FREETHOUGHT.
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
The Brahmans have a legend that the first children of man ascended
Mount Gunganoor, to visit the castle of Indra and inquire into the
secret of their origin. Speculations on the source of life, on the
mystery of creation, the cause of good and evil, and similar problems
which we might sum up under the name of religious inquiries, seem,
indeed, to have occupied the attention of our ancestors at a very early
period. An irrepressible instinct appears to prompt the free discussion
of such questions, and in a normal state of social relations the
attempt to suppress that instinct would have appeared as preposterous
as the attempt to enforce silence upon the inquirers into the problems
of health or astronomy. A thousand years before the birth of Buddha,
the Sakyas, or ethic philosophers, of northern Hindostan visited the
mountain-passes of Himalaya to converse with travelers and seek
information on the religious customs and traditions of foreign nations.
The book of Job, probably the oldest literary product of the Semitic
nations, records a series of free and often, indeed, absolutely
agnostic discussions of ethical and cosmological problems.
“Canst thou by searching find out God?” says Zophar. “It is as high as
heaven: what canst thou do? It is deeper than hell: what canst thou
know?”
“Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst oppress the work of thy own
hand?” Job asks his creator; “thine hands have made me; why dost thou
destroy me? Thou huntest me like a fierce lion. Wherefore, then, hast
thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh, that I had given up the
ghost and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not
been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my
days few? Cease, then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a
little, before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of
darkness and the shadow of death.”
And again: “Man dieth and wasteth away; man giveth up the ghost, and
where is he? As the waters fall from the sea and the flood dryeth up:
so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more he shall
not awake nor be raised out of his sleep.”... “If a man die, shall he
live again?” “Wherefore is light given unto them that are in misery,
and life unto the bitter in soul? who long for death, but it cometh
not; who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the
grave?”
Or Elihu’s interpellation: “Look up to heaven and see the clouds which
are higher than thou: If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? If
thou be righteous, what givest thou to him, or what can he receive of
thine hand?”
Could a committee of modern skeptics and philosophers discuss the
problems of existence with greater freedom?
For a series of centuries the monkish custodians of the literary
treasures of Greece and Rome expurgated the writings of the bolder
Freethinkers, and for the sake of its mere parchment destroyed more
than one work that would have been worth whole libraries of their own
lucubrations; yet even the scant relics of pagan literature furnish
abundant proofs of the ethical and metaphysical liberty which the
philosophers of the Mediterranean nations enjoyed for nearly a thousand
years. The marvelous development of Grecian civilization in art,
science, politics, literature, and general prosperity coincided with a
period of almost unlimited religious freedom. Speculations on the
origin of religious myths were propounded with an impunity which our
latter-day Freethinkers have still cause to envy. The possibility of
all definite knowledge of the attributes of the deity was boldly denied
two thousand years before the birth of Emmanuel Kant. The Freethinker
Diagoras traveled from city to city, propagating his system of
Agnosticism with a publicity which seems to imply a degree of tolerance
never yet re-attained in the progress of the most intellectual modern
nations. The skeptic Pyrrho ridiculed the absurdity of all our modern
Secularists would include under the name of other-worldliness. A Roman
actor was applauded with cheers and laughter for quoting a passage to
the effect that “if the gods exist, they seem to conduct their
administration on the principle of strict neutrality in the affairs of
mankind!”
Democritus, Euhemerus, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, Aristotle, Libanius,
Pliny, Lucretius, and the latter Pythagoreans, almost entirely ignored
the doctrines of Polytheism, which, indeed, never assumed an aggressive
form, the attempted suppression of the Christian dogmatists being an
only apparent exception, dictated by motives of political
apprehensions, rather than by religious zeal; for at the very time when
the followers of the life-hating Galilean were persecuted as “enemies
of mankind,” a large number of other oriental religions enjoyed
privileges bordering on license. The Grecian colonists of Asia Minor
never interfered with the religious customs of their new neighbors.
They studied and discussed them as they would study the curiosities of
other social phenomena; and a purely naturalistic system of education
would undoubtedly lead to analogous results. Intelligent children often
evince a remarkable tact in avoiding certain topics of conversation,
such as allusions to personal or national defects, scandals, the arcana
of sexual relations, private affairs, etc., and the experience of after
years may confirm such habits of discretion; but no conceivable motive
but deference to an arbitrary precept could dictate a similar reticence
in the discussion of purely metaphysical topics, or of dogmas which by
their very pretense to a mission of extreme importance should justify
an extreme frankness in debating the basis of their claims.
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Religious liberty guarantees every other kind of freedom, as every form
of slavery walks in the train of priestly despotism. In America
religious emancipation led the way to the Declaration of Independence,
and still continues to make this continent the chosen home of thousands
of Liberals whom the material prosperity of the New World would have
failed to attract. It is possible that a policy of intolerance would
have averted or postponed the fate of the Moorish empire, which was
ultimately overthrown by the fanatics of a creed which the followers of
a more rational faith had permitted to survive in their midst; yet it
is not less certain that for nearly five hundred years religious
tolerance made the realm of the Spanish caliphs the one bright Goshen
in a world of intellectual darkness. In northern Europe the history of
civilization begins only with the triumph of Rationalism.
Protestantism, in that wider sense which made the revolt of the
Germanic nations an insurrection against the powers of superstition,
has laid the foundation of national prosperity in Great Britain, in the
Netherlands, and in the rising empire of northern Germany. The real
founder of that empire was at once the greatest statesman and the
boldest Freethinker of the last fourteen centuries. His capital became
a city of refuge for the philosophers of Christian Europe. The eastern
provinces of his kingdom were colonized by refugees from the tyranny of
clerical autocrats. His absolute tolerance protected even the Jesuits,
expelled by the Catholic rulers of France and Spain. During the reign
of that crowned philosopher the religious and political dissenters of
Prussia expressed their views with a freedom which in semi-republican
England would have involved them in a maze of endless lawsuits. Among
the fruits of that freedom were products of science and philosophy
which have made that period the classic age of German literature.
“Before the appearance of Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason,’” says
Schopenhauer, “the works of duly installed government professors of
philosophy were mostly medleys of sophisms, pretending to reconcile
science and dogma, or reason and despotism. Here, at last, a state
university could boast of a man who lived at once by and for the
service of Truth—a phenomenon made possible only by the circumstance
that, for the first time since the days of the great Aurelius and the
greater Julian, a Freethinker had mounted the throne of an independent
monarchy.”
The protection of Freethought is likewise the best safeguard against
that virus of hypocrisy that has undermined the moral health of so many
modern nations.
“What an incalculable advantage to a nation as well as to its ruler,”
says a modern philosopher, “to know that the pillars of state are
founded on the eternal verities, on natural science, logic, and
arithmetic, instead of casuistry and immaculate conceptions!”
The consciousness of that advantage has more than once upheld the
birthland of Protestantism in its struggles against the allied powers
of despotism, and should uphold our republic in the inevitable struggle
against the allied despots of the twentieth century.
C.—PERVERSION.
The experience of the last sixteen centuries has made priestcraft
almost a synonym of intolerance; and yet it would be a mistake to
suppose that the interests of Freethought are incompatible with the
survival of any system of supernatural religion. The myths of
polytheism were for ages accepted as the basis of a creed enjoying all
the prerogatives and emoluments of an established religion, but the
priests of that religion had no need of protecting their prestige by
the butchery of heretics. With all their absurdities, the rites of
their creed were essentially a worship of Nature, naturally attractive
to all lovers of earth and life, and by their harmlessness conciliating
the favor of philosophers who might have studied the baneful tendencies
of a different creed—a creed which could propagate its dogmas only by
an unremitting war against the natural instincts of the human race, and
by constant intrigues against the protests of human reason. “The
Nature-worshiping Greeks repeated the harmless myths and practiced the
merry rites of their creed for centuries without troubling themselves
about the myths and rites of their neighbors. Their superstition
differed from that of the church as the inspired love of Nature differs
from the ecstatic fury of her enemies, as the day-dream of a happy
child differs from the fever-dream of a gloomy fanatic. ‘Procul
Profani!’ was the cry of the Eleusinian priests. They had more
followers than they wanted. Their joy-loving creed could dispense with
autos-da-fé. The Hebrews, in stress of famine, conquered a little strip
of territory between Arabia and the Syrian desert, and then tried their
best to live in peace with heaven and earth, and their sects contented
themselves with metaphorical rib-roastings. The Saracens spread their
conquests from Spain to the Ganges, but their wars had a physical,
rather than metaphysical, purpose. They needed land, and made a better
use of it than the former occupants. They contented themselves with
assessing dissenters, and did not deem it necessary to assassinate
them. But the Galilean pessimists could not afford to tolerate an
unconverted neighbor. To the enemies of Nature the happiness of an
earth-loving, garden-planting, and science-promoting nation was an
intolerable offense: reason had to be sacrificed to faith, health and
happiness to the cross, and earth to heaven” (The Secret of the East,
p. 62).
And even in the modified form of Protestant Christianity, that creed
remains the rancorous enemy of Freethought. The doctrine of the
Galilean Buddhist is essentially a doctrine of pessimism, of
other-worldliness and Nature-hating renunciation of human reason and
earthly prosperity, and therefore wholly irreconcilable with the
promotion of progressive science and secular happiness. Philosophers
have for centuries assembled their scholars undisturbed by the songs
and dances of pagan festivals; the exponents of secular science have
enjoyed the good-will of health-loving Hebrews and Mohammedans, and
will find a modus vivendi with the Spiritualists and Theosophists of
the future; but Secularism, “the Science of Happiness on Earth,” can
never hope to conciliate the dogmatists of a creed that denies the
value of life itself, and wages war against Nature as well as against
the claims of natural science.
D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.
Wherever Reason surrenders to Dogma, the exponents of that dogma will
claim unreasonable prerogatives. Irresponsible dogmatists have never
failed to pursue the interests of their creed at the expense of the
interests of mankind. The lessons of Science could not be reconciled
with the doctrines of Antinaturalism, and in the interest of that
doctrine the spiritual taskmasters of medieval Europe suppressed
Science by methods that have retarded the progress of mankind for
thirteen hundred years. The suppression of Freethought enabled the
enemies of Nature to complete their triumph by the suppression of
social and political liberty; and for ages the church has been the
faithful ally of Despotism. The priest-ridden rulers of the expiring
Roman empire and the priest-ridden rabble of the Roman provinces
assisted in the persecution of Freethought, and that crime against
reason was avenged by the development of a system of spiritual tyranny
which at last forced even princes to kiss the dust of Canossa and
degraded the lot of peasants beneath that of savages and wild beasts.
The war against natural science avenged itself in the neglect of
agriculture, and the enormous spread of deserts, which the priests of
the Galilean miracle-monger proposed to reclaim by prayer-meetings. The
surrender of Freethought to faith sealed the fate of millions of
heretics and “sorcerers,” who expiated an imaginary crime in the
agonies of the stake. Not the abrogation of civil rights, not the
intimidation of princes and commoners, but the eradication of
Freethought, enabled the priests of an unnatural creed to enforce their
hideous superstitions upon the prisoners of the numberless monasteries
which for a series of centuries combined all the conditions for the
systematic suppression of moral, intellectual, and personal freedom.
“I am not come to bring peace but the sword,” said the ingenuous
founder of a creed which could not fail to produce an irrepressible
conflict between the delusions of its doctrines and the inspirations of
nature and science—and, of course, also between the would-be followers
of its own preposterous precepts—and neither the lust of conquest nor
the jealousy of rival nations has ever stained this earth with the
torrents of blood shed by the bigots of that creed after its triumph
over the protests of Freethought. The fatuous attempt to crush out
dissent by substituting a roll of parchment for the book of Nature
avenged itself by murderous wars about the interpretation of those same
parchments. The dogmatists who had tried to perpetuate their power by
the murder of modest rationalists, were assailed by hordes of their own
irrationalists, raging about the ceremonial details of the wafer-rite
and the immersion rite. The bigots who had refused to heed the
pleadings of Bruno and Campanella were forced to acknowledge the
battle-axe logic of the Hussites.
E.—REFORM.
Truth that prevails against error also prevails against half truths,
and the recognition of just claims cannot be furthered by unjust
concessions. Uncompromising right is mightiest, and Freethinkers would
have served their cause more effectually if they had contended, not for
the favor to enjoy a privilege, but the right to fulfil a duty. The
ministry of reason imposes obligations to posterity, and to the memory
of its bygone martyrs, as well as to our help-needing contemporaries;
and the defense of its rights is a truer religion than submission to
the yoke of a mind-enslaving dogma. The Rishis, or sainted hermits of
Brahmanism, used to devote themselves to the service of a forest
temple, and guard its sanctuary against vermin and reptiles; and the
believers in a personal God cannot devote their lives to a nobler task
than by guarding his temples against the serpent of priestly despotism.
The disciples of Secularism should learn to value the right of
Freethought as the palladium of their faith, as the basis of all other
blessings—moral and material, as well as intellectual. They should
learn to revere the memory of the martyrs of their faith, and recognize
the importance of their services to the cause of modern civilization
and its sacred principles; but they should also learn to recognize the
magnitude of the remaining task. It is no trifle that the prevalent
system of ethics and the temporal and eternal hopes of millions of our
brethren are still based on a lie. It is no trifle that the health and
happiness of millions of our fellow-men are still sacrificed on the
altar of that untruth by the suppression of public recreations on the
only day when a large plurality of our working-men find their only
chance of leisure. It is no trifle that honest men are still branded as
“Infidels,” “renegades,” and “scoffers,” for refusing to kneel in the
temple of a nature-hating fanatic. The struggle against the spirits of
darkness is by no means yet decided in Italy, where the arch-hierarch
is spinning restless intrigues to regain the power which for ages made
Europe a Gehenna of misery and despotism. Nor in Spain, where a swarm
of clerical vampires is still sucking the life-blood of an impoverished
nation. Nor in Austria and southern Germany, where the alliance of
church and state remains a constant menace to the scant liberties of
the people.
Freethinkers need not underrate the influence of individual efforts to
recognize the superior advantage of organized coöperation, so urgently
needed for the reform of Sabbath laws, of press laws, and the
educational system of the numerous colleges still intrusted to the
control of the Jesuitical enemies of science. The strength-in-union
principle should encourage the oft-debated projects for the
establishment of Freethought colleges (as well as Freethought
communities); but still more decisive results could be hoped from that
union of the powers of knowledge and of moral courage which has never
yet failed to insure the triumph of social reforms. We should cease to
plead for favors where we can claim an indisputable right. We should
cease to admit the right of mental prostitutes to enforce the penalties
of social ostracism against the champions of science; but we, in our
turn, should deserve the prestige of that championship by scorning the
expedients of the moral cowardice which strains at gnats and connives
at beams, attacking superstition in the harmless absurdities of its
ceremonial institutions, and sparing the ruinous dogmas that have
drenched the face of earth with the blood of her noblest children, and
turned vast areas of garden-lands into hopeless deserts. The skeptics
who scoff at the inconsistencies of a poor clergyman who tries in vain
to reconcile the instincts of his better nature with the demands of an
anti-natural creed, should themselves be consistent enough to repudiate
the worship of the fatal founder of that creed, and not let the hoary
age of the Galilean doctrine palliate the tendencies of its
life-blighting delusions.
III.—MORAL MAXIMS.