14 HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



standing this great difference, Stuart Mill regards- himself 

 as fundamentally belonging to the same school of thought 

 with Bentham. Between Bentham's treatment of political 

 questions and Mill's, there is all the contrast between revo- 

 lutionary construction and construction on an historical 

 basis.^ In the present (1868) state of Europe, and espe- 

 cially of England, it is impossible to predict how many 

 experiments in revolutionary construction may be tried by 

 an uneducated democracy ; but we are safe in asserting 

 that the influence of the cultivated classes, for the present 

 and for an indefinite time to come, has been secured on 

 the side of an historical way of regarding all political 

 questions, and against revolutionary construction as well 

 as revolutionary destruction. 

 Liberal- At the same time, the new historical style of thought 

 ^^™" tends to make men more tolerant and more liberal. His- 



torical and genetic modes of studying the thoughts and 

 the actions of those who have gone before us have neces- 

 sarily the effect of producing the power, or if not the 

 power at least the desire, to appreciate the objects of 

 study. We no longer think it enough to judge, however 

 justly, of deeds, or of laws, or of works of art. We en- 

 deavour to account for them ; to see them not only with 

 our own eyes, but with the eyes of their authors ; to see 

 them, as it were, not only from without, but from within. 

 This appreciative sympathy with man is at the very root 

 of all that is best in that political and moral creed which 

 is rather vaguely called Liberalism ; and it has, I believe, 

 acted powerfully, though in part unconsciously, in pro- 

 ducing the characteristically modern sense of the sacred- 

 Toleration ness of mental freedom, and of the sinfulness of all 

 opinions, persecution of opinion, whether the opinion be religious. 

 or any other. For we have learned that belief is utterly 

 worthless, except when it is the product of free conviction. 

 We have learned that what is in form the same belief, or 

 the same creed, may be one thing if it is the result of free 

 conviction, and a totally different thing if it is the result 



' See the Essays on Benthiim and on Coleridge in Stnart Mill's Disser- 

 tations and Discussions. 



