"Better wild ideas than no ideas at all."
--Professor Nichol at Horsham.
THE emancipation of the understanding from intimidation and penal
restraint soon incited thinkers of enterprise to put their new powers
to use. Theology being especially a forbidden subject and the greatest
repressive force, inquiry into its pretensions first attracted critical
attention.
In every century forlorn hopes of truth had set out to storm one or
other of the ramparts of theology. Forces had been marshalled by
great leaders and battle often given in the open field; and unforeseen
victories are recorded, in the annals of the wars of infantine
rationalism, against the full-grown powers of superstition and darkness.
In every age valiant thinkers, scholars, philosophers, and critics, even
priests in defiance of power, ecclesiastical and civil, have, at their
own peril, explored the regions of forbidden truth.
In Great Britain it was the courage of insurgent thinkers among the
working class--whom no imprisonment could intimidate--who caused the
right of free speech and free publicity to be finally conceded. Thus
rulers came round to the conclusion of Caballero, that "tolerance is as
necessary in ideas as in social relations."
As soon as opinion was known to be emancipated, men began to think who
never thought before. The thinker no longer had to obtain a "Ticket
of Leave" from the Churches before he could inquire; he was free to
investigate where he would and what he would. Power is, as a rule, never
imparted nor acquired in vain, and honest men felt they owed it to those
who had won freedom for them, that they should extend it. Thus it
came to pass that independence was an inspiration to action in men
of intrepid minds. Professor Tyndall in the last words he wrote for
publication said, "I choose the nobler part of Emerson when, after
various disenchantments, he exclaims, 'I covet truth!'" On printing
these words the _Westminster Gazette_ added: "The gladness of true
heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this."
The energies of intellectual intrepidity had doubtless been devoted to
science and social progress; but as philosophers have found, down
to Huxley's day, all exploration was impossible in that direction.
Murchison, Brewster, Buckland, and other pioneers of science were
intimidated. Lyell held back his book, on the Antiquity of Man, twenty
years. Tyndall, Huxley, and Spencer were waiting to be heard. As
Huxley has justly said: "there was no Thoroughfare into the Kingdom
of Nature--By Order--Moses." Hence, to examine theology, to discover
whether its authority was absolute, became a necessity. It was soon seen
that there was ground for scepticism. The priests resented criticism
by representing the sceptic of their pretensions, as being sceptical of
everything, whereas they were only sceptics of clerical infallibility.
They indeed did aver that branches of human knowledge, received as well
established, were really open to question, in order to show that if men
could not be confident of things of which they had experience, how could
the Churches be confident of things of which no man had experience--and
which contradicted experience? So far from disbelieving everything,
scepticism went everywhere in search of truth and certainty. Since the
Church could not be absolutely certain of the truth of its tenets,
its duty was to be tolerant. But being intolerant it became as Julian
Hibbert put it--"well-understood self-defence" to assail it. The Church
fought for power, the thinker fought for truth. Free thought among the
people may be likened to a good ship manned by adventurous mariners,
who, cruising about in the ocean of theology came upon sirens, as other
mariners had done before--dangerous to be followed by navigators
bound to ports of progress. Many were thereby decoyed to their own
destruction. The sirens of the Churches sang alluring songs whose
refrains were:
1. The Bible the guide of God.
2. The origin of the universe disclosed.
3. The care of Providence assured.
4. Deliverance from peril by prayer dependable.
5. Original sin effaceable by grace.
6. Perdition avoidable by faith in crucifixion.
7. Future life revealed.
These propositions were subjects of resonant hymns, sermons, and tracts,
and were not, and are not, disowned, but still defended in discussion by
orthodox and clerical advocates. Save salvation by the blood of Christ
(a painful idea to entertain), the other ideas might well fascinate the
uninquiring. They had enchanted many believers, but the explorers of
whom we speak had acquired the questioning spirit, and had learned
prudently to look at both sides of familiar subjects and soon discovered
that the fair-seeming propositions which had formerly imposed on their
imagination were unsound, unsightly, and unsafe. The Syracusans of
old kept a school in which slaves were taught the ways of bondage.
Christianity has kept such a school in which subjection of the
understanding was inculcated, and the pupils, now free to investigate,
resolved to see whether such things were true.
Then began the reign of refutation of theological error, by some from
indignation at having been imposed upon, by others from zeal that
misconception should end; by more from enthusiasm for facts; by the
bolder sort from resentment at the intimidation and cruelty with which
inquiry had been suppressed so long; and by not a few from the love
of disputation which has for some the delight men have for chess or
cricket, or other pursuit which has conflict and conquest in it.
Self-determined thought is a condition of the progress of nations. Where
would science be but for open thought, the nursing mother of enterprise,
of discovery, of invention, of new conditions of human betterment?
A modern Hindu writer* tells us that: "The Hindu is sorely handicapped
by customs which are prescribed by his religious books. Hedged in by
minute rules and restrictions the various classes forming the Hindu
community have had but little room for expansion and progress. The
result has been stagnation. Caste has prevented the Hindus from sinking,
but it has also preventing them from rising."
* Pramatha Nath Bose.
The old miracle-bubbles which the Jews blew into the air of wonder two
thousand years ago, delight churches still in their childhood. The sea
of theology would have been stagnant centuries ago, had not insurgent
thinkers, at the peril of their lives, created commotion in it. Morals
would have been poisoned on the shores of theology had not free thought
purified the waters by putting the salt of reason into that sea,
freshening it year by year.