The same views which have prevailed for the introduction of religious establishments have inevitably led to the idea of provisions against the rise and progress of heresy. No arguments can be adduced in favour of the political patronage of truth that will not be equally cogent in behalf of the political discouragement of error. Nay, they will, of the two, perhaps be most cogent in the latter case; as to prevent men from going wrong is a milder and more temperate assumption of power than to compel them to go right. It has however happened that this argument, though more tenable, has had fewer adherents. Men are more easily reconciled to abuse in the distribution of rewards, than in the infliction of penalties. It seems therefore the less necessary laboriously to insist upon the refutation of this principle; its discussion is principally requisite for the sake of method.
Various arguments have been alleged in defence of this restraint. 'The importance of opinion, as a general proposition, is notorious and unquestionable.
Ought not political institution to take under its inspection that root from which all our voluntary actions are ultimately derived? The opinions of men must be expected to be as various as their education and their temper:Chapter ught not government to exert its foresight, to prevent this discord from breaking out into anarchy and violence? There is no proposition so absurd, or so hostile to morality and public good, as not to have found its votaries:Chapter ill there be no danger in suffering these eccentricities to proceed unmolested, and every perverter of truth and justice to make as many converts as he is able? It may be found indeed to be a hopeless task to endeavour to extirpate by the hand of power errors already established; but is it not the duty of government to prevent their ascendancy, to check the growth of their adherents, and the introduction of heresies hitherto unknown? Can those persons to whom the care of the general welfare is confided, or who are fitted, by their situation, or their talents, to suggest proper regulations to the adoption of the community, be justified in conniving at the spread of such extravagant and pernicious opinions as strike at the root of order and morality? Simplicity of mind, and an understanding undebauched with sophistry, have ever been the characteristics of a people among whom virtue has flourished: ought not government to exert itself, to exclude the inroad of qualities opposite to these? It is thus that the friends of moral justice have ever contemplated with horror the progress of infidelity and latitudinarian principles. It was thus that the elder Cato viewed with grief the importation into his own country of that plausible and loquacious philosophy by which Greece had already been corrupted.'
There are several trains of reflection which these reasoning suggest.
None of them can be more important than that which may assist us in detecting the error of the elder Cato, and of other persons who have been the zealous, but mistaken, advocates of virtue. Ignorance is not necessary to render men virtuous. If it were, we might reasonably conclude that virtue was an imposture, and that it was our duty to free ourselves from its shackles.
The cultivation of the understanding has no tendency to corrupt the heart.
A man who should possess all the science of Newton, and all the genius of Shakespeare, would not, on that account, be a bad man. Want of great and comprehensive views had as considerable a share as benevolence in the grief of Cato. The progress of science and intellectual cultivation, in some degree, resembles the taking to pieces a disordered machine, with a purpose, by reconstructing it, of enhancing its value. An uninformed and timid spectator might be alarmed at the temerity of the artist, at the confused heap of pins and wheels that are laid aside at random, and might take it for granted that nothing but destruction could be the consequence.
But he would be disappointed. It is thus that the extravagant sallies of mind are the prelude of the highest wisdom, and that the dreams of Ptolemy were destined to precede the discoveries of Newton.
The event cannot be other than favourable. Mind would else cease to be mind. It would be more plausible to say that the incessant cultivation of the understanding will terminate in madness than that it will terminate in vice. As long as enquiry is suffered to proceed, and science to improve, our knowledge is perpetually increased. Shall we know everything else, and nothing of ourselves? Shall we become clear-sighted and penetrating in all other subjects, without increasing our penetration upon the subject of man? Is vice most truly allied to wisdom, or to folly? Can mankind perpetually increase in wisdom, without increasing in the knowledge of what it is wise for them to do? Can a man have a clear discernment, unclouded with any remains of former mistake, that this is the action he ought to perform, most conducive to his own interest, and to the general good, most delightful at the instant, and satisfactory in the review, most agreeable to reason, justice and the nature of things, and refrain from performing it? Every system which has been constructed relative to the nature of superior. beings and Gods, amidst its other errors, has reasoned truly upon these topics, and taught that the accession of wisdom and knowledge led, not to malignity and tyranny, but to benevolence and justice.