Christians are perpetually crying that we destroy and never build up.
Nothing could be more false, for all negation has a positive side, and
we cannot deny error without affirming truth. But even if it were true,
it would not lessen the value of our work. You must clear the ground
before you can build, and plough before you sow. Splendor gives no
strength to an edifice whose foundations are treacherous, nor can a
harvest be reaped from fields unprepared for the seed.
Freethought is, in this respect, like a skilful physician, whose
function it is to expel disease and leave the patient sound and well. No
sick man claims that the doctor shall supply him with something in place
of his malady. It is enough that the enemy of his health is driven out.
He is then in a position to act for himself. He has legs to walk with,
a brain to devise, and hands to execute his will What more does he need?
What more can he ask without declaring himself a weakling or a fool? So
it is with superstition, the deadliest disease of the mind. Freethought
casts it out, with its blindness and its terrors, and leaves the mind
clear and free. All nature is then before us to study and enjoy.
Truth shines on us with celestial light, Goodness smiles on our best
endeavors, and Beauty thrills our senses and kindles our imagination
with the subtle magic of her charms.
What a boon it is to think freely, to let the intellect dart out in
quest of truth at every point of the compass, to feel the delight of
the chase and the gladness of capture! What a noble privilege to pour
treasures of knowledge into the alembic of the brain, and separate the
gold from the dross!
The Freethinker takes nothing on trust, if he can help it; he dissects,
analyses, and proves everything, Does this make him a barren sceptic?
Not so. What he discards he knows to be worthless, and he also knows
the value of what he prizes. If one sweet vision turns out a mirage, how
does it lessen our enjoyment at the true oasis, or shake our certitude
of water and shade under the palm-trees by the well?
The masses of men do not think freely. They scarcely think at all out of
their round of business; They are trained not to think. From the cradle
to the grave orthodoxy has them in its clutches. Their religion is
settled by priests, and their political and social institutions by
custom. They look askance at the man who dares to question what is
established, not reflecting that all orthodoxies were once heterodox,
that without innovation there could never have been any progress, and
that if inquisitive fellows had not gone prying about in forbidden
quarters ages ago, the world would still be peopled by savages dressed
in nakedness, war-paint, and feathers. The mental stultification which
begins in youth reaches ossification as men grow older. Lack of thought
ends in incapacity to think.
Real Freethought is impossible without education. The mind cannot
operate without means or construct without materials. Theology opposes
education: Freethought supports it. The poor as well as the rich should
share in its blessings. Education is a social capital which should be
supplied to all. It enriches and expands. It not only furnishes the
mind, but strengthens its faculties. Knowledge is power. A race of
giants could not level the Alps; but ordinary men, equipped with
science, bore through their base, and make easy channels for the
intercourse of divided nations.
Growth comes with use, and power with exercise, Education makes both
possible. It puts the means of salvation at the service of all, and
prevents the faculties from moving about _in vacuo_, and finally
standing still from sheer hopelessness. The educated man has a whole
magazine of appliances at his command, and his intellect is trained in
using them, while the uneducated man has nothing but his strength, and
his training is limited to its use.
Freethought demands education for all. It claims a mental inheritance
for every child born into the world. Superstition demands ignorance,
stupidity, and degradation. Wherever the schoolmaster is busy,
Freethought prospers; where he is not found, superstition reigns supreme
and levels the people in the dust.
Free speech and Freethought go together. If one is hampered the other
languishes. What is the use of thinking if I may not express my thought?
We claim equal liberty for all. The priest shall say what he believes
and so shall the sceptic. No law shall protect the one and disfranchise
the other. If any man disapproves what I say, he need not hear me a
second time. What more does he require? Let him listen to what he likes,
and leave others to do the same. Let us have justice and fair play all
round.
Freethought is not only useful but laudable. It involves labor and
trouble. Ours is not a gospel for those who love the soft pillow of
faith. The Freethinker does not let his ship rot away in harbor; he
spreads his canvas and sails the seas of thought. What though tempests
beat and billows roar? He is undaunted, and leaves the avoidance of
danger to the sluggard and the slave. He will not pay their price for
ease and safety. Away he sails with Vigilance at the prow and Wisdom at
the helm. He not only traverses the ocean highways, but skirts unmapped
coasts and ventures on uncharted seas. He gathers spoils in every zone,
and returns with a rich freight that compensates for all hazards. Some
day or other, you say, he will be shipwrecked and lost. Perhaps. All
things end somehow. But if he goes down he will die like a man and not
like a coward, and have for his requiem the psalm of the tempest and the
anthem of the waves.
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence,
honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and
deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw
in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile,
unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation,
and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the
people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence of power.
Buckle has well said that scepticism is "the necessary antecedent of
all progress." Without it we should still be groping in the night of the
Dark Ages. The very foundations of modern science and philosophy were
laid on ground which was wrested from the Church, and every stone
was cemented with the blood of martyrs. As the edifice arose the
sharpshooters of faith attacked the builders at every point, and they
still continue their old practice, although their missiles can hardly
reach the towering heights where their enemies are now at work.
Astronomy was opposed by the Church because it unsettled old notions of
the earth being the centre of the universe, and the sun, moon, and stars
mere lights stuck in the solid firmament, and worked to and fro like
sliding panels. Did not the Bible say that General Joshua commanded the
sun to stand still, and how could this have happened unless it moved
round the earth? And was not the earth certainly flat, as millions of
flats believed it to be? The Catholic Inquisition forced Galileo to
recant, and Protestant Luther called Copernicus "an old fool."
Chemistry was opposed as an impious prying into the secrets of God. It
was put in the same class with sorcery and witchcraft, and punished in
the same way. The early chemists were regarded as agents of the Devil,
and their successors are still regarded as "uncanny" in the more
ignorant parts of Christendom. Roger Bacon was persecuted by his brother
monks; his testing fire was thought to have come from the pit, and the
explosion of his gunpowder was the Devil vanishing in smoke and smell.
Even at the end of last century, the clergy-led mob of Birmingham who
wrecked Priestley s house and destroyed his apparatus, no doubt felt
that there was a close connection between chemistry and infidelity.
Physiology and Medicine were opposed on similar grounds. We were all
fearfully and wonderfully made, and the less the mystery was looked into
the better. Disease was sent by God for his own wise ends, and to resist
it was as bad as blasphemy. Every discovery and every reform was decried
as impious. Men now living can remember how the champions of faith
denounced the use of anæsthetics in painful labor as an interference
with God's curse on the daughters of Eve.
Geology was opposed because it discredited Moses, as though that famous
old Jew had watched the deposit of every stratum of the earth's crust.
It was even said that fossils had been put underground by God to puzzle
the wiseacres, and that the Devil had carried shells to the hill-tops
for the purpose of deluding men to infidelity and perdition. Geologists
were anathematised from the pulpits and railed at by tub-thumpers. They
were obliged to feel their way and go slowly. Sir Charles Lyell had to
keep back his strongest conclusions for at least a quarter of a century,
and could not say all he thought until his head was whitened by old age
and he looked into the face of Death.
Biology was opposed tooth and nail as the worst of all infidelity. It
exposed Genesis and put Moses out of court. It destroyed all special
creation, showed man's' kinship with other forms of life, reduced Adam
and Eve to myths, and exploded the doctrine of the Fall. Darwin was for
years treated as Antichrist, and Huxley as the great beast. All that is
being changed, thanks to the sceptical spirit. Darwin's corpse is buried
in Westminster Abbey, but his ideas are undermining all the churches and
crumbling them into dust.
The gospel of Freethought brands persecution as the worst crime against
humanity. It stifles the spirit of progress and strangles its pioneers.
It eliminates the brave, the adventurous and the aspiring, and leaves
only the timid, the sluggish and the grovelling. It removes the lofty
and spares the low. It levels all the hills of thought and makes an
intellectual flatness. It drenches all the paths of freedom with blood
and tears, and makes earth the vestibule of hell.
Persecution is the right arm of priestcraft. The black militia of
theology are the sworn foes of Free-thought. They represent it as the
sin against the Holy Ghost, for which there is no forgiveness in
this world or the next. When they speak of the Holy Ghost they mean
themselves. Freethought is a crime against _them_. It strips off the
mystery that invests their craft, and shows them as they really are, a
horde of bandits who levy black mail on honest industry, and preach a
despot in heaven in order to maintain their own tyranny on earth.
The gospel of Freethought would destroy all priesthoods. Every man
should be his own priest. If a professional soul-doctor gives you wrong
advice and leads you to ruin, he will not be damned for you. He will see
you so first. We must take all responsibility, and we should also take
the power. Instead of putting our thinking out, as we put our washing,
let us do it at home. No man can do another's thinking for him. What is
thought in the originator is only acquiescence in the man who takes it
at secondhand.
If we do our own thinking in religion we shall do it in everything else.
We reject authority and act for ourselves. Spiritual and temporal power
are brought under the same rule. They must justify themselves or go. The
Freethinker is thus a politician and a social reformer. What a Christian
_may_ be he _must_ be. Freethinkers are naturally Radicals. They are
almost to a man on the side of justice, freedom and progress. The Tories
know this, and hence they seek to suppress us by the violence of unjust
law. They see that we are a growing danger to every kind of privilege, a
menace to all the idle classes who live in luxury on the sweat and labor
of others--the devouring drones who live on the working bees.
The gospel of Freethought teaches us to distinguish between the knowable
and the unknowable. We cannot fathom the infinite "mystery of the
universe" with our finite plummet, nor see aught behind the veil of
death. Here is our appointed province:
This world which is the world
Of all of us, and where in the end
We find our happiness or not at all.
Let us make the best of this world and take our chance of any other. If
there is a heaven, we dare say it will hold all honest men. If it will
not, those who go elsewhere will at least be in good company.
Our salvation is here and now. It is certain and not contingent. We need
not die before we realise it Ours is a gospel, and the only gospel, for
this side of the grave. The promises of theology cannot be made good
till after death; ours are all redeemable in this life.
We ask men to acknowledge realities and dismiss fictions. When you have
sifted all the learned sermons ever preached, you will find very little
good grain. Theology deals with dreams and phantasies, and gives no
guidance to practical men. The whole truth or life may be summed up in
a few words. Happiness is the only good, suffering the only evil, and
selfishness the only sin. And the whole duty of man may be expressed
in one sentence, slightly altered from Voltaire--Learn what is true in
order to do what is right. If a man can tell you anything about these
matters, listen to him; if not, turn a deaf ear, and let him preach to
the wind.
The only noble things in this world are great hearts and great brains.
There is no virtue in a starveling piety which turns all beauty into
ugliness and shrivels up every natural affection. Let the heart beat
high with courage and enterprise, and throb with warm passion. Let the
brain be an active engine of thought, imagination and will. The gospel
of sorrow has had its day; the time has come for the gospel of gladness.
Let us live out our lives to the full, radiating joy on all in our own
circle, and diffusing happiness through the grander circle of humanity,
until at last we retire from the banquet of life, as others have done
before us, and sink in eternal repose.