disposed to grasp the rude implements of coercion, whether legal or merely social.  The cry, ‘Be my brother, or I slay thee,’ was the sign of a very weak, though very fiery, faith in the worth of fraternity.  He whose faith is most assured, has the best reason for relying on persuasion, and the strongest motive to thrust from him all temptations to use angry force.  The substitution of force for persuasion, among its other disadvantages, has this further drawback, from our present point of view, that it lessens the conscience of a society and breeds hypocrisy.  You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him.  Opinion and force belong to different elements.  To think that you are able by social disapproval or other coercive means to crush a man’s opinion, is as one who should fire a blunderbuss to put out a star.  The acquiescence in current notions which is secured by law or by petulant social disapproval, is as worthless and as essentially hypocritical, as the conversion of an Irish pauper to protestantism by means of soup-tickets, or that of a savage to Christianity by the gift of a string of beads.  Here is the radical fallacy of those who urge that people must use promises and threats in order to encourage opinions, thoughts, and feelings which they think good, and to prevent others which they think bad.  Promises and threats can influence acts.  Opinions and thoughts on morals, politics, and the rest, after they have once grown in a man’s mind, can no more be influenced by promises and threats than can my knowledge that snow is white or that ice is cold.  You may impose penalties on me by statute for saying that snow is white, or acting as if I thought ice cold, and the penalties may affect my conduct.  They will not, because they cannot, modify my beliefs in the matter by a single iota.  One result therefore of intolerance is to make hypocrites.  On this, as on the rest of the grounds which vindicate the doctrine of liberty, a man who thought himself infallible either in particular or in general, from the Pope of Rome down to the editor of the daily newspaper, might still be inclined to abstain from any form of compulsion.  The only reason to the contrary is that a man who is so silly as to think himself incapable of going wrong, is very likely to be too silly to perceive that coercion may be one way of going wrong.

The currency of the notion that earnest sincerity about one’s opinions and ideals of conduct is inseparably connected with intolerance, is indirectly due to the predominance of legal or juristic analogies in social discussion.  For one thing, the lawyer has to deal mainly with acts, and to deal with them by way of repression.  His attention is primarily fixed on the deed, and only secondarily on the mind of the doer.  And so a habit of thought is created, which treats opinion as something equally in the sphere of coercion with actions.  At the same time it favours coercive ways of affecting opinion.  Then,