I may as well pause here to explain their error. The right to
know is like the right to live. It is fundamental and
unconditional in its assumption that knowledge, like life, is a
desirable thing, though any fool can prove that ignorance is
bliss, and that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" (a
little being the most that any of us can attain), as easily as
that the pains of life are more numerous and constant than its
pleasures, and that therefore we should all be better dead. The
logic is unimpeachable; but its only effect is to make us say
that if these are the conclusions logic leads to, so much the
worse for logic, after which curt dismissal of Folly, we continue
living and learning by instinct: that is, as of right. We
legislate on the assumption that no man may be killed on the
strength of a demonstration that he would be happier in his
grave, not even if he is dying slowly of cancer and begs the
doctor to despatch him quickly and mercifully. To get killed
lawfully he must violate somebody else's right to live by
committing murder. But he is by no means free to live
unconditionally. In society he can exercise his right to live
only under very stiff conditions. In countries where there is
compulsory military service he may even have to throw away his
individual life to save the life of the community.
It is just so in the case of the right to knowledge. It is a
right that is as yet very imperfectly recognized in practice. But
in theory it is admitted that an adult person in pursuit of
knowledge must not be refused it on the ground that he would be
better or happier without it. Parents and priests may forbid
knowledge to those who accept their authority; and social taboo
may be made effective by acts of legal persecution under cover of
repressing blasphemy, obscenity, and sedition; but no government
now openly forbids its subjects to pursue knowledge on the ground
that knowledge is in itself a bad thing, or that it is possible
for any of us to have too much of it.