|
John Stuart
Mill (1806–1873). On
Liberty. 1869. |
|
|
|
|
|
THE TIME, it is to
be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the
"liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or
tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed,
against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest
with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines
or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question,
besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers,
that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of
England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in
the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in
force against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when
fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their propriety; 1 and, speaking
generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be apprehended, that
the government, whether completely responsible to the people or not, will
often attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so
it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public. Let us
suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people,
and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with
what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to
exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The
power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it
than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance
with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one,
were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion,
mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if
he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a
personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in
the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some
difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many.
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it
is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation;
those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the
opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error
for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the
clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its
collision with error. |
1 |
|
||||||
|
It is necessary to consider separately these
two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument
corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are
endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it
would be an evil still. |
2 |
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
First: the opinion which it is attempted to
suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it,
of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority
to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from
the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are
sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same
thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an
assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this
common argument, not the worse for being common. |
3 |
|
||||||
|
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind,
the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their
practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every
one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any
precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any
opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the
error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute princes, or
others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete
confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily
situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly
unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance
only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to
whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence
in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on
the infallibility of "the world" in general. And the world, to each
individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party,
his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be called, by
comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so
comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this
collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages,
countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now
think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the responsibility
of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it
never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous
worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him
a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in
Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself, as any amount of argument can make it,
that ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many
opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it
is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future
ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present. |
4 |
|
||||||
|
The objection likely to be made to this
argument, would probably take some such form as the following. There is no
greater assumption of infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error,
than in any other thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment
and responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because it
may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at
all? To prohibit what they think pernicious, is not claiming exemption from
error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of
acting on their conscientious conviction. If we were never to act on our
opinions, because those opinions may be wrong, we should leave all our
interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which
applies to all conduct, can be no valid objection to any conduct in
particular. It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the
truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon
others unless they are quite sure of being right. But when they are sure
(such reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink
from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think
dangerous to the welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be
scattered abroad without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened
times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true. Let us take care, it
may be said, not to make the same mistake: but governments and nations have
made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for
the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made unjust wars.
Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under whatever provocation, make
no wars? Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There
is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for
the purposes of human life. We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true
for the guidance of our own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we
forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions which we
regard as false and pernicious. |
5 |
|
||||||
|
I answer, that it is assuming very much more.
There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true,
because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted,
and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very
condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action;
and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational
assurance of being right. |
6 |
|
||||||
|
When we consider either the history of
opinion, or the ordinary conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed
that the one and the other are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the
inherent force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not
self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of
it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only
comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation
held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous
things which no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the
whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational
conduct? If there really is this preponderance—which there must be unless
human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state—it is
owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in
man either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that his errors
are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and
experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how
experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield
to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the
mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own
story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and
value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be
set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means
of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person
whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so?
Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct.
Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against
him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon
occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt,
that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing
the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of
every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at
by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode
but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any
other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion
by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and
hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a
just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that can, at least
obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all
gainsayers—knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties,
instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon
the subject from any quarter—he has a right to think his judgment better than
that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar
process. |
7 |
|
||||||
|
It is not too much to require that what the
wisest of mankind, those who are best entitled to trust their own judgment,
find necessary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted to by that
miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called
the public. The most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even
at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a
"devil's advocate." The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be
admitted to posthumous honours, until all that the devil could say against
him is known and weighed. If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted
to be questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its truth
as they now do. The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard
to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them
unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt
fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that
the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that
could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we
may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human
mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having
attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the
amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of
attaining it. |
8 |
|
||||||
|
Strange it is, that men should admit the
validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being
"pushed to an extreme;" not seeing that unless the reasons are good
for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should
imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that
there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful,
but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to
be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are
certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there
is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not
permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are
the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side. |
9 |
|
||||||
|
In the present age—which has been described as
"destitute of faith, but terrified at scepticism"—in which people
feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not
know what to do without them—the claims of an opinion to be protected from
public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to
society. There are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so useful, not to say
indispensable to well-being, that it is as much the duty of governments to
uphold those beliefs, as to protect any other of the interests of society. In
a case of such necessity, and so directly in the line of their duty,
something less than infallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and even
bind, governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the general
opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and still oftener thought, that
none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary beliefs; and there can
be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibiting what
only such men would wish to practise. This mode of thinking makes the
justification of restraints on discussion not a question of the truth of
doctrines, but of their usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to
escape the responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions.
But those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the assumption of
infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. The usefulness of
an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion,
and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion itself. There is the same
need of an infallible judge of opinions to decide an opinion to be noxious,
as to decide it to be false, unless the opinion condemned has full
opportunity of defending itself. And it will not do to say that the heretic
may be allowed to maintain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion, though
forbidden to maintain its truth. The truth of an opinion is part of its
utility. If we would know whether or not it is desirable that a proposition
should be believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of whether or
not it is true? In the opinion, not of bad men, but of the best men, no
belief which is contrary to truth can be really useful: and can you prevent
such men from urging that plea, when they are charged with culpability for
denying some doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they believe
to be false? Those who are on the side of received opinions, never fail to
take all possible advantage of this plea; you do not find them
handling the question of utility as if it could be completely abstracted from
that of truth: on the contrary, it is, above all, because their doctrine is
the "truth," that the knowledge or the belief of it is held to be
so indispensable. There can be no fair discussion of the question of
usefulness, when an argument so vital may be employed on one side, but not on
the other. And in point of fact, when law or public feeling do not permit the
truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are just as little tolerant of a
denial of its usefulness. The utmost they allow is an extenuation of its
absolute necessity, or of the positive guilt of rejecting it. |
10 |
|
||||||
|
In order more fully to illustrate the mischief
of denying a hearing to opinions because we, in our own judgment, have
condemned them, it will be desirable to fix down the discussion to a concrete
case; and I choose, by preference, the cases which are least favourable to
me—in which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on the score of
truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions
impugned be the belief in a God and in a future state, or any of the commonly
received doctrines of morality. To fight the battle on such ground, gives a
great advantage to an unfair antagonist; since he will be sure to say (and
many who have no desire to be unfair will say it internally), Are these the
doctrines which you do not deem sufficiently certain to be taken under the
protection of law? Is the belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure
of which, you hold to be assuming infallibility? But I must be permitted to
observe, that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may)
which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide
that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be
said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not
the less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However
positive any one's persuasion may be, not only of the falsity but of the
pernicious consequences—not only of the pernicious consequences, but (to
adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of
an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of that private judgment, though backed by
the public judgment of his country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the
opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far
from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the
opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which
it is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one
generation commit those dreadful mistakes, which excite the astonishment and
horror of posterity. It is among such that we find the instances memorable in
history, when the arm of the law has been employed to root out the best men
and the noblest doctrines; with deplorable success as to the men, though some
of the doctrines have survived to be (as if in mockery) invoked, in defence
of similar conduct towards those who dissent from them, or from their
received interpretation. |
11 |
|
||||||
|
Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that
there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities
and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born
in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been
handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most
virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and prototype of all
subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of
Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, "i maëstri di
color che sanno," the two headsprings of ethical as of all other
philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have
since lived—whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all
but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city
illustrious—was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction,
for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognised by the
State; indeed his accuser asserted (see the Apologia) that he believed
in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a
"corrupter of youth." Of these charges the tribunal, there is every
ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who
probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as
a criminal. |
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
It still remains to speak of one of the
principal causes which make diversity of opinion advantageous, and will
continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual
advancement which at present seems at an incalculable distance. We have
hitherto considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be
false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received
opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a
clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner
case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being
one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the
nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of
which the received doctrine embodies only a part. Popular opinions, on
subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole
truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller
part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by which they
ought to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand,
are generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the
bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the truth
contained in the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting
themselves up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter
case is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has
always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in
revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another
rises. Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only
substitutes, one partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement
consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more wanted,
more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it displaces. Such
being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even when resting on a
true foundation, every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of
truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with
whatever amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended. No sober
judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those who
force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have overlooked,
overlook some of those which we see. Rather, he will think that so long as
popular truth is one-sided, it is more desirable than otherwise that
unpopular truth should have one-sided asserters too; such being usually the
most energetic, and the most likely to compel reluctant attention to the
fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if it were the whole. |
34 |
||||||||
|
Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly
all the instructed, and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them,
were lost in admiration of what is called civilization, and of the marvels of
modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly overrating the
amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times,
indulged the belief that the whole of the difference was in their own favour;
with what a salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like
bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion,
and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional
ingredients. Not that the current opinions were on the whole farther from the
truth than Rousseau's were; on the contrary, they were nearer to it; they
contained more of positive truth, and very much less of error. Nevertheless
there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and has floated down the stream of opinion
along with it, a considerable amount of exactly those truths which the
popular opinion wanted; and these are the deposit which was left behind when
the flood subsided. The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating
and demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial
society, are ideas which have never been entirely absent from cultivated
minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect,
though at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted
by deeds, for words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their power. |
35 |
||||||||
|
In politics, again, it is almost a
commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or
reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life;
until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a
party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is
fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of
thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in
a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits
of reason and sanity. Unless opinions favourable to democracy and to
aristocracy, to property and to equality, to co-operation and to competition,
to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to liberty and
discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life, are
expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with equal talent and
energy, there is no chance of both elements obtaining their due; one scale is
sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, in the great practical concerns of
life, is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites,
that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment
with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process
of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners. On any of
the great open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions has a
better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated, but to be encouraged
and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the particular time and
place to be in a minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being,
represents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in
danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in
this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on most of these
topics. They are adduced to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the
universality of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in
the existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of
the truth. When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to the
apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the
right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing
to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence. |
36 |
||||||||
|
It may be objected, "But some received
principles, especially on the highest and most vital subjects, are more than
half-truths. The Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that
subject, and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly
in error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice, none
can be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing what
Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide what is
meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the New Testament, I
wonder that any one who derives his knowledge of this from the book itself,
can suppose that it was announced, or intended, as a complete doctrine of
morals. The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing morality, and confines its
precepts to the particulars in which that morality was to be corrected, or
superseded by a wider and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in terms most
general, often impossible to be interpreted literally, and possessing rather
the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation.
To extract from it a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible
without eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate
indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous
people. St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the
doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes a
pre-existing morality, namely, that of the Greeks and Romans; and his advice
to Christians is in a great measure a system of accommodation to that; even
to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery. What is called
Christian, but should rather be termed theological, morality, was not the
work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later origin, having been
gradually built up by the Catholic church of the first five centuries, and
though not implicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been much less
modified by them than might have been expected. For the most part, indeed,
they have contented themselves with cutting off the additions which had been
made to it in the middle ages, each sect supplying the place by fresh
additions, adapted to its own character and tendencies. That mankind owe a
great debt to this morality, and to its early teachers, I should be the last
person to deny; but I do not scruple to say of it, that it is, in many
important points, incomplete and one-sided, and that unless ideas and
feelings, not sanctioned by it, had contributed to the formation of European
life and character, human affairs would have been in a worse condition than
they now are. Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a
reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is
negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather
than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good:
in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not"
predominates unduly over "thou shalt." In its horror of sensuality,
it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into
one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as
the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far
below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human
morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's
feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as
a self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. It is essentially
a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities
found established; who indeed are not to be actively obeyed when they command
what religion forbids, but who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled
against, for any amount of wrong to ourselves. And while, in the morality of
the best Pagan nations, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate
place, infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian
ethics, that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It
is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read the maxim—"A
ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his dominions
another man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the
State." What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public
obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from
Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of
magnanimity, highmindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is
derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and
never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth,
professedly recognised, is that of obedience. |
37 |
||||||||
|
I am as far as any one from pretending that
these defects are necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every
manner in which it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a
complete moral doctrine which it does not contain, do not admit of being
reconciled with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and
precepts of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all,
that I can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they
are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality requires; that
everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within them, with no
greater violence to their language than has been done to it by all who have
attempted to deduce from them any practical system of conduct whatever. But
it is quite consistent with this, to believe that they contain, and were
meant to contain, only a part of the truth; that many essential elements of
the highest morality are among the things which are not provided for, nor
intended to be provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the Founder of
Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown aside in the system of
ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances by the Christian Church.
And this being so, I think it a great error to persist in attempting to find
in the Christian doctrine that complete rule for our guidance, which its
author intended it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. I
believe, too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil,
detracting greatly from the value of the moral training and instruction,
which so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to
promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings on an
exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular standards (as for
want of a better name they may be called) which heretofore co-existed with
and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiving some of its spirit, and
infusing into it some of theirs, there will result, and is even now
resulting, a low, abject, servile type of character, which, submit itself as
it may to what it deems the Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to or
sympathizing in the conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that other
ethics than any one which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources,
must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the moral
regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is no exception to the
rule, that in an imperfect state of the human mind, the interests of truth
require a diversity of opinions. It is not necessary that in ceasing to
ignore the moral truths not contained in Christianity, men should ignore any
of those which it does contain. Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs,
is altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always
exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good. The
exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole, must and
ought to be protested against; and if a reactionary impulse should make the
protestors unjust in their turn, this one-sidedness, like the other, may be
lamented, but must be tolerated. If Christians would teach infidels to be
just to Christianity, they should themselves be just to infidelity. It can do
truth no service to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary
acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and
most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not
know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith. |
38 |
||||||||
|
I do not pretend that the most unlimited use
of the freedom of enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the
evils of religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men of
narrow capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and
in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world, or at
all events none that could limit or qualify the first. I acknowledge that the
tendency of all opinions to become sectarian is not cured by the freest
discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated thereby; the truth which
ought to have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently
because proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents. But it is not on the impassioned
partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this
collision of opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict
between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the
formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to
both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into
prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being
exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few mental attributes more
rare than that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between
two sides of a question, of which only one is represented by an advocate
before it, truth has no chance but in proportion as every side of it, every
opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates,
but is so advocated as to be listened to. |
39 |
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
We have now recognised the necessity to the
mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of
freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four
distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. |
40 |
||||||||
|
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence,
that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is
to assume our own infallibility. |
41 |
||||||||
|
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an
error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since
the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole
truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of
the truth has any chance of being supplied. |
42 |
||||||||
|
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not
only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is,
vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it,
be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of
its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the
doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived
of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere
formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing
the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal
experience. |
43 |
||||||||
|
Before quitting the subject of freedom of
opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free
expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner
be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be
said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be
placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think
experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is
telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom
they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong
feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent. But this, though an
important consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a more
fundamental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even
though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur
severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it is
mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to
conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts
or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the
opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so
continually done in perfect good faith, by persons who are not considered,
and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or
incompetent, that it is rarely possible on adequate grounds conscientiously
to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law
presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. With regard
to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective,
sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would
deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to
both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against
the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used
without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses
them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief
arises from their use, is greatest when they are employed against the
comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by
any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to
received opinions. The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a
polemic, is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and
immoral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion
are peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential,
and nobody but themselves feels much interested in seeing justice done them;
but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those who attack a
prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to themselves, nor,
if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their own cause. In
general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a
hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of
unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight
degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the
side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing
contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the
interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to
restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for
example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to
discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion. It is, however,
obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either,
while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the
circumstances of the individual case; condemning every one, on whichever side
of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of
candour, or malignity, bigotry or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves;
but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it
be the contrary side of the question to our own: and giving merited honour to
every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty
to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating
nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be
supposed to tell, in their favour. This is the real morality of public
discussion: and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many
controversialists who to a great extent observe it, and a still greater
number who conscientiously strive towards it. |
44 |
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||