CHAPTER XIV 



EMANCIPATION OF BELIEF 



In the actual development of national life the sources 

 which still supply and cultivate the knowledge of moral 

 benefits, do so with steadily decreasing support from the 

 temporal power; and positive authority over belief and 

 thought has, in higher civilization, entirely disappeared. Re- 

 ligious compulsion ceased with the first concessions made by 

 dictatorial control to the advance of altruistic freedom. And 

 this does not appear as a loss to religion. It is natural that 

 the teachers of modern morality should, early in the growth 

 of liberty, perceive the inconsistency of imposing undesired 

 aid upon an individual; and so be among the first to relin- 

 quish the practice. Yet the religious institutions cling to 

 coercive methods. It seems as if the champions of patriar- 

 chal government had consented to abolish this power re- 

 luctantly, and only in order to retain popular support in other 

 directions. The service rendered to a paternal government 

 by a controlled moral religion is properly educational; in 

 which it teaches people the rightness, real or imaginary, of 

 the action taken by the executive; and conversely, it repre- 

 sents to the executive the right course as regards the people. 

 Now when the teachers lose or relinquish their control of the 

 people, a government which valued them only for that con- 

 trol has no further use for them; and inclines rather to 

 sustain the subject people in their independence, while it 



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