ht of thinking freely and acting independently, of
using our minds without excessive awe of authority, and shaping our
lives without unquestioning obedience to custom, is now a finally
accepted principle in some sense or other with every school of thought
that has the smallest chance of commanding the future. Under what
circumstances does the exercise and vindication of the right, thus
conceded in theory, become a positive duty in practice? If the majority
are bound to tolerate dissent from the ruling opinions and beliefs,
under what conditions and within what limitations is the dissentient
imperatively bound to avail himself of this toleration? How far, and in
what way, ought respect either for immediate practical convenience, or
for current prejudices, to weigh against respect for truth? For how much
is it well that the individual should allow the feelings and convictions
of the many to count, when he comes to shape, to express, and to act
upon his own feelings and convictions? Are we only to be permitted to
defend general principles, on condition that we draw no practical
inferences from them? Is every other idea to yield precedence and empire
to existing circumstances, and is the immediate and universal
workableness of a policy to be the main test of its intrinsic fitness?

To attempt to answer all these questions fully would be nothing less
than to attempt a compendium of life and duty in all their details, a
Summa of cases of conscience, a guide to doubters at every point of the
compass. The aim of the present writer is a comparatively modest one;
namely, to seek one or two of the most general principles which ought
to regulate the practice of compliance, and to suggest some of the
bearings which they may have in their application to certain
difficulties in modern matters of conduct.

It is pretty plain that an inquiry of this kind needs to be fixed by
reference to a given set of social circumstances tolerably well
understood. There are some common rules as to the expediency of
compromise and conformity, but their application is a matter of endless
variety and the widest elasticity. The interesting and useful thing is
to find the relation of these too vague rules to actual conditions; to
transform them into practical guides and real interpreters of what is
right and best in thought and conduct, in a special and definite kind of
emergency. According to the current assumptions of the writer and the
preacher, the on