system opened, in its special circumstances, a way
for talent. It maintained an intellectual organization for those who
were within its pale, irrespective of wealth or birth. It was no
objection that the greatest churchman frequently came from the lowest
walks of life. And that organization sustained it in spite of the
opposition of external circumstances for several centuries after its
supernatural and ostensible basis had completely decayed away.

[Sidenote: Approach of Europe to universal education.] Whatever may be
the facts under which, in the different countries of Europe, such an
organization takes place, or the political forms guiding it, the basis
it must rest upon is universal, and, if necessary, compulsory education.
In the more enlightened places the movement has already nearly reached
that point. Already it is an accepted doctrine that the state, as well
as the parent, has rights in a child and that it may insist on
education: conversely also, that every child has a claim upon the
government for good instruction. After providing in the most liberal
manner for that, free countries have but one thing more to do for the
accomplishment of the rest.

[Sidenote: Necessity of intellectual freedom.] That one thing is to
secure intellectual freedom as completely as the rights of property and
personal liberty have been already secured. Philosophical opinions and
scientific discoveries are entitled to be judged of by their truth, not
by their relation to existing interests. The motion of the earth round
the sun, the antiquity of the globe, the origin of species, are
doctrines which have had to force their way in the manner described in
this book, not against philosophical opposition, but opposition of a
totally different nature. And yet the interests which resisted them so
strenuously have received no damage from their establishment beyond that
consequent on the discredit of having so resisted them.

There is no literary crime greater than that of exciting a social, and
especially a theological odium against ideas that are purely scientific,
none against which the disapproval of every educated man ought to be
more strongly expressed. The republic of letters owes it to its own
dignity to tolerate no longer offences of that kind.

[Sidenote: The future course of Europe.] To such an organization of
their national intellect, and to giving it a political control, the
countries of Europe are thus rapidly advancing. They