WHAT IS FREETHOUGHT?
Freedom of thought and freedom of speech stand to each other as the two
halves of a pair of scissors. Without freedom of speech freedom of
thought is robbed of the better part of its utility, even if its
existence is not threatened. The one reacts on the other. As thought
provides the material for speech, so, in turn, it deteriorates when it
is denied expression. Speech is, in fact, one of the great factors in
human progress. It is that which enables one generation to hand on to
another the discoveries made, the inventions produced, the thoughts
achieved, and so gives a degree of fixity to the progress attained. For
progress, while expressed through the individual, is achieved by the
race. Individually, the man of to-day is not strikingly superior in form
or capacity to the man of five or ten thousand years ago. But he knows
more, can achieve more, and is in that sense stronger than was his
ancestors. He is the heir of the ages, not as a figure of speech, but as
the most sober of facts. He inherits what previous generations have
acquired; the schoolboy of to-day starts with a capital of inherited
knowledge that would have been an outfit for a philosopher a few
thousand years ago.
It is this that makes speech of so great importance to the fact of
progress. Without speech, written or verbal, it would be impossible to
conserve the products of human achievement. Each generation would have
to start where its predecessor commenced, and it would finish at about
the same point. It would be the fable of Sisyphus illustrated in the
passing of each generation of human beings.
But speech implies communication. There is not very much pleasure in
speaking to oneself. Even the man who apologised for the practice on the
ground that he liked to address a sensible assembly would soon grow
tired of so restricted an audience. The function of speech is to
transmit ideas, and it follows, therefore, that every embargo on the
free exchange of ideas, every obstacle to complete freedom of speech, is
a direct threat to the well-being of civilisation. As Milton could say
that a good book "is the precious life-blood of a master spirit,
embalmed and treasured up to a life beyond life," and that "he who
destroys a good book kills reason itself," so we may say that he who
strikes at freedom of thought and speech is aiming a blow at the very
heart of human betterment.
In theory, the truth of what has been said would be readily admitted,
but in practice it has met, and still meets, with a vigorous opposition.
Governments have exhausted their powers to prevent freedom of
intercourse between peoples, and every Church and chapel has used its
best endeavours to the same end. Even to-day, when all are ready to pay
lip-homage to freedom of thought, the obstacles in the way of a genuine
freedom are still very great. Under the best possible conditions there
will probably always be some coercion of opinion, if only of that
unconscious kind which society as a whole exerts upon its individual
members. But to this we have to add the coercion that is consciously
exerted to secure the formation of particular opinions, and which has
the dual effect of inducing dissimulation in some and impotency in
others. Quite ignorantly parents commence the work when they force upon
children their own views of religion and inculcate an exaggerated
respect for authority. They create an initial bias that is in only too
many cases fatal to real independence of thought. Social pressure
continues what a mistaken early training has commenced. When opinions
are made the test of "good form," and one's social standing partly
determined by the kind of opinions that one holds, there is developed on
the one side hypocrisy, and on the other, because certain opinions are
banned, thought in general is unhealthily freed from the sobering
influence of enlightened criticism.[11]
[11] It is a curious thing, as Philip Gilbert Hamerton points out in one
of his essays, that in England religious freedom appears to exist in
inverse proportion to rank. The king has no freedom whatever in a choice
of religion. His religion is part of the position. An English nobleman,
speaking generally, has two religions from which to choose. He may be
either a member of the established Church or of the Roman Catholic. In
the middle classes there is the choice of all sorts of religious sects,
so long as they are Christian. Religious dissent is permitted so long as
it does not travel beyond the limits of the chapel. And when we come to
the better class working man, he has the greatest freedom of all. His
social position does not depend upon his belonging to this or that
Church, and he may, to borrow a phrase from Heine, go to hell in his own
fashion.
To-day the legal prohibition of religious dissent is practically
ineffective, and is certainly far less demoralizing than the pressure
that is exerted socially and unofficially. In all probability this has
always been the case. For legal persecution must be open. Part of its
purpose is publicity, and that in itself is apt to rouse hostility.
Against open, legal persecution a man will make a stand, or if he gives
way to the force arrayed against him may do so with no feeling of
personal degradation. But the conformity that is secured by a threat of
social boycott, the freedom of speech that is prevented by choking the
avenues of intellectual intercourse, is far more deadly in its
consequences, and far more demoralizing in its influence on character.
To give way, as thousands do, not to the open application of force,
which carries no greater personal reflection than does the soldier's
surrender to superior numbers, but to the dread of financial loss, to
the fear of losing a social status, that one may inwardly despise even
while in the act of securing it, or from fear of offending those whom we
may feel are not worthy of our respect, these are the things that cannot
be done without eating into one's sense of self-respect, and inflicting
upon one's character an irreparable injury.
On this matter more will be said later. For the present I am concerned
with the sense in which we are using the word "Freethought."
Fortunately, little time need be wasted in discussing the once popular
retort to the Freethinker that if the principle of determinism be
accepted "free" thought is impossible. It is surprising that such an
argument should ever have secured a vogue, and is only now interesting
as an indication of the mentality of the defender of orthodox religion.
Certainly no one who properly understands the meaning of the word would
use such an argument. At best it is taking a word from sociology, a
sphere in which the meaning is quite clear and intelligible, and
applying it in the region of physical science where it has not, and is
not intended to have, any meaning at all. In physical science a thing is
what it does, and the business of science is to note the doings of
forces and masses, their actions and reactions, and express them in
terms of natural "law." From the point of view of physical science a
thing is neither free nor unfree, and to discuss natural happenings in
terms of freedom or bondage is equal to discussing smell in terms of
sight or colour in terms of smell. But applied in a legitimate way the
word "free" is not only justifiable, it is indispensible. The confusion
arises when we take a word from a department in which its meaning is
quite clear and apply it in a region where it has no application
whatever.
Applied to opinion "Free" has the same origin and the same application
as the expressions "a free man," or a "free State," or "a free people."
Taking either of these expressions it is plain that they could have
originated only in a state of affairs where some people are "free," and
some are living in a state of bondage or restraint. There is no need to
trace the history of this since so much is implied in the word itself. A
free State is one in which those belonging to it determine their own
laws without being coerced by an outside power. A free man is one who is
permitted to act as his own nature prompts. The word "free" implies
nothing as to the nature of moral or mental causation, that is a
question of a wholly different order. The free man exists over against
the one who is not free, the free State over against one that is held in
some degree of subjection to another State. There is no other meaning to
the word, and that meaning is quite clear and definite.
Now Freethought has a precisely similar significance. It says nothing as
to the nature of thought, the origin of thought, or the laws of thought.
With none of these questions is it vitally concerned. It simply asserts
that there are conditions under which thought is not "free," that is,
where it is coerced to a foregone conclusion, and that these conditions
are fatal to thought in its higher and more valuable aspects.
Freethought is that form of thinking that proceeds along lines of its
own determining, rather than along lines that are laid down by
authority. In actual practice it is immediately concerned with the
expression of opinion rather than with its formation, since no authority
can prevent the formation of opinion in any mind that is at all
independent in its movements and forms opinions on the basis of observed
facts and adequate reasoning. But its chief and primary significance
lies in its repudiation of the right of authority to say what form the
expression of opinion shall take. And it is also clear that such a term
as "Freethought" could only have come into general use and prominence in
a society in which the free circulation of opinion was more or less
impeded.
It thus becomes specially significant that, merely as a matter of
history, the first active manifestation of Freethought should have
occurred in connection with a revolt against religious teaching and
authority. This was no accident, but was rather a case of necessity.
For, in the first place, there is no other subject in which pure
authority plays so large a part as it does in religion. All churches and
all priesthoods, ancient and modern, fall back upon the principle of
pure authority as a final method of enforcing their hold upon the
people. That, it may be noted in passing, is one of the chief reasons
why in all ages governments have found religion one of the most
serviceable agencies in maintaining their sway. Secondly, there seems to
have been from the very earliest times a radically different frame of
mind in the approach to secular and religious matters. So far as one can
see there appears to be, even in primitive societies, no very strong
opposition to the free discussion of matters that are of a purely
secular nature. Questions of ways and means concerning these are freely
debated among savage tribes, and in all discussion differences of
opinion must be taken for granted. It is when we approach religious
subjects that a difference is seen. Here the main concern is to
determine the will of the gods, and all reasoning is thus out of place,
if not a positive danger. The only thing is to discover "God's will,"
and when we have his, or his will given in "sacred" books the embargo on
free thinking is complete. This feature continues to the end. We do not
even to-day discuss religious matters in the same open spirit in which
secular matters are debated. There is a bated breath, a timidity of
criticism in discussing religious subjects that does not appear when we
are discussing secular topics. With the thoroughly religious man it is
solely a question of what God wishes him to do. In religion this affords
the only latitude for discussion, and even that disappears largely when
the will of God is placed before the people in the shape of "revealed"
writings. Fortunately for the world "inspired" writings have never been
so clearly penned as to leave no room for doubt as to what they actually
meant. Clarity of meaning has never been one of the qualities of divine
authorship.
In this connection it is significant that the first form of democratic
government of which we have any clear record should have been in
freethinking, sceptical Greece. Equally notable is it that in both Rome
and Greece the measure of mental toleration was greater than it has ever
been in other countries before or since. In Rome to the very end of the
Pagan domination there existed no legislation against opinions, as such.
The holders of certain opinions might find themselves in uncomfortable
positions now and then, but action against them had to rest on some
ground other than that which was afterwards known as heresy. There
existed no law in the Roman Empire against freedom of opinion, and those
who are familiar with Mr. H. C. Lea's classic, _History of the
Inquisition_, will recall his account of the various tactics adopted by
the Christian Church to introduce measures that would accustom the
public mind to legislation which should establish the principle of
persecution for opinion.[12] In the end the Church succeeded in
effecting this, and its success was registered in the almost
unbelievable degradation of the human intellect which was exhibited in
the Christian world for centuries. So complete was this demoralization
that more than a thousand years later we find men announcing as a most
daring principle a demand for freedom of discussion which in old Greece
and Rome was never officially questioned. Christianity not merely killed
freedom wherever it established itself, but it came very near killing
even the memory of it.
[12] See specially Vol. I., chapters 6, 7, and 8. One is sorely tempted
to engage in what would be a rather lengthy aside on the mental freedom
enjoyed by the people of ancient Greece, but considerations of cogency
advise a shorter comment in this form. In the first place we have to
note that neither the Greeks nor the Romans possessed anything in the
shape of "sacred" books. That, as the history of Mohammedanism and
Christianity shows, is one of the most disastrous things that can happen
to any people. But apart from this there were several circumstances
connected with the development of the Greek peoples that made for
freedom of opinion. There was no uniform theology to commence with, and
the configuration of the country, while enough to maintain local
independence, was not enough to prevent a certain amount of intercourse.
And it would certainly seem that no people were ever so devoid of
intolerance as were the ancient Greeks. It is true that the history of
Greece was not without its examples of intolerance, but these were
comparatively few, and, as Professor Bury says, persecution was never
organized. The gods were criticized in both speeches and plays. Theories
of Materialism and Atheism were openly taught and were made the topic of
public discussion. There was, indeed, a passion for the discussion of
all sorts of subjects, and to discussion nothing is sacred. The best
thought of Rome owed its impetus to Greece, and at a later date it was
the recovered thought of Greece which gave the impetus to Mohammedan
Spain in its cultivation of science and philosophy, and so led to the
partial recovery of Europe from the disastrous control of the Christian
Church. Nor need it be assumed that the work of Greece was due to the
possession of a superior brain power. Of that there is not the slightest
vestige of proof. It is simply that the ancient Greek lived in a freer
mental atmosphere. The mind had less to hamper it in its operations; it
had no organized and powerful Church that from the cradle to the grave
pursued its work of preventing free criticism and the play of
enlightened opinion. For several centuries the world has been seeking to
recover some of its lost liberties with only a very moderate success.
But if one thinks of what the Greeks were, and if one adds to what they
had achieved a possible two thousand years of development, he will then
have some notion of what the triumph of the Christian Church meant to
the world.
It was, therefore, inevitable that in the western world Freethought
should come into prominence in relation to the Christian religion and
its claims. In the Christian Church there existed an organization which
not alone worked with the avowed intention of determining what men
should think, but finally proceeded to what was, perhaps, the logical
conclusion, to say what they should not think. No greater tyranny than
the Christian Church has ever existed. And this applies, not to the
Roman Church alone, but to every Church within the limit of its
opportunities. In the name and in the interests of religion the
Christian Church took some of the worst passions of men and consecrated
them. The killing of heretics became one of the most solemn duties and
it was urged upon secular rulers as such. The greatest instrument of
oppression ever formed, the Inquisition, was fashioned for no other
purpose than to root out opinions that were obnoxious to the Church. It
would have been bad enough had the attempts of the Church to control
opinion been limited to religion. But that was not the case. It aimed at
taking under its control all sorts of teaching on all sorts of
subjects. Nothing would have surprised an inhabitant of ancient Rome
more, could he have revisited the earth some dozen centuries after the
establishment of Christianity, than to have found men being punished for
criticising doctrines that were in his day openly laughed at. And
nothing could have given an ancient Athenian greater cause for wonder
than to have found men being imprisoned and burned for teaching cosmical
theories that were being debated in the schools of Athens two thousand
years before. Well might they have wondered what had happened to the
world, and well might they have come to the conclusion that it had been
overtaken by an attack of universal insanity. And the explanation would
not have been so very wide of the truth.
In this matter of suppression of freedom of thinking there was little to
choose between the Churches. Each aimed at controlling the thought of
mankind, each was equally intolerant of any variation from the set line,
and each employed the same weapon of coercion so far as circumstances
permitted. At most the Protestant Churches substituted a dead book for a
living Church, and in the end it may be questioned, when all allowance
is made for the changed circumstances in which Protestantism operated,
whether the rule of the new Church was not more disastrous than the
older one. It had certainly less excuse for its intolerance. The Roman
Catholic Church might urge that it never claimed to stand for freedom of
opinion, and whatever its sins it was so far free from the offence of
hypocrisy. But the Protestant Churches could set up no such plea; they
professed to stand on freedom of conscience. And they thus added the
quality of inconsistency and hypocrisy to an offence that was already
grave enough in itself.
But whatever opinion one may have on that point, it is certain that in
practice the Protestant leaders were as opposed to freedom of thought as
were the Roman Catholics. And Protestant bigotry left a mark on European
history that deserves special recognition. For the first time it made
the profession of Christianity a definite part of the law of the secular
State.[13] Hitherto there had been no law in any of the European States
which made a profession of Christianity necessary. There had been plenty
of persecutions of non-Christians, and the consequences of a rejection
of Christianity, if one lived in a Christian State, were serious enough.
But when the secular State punished the heretic it was a manifestation
of good will towards the Church and not the expression of a legal
enactment. It was the direct influence of the Church on the State.
Church and State were legally distinct during the mediaeval period,
however closely they may have been allied in practice. With the arrival
of Protestantism and the backing of the reformed religion given by
certain of the Princes, the machinery of intolerance, so to speak, was
taken over by the State and became one of its functions. It became as
much the duty of the secular officials to extirpate heresy, to secure
uniformity of religious belief as it was to the interest of the Church
to see that it was destroyed. Up to that time it was the aim of the
Church to make the State one of its departments. It had never legally
succeeded in doing this, but it was not for the Roman Church to sink to
the subordinate position of becoming a department of the State. It was
left for Protestantism to make the Church a branch of the State and to
give religious bigotry the full sanction of secular law.
[13] See on this point Heeren's _Historical Treatises_, 1836, pp.
61-70.
Neither with Catholic nor Protestant could there be, therefore, any
relaxation in the opposition offered to independent thinking. That still
remained the cardinal offence to the religious mind. In the name of
religion Protestants opposed the physics of Newton as bitterly as
Catholics opposed the physics of Galileo. The geology of Hutton and
Lyell, the chemistry of Boyle and Dalton, the biology of Von Baer,
Lamarck and Darwin, with almost any other branch of science that one
cares to select, tell the same tale. And when the desire for reform took
a social turn there was the same influence to be fought. For while the
Roman Catholic laid the chief insistence on obedience to the Church, the
Protestant laid as strong insistence on obedience to the State, and made
disobedience to its orders a matter of almost religious revolt. The
whole force of religion was thus used to induce contentment with the
existing order, instead of to the creation of an intelligent discontent
which would lead to continuous improvement. In view of these
circumstances it is not surprising that the word "Freethought" should
have lost in actual use its more general significance of a denial of the
place of mere authority in matters of opinion, and have acquired a more
definite and precise connotation. It could not, of course, lose its
general meaning, but it gained a special application and became properly
associated with a definitely anti-theological attitude. The growth in
this direction was gradual but inevitable. When the term first came into
general use, about the end of the seventeenth century, it was mainly
used with reference to those deists who were then attacking
Christianity. In that sense it continued to be used for some time. But
as Deism lost ground, thanks partly to the Christian attack, the clear
and logical issue between Theism and Atheism became apparent, with the
result that the definite anti-religious character of "Freethought"
became firmly established. And to-day it is mere affectation or timidity
to pretend that the word has any other vital significance. To say that a
man is a Freethinker is to give, to ninety-nine people out of a hundred,
the impression that he is anti-religious. And in this direction the
popular sense of the word discloses what has been its important historic
function. Historically, the chief stronghold of mere authority has been
religion. In science and in sociology, as well as in connection with
supernaturalism proper, every movement in the direction of the free
exercise of the intellect has met with the unceasing opposition of
religion. That has always been at once the symbol and the instrument of
oppression. To attack religion has been to attack the enemy in his
capital. All else has been matter of outpost skirmishing.
I have apparently gone a long way round to get at the meaning of the
word "Freethought," but it was necessary. For it is of very little use,
in the case of an important word that has stood and stands for the name
of a movement, to go to a dictionary, or to appeal to etymology. The
latter has often a mere antiquarian interest, and the former merely
registers current meanings, it does not make them. The use of a word
must ultimately be determined by the ideas it conveys to those who hear
it. And from what has been said the meaning of this particular word
should be fairly clear. While standing historically for a reasoned
protest against the imposition of opinion by authority, and, negatively,
against such artificial conditions as prevent the free circulation of
opinion, it to-day stands actually for a definitely anti-religious
mental attitude. And this is what one would naturally expect. Protests,
after all, are protests against something in the concrete, even though
they may embody the affirmation of an abstract principle. And nowadays
the principle of pure authority has so few defenders that it would be
sheer waste of time, unless the protest embodied a definite attitude
with regard to specific questions. We may, then, put it that to us
"Freethought" stands for a reasoned and definite opposition to all forms
of supernaturalism, it claims the right to subject all religious beliefs
to the test of reason, and further claims that when so tested they break
down hopelessly. It is from this point of view that these pages are
written, and the warranty for so defining it should be apparent from
what has been said in this and the preceding chapter.