The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [226]
4. They may even speak against them, provided that they do so from rational conviction,
5. Not from fraud, anger or hatred, and provided that they do not attempt to introduce any change on their private authority.
6. For instance, supposing a person shows that a law is repugnant to reason, and should be repealed;
7. If he submits his opinion to the judgement of those who, alone, have the right of making and repealing laws,
8. And meanwhile acts in nowise contrary to that law, he has deserved well of the state, and has behaved as a good citizen should;
9. But if he accuses the authorities of injustice, and stirs up the people against them,
10. Or seditiously strives to abrogate the law without their consent, he is merely an agitator and rebel.
11. Thus we see how people may declare and teach what they believe, without injury to the authority of their rulers, or to the public peace;
12. Namely, by leaving in their hands the power of legislation as it affects action,
13. And by doing nothing against their laws, though they be compelled often to act in contradiction to what they believe, and openly feel, to be best.
14. Such a course can be taken without detriment to justice and dutifulness, nay, it is the one which a just and dutiful person would adopt.
15. Hence, so long as people act in obedience to the laws of the rulers, they in nowise contravene their reason,
16. For in obedience to reason they transferred the right of controlling some of their actions to the rulers.
17. From freedom of thought and expression inconveniences may sometimes arise,
18. But what question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could possibly spring therefrom?
19. Whoever seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them.
20. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful.
21. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like,
22. Yet these are tolerated – vices as they are – because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
23. How much more then should free thought be granted, seeing that it is in itself a virtue and that it cannot be crushed!
Chapter 3
1. Besides, the evil results can easily be checked, not to mention that such freedom is necessary for progress in science and the liberal arts:
2. For people do not follow such pursuits to advantage unless their judgement be entirely free and unhampered.
3. But let it be granted that freedom may be crushed, and people be so bound down, that they do not dare to utter a whisper, save at the bidding of their rulers;
4. Nevertheless this can never be carried to the pitch of making them think according to authority,
5. So that the necessary consequences would be that people would daily be thinking one thing and saying another,
6. To the corruption of mutual trust, that mainstay of government, and to the fostering of flattery and perfidy,
7. Whence spring stratagems, and the corruption of every good art.
Chapter 4
1. It is possible by violence and its threat to impose uniformity of speech, but not where freedom otherwise lives;
2. For there the more that rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately are they resisted;
3. Not indeed by the avaricious, the flatterers, and those who think that goodness consists in filling their stomachs and purses,
4. But by those whom good education, sound morality and virtue have rendered more free.
5. People resent the branding as criminal of opinions they believe to be true,
6. And the proscription as wicked of that which inspires them to morality;
7. Hence they are ready to forswear the laws and conspire against the authorities,
8. Thinking it not shameful but honourable to stir up seditions and perpetuate any crime with this end in view.
9. Such being the constitution of human nature, we see that laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked,
10. And are adapted less for coercing criminals than