eaking and to
teaching in the name of pure reason, and that he does not attempt,
in his private capacity, to introduce innovations into the State.
For example, a citizen demonstrates that a certain law is repugnant
to sound reason, and believing this, he thinks it ought to be
abrogated. If he submits his opinion to the judgment of the
sovereign, to which alone it belongs to establish and to abolish
laws, and if, in the meantime, he does nothing contrary to law, he
certainly deserves well of the State as being a good citizen.

Let us admit that it is possible to stifle liberty of men and to
impose on them a yoke, to the point that they dare not even
murmur, however feebly, without the consent of the sovereign:
never, it is certain, can any one hinder them from thinking
according to their own free will. What follows hence? It is that
men will think one way and speak another; that, consequently, good
faith, so essential a virtue to a State, becomes corrupted; that
adulation, so detestable, and perfidy, shall be held in honor,
bringing in their train a decadence of all good and sound
habitudes. What can be more fatal to a State than to exile, as
malcontents, honest citizens, simply because they do not hold the
opinion of the multitude, and because they are ignorant of the art
of dissembling! What can be more fatal to a State than to treat as
enemies and to put to death men who have committed no other crime
than that of thinking independently! Behold, then, the scaffold,
the dread of the bad man, which now becomes the glorious theater
where tolerance and virtue blaze forth in all their splendor, and
covers publicly with opprobrium the sovereign majesty! Assuredly,
there is but one thing which that spectacle can teach us, and that
is to imitate these noble martyrs, or, if we fear death, to become
the abject flatterers of the powerful. Nothing hence can be so
perilous as to relegate and submit to divine right things which are
purely speculative, and to impose laws upon opinions which are, or
at least ought to be, subject to discussion among men. If the right
of the State were limited to repressing acts, and speech were
allowed impunity, controversies would not turn so often into
seditions.

AUGUSTE COMTE

In the name of the Past and of the