AGAINST the aspersions of the pulpit and the religious press, I offer
in evidence this magnificent audience. Although I represent but a small
part of the holy cause of intellectual liberty, even that part shall not
be defiled or smirched by a single personality. Whatever I say, I shall
say because I believe it will tend to make this world grander, man
nearer just, the father kinder, the mother more loving, the children
more affectionate, and because I believe it will make an additional
flower bloom in the pathway of every one who hears me.
In the first place, what have I said? What has been my offence? What
have I done? I am spoken of by the clergy as though I were a wolf that
in the absence of the good shepherd had fattened upon his innocent
flock. What have I said?
I delivered a lecture entitled, "The Liberty of Man, Woman and
Child." In that lecture I said that man was entitled to physical and
intellectual liberty. I defined physical liberty to be the right to do
right; the right to do anything that did not interfere with the real
happiness of others. I defined intellectual liberty to be the right to
think right, and the right to think wrong--provided you did your best to
think right.
This must be so, because thought is only an instrumentality by which we
seek to ascertain the truth. Every man has the right to think, whether
his thought is in reality right or wrong; and he cannot be accountable
to any being for thinking wrong. There is upon man, so far as thought
is concerned, the obligation to think the best he can, and to honestly
express his best thought. Whenever he finds what is right, or what he
honestly believes to be the right, he is less than a man if he fears to
express his conviction before an assembled world.
The right to do right is my definition of physical liberty. "The right
of one human being ceases where the right of another commences." My
definition of intellectual liberty is, the right to think, whether you
think right or wrong, provided you do your best to think right.
I believe in Liberty, Fraternity and Equality--the Blessed Trinity of
Humanity.
I believe in Observation, Reason and Experience--the Blessed Trinity of
Science.