The natural tendency to veracity, strengthened by the observation of the opposite quality in one with whom he was early brought into contact, received its decisive impulse, as has been told before, from Carlyle, whose writings confirmed and established his youthful reader in a hatred of shams and make-believes equal to his own.

In his mind no compromise was possible between truth and untruth. (As he once said, when urged to write a more eulogistic notice of a dead friend than he thought deserved], “The only serious temptations to perjury I have ever known have arisen out of the desire to be of some comfort to people I cared for in trouble.  If there are such things as Plato’s ‘Royal Lies’ they are surely those which one is tempted to tell on such occasions.  Mrs. —­ is such a good devoted little woman, and I am so doubtful about having a soul, that it seems absurd to hesitate to peril it for her satisfaction.”) [Against authorities and influences he published “Man’s Place in Nature,” though warned by his friends that to do so meant ruin to his prospects.  When he had once led the way and challenged the upholders of conventional orthodoxy, others backed him up with a whole armoury of facts.  But his fight was as far as possible for the truth itself, for fact, not merely for controversial victory or personal triumph.  Yet, as has been said by a representative of a very different school of thought, who can wonder that he should have hit out straight from the shoulder, in reply to violent or insidious attacks, the stupidity of which sometimes merited scorn as well as anger?

In his theological controversies he was no less careful to avoid any approach to mere abuse or ribaldry such as some opponents of Christian dogma indulged in.  For this reason he refused to interpose in the well-known Foote case.  Discussion, he said, could be carried on effectually without deliberate wounding of others’ feelings.

As he wrote in reply to an appeal for help in this case (March 12, 1883):—­]

I have not read the writings for which Mr. Foote was prosecuted.  But, unless their nature has been grossly misrepresented, I cannot say that I feel disposed to intervene on his behalf.

I am ready to go great lengths in defence of freedom of discussion, but I decline to admit that rightful freedom is attacked, when a man is prevented from coarsely and brutally insulting his neighbours’ honest beliefs.

I would rather make an effort to get legal penalties inflicted with equal rigour on some of the anti-scientific blasphemers—­who are quite as coarse and unmannerly in their attacks on opinions worthy of all respect as Mr. Foote can possibly have been.

[The grand result of his determination not to compromise where truth was concerned, was the securing freedom of thought and speech.  One man after another, looking back on his work, declares that if we can say what we think now, it is because he fought the battle of freedom.  Not indeed the battle of toleration, if toleration means toleration of error for its own sake.  Error, he thought, ought to be extirpated by all legitimate means, and not assisted because it is conscientiously held.