nk and straightforward
course. While he is under his own star, he is moving in its light: he
has, if unconsciously, his hand on the helm: he judges all currents
scrupulously and exactly, but always from his own place at the wheel and
with his own eyes. To abandon one or the other is to betray his trust,
or in good faith and ignorance to cast it off till it is gone, perhaps,
too far to recover.

V

If we so understand intellectual freedom, in what does its denial
consist? In this: around every set of principles guiding men, there
grows up a corresponding set of prejudices that with the majority in
practice often supersede the principles; and these prejudices with the
march of time assume such proportions, gather such power, both by the
numbers of their adherents and the authority of many supporting them,
that for a man of spirit, knowing them to be evil and urgent of
resistance, there is needed a vigour and freedom of mind that but few
understand and even fewer appreciate or encourage. The prejudices that
grow around a man's principles are like weeds and poison in his garden:
they blight his flowers, trees and fruit; and he must go forth with fire
and sword and strong unsparing hand to root out the evil things. He
will find with his courage and strength are needed passion and patience
and dogged persistence. For men defend a prejudice with bitter venom
altogether unlike the fire that quickens the fighter for freedom; and
the destroyer of the evil may find himself assailed by an astonishing
combination--charged with bad faith or treachery or vanity or sheer
perversity, in proportion as those who dislike his principles deny his
good faith; or those who profess them, because of his vigour and candour
denounce him for an enemy within the fold. But for all that he should
stand fast. If he has the courage so to do, he gives a fine example of
intellectual freedom.

VI

It will serve us to consider some prejudices, free-thinking and
religious. First the free-thinker. He has a prejudice very hard to kill.
If I believe in the beginning what Bernard Shaw has found out thus late
in the day, that priests are not as bad as they are painted, the
free-thinker would deny me intellectual freedom. The fact of my right to
think the matter out and come to that conclusion would count for
nothing. On the other hand, if I were known to have professed a certain
faith and to have abandoned it, he would acclaim that as casting off
me