This leads us to track a certain error that has confused modern debate.  A man in assumed impartiality tells you he will stand away from his own viewpoint and consider a case from yours.  Now, if he does honestly hold by his own view and thinks he can put it by and judge from his opponent’s, he is deceiving both himself and his opponent.  He can do so apparently, but, whatever assumption is made, he is governed subconsciously by his own firm conviction.  His belief is around him like an atmosphere; it goes with him wherever he goes; he can only stand free of it by altogether abandoning it.  If his case is such that he can come absolutely to the other side to view it uninfluenced by his own, then he has abandoned his own.  He is like a man in a boat who has thrown over rudder and bearings:  he may be moved by any current:  he is adrift.  If he is to recover the old ground, he must win it as something he never had.  But if instead of this he does at heart hold by his own view, he should give over the deception that he is uninfluenced by it in framing judgment.  It is psychologically impossible.  Let the man understand it as a duty to himself to be just to others, and to substitute this principle for his spurious impartiality.  This is the frank 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.