" He takes
the doctrines of Rousseau, which might conceivably have been suppressed
as pernicious. To the self-complacent eighteenth century those doctrines
came as "a salutary shock, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided
opinion." The current opinions were indeed nearer to the truth than
Rousseau's, they contained 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 we left behind when the
flood subsided."
Such is the drift of Mill's main argument. The present writer would
prefer to state the justification of freedom of opinion in a somewhat
different form, though in accordance with Mill's reasoning. The progress
of civilization, if it is partly conditioned by circumstances beyond
man's control, depends more, and in an increasing measure, on things
which are within his own power. Prominent among these are the
advancement of knowledge and the deliberate adaptation of his habits and
institutions to new conditions. To advance knowledge and to correct
errors, unrestricted freedom of discussion is required.
[240] History shows that knowledge grew when speculation was perfectly
free in Greece, and that in modern times, since restrictions on inquiry
have been entirely removed, it has advanced with a velocity which would
seem diabolical to the slaves of the mediaeval Church.
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