In religion the unreasonableness of imposing a similar cautious silence is not yet fully established, nor the vicious effects of practising it clearly recognised.  In these high matters an amount of economy and management is held praiseworthy, which in any other subject would be universally condemned as cowardly and ignoble.  Indeed the preliminary stage has scarcely been reached—­the stage in which public opinion grants to every one the unrestricted right of shaping his own beliefs, independently of those of the people who surround him.  Any woman, for instance, suspected of having cast behind her the Bible and all practices of devotion and the elementary articles of the common creed, would be distrustfully regarded even by those who wink at the same kind of mental boldness in men.  Nay, she would be so regarded even by some of the very men who have themselves discarded as superstition what they still wish women to retain for law and gospel.  So long as any class of adults are effectually discouraged in the free use of their minds upon the most important subjects, we are warranted in saying that the era of free thought, which naturally precedes the era of free speech, is still imperfectly developed.

The duties and rights of free speech are by no means identical with those of independent thought.  One general reason for this is tolerably plain.  The expression of opinion directly affects other people, while its mere formation directly affects no one but ourselves.  Therefore the limits of compromise in expression are less widely and freely placed, because the rights and interests of all who may be made listeners to our spoken or written words are immediately concerned.  In forming opinions, a man or woman owes no consideration to any person or persons whatever.  Truth is the single object.  It is truth that in the forum of conscience claims an undivided allegiance.  The publication of opinion stands on another footing.  That is an external act, with possible consequences, like all other external acts, both to the doer and to every one within the sphere of his influence.  And, besides these, it has possible consequences to the prosperity of the opinion itself.[19]

A hundred questions of fitness, of seasonableness, of conflicting expediencies, present themselves in this connection, and nothing gives more anxiety to a sensible man who holds notions opposed to the current prejudices, than to hit the right mark where intellectual integrity and prudence, firmness and wise reserve, are in exact accord.  When we come to declaring opinions that are, however foolishly and unreasonably, associated with pain and even a kind of turpitude in the minds of those who strongly object to them, then some of our most powerful sympathies are naturally engaged.  We wonder whether duty to truth can possibly require us to inflict keen distress on those to whom we are bound by the tenderest and most consecrated ties.  This is so wholly honourable a sentiment,