rudder and bearings: he may be moved by any current: he is adrift. If he
is to recover the old ground, he must win it as something he never had.
But if instead of this he does at heart hold by his own view, he should
give over the deception that he is uninfluenced by it in framing
judgment. It is psychologically impossible. Let the man understand it as
a duty to himself to be just to others, and to substitute this principle
for his spurious impartiality. This is the frank and straightforward
course. While he is under his own star, he is moving in its light: he
has, if unconsciously, his hand on the helm: he judges all currents
scrupulously and exactly, but always from his own place at the wheel and
with his own eyes. To abandon one or the other is to betray his trust,
or in good faith and ignorance to cast it off till it is gone, perhaps,
too far to recover.


V


If we so understand intellectual freedom, in what does its denial
consist? In this: around every set of principles guiding men, there
grows up a corresponding set of prejudices that with the majority in
practice often supersede the principles; and these prejudices with the
march of time assume such proportions, gather such power, both by the
numbers of their adherents and the authority of many supporting them,
that for a man of spirit, knowing them to be evil and urgent of
resistance, there is needed a vigour and freedom of mind that but few
understand and even fewer appreciate or encourage. The prejudices that
grow around a man's principles are like weeds and poison in his garden:
they blight his flowers, trees and fruit; and he must go forth with fire
and sword and strong unsparing hand to root out the evil things. He