The Good Book (79 page)

  7. But no one’s mind can lie wholly at the command of another,

  8. For no one can willingly give away the natural right of free reason and judgement, even if compelled to do so.

  9. For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical,

10. An abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects; To seek to prescribe what must be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men, is wrong.

11. All these questions fall within a person’s natural right, which he cannot abdicate even with consent,

12. Even under the lash of tyranny over body and life.

13. Judgement can be biased in many ways, sometimes to a great degree,

14. So that while exempt from direct external control, it may be so dependent on another person’s words, that it can be said to be ruled by him;

15. That is the way of proselytisers, demagogues and teachers of the young and credulous,

16. Who use their authority to fill others with beliefs and ideas of their own choosing;

17. But although this influence carries far, it has never gone so far as to invalidate this truth:

18. That every person’s understanding is his or her own, and that minds are as diverse as palates.

19. Demagogues have gained at times such a hold over popular judgement that they were accounted superhuman,

20. And believed to speak and act with special authority;

21. Nevertheless even the most famous of them could not escape murmurs and evil interpretations.

22. How much less then can other monarchs avoid them!

23. Yet such unlimited power, if it exists at all, must belong to a monarch,

24. And least of all to a democracy where the whole or a great part of the people wield authority collectively.

25. However unlimited, therefore, the power of a sovereign may be, it can never prevent people from forming judgements according to their own intellects, or being influenced by their emotions.

26. Since, therefore, no one can abdicate the freedom of judgement and feeling; since all are by in­­­defeasible natural right the owner of their own thoughts,

27. It follows that people thinking in diverse and contradictory fashions, cannot, without disastrous results, be compelled to speak only according to the dictates of the supreme power.

28. Not even the most experienced, to say nothing of the multitude, know how to keep silence.

29. The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience,

30. But rather to free all the people from fear, that they may live in security;

31. Which is to strengthen their natural right to exist and work without injury to themselves or others.

32. So the object of government is not to change people from rational beings into beasts or puppets,

33. But to enable them to develop themselves in security, and to employ their reason unshackled;

34. Neither showing hatred, anger or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice.

35. In short, the true aim of government is liberty.

Chapter 2

  1. Because it is impossible to preserve peace unless individuals compromise their right of acting entirely on their own judgement,

  2. They justly cede the right of free action in appropriate and necessary cases, though not the right of free reason and judgement;

  3. For people cannot act against the authorities without danger to the state, though their feelings and judgement may be at variance therewith;

  4. They may even speak against them, provided that they do so from rational conviction,

  5. Not from fraud, anger or hatred, and provided that they do not attempt to introduce any change on their private authority.

  6. For instance, supposing a person shows that a law is repugnant to reason, and should be repealed;

  7. If he submits his opinion to the judgement of those who, alone, have the right of making and repealing laws,

  8. And meanwhile acts in nowise contrary to that law, he has deserved well of the state, and has behaved as a good citizen should;

  9. But if he accuses the authorities of injustice, and stirs up the people against them,

10. Or seditiously strives to abrogate the law without their consent, he is merely an agitator and rebel.

11. Thus we see how people may declare and teach what they believe, without injury to the authority of their rulers, or to the public peace;

12. Namely, by leaving in their hands the power of legislation as it affects action,

13. And by doing nothing against their laws, though they be compelled often to act in contradiction to what they believe, and openly feel, to be best.

14. Such a course can be taken without detriment to justice and dutifulness, nay, it is the one which a just and dutiful person would adopt.  

15. Hence, so long as people act in obedience to the laws of the rulers, they in nowise contravene their reason,

16. For in obedience to reason they transferred the right of controlling some of their actions to the rulers.

17. From freedom of thought and expression inconveniences may sometimes arise,

18. But what question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could possibly spring therefrom?

19. Whoever seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them.

20. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful.

21. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like,

22. Yet these are tolerated – vices as they are – because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.

23. How much more then should free thought be granted, seeing that it is in itself a virtue and that it cannot be crushed!

Chapter 3

  1. Besides, the evil results can easily be checked, not to mention that such freedom is necessary for progress in science and the liberal arts:

  2. For people do not follow such pursuits to advantage unless their judgement be entirely free and unhampered.

  3. But let it be granted that freedom may be crushed, and people be so bound down, that they do not dare to utter a whisper, save at the bidding of their rulers;

  4. Nevertheless this can never be carried to the pitch of making them think according to authority,

  5. So that the necessary consequences would be that people would daily be thinking one thing and saying another,

  6. To the corruption of mutual trust, that mainstay of government, and to the fostering of flattery and perfidy,

  7. Whence spring stratagems, and the corruption of every good art.

Chapter   4

  1. It is possible by violence and its threat to impose uniformity of speech, but not where freedom otherwise lives;

  2. For there the more that rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately are they resisted;

  3. Not indeed by the avaricious, the flatterers, and those who think that goodness consists in filling their stomachs and purses,

  4. But by those whom good education, sound morality and virtue have rendered more free.

  5. People resent the branding as criminal of opinions they believe to be true,

  6. And the proscription as wicked of that which inspires them to morality;

  7. Hence they are ready to forswear the laws and conspire against the authorities,

  8. Thinking it not shameful but honourable to stir up seditions and perpetuate any crime with this end in view.

  9. Such being the constitution of human nature, we see that laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked,

10. And are adapted less for coercing criminals than for offending the upright;

11. So that they cannot be maintained without great peril to the state.

12. Moreover, such laws are almost always useless, for those who hold that the opinions proscribed are sound, cannot possibly obey the law;

13. Whereas those who already reject them as false, accept the law as a kind of privilege,

14. And make such boast of it that authority is powerless to repeal it, even if such a course be subsequently desired.

15. And, lastly, how many divisions have arisen from the attempt of authorities to decide by law the intricacies of opinion!

16. If people were not allured by the hope of getting the law and the authorities on their side,

17. Of triumphing over their adversaries in the sight of an applauding multitude,

18. And of acquiring honourable distinctions, they would not strive so maliciously, nor would such fury sway their minds.

19. This is taught not only by reason but by daily examples,

20. For laws of this kind prescribing what all the people shall think and forbidding anyone to speak or write to the contrary, have often been passed,

21. As concessions to the anger of those who cannot tolerate people of enlightenment and freedom,

22. And who, by such harsh and crooked enactments, can easily turn the loyalty of the masses into fury and direct it against whom they will.

23. How much better would it be to restrain popular anger, instead of passing inutile laws which can only be broken by those who love virtue and the liberal arts,

24. Thus paring down the state till it is too small to harbour people of talent.

25. What greater misfortune for a state than that honourable people should be sent into exile like criminals because they hold diverse opinions which they cannot disguise?

26. What can be more hurtful than that people who have committed no crime or wickedness should, because they are enlightened, be treated as enemies and put to death,

27. And that the scaffold, the terror of evildoers, should become the arena where the highest examples of tolerance and virtue are displayed to the people with all the marks of ignominy that authority can devise?

28. He that knows himself to be upright does not fear the death of a criminal, and shrinks from no punishment;

29. His mind is not wrung with remorse for any disgraceful deed:

30. He holds that death in a good cause is no punishment, but an honour, and that death for freedom is glory.

31. What purpose then is served by the death of such people, what example is proclaimed?

32. The cause for which they die is unknown to the idle and the foolish, hateful to the turbulent, loved by the upright.

33. The only lesson we can draw from such scenes is to flatter the persecutor, or else to imitate the victim.

Chapter 5

  1. If formal assent is not to be esteemed above conviction, and if governments are to retain authority and not be compelled to yield to agitators,

  2. It is imperative that freedom of judgement should be granted, so that people may live together in harmony,

  3. However diverse, or even openly contradictory their opinions may be.

  4. We cannot doubt that such is the best system of government and open to the fewest objections,

  5. Since it is the one most in harmony with human nature.

  6. In a
democracy everyone submits to the control of authority over his actions, but not over his judgement and reason;

  7. That is, seeing that all cannot think alike, the voice of the majority has the force of law, subject to repeal if circumstances bring about a change of opinion.

  8. In proportion as the power of free judgement is withheld we depart from the natural condition of humanity, and the government becomes more
tyrannical.

  9. Laws seeking to settle controversies of opinion and outlook are more likely to irritate than to reform, and thus can give rise to extreme licence.

10. Further, it was seen that divisions do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness,

11. But rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.

12. From all these considerations it is clearer than the sun at noonday,

13. That controversialists are those who condemn other men’s writings, and seditiously stir up the quarrelsome masses against their authors, rather than those authors themselves,

14. Who generally write only for the learned, and appeal solely to reason.

15. Thus the real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of thought and expression,

16. Which they are unable to tyrannise over as they can with people’s actions.

Chapter 6

  1. Among those who have studied the ways of government and rulers, there is much practical wisdom,

  2. Which applies as much to the rule of what is less than a state than to states themselves.