ts main object is to diffuse in a cheap
form the works of freethinkers of mark (cp. Bibliography). I understand
that more than two million copies of its cheap reprints have been sold.

[4] The advertisement tax was abolished in 1853, the stamp tax in 1855,
the paper duty in 1861, and the optional duty in 1870.

[5] In Austria-Hungary the police have the power to suppress printed
matter provisionally. In Russia the Press was declared free in 1905 by
an Imperial decree, which, however, has become a dead letter. The
newspapers are completely under the control of the police.

[6] I have taken these points, illustrating the Monistic attitude to the
Churches, from Ostwald's Monistic Sunday Sermons (German), 1911, 1912.

[7] I may note here that, as this is not a history of thought, I make no
reference to recent philosophical speculations (in America, England, and
France) which are sometimes claimed as tending to bolster up theology.
But they are all profoundly unorthodox.

[233]

CHAPTER VIII

THE JUSTIFICATION OF LIBERTY OF THOUGHT

MOST men who have been brought up in the free atmosphere of a modern
State sympathize with liberty in its long struggle with authority and
may find it difficult to see that anything can be said for the
tyrannical, and as they think extraordinarily perverse, policy by which
communities and governments persistently sought to stifle new ideas and
suppress free speculation. The conflict sketched in these pages appears
as a war between light and darkness. We exclaim that altar and throne
formed a sinister conspiracy against the progress of humanity. We look
back with horror at the things which so many champions of reason endured
at the hands of blind, if not malignant, bearers of authority.

But a more or less plausible case can be made out for coercion. Let us
take the most limited view of the lawful powers of society over its
individual members. Let us lay down, with Mill, that "the sole end for
which mankind are warranted, individually and collectively, in
interfering with the liberty of action of any of their members is self-
protection," and that coercion is only justified

[234] for the prevention of harm to others. This is the minimum claim
the State can make, and it will be admitted that it is not only the
right but the duty of the State to prevent harm to its members. That is
what it is for. Now no abstract or independent principle is
discoverable, why liberty of speech should