consecrates the error. And how do they settle
the question? They reckon up the advantages, and forget the drawbacks.
They detect and dwell on one or two elements of utility in the false
belief or the worn-out institution, and leave out of all account the
elements that make in the other direction.

Considering how much influence this vague persuasion has in encouraging
a well-meaning hypocrisy in individuals, and a profound stagnation in
societies, it may be well to examine the matter somewhat generally. Let
us try to measure the force of some of the most usual pleas for error.

I. A false opinion, it may be said, is frequently found to have
clustering around it a multitude of excellent associations, which do far
more good than the false opinion that supports them, does harm. In the
middle ages, for instance, there was a belief that a holy man had the
gift of routing demons, of healing the sick, and of working divers other
miracles. Supposing that this belief was untrue, supposing that it was
an error to attribute the sudden death of an incredible multitude of
troublesome flies in a church to the fact of Saint Bernard having
excommunicated them, what then? The mistaken opinion was still
associated with a deep reverence for virtue and sanctity, and this was
more valuable, than the error of the explanation of the death of the
flies was noxious or degrading.

The answer to this seems to be as follows. First, in making false
notions the proofs or close associates of true ones, you are exposing
the latter to the ruin which awaits the former. For example, if you have
in the minds of children or servants associated honesty, industry,
truthfulness, with the fear of hell-fire, then supposing this fear to
become extinct in their minds,--which, being unfounded in truth, it is
in constant risk of doing--the virtues associated with it are likely to
be weakened exactly in proportion as that association was strong.

Second, for all good habits in thought or conduct there are good and
real reasons in the nature of things. To leave such habits attached to
false opinions is to lessen the weight of these natural or spontaneous
reasons, and so to do more harm in the long run than effacement of them
seems for a time to do good. Most excellences in human character have a
spontaneous root in our nature. Moreover if they had not, and where they
have not, there is always a valid and real external defence for them.
The unreal defence must be w