account, and thinking much of it, and in trying to find causes for the
loss. One of them has been want of liberty for the human intelligence;
and another, to return to our proper subject, has been the prolonged
existence of superstition, of false opinions, and of attachment to gross
symbols, beyond the time when they might have been successfully
attacked, and would have fallen into decay but for the mistaken
political notion of their utility. In making a just estimate of this
utility, if we see reason to believe that these false opinions, narrow
superstitions, gross symbols, have been an impediment to the free
exercise of the intelligence and a worthier culture of the emotions,
then we are justified in placing the unknown loss as a real and most
weighty item in the account against them.

In short, then, the utmost that can be said on behalf of errors in
opinion and motive, is that they are inevitable elements in human
growth. But the inevitable does not coincide with the useful. Pain can
be avoided by none of the sons of men, yet the horrible and
uncompensated subtraction which it makes from the value and usefulness
of human life, is one of the most formidable obstacles to the smoother
progress of the world. And as with pain, so with error. The moral of our
contention has reference to the temper in which practically we ought to
regard false doctrine and ill-directed motive. It goes to show that if
we have satisfied ourselves on good grounds that the doctrine is false,
or the motive ill directed, then the only question that we need ask
ourselves turns solely upon the possibility of breaking it up and
dispersing it, by methods compatible with the doctrine of liberty. Any
embarrassment in dealing with it, due to a semi-latent notion that it
may be useful to some one else is a weakness that hinders social
progress.