ny opinion whatever upon these subjects,'
and he thinks that 'the ignorant preacher' who 'calls his betters
atheists is not guilty of intolerance, but of rudeness and
ignorance.'[144]

I must confess that this makes upon me the impression that Fitzjames was
a little at a loss for good arguments to support what he felt to be the
right mode of limiting his principles. The difficulty was due, I think,
to the views which he shared with Mill. The utilitarian point of view
tends to lower the true ground of toleration, because it regards
exclusively the coercive elements of law. I should hold that free
thought is not merely a right, but a duty, the exercise of which should
be therefore encouraged as well as permitted; and that the inability of
the coarse methods of coercion to stamp out particular beliefs without
crushing thought in general, is an essential part of the argument, not a
mere accident of particular cases. Our religious beliefs are not
separate germs, spreading disease and capable of being caught and
suppressed by the rough machinery of law, but parts of a general process
underlying all law, and capable of being suppressed only at the cost of
suppressing all mental activity. The utilitarian conception dwells too
much upon the 'sanctions,' and too little on the living spirit, of which
they are one expression.

Fitzjames's view may so far be summed up by saying that he denies the
possibility of making the state a neutral in regard to the moral and
religious problems involved. Morality, again, coincides with 'utility ';
and the utility of laws and conduct in general is the criterion which we
must apply to every case by the help of the appropriate experience. We
must therefore reject every general rule in the name of which this
criterion may be rejected. This applies to Mill's doctrine of equality,
as well as to his doctrine of non-interference. I pass over some
comparatively commonplace remarks upon the inconsistency of 'liberty'
and 'equality.' The most unequivocal contradiction comes out in regard
to Mill's theory of the equality of the sexes. There was no dogma to
which Mill was more attached or to which Fitzjames was more decidedly
opposed. The essence of the argument, I take it, is this:[145]

A just legislator, says Mill, will treat all men as equals. He must
mean, then, that there are no such differences between any two classes
of men as would affect the expediency of the applying the same laws to
both. Wha