Some thoughts on the migration of ideas

Last week I posted a long translation from R. Baruch Halevi Epstein's autobiography, Makor Baruch. That passage was excerpted from a longer discussion of his understanding of the Talmudic maxim, "Both of these are the word of the living God.." (Chulin 64b, among other places.) The basic idea is that both sides of a debate are, somehow, connected to the divine. To Epstein, this idea makes no sense. He doesn't understand how two sides in a debate, which contradict each other, can possibly both be true. His answer is that of course both sides are not correct. However, by means of debate, the give and take of ideas, we are able to arrive at the truth

For those of you who recognize this as John Stuart Mill's argument for freedom of expression from "On Liberty," well, you're one hundred percent correct. How on earth did a 19th-20th century Eastern European traditional Jew hear about Utilitarianism? Now, I suppose it is possible that he read it in translation, if such existed. However, I doubt it. My theory, which still, obviously, needs to be tested, is that he read the story of Disraeli and Bismarck, as reported by Belawitz (I may have that wrong, I'm transliterating from Hebrew). He liked Disraeli's idea, saw how it could apply to the Talmudic maxim, and used it, claiming that Disraeli had borrowed it from his Jewish education, in order to justify its use. The irony is that it originates with an 18th century deist. Not at all Kosher.