It was no doubt the record and the result of the French Revolution that moved the majority of political reformers for two generations to keep their own counsel on religious matters. Paine has been expressly charged with hindering the cause of democratic politics by identifying himself also with the cause of Freethinking. To a man like Bradlaugh such an objection counted for nothing. It was not merely that he saw how profoundly religion reacts on life, how creed shapes conduct, and how the current religion must always tend to support old political doctrine as against new. He took his course instinctively as well as reasoningly. That a doctrine is false was to him a reason for exposing it as such; and though as a utilitarian he held that truth is the best policy, he did not wait for the demonstration before choosing his course. He had in fact that love of truth for its own sake which is the inspiration of all scientific progress; but he had it without restriction, or at least with as little restriction as can well be. No man can be equally interested in all inquiries; and none can help thinking some unprofitable; but Bradlaugh was limited only by his tastes, never by the common opinion that the spread of truth is inexpedient. He would give facilities for all conscientious truth-seeking whatever, barring only random disclosures of sensational facts with no better motive than sensation, or with no likelihood of edification to balance the likelihood of the reverse. As to the great themes of belief and discussion in all ages, he simply could not think that human welfare is promoted by maintaining beliefs known to be false. He was a democrat in religion as in politics. If truth was good for him, it must be equally good for the multitude, so far as it was possible to enlighten them. They must needs be enlightened by language within reach of their capacity; but while he would make matters plain for them, he would in no wise consent to garble and conceal what he held to be the truth. With the many people who either care nothing whether current beliefs are false or true, or think it desirable that they should be false, he had no sympathy. It seemed to him that if anything was worth investigating, the most serious beliefs of the mass of the human race must be; and the idea that the mass could be helped or raised by keeping them deluded was to him morally repugnant and sociologically false. "My object," he writes in his pamphlet on Heresy, "is to show that the civilisation of the mass is in proportion to the spread of heresy amongst them; that its effect is seen in an exhibition of manly dignity and self-reliant effort which is utterly unattainable amongst a superstitious people." And all acts of prayer and religious propitiation were to him survivals of superstition.