Freedom has been hunted through the world, and is ever exposed to Insult and injury. It is crushed by conquest; frowned from courts; expelled from colleges; scorned out of society; flogged in schools; and anathematised in churches. Mind is her last asylum; and if freedom quail there, what becomes of the hope of the world, or the worth of human nature?--W. J. Fox's Lectures to the Working Classes, part 12, p. 65. We should be prepared to dare all things for truth. If the 'very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalisation,' we should be prepared to risk them. If we must choose between truth and repose, we ought not to hesitate. There is danger in having the truth--philosophers are obliged to conceal it. Mankind vaunt their love of truth, but they are not to be trusted. From interest or ignorance they always persecute, and often kill, the discoverer. Still the pursuit of truth is a _duty_, and we must find consolation in the heroic reflection of Burke, that _in all exertions of duty there it something to be hazarded_. But intellectual daring will never be common while it is so generally believed to be criminal. We will, therefore, quote some considerations touching the rightfulness of inquiry. Without inquiry it is impossible for us to know whether our opinions are true or false, and various are the pretences employed for declining investigation: frequently they are masked under vague and metaphorical phrases: "inquiry implies the weighing of evidence, and might lead to doubt and perplexity"--"to search into a subject might shake the settled convictions of the understanding"--to examine opposite arguments, and contradictory opinions, might contaminate the mind with false views. 'Every one who alleges pretexts like these for declining inquiry, must obviously begin by assuming that his own opinions are unerringly in the right. Nothing could justify a man for declining the investigation of a subject involving important opinions, but the possession of an understanding free from liability of error. Not gifted with infallibility, in what way, except by diligent inquiry, can he obtain any assurance that he is not pursuing a course of injurious action? If he holds any opinion, he must have acquired it either by examination, by instillation, rote, or some other process. On the supposition that he has acquired it by proper examination, the duty on which I am now insisting has been discharged, and the matter is at an end--but if he has acquired it in any other manner, the mere plea, that his mind might become unsettled, can be no argument against the duty of investigation. For anything he can allege to the contrary, his present opinions are wrong--and, in that case, the disturbance of his blind convictions, instead of being an evil, is an essential step towards arriving at the truth.