A History of Freedom of Thought | Page 3

and its
members.
On the other hand, those who have the responsibility of governing a

society can argue that it is as incumbent on them to prohibit the
circulation of pernicious opinions as to prohibit any anti-social actions.
They can argue that a man may do far more harm by propagating
anti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbour’s horse or making
love to his neighbour’s wife. They are responsible for the welfare of the
State, and if they are convinced that an opinion is dangerous, by
menacing the political, religious, or moral assumptions on which the
society is based, it is their duty to protect society against it, as against
any other danger.
[14]
The true answer to this argument for limiting freedom of thought will
appear in due course. It was far from obvious. A long time was needed
to arrive at the conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and
only a part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far as I
can judge, is the most important ever reached by men. It was the issue
of a continuous struggle between authority and reason—the subject of
this volume. The word authority requires some comment.
If you ask somebody how he knows something, he may say, “I have it
on good authority,” or, “I read it in a book,” or, “It is a matter of
common knowledge,” or, “I learned it at school.” Any of these replies
means that he has accepted information from others, trusting in their
knowledge, without verifying their statements or thinking the matter
out for himself. And the greater part of most men’s knowledge and
beliefs is of this kind, taken without verification from their parents,
teachers, acquaintances, books, newspapers. When an English boy
learns French, he takes the conjugations and the meanings of the words
on the authority of his teacher or his grammar. The fact that in a certain
place, marked on the map, there is a populous city called Calcutta, is
for most
[15] people a fact accepted on authority. So is the existence of
Napoleon or Julius Caesar. Familiar astronomical facts are known only
in the same way, except by those who have studied astronomy. It is
obvious that every one’s knowledge would be very limited indeed, if
we were not justified in accepting facts on the authority of others.

But we are justified only under one condition. The facts which we can
safely accept must be capable of demonstration or verification. The
examples I have given belong to this class. The boy can verify when he
goes to France or is able to read a French book that the facts which he
took on authority are true. I am confronted every day with evidence
which proves to me that, if I took the trouble, I could verify the
existence of Calcutta for myself. I cannot convince myself in this way
of the existence of Napoleon, but if I have doubts about it, a simple
process of reasoning shows me that there are hosts of facts which are
incompatible with his non-existence. I have no doubt that the earth is
some 93 millions of miles distant from the sun, because all astronomers
agree that it has been demonstrated, and their agreement is only
explicable on the supposition that this has been demonstrated and that,
if I took the trouble to work out the calculation, I should reach the same
result.
[16]
But all our mental furniture is not of this kind. The thoughts of the
average man consist not only of facts open to verification, but also of
many beliefs and opinions which he has accepted on authority and
cannot verify or prove. Belief in the Trinity depends on the authority of
the Church and is clearly of a different order from belief in the
existence of Calcutta. We cannot go behind the authority and verify or
prove it. If we accept it, we do so because we have such implicit faith
in the authority that we credit its assertions though incapable of proof.
The distinction may seem so obvious as to be hardly worth making. But
it is important to be quite clear about it. The primitive man who had
learned from his elders that there were bears in the hills and likewise
evil spirits, soon verified the former statement by seeing a bear, but if
he did not happen to meet an evil spirit, it did not occur to him, unless
he was a prodigy, that there was a distinction between the two
statements; he would rather have argued, if he argued at all, that as his
tribesmen were right about the bears they were sure to be right also
about the spirits. In the Middle Ages a man who believed on authority
that there is a