in a kind of authoritative nihilism. It is, therefore, a signal
gain that we now have a new type, with the old wise device, [Greek:
memneso apistein]--_be sure that you distrust_. Distrust your own bias;
distrust your supposed knowledge; constantly try, prove, fortify your
firmest convictions. And all this, throughout the whole domain where the
intelligence rules. It was characteristic of a man of this type that he
should have been seized by that memorable passage in Condorcet's Life of
Turgot to which Mr. Mill refers (p. 114), and which every man with an
active interest in serious affairs should bind about his neck and write
on the tablets of his heart.

'Turgot,' says his wise biographer, 'always looked upon anything like a
sect as mischievous.... From the moment that a sect comes into
existence, all the individuals composing it become answerable for the
faults and errors of each one of them. The obligation to remain united
leads them to suppress or dissemble all truths that might wound anybody
whose adhesion is useful to the sect. They are forced to establish in
some form a body of doctrine, and the opinions which make a part of it,
being adopted without inquiry, become in due time pure prejudices.
Friendship stops with the individuals; but the hatred and envy that any
of them may arouse extends to the whole sect. If this sect be formed by
the most enlightened men of the nation, if the defence of truths of the
greatest importance to the common happiness be the object of its zeal,
the mischief is still worse. Everything true or useful which they
propose is rejected without examination. Abuses and errors of every kind
always have for their defenders that herd of presumptuous and mediocre
mortals, who are the bitterest enemies of all celebrity and renown.
Scarcely is a truth made clear, before those to whom it would be
prejudicial crush it under the name of a sect that is sure to have
already become odious, and are certain to keep it from obtaining so much
as a hearing. Turgot, then, was persuaded that perhaps the greatest ill
you can do to truth is to drive those who love it to form themselves
into a sect, and that these in turn can commit no more fatal mistake
than to have the vanity or the weakness to fall into the trap.'

Yet we know that with Mr. Mill as with Turgot this deep distrust of sect
was no hindrance to the most careful systematisation of opinion and
conduct. He did not interpret many-sidedness in the fla