SECTION V.

ON THE ASSUMPTIONS INVOLVED IN ALL RESTRAINTS ON THE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS.

THE arguments adduced in the last section have brought us to the conclusion, that unrestrained freedom of inquiry is the only, or at least the best and readiest way, of arriving at correct opinions. It may deserve a little attention, in the next place, to investigate the grounds on which all restrictions, if they are honestly intended for the benefit of the community, must proceed. They must evidently be founded, either on the position that the prevalence of truth would be productive of pernicious consequences, or, admitting its good

consequences, on the positions, first, that truth has been attained, and secondly, that, having been attained, it stands in need of the protection and assistance of power in its contest with error.

That the prevalence of truth would contribute to the happiness of man has already been enforced at some length; and in showing that there is no fixed standard or positive test of truth, we have, perhaps, sufficiently exposed the presumption of assuming, that truth has been infallibly attained. Nothing, in fact, could justify such an assumption but the possession of faculties not liable to mistake, or such palpable evidence on a subject as would render all restraints perfectly superfluous and absurd. The most thorough conviction of the truth of any opinions is far from being a proof of their correctness, or the slightest justification of any attempt at the forcible suppression of contrary sentiments. Had our predecessors, who were equally convinced of the truth of their tenets, succeeded in stifling inves

tigation, the world would have been still immersed in the darkness of superstition, and bound as fast as ever by the fetters of prejudice. They felt themselves, nevertheless, as firmly in the right as the present age can possibly feel, and were equally justified in acts of intolerance and persecution. Amidst the overwhelming proof afforded by the annals of the past, that mankind are continually liable to be deceived in their strongest convictions, it is a preposterous and unpardonable presumption, in any man, to set up the firmness of his own belief as an absolute criterion of truth.

Every one must, of course, think his own opinions right; for if he thought them wrong, they would no longer be his opinions: but there is a wide difference between regarding ourselves as infallible, and being firmly con vinced of the truth of our creed. When a man reflects on any particular doctrine, he may be impressed with a thorough conviction of the improbability or even impossibility of its being false; and so he may feel with regard to all his other opinions, when he makes

them objects of separate contemplation. And yet, when he views them in the aggregate, when he reflects, that not a single being on the earth holds collectively the same, when he looks at the past history and present state of mankind, and observes the various creeds of different ages and nations, the peculiar modes of thinking of sects, and bodies, and individuals, the notions once firmly held, which have been exploded, the prejudices once universally prevalent, which have been removed, and the endless controversies, which have distracted those who have made it the business of their lives to arrive at the truth; and when he further dwells on the consideration, that many of these his fellow creatures have had a conviction of the justness of their respective sentiments equal to his own, he cannot help the obvious inference, that in his own opinions it is next to impossible that there is not an admixture of error; that there is an infinitely greater probability of his being wrong in some than right in all.

Every man of common sense and common

candour, although he may have no suspicion where his mistakes lie, must have this general suspicion of his own fallibility; and, if he act consistently, he will not seek to suppress opinions by force, because in so doing he might be at once lending support to error, and destroying the only means of its detection. In endeavouring to spread his opinions, and to suppress all others by the arm of power, the utmost success would have no tendency to lay open the least of those mistakes which had insinuated themselves into his creed; but in propagating his opinions by arguments, by appeals to the discrimination of his fellow-men, he would be contributing alike to the detection of his own errors and to the overthrow of those of his antagonists.

It remains to consider, in the next place, the assumption, implied in all restrictions on inquiry, that truth, in its contest with error, stands in need of the protection of human authority.

Men have long since found out how ridicu