The Value and Importance of the Temple

Haggai. 

Read Haggai and write responses to the following questions:

(a) The Importance of the Temple.

What did Haggai say were the consequences for delaying the building of the temple? 
 6 Ye have ^asown much, and bring in little; ye ^beat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that ^cearneth wages earneth^dwages to put it into a bag with ^eholes.

What do you think it means to put your wages “into a bag with holes”?  

Their money/goods were not keeping long. They were not storing their treasures in heaven, so they were not eternal/keepable. 

What does Haggai 1:4–6 tell about the priority of the temple in the lives of the people?  

Haggai 1:7–11, “The Consequences of Disobedience,” pg. 325) "The Jews in Jerusalem were charged by Haggai: “Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:7). They had refused to fulfill the assignment given them by the Lord to rebuild the temple. True, there had been difficult circumstances because of the interference of the Samaritans, but the Lord would not bless them with prosperity if they did not heed His commands (compare D&C 82:10).

There are parallels between Haggai’s time and Latter-day Saint history since the Latter-day Saints also built two temples, one in Kirtland and one in Nauvoo, in times of great poverty and persecution. Compare Haggai’s call to Israel with the revelations given to Joseph Smith about the Saints’ task of building the Nauvoo temple (see D&C 124:31–55). The Lord directly tied the poverty of the people of Haggai’s time and the sterility of the land to their failure to heed the commandment to rebuild the Lord’s house (see Haggai 1:9–11)." 

"God would not bless them with prosperity if they would not heed His commandments" to rebuild the temple.

(b) The People’s Response to Haggai.

What did the people do because of Haggai’s message? 

They started building the temple. 

I am making the temple the symbol of your membership and the temple affects the way I live because every thing I do is to be worthy of going in. It is the most peaceful place that I can find and feels closer to God than even nature has provided me. Nature is a top contender for peace but being with God in his house that I know I helped build with my tithing brings love and joy. 

I work everyday to fight my worldly desires to be able to go. Some things are so simple that are hard to do but it's always worth the sacrifice. 

(c) The Lord’s Promise If They Build the Temple.

From Haggai 2 list the blessings and knowledge the people would have if they worked to rebuild the temple. 

• God will overthrow the kingdoms of the kingdoms of the heathen.
• abundance of crop
• peace
• when the Lord says he'll bless them he really will do it, he keeps his promises

Also, record three main points that describe how the temple is a place of peace.

• spirit remains among them
• safety
• glory (blessings) 

Understanding the Majesty of God

 Habakkuk. 

(a) The chapter summary for Habakkuk 1. 

Habakkuk became troubled when he realized that the Lord can use the wickedness of others to humble others. The Lord uses the trials we all have to face whether from the bad choices of others or just every day hardships to shape us. It is a scary thought that even wicked people can be servants in the Lord's hands. It keeps us on edge that maybe the Lord sent us someone difficult just to teach us or humble us to him. 

(b) Habakkuk 2:3–15 and compare it with Articles of Faith 1:9; Jacob 4:8; Doctrine and Covenants 101:32–34; 121:26–31; 130:18–19.

“Understanding and Obtaining the Knowledge and Glory of the Lord.” 

For us to understand and obtain the knowledge and Glory of the Lord we must be patient and understanding. It is both through patients and faith that the Lord will reveal what he wants us to know. Habakkuk discusses that we will be able to see when it is the right time for us. "For the vision is yet for an appointed time . . . "(Habakkuk 2:3) The Lord has control over this appointed time. When we search for the knowledge then line upon line it will be granted to us. Some things are still mysteries that we cannot obtain unless God wills it for us. 

We as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints we believe that God has yet to reveal all to us his children. We believe that we are still able to receive his words straight from him. ( Articles of Faith 1:9)  It truly is impossible for man to learn more about God and his ways unless God provides it to mankind. "Behold, great and marvelous are the ^aworks of the Lord. How^bunsearchable are the depths of the ^cmysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man^dknoweth of his ^eways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the ^frevelations of God."(Jacob 4:8) 

In order to have revaluation we must have faith. We cannot gain knowledge from God if we think that we already know everything. "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his ^afaith." (Habakkuk 2:4) He will lift us up when we are ready and teachable. This applies to being understanding. When we are understanding of His timeline that means we are humble and accepting him and his ways. 

The world is full of examples of the knowledge and glory of the Lord."For the ^aearth shall be filled with the ^bknowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." (Habakkuk 2:14) We are but to ask in patients and humility for understanding of it.

The Better for My Foes

The Better for My Foes 

The Role of Opposition
by Elouise Bell
Elouise M. Bell is a retired English teacher who worked at Brigham Young University for more than thirty-five years. During various sabbaticals, Bell taught at the University of Arizona, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and Berzenyi College in Hungary. She has served on the Young Women General Board and on the Utah Arts Council. She has written for three Utah newspapers and has authored several books. “The Better for My Foes” appeared originally in a 1991 issue of Sunstone.
I draw my inspiration from two sources—the noted American political philosopher and journalist Walter Lippmann and the clown or fool from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Since clowning is the older and in some ways more serious profession, let us begin there.
As you remember, the fools in Shakespeare’s dramas are anything but fools. Often the greatest wisdom of a play comes from that quarter. The clown in Twelfth Night is no exception. In Act V, scene l, Orsino, the duke of Illyria, says to the clown by way of greeting, “How dost thou, my good fellow?”
The clown replies, “Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.” The duke tries to correct him: “Just the contrary—the better for thy friends.”
“No sir, the worse.”
“How can that be?”
“Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass, so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused. So that . . . the worse for my friends, and the better for my foes.”
To which the duke replies. “Why this is excellent.” Which, I hope to establish, it is indeed.
The same insight came to King Lear after he had been so reduced in circumstances that he was literally naked and homeless upon the moor in a raging storm. Speaking in anger and bitterness about the many lackeys and paid flatterers who had clustered around him in his former days of glory, he said, “They told me I was ague-proof.” That is, they flattered him so

The Better for My Foes 55

outrageously that he believed he was immune even from the common afflictions such as ague or flu, which are the lot of humankind.

Thus Lear is pointing out that sometimes those who agree easily and quickly with us do us a disservice. And the clown is explaining that those whom we may consider our foes can actually be our greatest benefactors.

The concept of valued opposition is not, I fear, very well understood in Mormon culture. And without it we cause ourselves and others needless grief and may actually hinder what we would advance. As I have listened to speeches and public discussions, read letters to the editors of several newspapers both in Utah and outside, heard people debate among themselves on various controversies—ranging from the activities of the Environmental Protection Agency to the merits of a constitutional amendment on equal rights—I have observed four general attitudes, four ways of viewing opposition. There are surely others, but these four seem to predominate: (1) opposition as persecution, (2) opposition as counsel for the defense, (3) opposition as airing of personal opinion, and (4) opposition as sand in the shoes.
The first attitude reveals what we could call a Hatfield-McCoy pattern of response, a “Them ‘n Us” philosophy, whose motto is, “Fire at Will, For the Enemy Is All Around Us!” This philosophy teaches that the opposition is basically a passel of no-good skunks out to get Us in every way possible and that even though this week our concern may be with stopping them from stealing our hogs, we can never let our guard down. Next week They (or someone in cahoots with Them) will be trying to poison the well or dynamite the privy. In other words this camp views the opposition as unmitigated evil, and as far as listening to the opposition goes, they listen only long enough to fix the enemy position before blasting away. (When I originally formulated these ideas, I wrote, “I really don’t think this militia group to be very large, but they are loud.” Today I feel a deeper concern. The ranks of the self-appointed righteous seem to be swelling, if not yet a majority.)

For Mormons, and for many other Christians, the problem arises, I believe, out of the confusion of human opposition—in matters political, economic, educational, even religious— with the supernatural. It is understandably easy but unequivocally dangerous to move from viewing Satan as the opposition to viewing any mortal opposition as satanic. To put it another way, all that is of Satan is opposition, but all that opposes us is not satanic. Yet down through the centuries, such an attitude has often prevailed as men have made the slippery step from “This is what we believe” to “This is what God believes, and death to the infidels who believe otherwise.”

Not every skirmish is a holy war. We can effectively root out waste and inefficiency in public office without believing that every politician is in the pay of Satan. We can debate how our communities and valleys can best be developed and protected without convincing ourselves and others that those who oppose us (on whatever side they happen to be) are advance men for the adversary. We can consider how best to structure our schools without consigning the neighbor who disagrees with us to the legions of Lucifer.

Now to the second attitude toward opposition. This is in many respects a more intelligent approach to opposition, so much so in fact that I’m going to call it the lawyer’s attitude. But intelligent as this attitude is in the right place, it is still not the appropriate stance for people trying

The Better for My Foes 56

seriously to discover how best to regulate our government, outfit our schools, develop our resources, and incorporate a moral ethic into our society.

This attitude toward opposition says, “We must listen to the opposition, study them closely, read their literature, and hear their spokespersons, in order that we may know how to refute their arguments.” I call this the lawyer’s attitude because the lawyer does not go into court to tell all she knows of a case, and certainly she does not go into court to learn what she does not know. In fact an old axiom says that a lawyer must never ask of a witness any question to which she, the lawyer, does not already know the answer. There must be, in short, no surprises. The lawyer is in court, is being paid, to advocate one particular position with all the skill and eloquence she has. She must try to outwit her opponents by guessing what form their questioning will take. She must try to know about any evidence they plan to introduce, any witness they may call. She tries to think of every point the opposing lawyers could conceivably make—not so that she can change her mind about what she believes but so that she will be prepared in court for any direction the argument may take.

Given the nature of our judicial system, such an attitude is professionally justified. One or more lawyers represent each side of a case, and the judge and jury decide the truth as best they can. But the individual truth seeker who has the lawyer’s attitude about the opposition is shortchanging himself, for who will be the judge if he has already made up his mind before he hears what the other side has to say, if he listens only to refute? Such a person has skipped a crucial step.

The third attitude is related to the second in that it allows all opponents “their day in court.” This attitude—and I have heard it widely voiced in the church—says, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but this is what I believe” (implying, “And I don’t intend to change”). What could be fairer than that? Well, fair it may be, but foolish it certainly is. Remember Shakespeare’s fool? He did not merely allow his foes to talk. He listened to them and was ready to change his views on the basis of what they said if it was logical and valid. Yet many of us today think of ourselves as enlightened because we are willing to “let others have their say” without seriously considering their say. The danger of this approach is brilliantly explained by the great essayist Walter Lippmann in an article entitled “The Indispensable Opposition” (August 1939, The Atlantic Monthly). In this essay Lippmann is discussing why it is so important to protect the right of free speech:

“We take, it seems to me, a naively self-righteous view when we argue as if the right of our opponents to speak were something that we protect because we are magnanimous, noble, and unselfish. The compelling reason ... is that we must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

“This is the creative principle of freedom of speech, not that it is a system for the tolerating of error, but that it is a system for finding the truth. . . . And so, if we truly wish to understand why freedom is necessary in a civilized society, we must begin by realizing that, because freedom of discussion improves our own opinions, the liberties of other men are our own vital necessity. . . .

“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise, he

The Better for My Foes 57

will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But, though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”

And thus we have returned to the point put forth by the fool. If we are as wise as he, we too will listen to the opposition in order to learn—not merely to fix their positions so we may fire upon them, nor to know their arguments so we may defeat them, nor simply to allow them “equal time” to air their opinions. We will listen to others to learn if our own perceptions are right and true, conscious always that they may not be.

Now there is yet another attitude toward opposition, which is both an attitude and a cause of our problems with opposition generally. I call it the “sand in the shoes” theory. It is related to the “Hatfield-McCoy” school, although proponents are very different in temperament and profoundly different in theology.

The “sand in the shoes” view says that opposition is necessary and inevitable. As we climb the mountain in our great quest, there is bound to be sand in our shoes from time to time. We must simply persevere, patiently removing the sand when it becomes too great an obstruction. Such a philosophy seems eminently sane and courageous, and of course it is, when applied to obstacles such as one’s individual crosses—sickness, sorrow, misfortune, what Shakespeare calls “the whips and scorns of time.” If that is what one means by opposition, then all is well. But when this philosophy becomes muddied, and opposition broadens to mean “those on the other side” and is considered part of the divinely-decreed testing of one’s mettle, then danger sets in. Although the “sand in the shoe” philosopher may be softer spoken than the “persecuted righteous,” the roots of their problems are similar—confusing opposition with evil.

And at this point we have come to the quick of the ulcer. For Mormons, opposition has a special meaning, deeply felt if rarely examined, a meaning which grows out of a specific scripture. It is my theory—and I stress that term—that a general misunderstanding of this passage prevails and accounts for our many inappropriate attitudes toward any who line up on the other side of us.
The scripture is found in 2 Nephi 2:11. Father Lehi says to his son Jacob: “For it needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.”

How do we understand this scripture? It seems to me that a great many people interpret it by making two columns—righteousness, holiness, and good on one side (Column A) and wickedness, misery, and bad on the other (Column B). Column B is the opposition, admittedly bad but still necessary so that we might achieve, appreciate, and enjoy Column A, the good things of life.
Lehi, however, says that even wickedness could not come to pass, nor misery nor evil, without opposition. If we take the view that the valiant need opposition to build up spiritual muscles, as it were, why would the wicked need it? Do they also need “sand in the shoes” to be tested, to develop character? Notice also that Lehi does not say, “righteousness needs opposition.”

The Better for My Foes 58

Though often understood this way, the passage reads differently. Lehi says that it is necessary that there be an opposition in all things. Without that condition as a given, righteousness could not be brought to pass. Righteousness wouldn’t even happen in the first place. Quite a different concept.
A few verses on in that same chapter, Lehi speaks of the Lord creating our first parents and the beasts and fowls of the air and then says that after this was done, “It must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter” (2 Ne. 2:15). Which fruit was sweet: the fruit of the tree of life or the fruit of the forbidden tree? The word order (plus the additional evidence of Moses 4:12) would suggest it was the forbidden fruit which was sweet and the fruit of the tree of life which was bitter. Is the tree of life, the tree Adam and Eve were encouraged to eat, bad then because it is bitter? Is the bitterness “opposition”? If the tree of life is bitter, must we list it in Column B?

The answer to this question may lie in the earlier verse in the words which explain that “all things must needs be a compound in one.” Lehi says, “It must needs be that there is an opposition in all things.” Notice in all things, not to. Could we restate this to say that in all aspects of life there must be and there is a mixture of good and bad, right and wrong, holiness and misery? This mixture, this opposition of qualities, produces a state of constant motion, movement, interchange, growth—of life. Lehi explains, “if it should be one body”—if there were not this compound of qualities—”it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death.”

Consider the possibility (which I believe to be valid) that the “opposition” Lehi speaks of is not in fact the “bad” or “wrong” side of things (Column B) but instead the mixture itself, the intermingling process, the fact that all things in life are a compound. In this sense opposition is not at all a negative circumstance, although it involves negative qualities as well as positive ones. Because we have misinterpreted “opposition” to mean all the “evils” in Column B, we carry over that connotation to our political, economic, social, environmental, and other debates and consider our human opposition as “evil” or “bad” also—or at least we consider their ideas as such. Our misunderstanding of the word has misled us.

In summary of this point then: while I definitely believe we are given struggles and pain and problems in this life in order to strengthen our characters and fortify our souls, to classify our political and other philosophical opposition as part of the “necessary evil” of this life is to accuse them falsely and to martyr ourselves undeservedly.
I offer in conclusion a quotation from LDS president Harold B. Lee: “It is good to be faithful. It is better to be faithful and competent.” I believe we will be more competent in our roles as parents, citizens, office holders, and members who would be instrumental in building a Zion society if we thought more deeply and more carefully about the nature of opposition. As a practical start I offer the following suggestions:

1. Beware the impulse to divide opposing camps into Column A and Column B—the good guys and the bad guys. Usually any given political or social stance has both merit and weakness—the “compound in one”—including the view you are proposing.
   
2. Beware making a person, rather than a position, the opposition. If we do that we run the risk of losing that person as an ally on another issue about which we both agree.
   

The Better for My Foes 59

Moreover, if we think of persons as the opposition, we may end up arguing personalities rather than issues, and at that point reason goes out the window.

3. Beware of establishing a predictable pattern of opposition. Emerson taught us that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” If you can always predict what side of an issue I’m going to be on, that’s a sign that I am prejudging, biasing my response, or judging something besides the issues and the arguments.
   
4. Beware of self-listening to the opposition. This is listening just long enough to decide how you’re going to answer, and then not thinking beyond that point.
   
5. Beware of never changing your mind. I would have very little confidence in a person who had never changed his or her mind on an issue, who had never said, “Well, I thought about that some more; I studied that a bit more deeply, and decided I was wrong.”
   
6. Beware of the passion to take a stand, any stand, now, rather than wait and ponder. Be mature enough and confident enough to be able to live with a few loose ends, a few uncertainties.
   
7. Beware of confusing God’s infallibility with your own. Because the church has access to divine truth, it does not follow that any Mormon who quotes scripture to support his or her view must of necessity be right.
   
8. Beware abandoning the wisdom of Moroni 10:4, which exhorts us to seek truth with a sincere heart and real intent. If this advice is valid in such a weighty quest as a testimony, surely it is a good model to follow in lesser matters such as political issues. But just as the scripture asks the investigator to seek with real intent, so in temporal matters we must study, which includes listening to our opponents, with truly open minds. The famed historian Marchette Chute has wisely said, “If you know in advance what the truth will be, you will never find it.”
   

The still-young experiment of democracy has had many critics from the days it was first tried in the western world. One of the most oft-repeated objections to government of and by the people is that most people simply do not have the philosophical and rational training and understanding to make wise decisions about government and civic affairs. Most people, according to the nay-sayers, will always be ruled by passion, swayed by prejudice, seduced by propaganda, and hence incapable of enlightened self-government. I do not agree with the nay-sayers. The dangers they warn of are real but not irrevocable. I believe government of and by the people can work. But it can only work when we train ourselves in the principles of sound thinking, when we are ever mindful of the absolute indispensability of that man or woman across the aisle or on the other side of the platform, when we, like Shakespeare’s wise Fool, know enough to treasure our “foe,” the opposition. 

The Indispensable Opposition

The Indispensable Opposition by Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, receiving the award in 1958 and 1962. Educated at Harvard, he became well-known for his syndicated column “Today and Tomorrow,” a commentary on national and international affairs. A prolific writer, his books include Liberty and the News (1920), A Preface to Morals (1929), and The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy (1963). “The Indispensable Opposition” originally appeared in a 1939 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.
Were they pressed hard enough, most men would probably confess that political freedom—that is to say, the right to speak freely and to act in opposition—is a noble ideal rather than a practical necessity. As the case for freedom is generally put today, the argument lends itself to this feeling. It is made to appear that, whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration. Thus, the defense of freedom of opinion tends to rest not on its substantial, beneficial, and indispensable consequences, but on a somewhat eccentric, a rather vaguely benevolent, attachment to an abstraction.

It is all very well to say with Voltaire, “I wholly disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it,” but as matter of fact most men will not defend to the death the rights of other men: if they disapprove sufficiently what other men say, they will somehow suppress those men if they can.
So, if this is the best that can be said for liberty of opinion, that a man must tolerate his opponents because everyone has a “right” to say what he pleases, then we shall find that liberty of opinion is a luxury, safe only in pleasant times when men can be tolerant because they are not deeply and vitally concerned. Yet actually, as a matter of historic fact, there is a much stronger foundation for the great constitutional right of freedom of speech, and as a matter of practical human experience there is a much more compelling reason for cultivating the habits of free men. We take, it seems to me, a naively self-righteous view when we argue as if the right of our opponents to speak were something that we protect because we are magnanimous, noble, and unselfish. The compelling reason why, if liberty of opinion did not exist, we should have to invent it, why it will eventually have to be restored in all civilized countries where it is now suppressed, is that we must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

I

The Indispensable Opposition 328
We miss the whole point when we imagine that we tolerate the freedom of our political opponents as we tolerate a howling baby next door, as we put up with the blasts from our neighbor’s radio because we are too peaceable to heave a brick through the window. If this were all there is to freedom of opinion, that we are too good-natured or too timid to do anything about our opponents and our critics except to let them talk, it would be difficult to say whether we are tolerant because we are magnanimous or because we are lazy, because we have strong principles or because we lack serious convictions, whether we have the hospitality of an inquiring mind or the indifference of an empty mind. And so, if we truly wish to understand why freedom is necessary in a civilized society, we must begin by realizing that, because freedom of discussion improves our own opinions, the liberties of other men are our own vital necessity.

We are much closer to the essence of the matter, not when we quote Voltaire, but when we go to the doctor and pay him to ask us the most embarrassing questions and to prescribe the most disagreeable diet. When we pay the doctor to exercise complete freedom of speech about the cause and cure of our stomachache, we do not look upon ourselves as tolerant and magnanimous, and worthy to be admired by ourselves. We have enough common sense to know that if we threaten to put the doctor in jail because we do not like the diagnosis and the prescription it will be unpleasant for the doctor, to be sure, but equally unpleasant for our own stomachache. That is why even the most ferocious dictator would rather be treated by a doctor who was free to think and speak the truth than by his own Minister of Propaganda. For there is a point, the point at which things really matter, where the freedom of others is no longer a question of their right but of our need.

The point at which we recognize this need is much higher in some men than in others. The totalitarian rulers think they do not need the freedom of an opposition: they exile, imprison, or shoot their opponents. We have concluded on the basis of practical experience, which goes back to Magna Carta and beyond, that we need the opposition. We pay the opposition salaries out of the public treasury.
In so far as the usual apology for freedom of speech ignores this experience, it becomes abstract and eccentric rather than concrete and human. The emphasis is generally put on the right to speak, as if all that mattered were that the doctor should be free to go out into the park and explain to the vacant air why I have a stomachache. Surely that is a miserable caricature of the great civic right which men have bled and died for. What really matters is that the doctor should tell me what ails me, that I should listen to him; that if I do not like what he says I should be free to call in another doctor; and that then the first doctor should have to listen to the second doctor; and that out of all the speaking and listening, the give-and-take of opinions, the truth should be arrived at.

This is the creative principle of freedom of speech, not that it is a system for the tolerating of error, but that it is a system for finding the truth. It may not produce the truth, or the whole truth all the time, or often, or in some cases ever. But if the truth can be found, there is no other system which will normally and habitually find so much truth. Until we have thoroughly

The Indispensable Opposition 329

understood this principle, we shall not know why we must value our liberty, or how we can protect and develop it.

II

Let us apply this principle to the system of public speech in a totalitarian state. We may, without any serious falsification, picture a condition of affairs in which the mass of the people are being addressed through one broadcasting system by one man and his chosen subordinates. The orators speak. The audience listens but cannot and dare not speak back. It is a system of one-way communication; the opinions of the rulers are broadcast outwardly to the mass of the people. But nothing comes back to the rulers from the people except the cheers; nothing returns in the way of knowledge of forgotten facts, hidden feelings, neglected truths, and practical suggestions.

But even a dictator cannot govern by his own one-way inspiration alone. In practice, therefore, the totalitarian rulers get back the reports of the secret police and of their party henchmen down among the crowd. If these reports are competent, the rulers may manage to remain in touch with public sentiment. Yet that is not enough to know what the audience feels. The rulers have also to make great decisions that have enormous consequences, and here their system provides virtually no help from the give-and-take of opinion in the nation. So they must either rely on their own institution, which cannot be permanently and continually inspired, or, if they are intelligent despots, encourage their trusted advisers and their technicians to speak and debate freely in their presence.

On the walls of the houses of Italian peasants one may see inscribed in large letters the legend, “Mussolini is always right.” But if that legend is taken seriously by Italian ambassadors, by the Italian General Staff, and by the Ministry of Finance, then all one can say is heaven help Mussolini, heaven help Italy, and the new Emperor of Ethiopia.
For at some point, even in a totalitarian state, it is indispensable that there should exist the freedom of opinion which causes opposing opinions to be debated. As time goes on, that is less and less easy under a despotism; critical discussion disappears as the internal opposition is liquidated in favor of men who think and feel alike. That is why the early successes of despots, of Napoleon I and of Napoleon III, have usually been followed by an irreparable mistake. For in listening only to his yes men—the others being in exile or in concentration camps, or terrified— the despot shuts himself off from the truth that no man can dispense with.

We know all this well enough when we contemplate the dictatorships. But when we try to picture our own system, by way of contrast, what picture do we have in our minds? It is, is it not, that anyone may stand up on his own soapbox and say anything he pleases, like the individuals in Kipling’s poem who sit each in his separate star and draw the Thing as they see it for the God of Things as they are. Kipling, perhaps, could do this, since he was a poet. But the ordinary mortal isolated on his separate star will have an hallucination, and a citizenry declaiming from separate soapboxes will poison the air with hot and nonsensical confusion.

If the democratic alternative to the totalitarian one-way broadcasts is a row of separate soapboxes, then I submit that the alternative is unworkable, is unreasonable, and is humanly

The Indispensable Opposition 330

unattractive. It is above all a false alternative. It is not true that liberty has developed among civilized men when anyone is free to set up a soapbox, is free to hire a hall where he may expound his opinions to those who are willing to listen. On the contrary, freedom of speech is established to achieve its essential purpose only when different opinions are expounded in the same hall to the same audience.
For, while the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important. Even in Russia and Germany a man may still stand in an open field and speak his mind. What matters is not the utterance of opinions. What matters is the confrontation of opinions in debate. No man can care profoundly that every fool should say what he likes. Nothing has been accomplished if the wisest man proclaims his wisdom in the middle of the Sahara Desert. This is the shadow. We have the substance of liberty when the fool is compelled to listen to the wise man and learn; when the wise man is compelled to take account of the fool, and to instruct him; when the wise man can increase his wisdom by hearing the judgment of his peers.

That is why civilized men must cherish liberty—as a means of promoting the discovery of truth. So we must not fix our whole attention on the right of anyone to hire his own hall, to rent his own broadcasting station, to distribute his own pamphlets. These rights are incidental; and though they must be preserved, they can be preserved only by regarding them as incidental, as auxiliary to the substance of liberty that must be cherished and cultivated.

Freedom of speech is best conceived, therefore, by having in mind the picture of a place like the American Congress, an assembly where opposing views are represented, where ideas are not merely uttered but debated, or the British Parliament, where men who are free to speak are also compelled to answer. We may picture the true condition of freedom as existing in a place like a court of law, where witnesses testify and are cross-examined, where the lawyer argues against the opposing lawyer before the same judge and in the presence of one jury. We may picture freedom as existing in a forum where the speaker must respond to questions; in a gathering of scientists where the data, the hypothesis, and the conclusion are submitted to men competent to judge them; in a reputable newspaper which not only will publish the opinions of those who disagree but will reexamine its own opinion in the light of what they say.

Thus the essence of freedom of opinion is not in mere toleration as such, but in the debate which toleration provides: it is not in the venting of opinion, but in the confrontation of opinion. That this is the practical substance can readily be understood when we remember how differently we feel and act about the censorship and regulation of opinion purveyed by different media of communication. We find then that, in so far as the medium makes difficult the confrontation of opinion in debate, we are driven towards censorship and regulation.

There is, for example, the whispering campaign, the circulation of anonymous rumors by men who cannot be compelled to prove what they say. They put the utmost strain on our tolerance, and there are few who do not rejoice when the anonymous slanderer is caught, exposed, and punished. At a higher level there is the moving picture, a most powerful medium for conveying ideas, but a medium which does not permit debate. A moving picture cannot be answered effectively by another moving picture; in all free countries there is some censorship of the movies, and there would be more if the producers did not recognize their limitations by

The Indispensable Opposition 331

avoiding political controversy. There is then the radio. Here debate is difficult; it is not easy to make sure that the speaker is being answered in the presence of the same audience. Inevitably, there is some regulation of the radio.

When we reach the newspaper press, the opportunity for debate is so considerable that discontent cannot grow to the point where under normal conditions there is any disposition to regulate the press. But when newspapers abuse their power by injuring people who have no means of replying, a disposition to regulate the press appears. When we arrive at Congress we find that, because the membership of the House is so large, full debate is impracticable. So there are restrictive rules. On the other hand, in the Senate, where the conditions of full debate exist, there is almost absolute freedom of speech.

This shows us that the preservation and development of freedom of opinion are not only a matter of adhering to abstract legal rights, but also, and very urgently, a matter of organizing and arranging sufficient debate. Once we have a firm hold on the central principle, there are many practical conclusions to be drawn. We then realize that the defense of freedom of opinion consists primarily in perfecting the opportunity for an adequate give-and-take of opinion; it consists also in regarding the freedom of those revolutionists who cannot or will not permit or maintain debate when it does not suit their purposes.

We must insist that free oratory is only the beginning of free speech; it is not the end, but a means to an end. The end is to find the truth. The practical justification of civil liberties is not that self-expression is one of the rights of man. It is that the examination of opinion is one of the necessities of man. For experience tells us that it is only when freedom of opinion becomes the compulsion to debate that the seed which our fathers planted has produced its fruit. When that is understood, freedom will be cherished not because it is a vent for our opinions but because it is the surest method of correcting them.
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may best justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve the truth. When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.

III

The only reason for dwelling on all this is that if we are to preserve democracy we must understand its principles. And the principle which distinguishes it from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.

The democratic system cannot be operated without effective opposition. For, in making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority. That means that it must listen to the minority and be moved by the criticisms of the minority. 
That means that its measures must take account of the minority’s

The Indispensable Opposition 332

objections, and that in administering measures it must remember that the minority may become the majority.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But, though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.
The national unity of a free people depends upon a sufficiently even balance of political power to make it impracticable for the administration to be arbitrary and for the opposition to be revolutionary and irreconcilable. Where that balance no longer exists, democracy perishes. For unless all the citizens of a state are forced by circumstances to compromise, unless they feel that they can affect policy but that no one can wholly dominate it, unless by habit and necessity they have to give and take, freedom cannot be maintained.