after all declared to be such as to warrant us in calling errors useful!

III. A third objection now presents itself to me, which I wish to state
as strongly as possible. 'Even if a false opinion cannot in itself be
more useful than a true one, whatever good habits may seem to be
connected with it, yet,' it may be contended, 'relatively to the general
mental attitude of a set of men, to their other notions and maxims, the
false opinion may entail less harm than would be wrought by its mere
demolition. There are false opinions so intimately bound up with the
whole way of thinking and feeling, that to introduce one or two detached
true opinions in their stead, would, even if it were possible, only
serve to break up that coherency of character and conduct which it is
one of the chief objects of moralists and the great art of living to
produce. For a true opinion does not necessarily bring in its train all
the other true opinions that are logically connected with it. On the
contrary, it is only too notorious a fact in the history of belief, that
not merely individuals but whole societies are capable of holding at one
and the same time contradictory opinions and mutually destructive
principles. On the other hand, neither does a false opinion involve
practically all the evil consequences deducible from it. For the results
of human inconsistency are not all unhappy, and if we do not always act
up to virtuous principle, no more do we always work out to its remotest
inference every vicious principle. Not insincerity, but inconsistency,
has constantly turned the adherents of persecuting precepts into friends
of tolerant practice.'

'It is a comparatively small thing to persuade a superstitious person to
abandon this or that article of his superstition. You have no security
that the rejection of the one article which you have displaced will lead
to the rejection of any other, and it is quite possible that it may lead