is not humanity, but knowledge.  It is to the diffusion of knowledge, and to that alone, that we owe the comparative cessation of what is unquestionably the greatest evil men have ever inflicted on their own species.  For that religious persecution is a greater evil than any other, is apparent, not so much from the enormous and almost incredible number of its known victims, as from the fact that the unknown must be far more numerous, and that history gives no account of those who have been spared in the body in order that they might suffer in the mind.  We hear much of martyrs and confessors—­of those who were slain by the sword, or consumed in the fire:  but we know little of that still larger number who by the mere threat of persecution have been driven into an outward abandonment of their real opinions; and who, thus forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have passed the remainder of their lives in the practice of a constant and humiliating hypocrisy.  It is this which is the real curse of religious persecution.  For in this way, men being constrained to mask their thoughts, there arises a habit of securing safety by falsehood, and of purchasing impunity with deceit.  In this way fraud becomes a necessary of life; insincerity is made a daily custom; the whole tone of public feeling is vitiated, and the gross amount of vice and of error fearfully increased.  Surely, then, we have reason to say that, compared to this, all other crimes are of small account; and we may well be grateful for that increase of intellectual pursuits which has destroyed an evil that some among us would even now willingly restore.

THE MYTHICAL ORIGIN OF HISTORY

From the ‘History of Civilization in England’

At a very early period in the progress of a people, and long before they are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may stimulate their courage.  This is supplied to them by the invention of ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest tribes of the earth.  They are for the most part sung by a class of men whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of traditions.  Indeed, so natural is this curiosity as to past events that there are few nations to whom these bards or minstrels are unknown.  Thus, to select a few instances, it is they who have preserved the popular traditions, not only of Europe, but also of China, Tibet, and Tartary; likewise of India, of Scinde, of Beloochistan, of Western Asia, of the islands of the Black Sea, of Egypt, of Western Africa, of North America, of South America, and of the islands in the Pacific.