It is this that makes speech of so great importance to the fact of progress. Without speech, written or verbal, it would be impossible to conserve the products of human achievement. Each generation would have to start where its predecessor commenced, and it would finish at about the same point. It would be the fable of Sisyphus illustrated in the passing of each generation of human beings. But speech implies communication. There is not very much pleasure in speaking to oneself. Even the man who apologised for the practice on the ground that he liked to address a sensible assembly would soon grow tired of so restricted an audience. The function of speech is to transmit ideas, and it follows, therefore, that every embargo on the free exchange of ideas, every obstacle to complete freedom of speech, is a direct threat to the well-being of civilisation. As Milton could say that a good book "is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up to a life beyond life," and that "he who destroys a good book kills reason itself," so we may say that he who strikes at freedom of thought and speech is aiming a blow at the very heart of human betterment. In theory, the truth of what has been said would be readily admitted, but in practice it has met, and still meets, with a vigorous opposition. Governments have exhausted their powers to prevent freedom of intercourse between peoples, and every Church and chapel has used its best endeavours to the same end. Even to-day, when all are ready to pay lip-homage to freedom of thought, the obstacles in the way of a genuine freedom are still very great. Under the best possible conditions there will probably always be some coercion of opinion, if only of that unconscious kind which society as a whole exerts upon its individual members. But to this we have to add the coercion that is consciously exerted to secure the formation of particular opinions, and which has the dual effect of inducing dissimulation in some and impotency in others. Quite ignorantly parents commence the work when they force upon children their own views of religion and inculcate an exaggerated respect for authority. They create an initial bias that is in only too many cases fatal to real independence of thought. Social pressure continues what a mistaken early training has commenced. When opinions are made the test of "good form," and one's social standing partly determined by the kind of opinions that one holds, there is developed on the one side hypocrisy, and on the other, because certain opinions are banned, thought in general is unhealthily freed from the sobering influence of enlightened criticism.[11]