On Liberty- John Mill

"Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions , but the Christian church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overstopping the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade. Our merely social intolerence kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us the heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smolder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a state of things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it mantains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification , is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind."

The considerations of this passage are profound. And the consequences dire because inevitably are we creating or destroying our moral courage and that of our posterity. Truth will always shine but it is us- our age and reason that suffers. Our dignity and uprightness or lack thereof that will be scorn.

Is society already judging courage or cowardice?