak, why he before others should refusecompliance and abstain from conformity, the answer is that though themany are ultimately moved, it is always one who is first to leave theold encampment. If the maxim of the compromiser were sound, it ought tobe capable of universal application. Nobody has a right to make anapology for himself in this matter, which he will not allow to be validfor others. If one has a right to conceal his true opinions, and topractice equivocal conformities, then all have a right. One plea forexemption is in this case as good as another, and no better. That he hasmarried a wife, that he has bought a yoke of oxen and must prove them, that he has bidden guests to a feast--one excuse lies on the same levelas the rest. All are equally worthless as answers to the generoussolicitation of enlightened conscience. Suppose, then, that each man onwhom in turn the new ideas dawned wore to borrow the compromiser's pleaand imitate his example. We know what would happen. The exploit inwhich no one will consent to go first, remains unachieved. You waituntil there are persons enough agreeing with you to form an effectiveparty? But how are the members of the band to know one another, if allare to keep their dissent from the old, and their adherence to the new, rigorously private? And how many members constitute the innovating bandan effective force! When one-half of the attendants at a church areunbelievers, will that warrant us in ceasing to attend, or shall wetarry until the dissemblers number two-thirds? Conceive the additionswhich your caution has made to the moral integrity of the community inthe meantime. Measure the enormous hindrances that will have been placedin the way of truth and improvement, when the day at last arrives onwhich you and your two-thirds take heart to say that falsehood and abusehave now reached their final term, and must at length be swept away intothe outer darkness. Consider how much more terrible the shock of changewill be when it does come, and how much less able will men be to meetit, and to emerge successfully from it. 

Perhaps the compromiser shrinks, not because he fears to march alone, but because he thinks that the time has not yet come for the progressiveidea which he has made his own, and for whose triumph one day heconfidently hopes. This plea may mean two wholly different states of thecase. The time has not yet come for what? For making those positivechanges in life or institution, which the change in idea must ultimatelyinvolve? That is one thing. Or for propagating, elaborating, enforcingthe new idea, and strenuously doing all that one can to bring as manypeople as possible to a state of theory, which will at last permit therequisite change in practice to be made with safety and success? This isanother and entirely different thing. The time may not have come for thefirst of these two courses. The season may not be advanced enough for usto push on to active conquest. But the time has always come, and theseason is never unripe, for the announcement of the fruitful idea. 

We must go further than that. In so far as it can be done by one manwithout harming his neighbours, the time has always come for therealisation of an idea. When the change in way of living or ininstitution is one which requires the assent and co-operation of numbersof people, it may clearly be a matter for question whether men enoughare ready to yield assent and co-operation. But the expression of thenecessity of the change and the grounds of it, though it may not alwaysbe appropriate, can never be premature, and for these reasons. The factof a new idea having come to one man is a sign that it is in the air. The innovator is as much the son of his generation as the conservative. Heretics have as direct a relation to antecedent conditions as theorthodox. Truth, said Bacon, has been rightly named the daughter ofTime. The new idea does not spring up uncaused and by miracle. If it hascome to me, there must be others to whom it has only just missed coming. If I have found my way to the light, there must be others groping afterit very close in my neighbourhood. My discovery is their goal. They areprepared to receive the new truth, which they were not prepared to findfor themselves. The fact that the mass are not yet ready to receive, anymore than to find, is no reason why the possessor of the new truthshould run to hide under a bushel the candle which has been lighted forhim. If the time has not come for them, at least it has come for him. Noman can ever know whether his neighbours are ready for change or not. Hehas all the following certainties, at least:--that he himself is readyfor the change; that he believes it would be a good and beneficent one;that unless some one begins the work of preparation, assuredly therewill be no consummation; and that if he declines to take a part in thematter, there can be no reason why every one else in turn should notdecline in like manner, and so the work remain for ever unperformed. Thecompromiser who blinds himself to all those points, and acts just as ifthe truth were not in him, does for ideas with which he agrees, the verything which the acute persecutor does for ideas which he dislikes--heextinguishes beginnings and kills the germs. 

The consideration on which so many persons rely, that an existinginstitution, though destined to be replaced by a better, performs usefulfunctions provisionally, is really not to the point. It is an excellentreason why the institution should not be removed or fundamentallymodified, until public opinion is ripe for the given piece ofimprovement. But it is no reason at all why those who are anxious forthe improvement, should speak and act just as they would do if theythought the change perfectly needless and undesirable. It is no reasonwhy those who allow the provisional utility of a belief or aninstitution or a custom of living, should think solely of the utilityand forget the equally important element of its provisionalness. For thefact of its being provisional is the very ground why every one whoperceives this element, should set himself to act accordingly. It is theground why he should set himself, in other words, to draw opinion inevery way open to him--by speech, by voting, by manner of life andconduct--in the direction of new truth and the better practice. Let usnot, because we deem a thing to be useful for the hour, act as if itwere to be useful for ever. The people who selfishly seek to enjoy asmuch comfort and ease as they can in an existing state of things, withthe desperate maxim, 'After us, the deluge, ' are not any worse thanthose who cherish present comfort and case and take the world as itcomes, in the fatuous and self-deluding hope, 'After us, themillennium. ' Those who make no sacrifice to avert the deluge, and thosewho make none to hasten their millennium, are on the same moral level. And the former have at least the quality of being no worse than theiravowed principle, while the latter nullify their pretended hopes byconformities which are only proper either to profound socialcontentment, or to profound social despair. Nay, they seem to think thatthere is some merit in this merely speculative hopefulness. They act asif they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvementof mankind, is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about anyimprovement in particular. 

If those who defend a given institution are doing their work well, thatfurnishes the better reason why those who disapprove of it anddisbelieve in its enduring efficacy, should do their work well also. Take the Christian churches, for instance. Assume, if you will, thatthey are serving a variety of useful functions. If that were all, itwould be a reason for conforming. But we are speaking of those for whomthe matter does not end here. If you are convinced that the dogma is nottrue; that a steadily increasing number of persons are becoming awarethat it is not true; that its efficacy as a basis of spiritual life isbeing lowered in the same degree as its credibility; that both dogma andchurch must be slowly replaced by higher forms of faith, if not also bymore effective organisations; then, all who hold such views as thesehave as distinctly a function in the community as the ministers andupholders of the churches, and the zeal of the latter is simply the mostmonstrously untenable apology that could be invented for dereliction ofduty by the former. 

If the orthodox to some extent satisfy certain of the necessities of thepresent, there are other necessities of the future which can only besatisfied by those who now pass for heretical. The plea which we areexamining, if it is good for the purpose for which it is urged, wouldhave to be expressed in this way:--The institution is working asperfectly as it can be made to do, or as any other in its place would belikely to do, and therefore I will do nothing by word or deed towardsmeddling with it. Those who think this, and act accordingly, are theconsistent conservatives of the community. If a man takes up anyposition short of this, his conformity, acquiescence, and inertia atonce become inconsistent and culpable. For unless the institution orbelief is entirely adequate, it must be the duty of all who havesatisfied themselves that it is not so, to recognise its deficiences, and at least to call attention to them, even if they lack opportunity orcapacity to suggest remedies. Now we are dealing with persons who, fromthe hypothesis, do not admit that this or that factor in an existingsocial state secures all the advantages which might be secured ifinstead of that factor there were some other. We are speaking of all thevarious kinds of dissidents, who think that the current theology, or anestablished church, or a monarchy, or an oligarchic republic, is a badthing and a lower form, even at the moment while they attributeprovisional merit to it. They can mean nothing by classing each ofthese as bad things, except that they either bring with them certainserious drawbacks, or exclude certain valuable advantages. The fact thatthey perform their functions well, such as they are, leaves thefundamental vice or defect of these functions just where it was. If anyone really thinks that the current theology involves depraved notions ofthe supreme impersonation of good, restricts and narrows theintelligence, misdirects the religious imagination, and has becomepowerless to guide conduct, then how does the circumstance that ithappens not to be wholly and unredeemedly bad in its influence, relieveour dissident from all care or anxiety as to the points in which, as wehave seen, he does count it inadequate and mischievous? Even if hethinks it does more good than harm--a position which must be verydifficult for one who believes the common supernatural conception of itto be entirely false--even then, how is he discharged from the duty ofstigmatising the harm which he admits that it does?

Again, take the case of the English monarchy. Grant, if you will, thatthis institution has a certain function, and that by the present chiefmagistrate this function is estimably performed. Yet if we are of thosewho believe that in the stage of civilisation which England has reachedin other matters, the monarchy must be either obstructive and injurious, or else merely decorative; and that a merely decorative monarchy tendsin divers ways to engender habits of abasement, to nourish lower socialideals, to lessen a high civil self-respect in the community; then itmust surely be our duty not to lose any opportunity of pressing theseconvictions. To do this is not necessarily to act as if one were anxiousfor the immediate removal of the throne and the crown into the museum ofpolitical antiquities. We may have no urgent practical solicitude inthis direction, on the intelligible principle that a free people alwaysgets as good a kind of government as it deserves. Our conviction is not, on the present hypothesis, that monarchy ought to be swept away inEngland, but that monarchy produces certain mischievous consequences tothe public spirit of the community. And so what we are bound to do is totake care not to conceal this conviction; to abstain scrupulously fromall kinds of action and observance, public or private, which tend everso remotely to foster the ignoble and degrading elements that exist in acourt and spread from it outwards; and to use all the influence we have, however slight it may be, in loading public opinion to a right attitudeof contempt and dislike for these ignoble and degrading elements, andthe conduct engendered by them. A policy like this does not interferewith the advantages of the monarchy, such as they are asserted to be, and it has the effect of making what are supposed to be itsdisadvantages as little noxious as possible. The question whether we canget others to agree with us is not relevant. If we were eager forinstant overthrow, it would be the most relevant of all questions. Butwe are in the preliminary stage, the stage for acting on opinion. Thefact that others do not yet share our opinion, is the very reason forour action. We can only bring them to agree with us, if it be possibleon any terms, by persistency in our principles. This persistency, in allbut either very timid or very vulgar natures, always has been andalways will be independent of external assent or co-operation. Thehistory of success, as we can never too often repeat to ourselves, isthe history of minorities. And what is more, it is for the most part thehistory of insurrection exactly against what the worldly spirits of thetime, whenever it may have been, deemed mere trifles and accidents, withwhich sensible men should on no account dream of taking the trouble toquarrel. 

'Halifax, ' says Macaulay, 'was in speculation a strong republican anddid not conceal it. He often made hereditary monarchy and aristocracythe subjects of his keen pleasantry, while he was fighting the battlesof the court and obtaining for himself step after step in the peerage. 'We are perfectly familiar with this type, both in men who have, and menwho have not, such brilliant parts as Halifax. Such men profess tonourish high ideals of life, of character, of social institutions. Yetthey never think of these ideals, when they are deciding what ispractically attainable. One would like to ask them what purpose isserved by an ideal, if it is not to make a guide for practice and alandmark in dealing with the real. A man's loftiest and most idealnotions must be of a singularly ethereal and, shall we not say, senseless kind, if he can never see how to take a single step that maytend in the slightest degree towards making them more real. If an idealhas no point of contact with what exists, it is probably not much morethan the vapid outcome of intellectual or spiritual self-indulgence. Ifit has such a point of contact, then there is sure to be something whicha man can do towards the fulfilment of his hopes. He cannot substitute anew national religion for the old, but he can at least do something toprevent people from supposing that the adherents of the old are morenumerous than they really are, and something to show them that goodideas are not all exhausted by the ancient forms. He cannot transform amonarchy into a republic, but he can make sure that one citizen at leastshall aim at republican virtues, and abstain from the debasingcomplaisance of the crowd. 

'It is a very great mistake, said Burke, many years before the FrenchRevolution is alleged, and most unreasonably alleged, to have alienatedhim from liberalism: 'it is a very great mistake to imagine thatmankind follow up practically any speculative principle, either ofgovernment or of freedom, as far as it will go in argument and logicalillation. All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise andbarter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take;--we remit somerights that we may enjoy others. . . . Man acts from motives relative tohis interests; and not on metaphysical speculations. [29] These are thewords of wisdom and truth, if we can be sure that men will interpretthem in all the fulness of their meaning, and not be content to takeonly that part of the meaning which falls in with the dictates of theirown love of ease. In France such words ought to be printed in capitalson the front of every newspaper, and written up in letters of burnishedgold over each faction of the Assembly, and on the door of every bureauin the Administration. In England they need a commentary which shallbring out the very simple truth, that compromise and barter do not meanthe undisputed triumph of one set of principles. Nor, on the other hand, do they mean the mutilation of both sets of principles, with a view toproducing a _tertium quid_ that shall involve the disadvantages of each, without securing the advantages of either. What Burke means is that weought never to press our ideas up to their remotest logical issues, without reference to the conditions in which we are applying them. Inpolitics we have an art. Success in politics, as in every other art, obviously before all else implies both knowledge of the material withwhich we have to deal, and also such concession as is necessary to thequalities of the material. Above all, in politics we have an art inwhich development depends upon small modifications. That is the trueside of the conservative theory. To hurry on after logical perfection isto show one's self ignorant of the material of that social structurewith which the politician has to deal. To disdain anything short of anorganic change in thought or institution in infatuation. To be willingto make such changes too frequently, even when they are possible, isfoolhardiness. That fatal French saying about small reforms being theworst enemies of great reforms is, in the sense in which it is commonlyused, a formula of social ruin. 

On the other hand, let us not forget that there is a sense in which thisvery saying is profoundly true. A small and temporary improvement mayreally be the worst enemy of a great and permanent improvement, unlessthe first is made on the lines and in the direction of the second. Andso it may, if it be successfully palmed off upon a society as actuallybeing the second. In such a case as this, and our legislation presentsinstances of the kind, the small reform, if it be not made withreference to some large progressive principle and with a view to furtherextension of its scope, makes it all the more difficult to return to theright line and direction when improvement is again demanded. To take anexample which is now very familiar to us all. The Education Act of 1870was of the nature of a small reform. No one pretends that it is anythingapproaching to a final solution of a complex problem. But the governmentinsisted, whether rightly or wrongly, that their Act was as large ameasure as public opinion was at that moment ready to support. At thesame time it was clearly agreed among the government and the whole ofthe party at their backs, that at some time or other, near or remote, ifpublic instruction was to be made genuinely effective, the private, voluntary, or denominational system would have to be replaced by anational system. To prepare for this ultimate replacement was one of thepoints to be most steadily borne in mind, however slowly and tentativelythe process might be conducted. Instead of that, the authors of the Actdeliberately introduced provisions for extending and strengthening thevery system which will have eventually to be superseded. They thus bytheir small reform made the future great reform the more difficult ofachievement. Assuredly this is not the compromise and barter, the giveand take, which Burke intended. What Burke means by compromise, and whatevery true statesman understands by it, is that it may be mostinexpedient to meddle with an institution merely because it does notharmonise with 'argument and logical illation. ' This is a very differentthing from giving new comfort and strength with one hand, to aninstitution whose death-warrant you pretend to be signing with theother. 

In a different way the second possible evil of a small reform may beequally mischievous--where the small reform is represented as settlingthe question. The mischief here is not that it takes us out of theprogressive course, as in the case we have just been considering, butthat it sets men's minds in a posture of contentment, which is notjustified by the amount of what has been done, and which makes it allthe harder to arouse them to new effort when the inevitable timearrives. 

In these ways, then, compromise may mean, not acquiescence in aninstalment, on the ground that the time is not ripe to yield us morethan an instalment, but either the acceptance of the instalment asfinal, followed by the virtual abandonment of hope and effort; or elseit may mean a mistaken reversal of direction, which augments thedistance that has ultimately to be traversed. In either of these senses, the small reform may become the enemy of the great one. But a rightconception of political method, based on a rightly interpretedexperience of the conditions on which societies unite progress withorder, leads the wise conservative to accept the small change, lest aworse thing befall him, and the wise innovator to seize the chance of asmall improvement, while incessantly working in the direction of greatones. The important thing is that throughout the process neither of themshould lose sight of his ultimate ideal; nor fail to look at the detailfrom the point of view of the whole; nor allow the near particular tobulk so unduly large as to obscure the general and distant. 

If the process seems intolerably slow, we may correct our impatience bylooking back upon the past. People seldom realise the enormous period oftime which each change in men's ideas requires for its fullaccomplishment. We speak of these changes with a peremptory kind ofdefiniteness, as if they had covered no more than the space of a fewyears. Thus we talk of the time of the Reformation, as we might talk ofthe Reform Bill or the Repeal of the Corn Duties. Yet the Reformation isthe name for a movement of the mind of northern Europe, which went onfor three centuries. Then if we turn to that still more momentous setof events, the rise and establishment of Christianity, one might supposefrom current speech that we could fix that within a space of half acentury or so. Yet it was at least four hundred years before all thefoundations of that great superstructure of doctrine and organisationwere completely laid. Again, to descend to less imposing occurrences, the transition in the Eastern Empire from the old Roman system ofnational organisation to that other system to which we give the specificname of Byzantine, --this transition, so infinitely less important as itwas than either of the two other movements, yet occupied no less than acouple of hundred years. The conditions of speech make it indispensablefor us to use definite and compendious names for movements that wereboth tardy and complex. We are forced to name a long series of events asif they were a single event. But we lose the reality of history, we failto recognise one of the most striking aspects of human affairs, andabove all we miss that most invaluable practical lesson, the lesson ofpatience, unless we remember that the great changes of history took uplong periods of time which, when measured by the little life of a man, are almost colossal, like the vast changes of geology. We know how longit takes before a species of plant or animal disappears in face of abetter adapted species. Ideas and customs, beliefs and institutions, have always lingered just as long in face of their successors, and thecompetition is not less keen nor less prolonged, because it is for oneor other inevitably destined to be hopeless. History, like geology, demands the use of the imagination, and in proportion as the exercise ofthe historic imagination is vigorously performed in thinking of thepast, will be the breadth of our conception of the changes which thefuture has in store for us, as well as of the length of time and themagnitude of effort required for their perfect achievement[30]. 

This much, concerning moderation in political practice. No suchconsiderations present themselves in the matters which concern theshaping of our own lives, or the publications of our social opinions. Inthis region we are not imposing charges upon others, either by law orotherwise. We therefore owe nothing to the prejudices or habits ofothers. If any one sets serious value upon the point of differencebetween his own ideal and that which is current, if he thinks that his'experiment in living' has promise of real worth, and that if morepersons could be induced to imitate it, some portion of mankind would bethus put in possession of a better kind of happiness, then it is sellinga birthright for a mess of pottage to abandon hopes so rich andgenerous, merely in order to avoid the passing and casual penalties ofsocial disapproval. And there is a double evil in this kind of flinchingfrom obedience to the voice of our better selves, whether it takes theform of absolute suppression of what we think and hope, or only oftimorous and mutilated presentation. We lose not only the possibleadvantage of the given change. Besides that, we lose also the certainadvantage of maintaining or increasing the amount of conscientiousnessin the world. And everybody can perceive the loss incurred in a societywhere diminution of the latter sort takes place. The advance of thecommunity depends not merely on the improvement and elevation of itsmoral maxima, but also on the quickening of moral sensibility. Thelatter work has mostly been effected, when it has been effected on alarge scale, by teachers of a certain singular personal quality. They donothing to improve the theory of conduct, but they have the art ofstimulating men to a more enthusiastic willingness to rise in dailypractice to the requirements of whatever theory they may accept. Thelove of virtue, of duty, of holiness, or by whatever name we call thispowerful sentiment, exists in the majority of men, where it exists atall, independently of argument. It is a matter of affection, sympathy, association, aspiration. Hence, even while, in quality, sense of duty isa stationary factor, it is constantly changing in quantity. The amountof conscience in different communities, or in the same community atdifferent times, varies infinitely. The immediate cause of the declineof a society in the order of morals is a decline in the quantity of itsconscience, a deadening of its moral sensitiveness, and not adepravation of its theoretical ethics. The Greeks became corrupt andenfeebled, not for lack of ethical science, but through the decay in thenumbers of those who were actually alive to the reality and force ofethical obligations. Mahometans triumphed over Christians in the Eastand in Spain--if we may for a moment isolate moral conditions from therest of the total circumstances--not because their scheme of duty wasmore elevated or comprehensive, but because their respect for duty wasmore strenuous and fervid. 

The great importance of leaving this priceless element in a communityas free, as keen, and as active as possible, is overlooked by thethinkers who uphold coercion against liberty, as a saving socialprinciple. Every act of coercion directed against an opinion or a way ofliving is in so far calculated to lessen the quantity of conscience inthe society where such acts are practised. Of course, where ways ofliving interfere with the lawful rights of others, where they are notstrictly self-regarding in all their details, it is necessary to forcethe dissidents, however strong may be their conscientious sentiment. Theevil of attenuating that sentiment is smaller than the evil of allowingone set of persons to realise their own notions of happiness, at theexpense of all the rest of the world. But where these notions can berealised without unlawful interference of that kind, then the forciblehindrance of such realisation is a direct weakening of the force andamount of conscience on which the community may count. There is onememorable historic case to illustrate this. Lewis XIV. , in revoking theEdict of Nantes, and the author of the still more cruel law of 1724, notonly violently drove out multitudes of the most scrupulous part of theFrench nation; they virtually offered the most tremendous bribes tothose of less stern resolution, to feign conversion to the orthodoxfaith. This was to treat conscience as a thing of mean value. It was toscatter to the wind with both hands the moral resources of thecommunity. And who can fail to see the strength which would have beengiven to France in her hour of storm, a hundred years after therevocation of the Edict of Nantes, if her protestant sons, fortified bythe training in the habits of individual responsibility whichprotestantism involves, had only been there to aid?

This consideration brings us to a new side of the discussion. We mayseem to have been unconsciously arguing as strongly in favour of avigorous social conservatism as of a self-asserting spirit of socialimprovement. All that we have been saying may appear to cut both ways. If the innovator should decline to practise silence or reserve, whyshould the possessor of power be less uncompromising, and why should henot impose silence by force? If the heretic ought to be uncompromisingin expressing his opinions, and in acting upon them, in the fulness ofhis conviction that they are right, why should not the orthodox beequally uncompromising in his resolution to stamp out the hereticalnotions and unusual ways of living, in the fulness of his convictionthat they are thoroughly wrong? To this question the answer is that thehollow kinds of compromise are as bad in the orthodox as in theheretical. Truth has as much to gain from sincerity and thoroughness inone as in the other. But the issue between the partisans of the twoopposed schools turns upon the sense which we design to give to theprocess of stamping out. Those who cling to the tenets of liberty limitthe action of the majority, as of the minority, strictly to persuasion. Those who dislike liberty, insist that earnestness of convictionjustifies either a majority or a minority in using not persuasion only, but force. I do not propose here to enter into the great question whichMr. Mill pressed anew upon the minds of this generation. His argumentsare familiar to every reader, and the conclusion at which he arrived isalmost taken for a postulate in the present essay. [31] The object ofthese chapters is to reiterate the importance of self-assertion, tenacity, and positiveness of principle. The partisan of coercion willargue that this thesis is on one side of it a justification ofpersecution, and other modes of interfering with new opinions and newways of living by force, and the strong arm of the law, and whateverother energetic means of repression may be at command. If the minorityare to be uncompromising alike in seeking and realising what they takefor truth, why not the majority? Now this implies two propositions. Itis the same as to say, first, that earnestness of conviction is not tobe distinguished from a belief in our own infallibility; second, thatfaith in our infallibility is necessarily bound up with intolerance. 

Neither of these propositions is true. Let us take them in turn. Earnestness of conviction is perfectly compatible with a sense ofliability to error. This has been so excellently put by a former writerthat we need not attempt to better his exposition. 'Every one must, ofcourse, think his own opinions right; for if he thought them wrong, theywould no longer be his opinions: but there is a wide difference betweenregarding ourselves as infallible, and being firmly convinced of thetruth of our creed. When a man reflects on any particular doctrine, hemay be impressed with a thorough conviction of the improbability or evenimpossibility of its being false: and so he may feel with regard to allhis other opinions, when he makes them objects of separatecontemplation. And yet when he views them in the aggregate, when hereflects that not a single being on the earth holds collectively thesame, when he looks at the past history and present state of mankind, and observes the various creeds of different ages and nations, thepeculiar modes of thinking of sects and bodies and individuals, thenotions once firmly held, which have been exploded, the prejudices onceuniversally prevalent, which have been removed, and the endlesscontroversies which have distracted those who have made it the businessof their lives to arrive at the truth; and when he further dwells onthe consideration that many of these, his fellow-creatures, have had aconviction of the justness of their respective sentiments equal to hisown, he cannot help the obvious inference, that in his own opinion it isnext to impossible that there is not an admixture of error; that thereis an infinitely greater probability of his being wrong in some thanright in all. '[32]

Of course this is not an account of the actual frame of mind of ordinarymen. They never do think of their opinions in the aggregate incomparison with the collective opinions of others, nor ever draw theconclusions which such reflections would suggest. But such a frame ofmind is perfectly attainable, and has often been attained, by persons offar lower than first-rate capacity. And if this is so, there is noreason why it should not be held up for the admiration and imitation ofall those classes of society which profess to have opinions. It wouldthus become an established element in the temper of the age. Nor need wefear that the result of this would be any flaccidity of conviction, orlethargy in act. A man would still be penetrated with the rightness ofhis own opinion on a given issue, and would still do all that he couldto make it prevail in practice. But among the things which he would nolonger permit himself to do, would be the forcible repression in othersof any opinions, however hostile to his own, or of any kind of conduct, however widely it diverged from his own, and provided that it concernedthemselves only. This widening of his tolerance would be the naturalresult of a rational and realised consciousness of his own generalfallibility. 

Next, even belief in one's own infallibility does not necessarily leadto intolerance. For it may be said that though no man in his senseswould claim to be incapable of error, yet in every given case he isquite sure that he is not in error, and therefore this assurance inparticular is tantamount by process of cumulation to a sense ofinfallibility in general. Now even if this were so, it would not ofnecessity either produce or justify intolerance. The certainty of thetruth of your own opinions is independent of any special idea as to themeans by which others may best be brought to share them. The questionbetween persuasion and force remains apart--unless, indeed, we may saythat in societies where habits of free discussion have once begun totake root, those who are least really sure about their opinions, areoften most unwilling to trust to persuasion to bring them converts, andmost disposed to grasp the rude implements of coercion, whether legal ormerely social. The cry, 'Be my brother, or I slay thee, ' was the sign ofa very weak, though very fiery, faith in the worth of fraternity. Hewhose faith is most assured, has the best reason for relying onpersuasion, and the strongest motive to thrust from him all temptationsto use angry force. The substitution of force for persuasion, among itsother disadvantages, has this further drawback, from our present pointof view, that it lessens the conscience of a society and breedshypocrisy. You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him. Opinion and force belong to different elements. To think that you areable by social disapproval or other coercive means to crush a man'sopinion, is as one who should fire a blunderbuss to put out a star. Theacquiescence in current notions which is secured by law or by petulantsocial disapproval, is as worthless and as essentially hypocritical, asthe conversion of an Irish pauper to protestantism by means ofsoup-tickets, or that of a savage to Christianity by the gift of astring of beads. Here is the radical fallacy of those who urge thatpeople must use promises and threats in order to encourage opinions, thoughts, and feelings which they think good, and to prevent otherswhich they think bad. Promises and threats can influence acts. Opinionsand thoughts on morals, politics, and the rest, after they have oncegrown in a man's mind, can no more be influenced by promises and threatsthan can my knowledge that snow is white or that ice is cold. You mayimpose penalties on me by statute for saying that snow is white, oracting as if I thought ice cold, and the penalties may affect myconduct. They will not, because they cannot, modify my beliefs in thematter by a single iota. One result therefore of intolerance is to makehypocrites. On this, as on the rest of the grounds which vindicate thedoctrine of liberty, a man who thought himself infallible either inparticular or in general, from the Pope of Rome down to the editor ofthe daily newspaper, might still be inclined to abstain from any form ofcompulsion. The only reason to the contrary is that a man who is sosilly as to think himself incapable of going wrong, is very likely to betoo silly to perceive that coercion may be one way of going wrong. 

The currency of the notion that earnest sincerity about one's opinionsand ideals of conduct is inseparably connected with intolerance, isindirectly due to the predominance of legal or juristic analogies insocial discussion. For one thing, the lawyer has to deal mainly withacts, and to deal with them by way of repression. His attention isprimarily fixed on the deed, and only secondarily on the mind of thedoer. And so a habit of thought is created, which treats opinion assomething equally in the sphere of coercion with actions. At the sametime it favours coercive ways of affecting opinion. Then, what is stillmore important, the jurist's conception of society has its root in therelation between sovereign and subject, between lawmaker and those whomlaw restrains. Exertion of power on one hand, and compliance on theother--this is his type of the conditions of the social union. Thefertility and advance of discussion on social issues depends on thesubstitution of the evolutional for the legal conception. The lawyer'stype of proposition is absolute. It is also, for various reasons whichneed not be given here, inspired by involuntary reference to the lower, rather than to the more highly developed, social states. In the lowerstates law, penalties, coercion, compulsion, the strong hand, a sternlyrepressive public opinion, were the conditions on which the communitywas united and held together. But the line of thought which theseanalogies suggest, becomes less and less generally appropriate in socialdiscussion, in proportion as the community becomes more complex, morevarious in resource, more special in its organisation, in a word, moreelaborately civilised. The evolutionist's idea of society concedes tolaw its historic place and its actual part. But then this idea leadsdirectly to a way of looking at society, which makes the replacement oflaw by liberty a condition of reaching the higher stages of socialdevelopment. 

The doctrine of liberty belongs to the subject of this chapter, becauseit is only another way of expressing the want of connection betweenearnestness in realising our opinions, and anything like coercion intheir favour. If it were true that aversion from compromise, in carryingout our ideas, implied the rightfulness of using all the means in ourpower to hinder others from carrying out ideas hostile to them, then weshould have been preaching in a spirit unfavourable to the principle ofliberty. Our main text has been that men should refuse to sacrificetheir opinions and ways of living (in the self-regarding sphere) out ofregard to the _status quo_, or the prejudices of others. And this, as amatter of course, excludes the right of forcing or wishing any one elseto make such a sacrifice to us. Well, the first foundation-stone for thedoctrine of liberty is to be sought in the conception of society as agrowing and developing organism. This is its true base, apart from thenumerous minor expediencies which may be adduced to complete thestructure of the argument. It is fundamentally advantageous that insocieties which have reached our degree of complex and intricateorganisation, unfettered liberty should be conceded to ideas and, withinthe self-regarding sphere, to conduct also. The reasons for this are ofsome such kind as the following. New ideas and new 'experiments inliving' would not arise, if there were not a certain inadequateness inexisting ideas and ways of living. They may not point to the right modeof meeting inadequateness, but they do point to the existence andconsciousness of it. They originate in the social capability of growth. Society can only develop itself on condition that all such novelties(within the limit laid down, for good and valid reasons, at selfregarding conduct) are allowed to present themselves. First, becauseneither the legislature nor any one else can ever know for certain whatnovelties will prove of enduring value. Second, because even if we didknow for certain that given novelties were pathological growths and notnormal developments, and that they never would be of any value, stillthe repression necessary to extirpate them would involve too serious arisk both of keeping back social growth at some other point, and ofgiving the direction of that growth an irreparable warp. And let usrepeat once more, in proportion as a community grows more complex in itsclasses, divisions, and subdivisions, more intricate in its productive, commercial, or material arrangements, so does this risk very obviouslywax more grave. 

In the sense in which we are speaking of it, liberty is not a positiveforce, any more than the smoothness of a railroad is a positiveforce. [33] It is a condition. As a force, there is a sense in which itis true to call liberty a negation. As a condition, though it may stillbe a negation, yet it may be indispensable for the production of certainpositive results. The vacuity of an exhausted receiver is not a force, but it is the indispensable condition of certain positive operations. Liberty as a force may be as impotent as its opponents allege. This doesnot affect its value as a preliminary or accompanying condition. Theabsence of a strait-waistcoat is a negation; but it is a usefulcondition for the activity of sane men. No doubt there must be adefinite limit to this absence of external interference with conduct, and that limit will be fixed at various points by different thinkers. Weare now only urging that it cannot be wisely fixed for the more complexsocieties by any one who has not grasped this fundamental preconception, that liberty, or the absence of coercion, or the leaving people tothink, speak, and act as they please, is in itself a good thing. It isthe object of a favourable presumption. The burden of proving itinexpedient always lies, and wholly lies, on those who wish to abridgeit by coercion, whether direct or indirect. 

One reason why this truth is so reluctantly admitted, is men'sirrational want of faith in the self-protective quality of a highlydeveloped and healthy community. The timid compromiser on the one hand, and the advocate of coercive restriction on the other, are equally thevictims of a superfluous apprehension. The one fears to use his libertyfor the same reason that makes the other fearful of permitting liberty. This common reason is the want of a sensible confidence that, in a freewestern community, which has reached our stage of development, religious, moral, and social novelties--provided they are tainted by noelement of compulsion or interference with the just rights of others, may be trusted to find their own level. Moral and intellectualconditions are not the only motive forces in a community, nor are theyeven the most decisive. Political and material conditions fix the limitsat which speculation can do either good or harm. Let us take anillustration of the impotence of moral ideas to override materialcircumstances; and we shall venture to place this illustration somewhatfully before the reader. 

There is no more important distinction between modern civilisedcommunities and the ancient communities than the fact that the latterrested on Slavery, while the former have abolished it. Hence there canhardly be a more interesting question than this--by what agencies soprodigious a transformation of one of the fundamental conditions ofsociety was brought about. The popular answer is of a very ready kind, and it passes quite satisfactorily. This answer is that the first greatstep towards free labour, the transformation of personal slavery intoserfdom, was the result of the spiritual change which was wrought inmen's minds by the teaching of the Church. It is unquestionable that theinfluence of the Church tended to mitigate the evils of slavery, tohumanise the relations between master and slave, between the lord andthe serf. But this is a very different thing from the radicaltransformation of those relations. If we think of society as anorganism we instantly understand that so immense a change as this couldnot possibly have been effected without the co-operation of the othergreat parts of the social system, any more than a critical evolutioncould take place in the nutritive apparatus of an animal, without achange in the whole series of its organs. Thus in order that serfageshould be evolved from slavery, and free labour again from serfage, itcould not be enough that an alteration should have been wrought in men'sideas as to their common brotherhood, and the connected ideas as to thelawfulness or unlawfulness of certain human relations. There must havebeen an alteration also of the economic and material conditions. Historyconfirms the expectations which we should thus have been led toentertain. The impotence of spiritual and moral agencies alone inbringing about this great metamorphosis, is shown by such facts asthese. For centuries after the new faith had consolidated itself, slavery was regarded without a particle of that deep abhorrence whichthe possession of man by man excites in us now. In the ninth and tenthcenturies the slave trade was the most profitable branch of thecommerce that was carried on in the Mediterranean. The historian tellsus that, even so late as this, slaves were the principal article ofEuropean export to Africa, Syria, and Egypt, in payment for the produceof the East which was brought from those countries. It was the crumblingof the old social system which, by reducing the population, lesseningthe wealth, and lowering the standard of living among the free masters, tended to extinguish slavery, by diminishing the differences between themasters and their bondsmen. Again, it was certain laws enacted by theRoman government for the benefit of the imperial fisc, which firstconferred rights on the slave. The same laws brought the free farmer, whose position was less satisfactory for the purposes of the revenue, down nearer and nearer to a servile condition. Again, in the ninth andtenth centuries, pestilence and famine accelerated the extinction ofpredial slavery by weakening the numbers of the free population. 'History, ' we are told by that thoroughly competent authority, Mr. Finlay, 'affords its testimony that neither the doctrines ofChristianity, nor the sentiments of humanity, have ever yet succeededin extinguishing slavery, where the soil could be cultivated with profitby slave labour. No Christian community of slave-holders has yetvoluntarily abolished slavery. In no country where it prevailed hasrural slavery ceased, until the price of productions raised by slavelabour has fallen so low as to leave no profit to the slave-owner. '

The moral of all this is the tolerably obvious truth, that theprosperity of an abstract idea depends as much on the medium into whichit is launched, as upon any quality of its own. Stable societies areamply furnished with force enough to resist all effort in a destructivedirection. There is seldom much fear, and in our own country there ishardly any fear at all, of hasty reformers making too much way againstthe spontaneous conservatism which belongs to a healthy andwell-organised community. If dissolvent ideas do make their way, it isbecause the society was already ripe for dissolution. New ideas, howeverardently preached, will dissolve no society which was not already in acondition of profound disorganisation. We may be allowed just to pointto two memorable instances, by way of illustration, though a long andelaborate discussion would be needed to bring out their full force. Ithas often been thought since, as it was thought by timorousreactionaries at the time, that Christianity in various ways sapped thestrength of the Roman Empire, and opened the way for the barbarians. Intruth, the most careful and competent students know now that the Empireslowly fell to pieces, partly because the political arrangements werevicious and inadequate, but mainly because the fiscal and economicsystem impoverished and depopulated one district of the vast empireafter another. It was the break-up of the Empire that gave the Churchits chance; not the Church that broke up the Empire. It is a mistake ofthe same kind to suppose that the destructive criticism of the Frenchphilosophers a hundred years ago was the great operative cause of thecatastrophe which befel the old social régime. If Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, had never lived, or if their works had all been suppressed assoon as they were printed, their absence would have given no new life toagriculture, would not have stimulated trade, nor replenished thebankrupt fisc, nor incorporated the privileged classes with the bulk ofthe nation, nor done anything else to repair an organisation of whichevery single part had become incompetent for its proper function. It wasthe material misery and the political despair engendered by the reigningsystem, which brought willing listeners to the feet of the teachers whoframed beneficent governments on the simple principles of reason and thenatural law. And these teachers only busied themselves with abstractpolitics, because the real situation was desperate. They had noalternative but to evolve social improvements out of their ownconsciousness. There was not a single sound organ in the body politic, which they could have made the starting-point of a reconstitution of asociety on the base of its actual or historic structure. The mischiefswhich resulted from their method are patent and undeniable. But themethod was made inevitable by the curse of the old régime. [34]

Nor is there any instance in history of mere opinion making a breach inthe essential constitution of a community, so long as the politicalconditions were stable and the economic or nutritive conditions sound. If some absolute monarch were to be seized by a philanthropic resolutionto transform the ordering of a society which seemed to be at hisdisposal, he might possibly, by the perseverance of a lifetime, succeedin throwing the community into permanent confusion. Joseph II. Perhapsdid as much as a modern sovereign can do in this direction. Yet littlecame of his efforts, either for good or harm. But a man without thewhole political machinery in his power need hardly labour under anyapprehension that he may, by the mere force of speculative opinion, involuntarily work a corresponding mischief. If it is true that the mostfervent apostles of progress usually do very little of the good on whichthey congratulate themselves, they ought surely on the same ground to beacquitted of much of the harm for which they are sometimes reviled. In acountry of unchecked and abundant discussion, a new idea is not at alllikely to make much way against the objection of its novelty, unless itis really commended by some quality of temporary or permanent value. Sofar therefore as the mere publication of new principles is concerned, and so far also as merely self-regarding action goes, one who has thekeenest sense of social responsibility, and is most scrupulously afraidof doing anything to slacken or perturb the process of social growth, may still consistently give to the world whatever ideas he has gravelyembraced. He may safely trust, if the society be in a normal condition, to its justice of assimilation and rejection. There are a fewindividuals for whom newness is a recommendation. But what are thesefew among the many to whom newness is a stumbling-block? Old ideas maysurvive merely because they are old. A new one will certainly not, amonga considerable body of men in a healthy social state, gain anyacceptance worth speaking of, merely because it is new. 

The recognition of the self-protecting quality of society is somethingmore than a point of speculative importance. It has a direct practicalinfluence. For it would add to the courage and intrepidity of the menwho are most attached to the reigning order of things. If such men couldonly divest themselves of a futile and nervous apprehension, that thingsas they are have no root in their essential fitness and harmony, andthat order consequently is ever hanging on a trembling and doubtfulbalance, they would not only gain by the self-respect which would beadded to them and the rest of the community, but all discussion wouldbecome more robust and real. If they had a larger faith in the stabilityfor which they profess so great an anxiety, they would be more freealike in understanding and temper to deal generously, honestly, andeffectively with those whom they count imprudent innovators. There isnothing more amusing or more instructive than to turn to the debates inparliament or the press upon some innovating proposal, after an intervalsince the proposal was accepted by the legislature. The flaming hopes ofits friends, the wild and desperate prophecies of its antagonists, arefound to be each as ill-founded as the other. The measure which was todo such vast good according to the one, such portentous evil accordingto the other, has done only a part of the promised good, and has donenone of the threatened evil. The true lesson from this is one ofperseverance and thoroughness for the improver, and one of faith in theself-protectiveness of a healthy society for the conservative. Themaster error of the latter is to suppose that men are moved mainly bytheir passions rather than their interests, that all their passions arepresumably selfish and destructive, and that their own interests canseldom be adequately understood by the persons most directly concerned. How many fallacies are involved in this group of propositions, thereader may well be left to judge for himself. 

We have in this chapter considered some of the limitations which areset by the conditions of society on the duty of trying to realise ourprinciples in action. The general conclusion is in perfect harmony withthat of the previous chapters. A principle, if it be sound, representsone of the larger expediencies. To abandon that for the sake of someseeming expediency of the hour, is to sacrifice the greater good for theless, on no more creditable ground than that the less is nearer. It isbetter to wait, and to defer the realisation of our ideas until we canrealise them fully, than to defraud the future by truncating them, iftruncate them we must, in order to secure a partial triumph for them inthe immediate present. It is better to bear the burden ofimpracticableness, than to stifle conviction and to pare away principleuntil it becomes more hollowness and triviality. What is the sense, andwhat is the morality, of postponing the wider utility to the narrower?Nothing is so sure to impoverish an epoch, to deprive conduct ofnobleness, and character of elevation. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 27: _The Study of Sociology_, p. 396. ]

[Footnote 28: No one, for instance, has given more forcible or decisiveexpression than Mr. Spencer has done to the duty of not passivelyaccepting the current theology. See his _First Principles_, pt. I. Ch. Vi, § 34; paragraph beginning, --'Whoever hesitates to utter that whichhe thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance ofthe time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonalpoint of view, ' etc. ]

[Footnote 29: _Speech on Conciliation with America_. ]

[Footnote 30: 'Toute énormité dans les esprits d'un certain ordre n'estsouvent qu'une grande vue prise hors du temps et du lieu, et ne gardantaucun rapport réel avec les objets environnants. Le propre de certainesprunelles ardentes est de franchir du regard les intervalles et de lessupprimer. Tantôt c'est une idée qui retarde de plusieurs siècles, etque ces vigoureux esprits se figurent encore présente et vivante; tantôtc'est une idée qui avance, et qu'ils croient incontinent réalisable. M. De Couaën était ainsi; il voyait 1814 dès 1804, et de là unesupériorité; mais il jugeait 1814 possible dès 1804 ou 1805, et de làtout un chimérique entassement. --Voilà un point blanc à l'horizon, chacun jurerait que c'est un nuage. "C'est une montagne, " dit levoyageur à l'oeil d'aigle; mais s'il ajoute: "Nous y arriverons ce soir, dans deux heures;" si, à chaque heure de marche, il crie avecemportement: "Nous y sommes, " et le veut démontrer, il choque lesvoisins avec sa poutre, et donne l'avantage aux yeux moins perçants etplus habitués à la plaine. '--Ste. Beuve's _Volupté_, p. 262]

[Footnote 31: It is sometimes convenient to set familiar arguments downonce more; so I venture to reprint in a note at the end of the chapter ashort exposition of the doctrine of liberty, which I had occasion tomake in considering Sir J. F. Stephen's vigorous attack on thatdoctrine. ]

[Footnote 32: Mr. Samuel Bailey's _Essays on the Formation andPublication of Opinions_, etc. , p. 138, (1826. )]

[Footnote 33: There is a sense, and a most important sense, in whichliberty is a positive force. It is its robust and bracing influence oncharacter, which makes wise men prize freedom and strive for theenlargement of its province. As Mr. Mill expressed this:--'It is ofimportance not only what men do, but what manner of men they are that doit, ' Milton pointed to the positive effect of liberty on character inthe following passage:--'They are not skilful considerers of humanthings who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. Thoughye take from a covetous man his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; yecannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shutup all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in anyhermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that came not thither so. Supposewe could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, somuch we expel of virtue. And were I the chooser, a dram of well-doingshould be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance ofevil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth and completing of onevirtuous person, more than the restraint of ten vicious. ']

[Footnote 34: There is, I think, nothing in this paragraph reallyinconsistent with De Tocqueville's well-known and striking chapter, 'Comment les hommes de lettres devinrent les principaux hommespolitiques du pays, et des effets qui en résultèrent. ' (_Ancien Régime_, iii. I. ) Thus Sénac de Meilhan writes in 1795;--'C'est quand laRévolution a été entamée qu'on a cherché dans Mably, dans Rousseau, desarmes pour sustenter le système vers lequel entrainait l'effervescencede quelques esprits hardis. Mais ce ne sont point les auteurs que j'aicités qui ont enflamme les têtes; M. Necker seul a produit cet effet, etdéterminé l'explosion, ' . . . 'Les écrits de Voltaire ont certainement nuià la religion, et ébranlé la croyance dans un assez grand nombre; maisils n'ont aucun rapport avec les affaires du gouvernement, et sont plusfavorables que contraires à la monarchie. . . . ' Of Rousseau's _SocialContract_:--'Ce livre profond et abstrait était peu lu, et etendu debien peu de gens. ' Mably--'avait peu de vogue. ' _De Gouvernment, etc. , en France_, p. 129, etc. ]

NOTE TO PAGE 242. 

THE DOCTRINE OF LIBERTY. 

Mr. Mill's memorable plea for social liberty was little more than anenlargement, though a very important enlargement, of the principles ofthe still more famous Speech for Liberty of Unlicensed Printing withwhich Milton ennobled English literature two centuries before. Miltoncontended for free publication of opinion mainly on these grounds:First, that the opposite system implied the 'grace of infallibility andincorruptibleness' in the licensers. Second, that the prohibition ofbold books led to mental indolence and stagnant formalism both inteachers and congregations, producing the 'laziness of a licensingchurch. ' Third, that it 'hinders and retards the importation of ourrichest merchandise, truth;' for the commission of the licenser enjoinshim to let nothing pass which is not vulgarly received already, and 'ifit come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibitedthan truth itself, whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared anddimmed with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and unplausiblethan many errors, even as the person is of many a great man slight andcontemptible to see to. ' Fourth, that freedom is in itself an ingredientof true virtue, and 'they are not skilful considerers of human thingswho imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; that virtuetherefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, andknows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejectsit, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her virtue is but an excrementalvirtue, which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whomI dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the form of Guion, brings him in withhis palmer through the cave of Mammon and the tower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know and yet abstain. '

The four grounds on which Mr. Mill contends for the necessity of freedomin the expression of opinion to the mental wellbeing of mankind, arevirtually contained in these. His four grounds are, (1) that thesilenced opinion may be true; (2) it may contain a portion of truth, essential to supplement the prevailing opinion; (3) vigorous contestingof opinions that are even wholly true, is the only way of preventingthem from sinking to the level of uncomprehended prejudices; (4) withoutsuch contesting, the doctrine will lose its vital effect on characterand conduct. 

But Milton drew the line of liberty at what he calls 'neighbouringdifferences, or rather indifferences. ' The Arminian controversy hadloosened the bonds with which the newly liberated churches of theReformation, had made haste to bind themselves again, and weakened thatauthority of confessions, which had replaced the older but not moreintolerant authority of the universal church. Other controversies whichraged during the first half of the seventeenth century, --those betweencatholics and protestants, between prelatists and presbyterians, betweensocinians and trinitarians, between latitudinarians, puritans, andsacramentalists, --all tended to weaken theological exclusiveness. Thisslackening, however, was no more than partial. Roger Williams, indeed, the Welsh founder of Rhode Island, preached, as early as 1631, theprinciples of an unlimited toleration, extending to catholics, Jews, andeven infidels. Milton stopped a long way short of this. He did not mean'tolerated popery and open superstition, which, as it extirpates allreligious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, providedfirst that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win andregain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evilabsolutely either against faith or manners no law can possibly permitthat intends not to unlaw itself. '

Locke, writing five-and-forty years later, somewhat widened theselimitations. His question was not merely whether there should be freeexpression of opinion, but whether there should furthermore be freedomof worship and of religious union. He answered both questionsaffirmatively, --not on the semi-sceptical ground of Jeremy Taylor, whichis also one of the grounds taken by Mr. Mill, that we cannot be surethat our own opinion is the true one, --but on the strength of hisdefinition of the province of the civil magistrate. Locke held that themagistrate's whole jurisdiction reached only to civil concernments, andthat 'all civil power, right, and dominion is bounded to that only careof promoting these things; and that it neither can nor ought in anymanner to be extended to the saving of souls. This chiefly because thepower of the civil magistrate consists only in outward force, while trueand saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God, and such is the natureof the understanding that it cannot he compelled to the belief ofanything by outward force. . . . It is only light and evidence that canwork a change in men's opinions; and that light can in no manner proceedfrom corporal sufferings, or any other outward penalties. ' 'I may growrich by an art that I take not delight in; I may be cured of somedisease by remedies that I have not faith in; but I cannot be saved by areligion that at I distrust and a ritual that I abhor. ' (_First Letterconcerning Toleration_. ) And much more in the same excellent vein. ButLocke fixed limits to toleration. 1. No opinions contrary to humansociety, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservationof civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate. Thus, to takeexamples from our own day, a conservative minister would think himselfright on this principle in suppressing the Land and Labour League; acatholic minister in dissolving the Education League; and any ministerin making mere membership of the Mormon sect a penal offence. 2. Notolerance ought to be extended to 'those who attribute unto thefaithful, religious, and orthodox, that is in plain terms untothemselves, any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals, incivil concernments; or who, upon pretence of religion, do challenge anymanner of authority over such as are not associated with them in theirecclesiastical communion. ' As I have seldom heard of any sect, exceptthe Friends, who did not challenge as much authority as it couldpossibly get over persons not associated with it, this would amount to auniversal proscription of religion; but Locke's principle might at anyrate be invoked against Ultra-montanism in some circumstances. 3. Thoseare not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. The takingaway of God, _though but even in thought_, dissolves all society; andpromises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, have no hold on such. Thus the police ought to close Mr. Bradlaugh'sHall of Science, and perhaps on some occasions the Positivist School. 

Locke's principles depended on a distinction between civil concernments, which he tries to define, and all other concernments. Warburton'sarguments on the alliance between church and state turned on the samepoint, as did the once-famous Bangorian controversy. This distinctionwould fit into Mr. Mill's cardinal position, which consists in adistinction between the things that only affect the doer or thinker ofthem, and the things that affect other persons as well. Locke's attemptto divide civil affairs from affairs of salvation, was satisfactoryenough for the comparatively narrow object with which he opened hisdiscussion. Mr. Mill's account of civil affairs is both wider and moredefinite; naturally so, as he had to maintain the cause of tolerance ina much more complex set of social conditions, and amid a far greaterdiversity of speculative energy, than any one dreamed of in Locke'stime. Mr. Mill limits the province of the civil magistrate to therepression of acts that directly and immediately injure others than thedoer of them. So long as acts, including the expression of opinions, arepurely self-regarding, it seems to him expedient in the long run thatthey should not be interfered with by the magistrate. He goes muchfurther than this. Self-regarding acts should not be interfered with bythe magistrate. Not only self-regarding acts, but all opinionswhatever, should, moreover, be as little interfered with as possible bypublic opinion, except in the way of vigorous argumentation and earnestpersuasion in a contrary direction; the silent but most impressivesolicitation of virtuous example; the wise and careful upbringing of theyoung, so that when they enter life they may be most nobly fitted tochoose the right opinions and obey the right motives. 

The consideration by which he supports this rigorous confinement ofexternal interference on the part of government, or the unorganisedmembers of the community whose opinion is called public opinion, tocases of self-protection, are these, some of which have been alreadystated:--

1. By interfering to suppress opinions or experiments in living, you mayresist truths and improvements in a greater or less degree. 

2. Constant discussion is the only certain means of preserving thefreshness of truth in men's minds, and the vitality of its influenceupon their conduct and motives. 

3. Individuality is one of the most valuable elements of wellbeing, andyou can only be sure of making the most of individuality, if you have anatmosphere of freedom, encouraging free development and expansion. 

4. Habitual resort to repressive means of influencing conduct tends morethan anything else to discredit and frustrate the better means, such aseducation, good example, and the like. (_Liberty_, 148. )

The principle which he deduces from these considerations is--'that thesole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number isself-protection; the only purpose for which power can be rightfullyexercised over any member of a civilised community, is to prevent harmto others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficientwarrant. He cannot be rightfully compelled to do or forbear because itwill make him happier, because in the opinion of others to do so wouldbe wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating withhim, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, butnot for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he dootherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired todeter him must be calculated to produce evil to others. ' (_Liberty_, 22. )

Two disputable points in the above doctrine are likely at once to revealthemselves to the least critical eye. First, that doctrine would seem tocheck the free expression of disapproval; one of the most wholesome andindispensable duties which anybody with interest in serious questionshas to perform, and the non-performance of which would remove the mostproper and natural penalty from frivolous or perverse opinions andobnoxious conduct. Mr. Mill deals with this difficulty as follows:--'Wehave a right in various ways to act upon our unfavourable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise ofours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have aright to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance) for we have aright to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, andit may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think hisexample or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those withwhom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optionalgood offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In thesevarious modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands ofothers for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffersthese penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and as it werethe spontaneous, consequences of the faults themselves, not because theyare purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. ' (_Liberty_, 139. ) This appears to be a satisfactory way of meeting the objection. For though the penalties of disapproval may be just the same, whetherdeliberately inflicted, or naturally and spontaneously falling on theobject of such disapproval, yet there is a very intelligible differencebetween the two processes in their effect on the two parties concerned. A person imbued with Mr. Mill's principle would feel the responsibilityof censorship much more seriously; would reflect more carefully andcandidly about the conduct or opinion of which he thought ill; would bemore on his guard against pharisaic censoriousness, and that desire tobe ever judging one another, which Milton well called the stronghold ofour hypocrisy. The disapproval of such a person would have an austerecolour, a gravity, a self-respecting reserve, which could never belongto an equal degree of disapproval in a person who had started from theofficious principle, that if we are sure we are right, it is straightwayour business to make the person whom we think wrong smart for his error. And in the same way such disapproval would be much more impressive tothe person whom it affected. If it was justified, he would be like afroward child who is always less effectively reformed--if reformable atall--by angry chidings and passionate punishments than by the sight of acool and austere displeasure which lets him persist in his frowardnessif he chooses. 

The second weak point in the doctrine lies in the extreme vagueness ofthe terms, protective and self-regarding. The practical difficultybegins with the definition of these terms. Can any opinion, or anyserious part of conduct, be looked upon as truly and exclusivelyself-regarding? This central ingredient in the discussion seemsinsufficiently laboured in the essay on Liberty. Yet it is here morethan anywhere else that controversy is needed to clear up what is injust as much need of elucidation, whatever view we may take of theinherent virtue of freedom--whether we look on freedom as a merenegation, or as one of the most powerful positive conditions ofattaining the highest kind of human excellence. 

To some persons the analysis of conduct, on which the whole doctrine ofliberty rests, seems metaphysical and arbitrary. They are reluctant toadmit there are any self-regarding acts at all. This reluctance impliesa perfectly tenable proposition, a proposition which has been maintainedby nearly all religious bodies in the world's history in theirnon-latitudinarian stages. To distinguish the self-regarding from theother parts of conduct, strikes them not only as unscientific, but asmorally and socially mischievous. They insist that there is a social aswell as a personal element in every human act, though in very differentproportions. There is no gain, they contend, and there may be much harm, in trying to mark off actions, in which the personal element decisivelypreponderates, from actions of another sort. Mr. Mill did so distinguishactions, nor was his distinction either metaphysical or arbitrary in itssource. As a matter of observation, and for the practical purposes ofmorality, there are kinds of action whose consequences do not go beyondthe doer of them. No doubt, you may say that by engaging in these kindsin any given moment, the doer is neglecting the actions in which thesocial element preponderates, and therefore even acts that seem purelyself-regarding have indirect and negative consequences to the rest ofthe world. But to allow considerations of this sort to prevent us fromusing a common-sense classification of acts by the proportion of thepersonal element in them, is as unreasonable as if we allowed thedoctrine of the conservation of physical force, or the evolution of onemode of force into another, to prevent us from classifying theaffections of matter independently, as light, heat, motion, and therest. There is one objection obviously to be made to most of theillustrations which are designed to show the public element in allprivate conduct. The connection between the act and its influence onothers is so remote (using the word in a legal sense), though quitecertain, distinct, and traceable, that you can only take the act out ofthe self-regarding category, by a process which virtually denies theexistence of any such category. You must set a limit to this 'indirectand at-a-distance argument, ' as Locke called a similar plea, and thesetting of this limit is the natural supplement to Mr. Mill's 'simpleprinciple. '

The division between self-regarding acts and others then, rests onobservation of their actual consequences. And why was Mr. Mill soanxious to erect self-regarding acts into a distinct and importantclass, so important as to be carefully and diligently secured by aspecial principle of liberty? Because observation of the recordedexperience of mankind teaches us, that the recognition of thisindependent provision is essential to the richest expansion of humanfaculty. To narrow or to repudiate such a province, and to insistexclusively on the social bearing of each part of conduct, is to limitthe play of motives, and to thwart the doctrine that 'mankind obtain agreater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules andconditions required by the rest, than when each makes the good of therest his only object. ' To narrow or to repudiate such a province is totighten the power of the majority over the minority, and to augment theauthority of whatever sacerdotal or legislative body may represent themajority. Whether the lawmakers be laymen in parliament, or priests ofhumanity exercising the spiritual power, it matters not. 

We may best estimate the worth and the significance of the doctrine ofLiberty by considering the line of thought and observation which led toit. To begin with, it is in Mr. Mill's hands something quite differentfrom the same doctrine as preached by the French revolutionary school;indeed one might even call it reactionary, in respect of the Frenchtheory of a hundred years back. It reposes on no principle of abstractright, but, like the rest of its author's opinions, on principles ofutility and experience. Dr. Arnold used to divide reformers into twoclasses, popular and liberal. The first he defined as seekers ofliberty, the second as seekers of improvement; the first were the goats, and the second were the sheep. Mr. Mill's doctrine denied the mutualexclusiveness of the two parts of this classification, for it madeimprovement the end and the test, while it proclaimed liberty to be themeans. Every thinker now perceives that the strongest and most durableinfluences in every western society lead in the direction of democracy, and tend with more or less rapidity to throw the control of socialorganisation into the hands of numerical majorities. There are manypeople who believe that if you only make the ruling body big enough, itis sure to be either very wise itself, or very eager to choose wiseleaders. Mr. Mill, as any one who is familiar with his writings is wellaware, did not hold this opinion. He had no more partiality for mob rulethan De Maistre or Goethe or Mr. Carlyle. He saw its evils more clearlythan any of these eminent men, because he had a more scientific eye, andbecause he had had the invaluable training of a political administratoron a large scale, and in a very responsible post. But he did not contenthimself with seeing these evils, and he wasted no energy in passionatedenunciation of them, which he knew must prove futile. Guizot said of DeTocqueville, that he was an aristocrat who accepted his defeat. Mr. Millwas too penetrated by popular sympathies to be an aristocrat in DeTocqueville's sense, but he likewise was full of ideas and hopes whichthe unchecked or undirected course of democracy would defeat withoutchance of reparation. This fact he accepted, and from this he started. Mr. Carlyle, and one or two rhetorical imitators, poured malediction onthe many-headed populace, and with a rather pitiful impatience insistedthat the only hope for men lay in their finding and obeying a strongman, a king, a hero, a dictator. How he was to be found, neither themaster nor his still angrier and more impatient mimics could ever tellus. 

Now Mr. Mill's doctrine laid down the main condition of finding yourhero; namely, that all ways should be left open to him, because no man, nor majority of men, could possibly tell by which of these ways theirdeliverers were from time to time destined to present themselves. Witshave caricatured all this, by asking us whether by encouraging the taresto grow, you give the wheat a better chance. This is as misleading assuch metaphors usually are. The doctrine of liberty rests on a faithdrawn from the observation of human progress, that though we know wheatto be serviceable and tares to be worthless, yet there are in the greatseed-plot of human nature a thousand rudimentary germs, not wheat andnot tares, of whose properties we have not had a fair opportunity ofassuring ourselves. If you are too eager to pluck up the tares, you arevery likely to pluck up with them these untried possibilities of humanexcellence, and you are, moreover, very likely to injure the growingwheat as well. The demonstration of this lies in the recorded experienceof mankind. 

Nor is this all. Mr. Mill's doctrine does not lend the least countenanceto the cardinal opinion of some writers in the last century, that theonly need of human character and of social institutions is to be letalone. He never said that we were to leave the ground uncultivated, tobring up whatever might chance to grow. On the contrary, the ground wasto be cultivated with the utmost care and knowledge, with a view toprevent the growth of tares--but cultivated in a certain manner. You maytake the method of the Inquisition, of the more cruel of the Puritans, of De Maistre, of Mr. Carlyle; or you may take Mr. Mill's method ofcultivation. According to the doctrine of Liberty, we are to devoteourselves to prevention, as the surest and most wholesome mode ofextirpation. Persuade; argue; cherish virtuous example; bring up theyoung in habits of right opinion and right motive; shape your socialarrangements so as to stimulate the best parts of character. By thesemeans you will gain all the advantages that could possibly have come ofheroes and legislative dragooning, as well as a great many more whichneither heroes nor legislative dragooning could ever have secured. 

It is well with men, Mr. Mill said, moreover, in proportion as theyrespect truth. Now they at once prove and strengthen their respect fortruth, by having an open mind to all its possibilities, while at thesame time they hold firmly to their own proved convictions, until theyhear better evidence to the contrary. There is no anarchy, noruncertainty, nor paralysing air of provisionalness in such a frame ofmind. So far is it from being fatal to loyalty or reverence, that it isan indispensable part of the groundwork of the only loyalty that a wiseruler or teacher would care to inspire--the loyalty springing from arational conviction that, in a field open to all comers, he is the bestman they can find. Only on condition of liberty without limit is theablest and most helpful of 'heroes' sure to be found; and only oncondition of liberty without limit are his followers sure to be worthyof him. You must have authority, and yet must have obedience. Thenoblest and deepest and most beneficent kind of authority is that whichrests on an obedience that is rational and spontaneous. 

The same futile impatience which animates the political utterances ofMr. Carlyle and his more weak-voiced imitators, takes another form inmen of a different training or temperament. They insist that if themajority has the means of preventing vice by law, it is folly andweakness not to resort to those means. The superficial attractivenessof such a doctrine is obvious. The doctrine of liberty implies a broaderand a more patient view. It says:--Even if you could be sure that whatyou take for vice is so--and the history of persecution shows howcareful you should be in this preliminary point--even then it is anundoubted and, indeed, a necessary tendency of this facile repressivelegislation, to make those who resort to it neglect the more effective, humane, and durable kinds of preventive legislation. You pass a law (ifyou can) putting down drunkenness; there is a neatness in such a methodvery attractive to fervid and impatient natures. Would you not have donebetter to leave that law unpassed, and apply yourselves sedulouslyinstead to the improvement of the dwellings of the more drunken class, to the provision of amusements that might compete with the ale-house, tothe extension and elevation of instruction, and so on? You may say thatthis should be done, and yet the other should not be left undone; but, as matter of fact and history, the doing of the one has always gone withthe neglect of the other, and ascetic law-making in the interests ofvirtue has never been accompanied either by law-making or any otherkinds of activity for making virtue easier or more attractive. It is therecognition how little punishment can do, that leaves men free to seehow much social prevention can do. I believe, then, that what seems tothe criminal lawyers and passionate philanthropists self-evident, is intruth an illusion, springing from a very shallow kind of impatience, heated in some of them by the addition of a cynical contempt for humannature and the worth of human existence. 

If people believe that the book of social or moral knowledge is nowcompleted, that we have turned over the last page and heard the lastword, much of the foundation of Mr. Mill's doctrine would disappear. Butthose who hold this can hardly have much to congratulate themselvesupon. If it were so, and if governments were to accept the principlethat the only limits to the enforcement of the moral standard of themajority are the narrow expediencies of each special case, withoutreference to any deep and comprehensive principle covering all thelargest considerations, why, then, the society to which we ought to lookwith most admiration and envy, is the Eastern Empire during the ninthand tenth centuries, when the Byzantine system of a thoroughsubordination of the spiritual power had fully consolidated itself!