om _A Political Treatise_, ch. iii, same title.

[37] Literally, "oil and trouble"--a common proverbial expression in
Latin.

[38] From _A Political Treatise_, ch. iv, same title.

[39] From _A Political Treatise_, ch. v, same title.

[40] In his book called "Il Principe," or "The Prince."

CHAPTER XVIII

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH[41]

If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king
would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would
cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the
intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good
or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates. However, ... no
man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no
one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and
judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this reason government which
attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered
an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects to
seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false,
or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God. All these
questions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot abdicate
even with his own consent.

I admit that the judgment can be biased in many ways, and to an almost
incredible degree, so that while exempt from direct external control it
may be so dependent on another man's words, that it may fitly be said to
be ruled by him; but although this influence is carried to great
lengths, it has never gone so far as to invalidate the statement that
every man's understanding is his own, and that brains are as diverse as
palates.

Moses, not by fraud, but by Divine virtue, gained such a hold over the
popular judgment that he was accounted superhuman, and believed to speak
and act through the inspiration of the Deity; nevertheless, even he
could not escape murmurs and evil interpretations. How much less then
can other monarchs avoid them! Yet such unlimited power, if it exists at
all, must belong to a monarch, and least of all to a democracy, where
the whole or a great part of the people wield authority collectively.
This is a fact which I think every one can explain for himself.

However unlimited, therefore, the power of a sovereign may be, however
implicitly it is trusted as the exponent of law and religion, it can
never prevent men from forming judg