though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury,
envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated--vices
as they are--because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments. How
much more, then, should free thought be granted, seeing that it is in
itself a virtue and that it cannot be crushed! Besides, the evil results
can easily be checked, as I will show, by the secular authorities, not
to mention that such freedom is absolutely necessary for progress in
science and the liberal arts: for no man follows such pursuits to
advantage unless his judgment be entirely free and unhampered.

But let it be granted that freedom may be crushed, and men be so bound
down that they do not dare to utter a whisper, save at the bidding of
their rulers; nevertheless this can never be carried to the pitch of
making them think according to authority, so that the necessary
consequences would be that men would daily be thinking one thing and
saying another, to the corruption of good faith, that mainstay of
government, and to the fostering of hateful flattery and perfidy, whence
spring stratagems, and the corruption of every good art.

It is far from possible to impose uniformity of speech, for the more
rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech the more obstinately are they
resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, the flatterers, and other
numskulls, who think supreme salvation consists in filling their
stomachs and gloating over their money-bags, but by those whom good
education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free. Men, as
generally constituted, are most prone to resent the branding as criminal
of opinions which they believe to be true, and the proscription as
wicked of that which inspires them with piety towards God and man;
hence they are ready to forswear the laws and conspire against the
authorities, thinking it not shameful but honorable to stir up seditions
and perpetuate any sort of crime with this end in view. Such being the
constitution of human nature, we see that laws directed against opinions
affect the generous minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less
for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright; so that they
cannot be maintained without great peril to the state.

Moreover, such laws are almost always useless, for those who hold that
the opinions proscribed are sound, cannot possibly obey the law; whereas
those who already reject them as false, accept the law