Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/40



Oubtless, it will be objected (nay, it hath been objected) by the Patrons of unlimited Freedom of Thought, that This is indeed a System of Slavery; that it is building civil Liberty on the Servitude of the Mind, and shackling the infant Soul with early Prejudice.

In Answer to this plausible Objection, the Writer replies (what he hath elsewhere advanced ) "That a Prejudice doth not imply, as is generally supposed, the Falsehood of the Opinion instilled, but only that it is taken up, and held, without its proper Evidence. Thus the infant Mind may be prejudiced in Favour of Truth as well as Falsehood; and neither can the one or the other, thus instilled, be properly called more than an Opinion."