But as a matter of fact, their contempt for the literary men is transparent bravado, masking a secret fear. The practical politicians have betrayed their real attitude towards literature in every age by exhibitions of apprehensive jealousy towards that formidable rival power which is constantly threatening to take government out of their hands—the rival power of the unofficed individual who, by liberating new ideas and emotions, sets the old government building shaking over their heads.
Wherever the vital part of government is not truly popular and social, the official governors are found attempting to control or to suppress the formation and expression of a public mind. Says the ancient Chinese sage of the Taoist sect, "the difficulty in governing the people [he means by edicts from on high] arises from their having too much knowledge, and therefore he who tries to govern a state by wisdom is a scourge to it, while he who does not try to govern thereby is a blessing." Some two thousand years later, Sir William Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, a man who seems to have had a Taoist strain in his ancestry, wrote to the English Commissioners of Foreign Plantations: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these
