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 internecine struggles. You could boast of being a philosopher, and yet be content to allow error to die out among the vulgar without trying to force new ideas upon minds totally incapable of appreciating them. To speak freely and openly is no doubt the best rule in the long-run; but there is, it must be admitted, a real difficulty in proclaiming truth with the knowledge that it will be perverted by the vulgar interpreters. To Gibbon, in his earlier days, that difficulty scarcely presented itself. He fancied that even his chapters upon Christianity would be accepted by all cultivated people, while there should be a faint understanding that the old language should still be kept up 'for the use of the poor.'

Gibbon, indeed, had in time to confess that this view involved an important practical mistake. Philosophy, political and religious, could not permanently remain the esoteric doctrine of a narrow circle; and when hot-headed Rousseaus and the like spread its tents among the vulgar, it produced an explosion which took the calm philosophers by surprise. Gibbon began to see a good side even in the superstition, the vitality of which had astonished him so much on the