Mill's tendency is not,of course,to deny,but to treat this too slightly.He is inclined to regard 'authority'as something logically opposed to reason,or,in other words,to accept the old Protestant version of the 'right of private judgment';or to speak as if every man had to build up his whole structure of belief from the very foundations.There is,he would admit,a structure of knowledge erected by the convergence of competent inquirers,and tested by free discussion and careful verification at every point of its growth.New theories give and receive strength from their 'solidarity'with established theories;and 'authority'is derived from the reciprocal considerations of various results of investigation.Mill is apt to speak as if each thinker and each opinion were isolated.The 'real advantage which truth has,consists,'he says,'in this,that though a true opinion may be often suppressed,it will be generally rediscovered,and may be rediscovered at a favourable moment,when it will escape persecution and grow strong enough to defend itself.'(15)Persecution may succeed and often has succeeded.
The doctrine that it cannot succeed is a 'pleasant falsehood'which has become commonplace by repetition.The statement is surely incomplete.Errors,like truths,may be 'rediscovered'or revived.There are 'idols of the tribe'--fallacies dependent upon permanent weaknesses of the intellect itself,which appear at all ages and may gain strength under favourable circumstances.
Truth becomes definitively established when it is capable of fitting in with a nucleus of verified and undeniable truth.Mill seems to have in mind such a truth as the discovery of a particular fact.If the existence of America had been forgotten,it would be rediscovered by the next Columbus.If the dream of an Atlantis had once vanished,we need never dream it again.But the statement is inadequate when the truth discovered is some new law which not merely adds to our knowledge,but helps to systematise and to affect our whole method of reasoning.
This position affects Mill's view of the efficacy of persecution.He argues,rather oddly,from the suppression of Lollards,Hussites,and Protestants.Mill certainly did not hold that the suppressed opinions were true;and he does not attempt to prove that they would not have died out of themselves.If Protestantism was suppressed in Spain,the reason may have been that it was so little congenial to the Spanish people,that the persecutions were on the side of the really dominant tendencies of the majority.That a tree without roots may fall the quicker when the wind blows needs no proof;but is not conclusive as to the effect upon a living tree.The true view,I venture to think,is different.(16)Opinions are not a set of separate dogmas which can be caught and stamped out by themselves.So long as thought is active it works by methods too subtle to be met by such coarse weapons.It allows the dogma to persist,but evacuates it of meaning.The whole structure becomes honeycombed and rotten,as when in France sceptics had learned to say everything without overtly saying anything.Persecution directed against this or that separate theory only embitters and poisons a process which is inevitable if people are to think at all;and persecution can only succeed,either where it is superfluous,or where it is so systematic and vigorous as to suppress all intellectual activity.In either case the result is most lamentable,and the admission only strengthens the case against persecuting.Persecution can only succeed by paralysing the whole intellectual movement.
I think,then,that Mill,though essentially in the right,has an inadequate perception of one aspect of the question.
Elsewhere(17)he complains that we have substituted an apotheosis of instinct for an apotheosis of reason,and so fallen into an infinitely more 'degrading idolatry.'Here,he seems inclined to attack all beliefs not due to the individual reason acting independently.He accentuates too decidedly the absolute value,not of freedom,but of its incidental result,contradiction.He seems to hold that opposition to an established opinion is good in itself.He would approve of circle-squarers and perpetual-motion makers because they oppose established scientific doctrines.He admires originality even when it implies stupidity.Intelligence shows itself as much in recognising a valid proof as in rejecting a fallacy;and the progress of thought is as dependent upon co-operation and the acceptance of rational authority as upon rejecting errors and declining to submit to arbitrary authority.A man after all ought to realise the improbability of his being right against a consensus of great thinkers.Mill himself remarks,when criticising Bentham,that even originality is not 'a more necessary part of the philosophical character than a thoughtful regard for previous thinkers and for the collective mind of the human race.'(18)That,I take it,is perfectly true,but is apt to pass out of sight in his argument.The ideal state is not one of perpetual contradiction of first principles,but one in which contradiction has led to the establishment of a rational authority.
III.THE DECAY OF INDIVIDUALITY
I have insisted upon this chiefly because a similar error seems to intrude into the more difficult problems which follow.
