permanent conditions of social health? In regard to liberty Mill's reply
turns on the moral or spiritual forces which determine the life of
society. First, particularly as regards freedom of thought and
discussion, society needs light. Truth has a social value, and we are
never to suppose that we are in the possession of complete and final
truth. But truth is only to be sought by experience in the world of
thought, and of action as well. In the process of experimentation there
are endless opportunities of error, and the free search for truth
therefore involves friction and waste. The promulgation of error will do
harm, a harm that might be averted if error were suppressed. But
suppression by any other means than those of rational suasion is one of
those remedies which cure the disease by killing the patient. It
paralyzes the free search for truth. Not only so, but there is an
element of positive value in honest error which places it above
mechanically accepted truth. So far as it is honest it springs from the
spontaneous operation of the mind on the basis of some partial and
incomplete experience. It is, so far as it goes, an interpretation of
experience, though a faulty one, whereas the belief imposed by authority
is no interpretation of experience at all. It involves no personal
effort. Its blind acceptance seals the resignation of the will and the
intellect to effacement and stultification.

The argument on this side does not rest on human fallibility. It appeals
in its full strength to those who are most confident that they possess
truth final and complete. They are asked to recognize that the way in
which this truth must be communicated to others is not by material but
by spiritual means, and that if they hold out physical threats as a
deterrent, or worldly advantage as a means of persuasion, they are
destroying not merely the fruits but the very root of truth as it grows
within the human mind. Yet the argument receives additional force when
we consider the actual history of human belief. The candid man who knows
anything of the movements of thought will recognize that even the faith
which is most vital to him is something that has grown through the
generations, and he may infer, if he is reasonable, that as it has grown
in the past so, if it has the vital seed within it, it will grow in the
future. It may be permanent in outline, but in content it will change.
But, if truth itself is an expanding circle of ideas th