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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10684 ***
+
+Note: Numbers enclosed in square brackets are page numbers.
+
+HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
+OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
+
+No. 69
+
+Editors:
+
+HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.
+Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., LL.D., F.B.A.
+Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.
+Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
+
+BY
+
+J. B. BURY, M.A., F.B.A
+
+HON. D.LITT. OF OXFORD, DURHAM, AND DUBLIN, AND HON. LL.D. OF EDINBURGH,
+GLASGOW, AND ABERDEEN UNIVERSITIES; REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY,
+CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
+
+AUTHOR OF “HISTORY OF THE LATTER ROMAN EMPIRE,” “HISTORY OF GREECE,”
+“HISTORY OF THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE,” ETC.
+
+
+
+[IV]
+
+1913,
+
+
+
+[V]
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.
+
+   I Introductory
+  II Reason Free (Greece And Rome)
+ III Reason in Prison (The Middle Ages)
+  IV Prospect of Deliverance (The Renaissance and the Reformation)
+   V Religious Toleration
+  VI The Growth of Rationalism (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)
+ VII The Progress of Rationalism (Nineteenth Century)
+VIII The Justification of Liberty of Thought
+      Bibliography
+      Index
+
+
+[7] A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND THE FORCES AGAINST IT
+
+(INTRODUCTORY)
+
+IT is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered
+from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks.
+The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience
+and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private
+thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to
+the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts
+to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours. Moreover
+it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the
+mind. If a man’s thinking leads him to call in question ideas and
+customs which regulate the behaviour of those about him, to reject
+beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those they
+follow, it is almost
+
+[8] impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own
+reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude
+that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some
+have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face death
+rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in any
+valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.
+
+At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken
+as a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are so
+accustomed to it that we look on it as a natural right. But this right
+has been acquired only in quite recent times, and the way to its
+attainment has lain through lakes of blood. It has taken centuries to
+persuade the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one’s
+opinions and to discuss all questions is a good and not a bad thing.
+Human societies (there are some brilliant exceptions) have been
+generally opposed to freedom of thought, or, in other words, to new
+ideas, and it is easy to see why.
+
+The average brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least
+resistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs
+which he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly
+attached; he is instinctively hostile to anything which
+
+[9] would upset the established order of this familiar world. A new
+idea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the
+necessity of rearranging his mind; and this process is laborious,
+requiring a painful expenditure of brain-energy. To him and his fellows,
+who form the vast majority, new ideas, and opinions which cast doubt on
+established beliefs and institutions, seem evil because they are
+disagreeable.
+
+The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positive
+feeling of fear. The conservative instinct hardens into the conservative
+doctrine that the foundations of society are endangered by any
+alterations in the structure. It is only recently that men have been
+abandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigid
+stability and on the preservation of its traditions and institutions
+unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be
+dangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient
+questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is
+considered a pestilent person.
+
+The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine which is its
+consequence, are strengthened by superstition. If the social structure,
+including the whole body of customs and opinions, is associated
+intimately
+
+[10] with religious belief and is supposed to be under divine patronage,
+criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while criticism of the
+religious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of supernatural
+powers.
+
+The psychological motives which produce a conservative spirit hostile to
+new ideas are reinforced by the active opposition of certain powerful
+sections of the community, such as a class, a caste, or a priesthood,
+whose interests are bound up with the maintenance of the established
+order and the ideas on which it rests.
+
+Let us suppose, for instance, that a people believes that solar eclipses
+are signs employed by their Deity for the special purpose of
+communicating useful information to them, and that a clever man
+discovers the true cause of eclipses. His compatriots in the first place
+dislike his discovery because they find it very difficult to reconcile
+with their other ideas; in the second place, it disturbs them, because
+it upsets an arrangement which they consider highly advantageous to
+their community; finally, it frightens them, as an offence to their
+Divinity. The priests, one of whose functions is to interpret the divine
+signs, are alarmed and enraged at a doctrine which menaces their power.
+
+In prehistoric days, these motives, operating
+
+[11] strongly, must have made change slow in communities which
+progressed, and hindered some communities from progressing at all. But
+they have continued to operate more or less throughout history,
+obstructing knowledge and progress. We can observe them at work to-day
+even in the most advanced societies, where they have no longer the power
+to arrest development or repress the publication of revolutionary
+opinions. We still meet people who consider a new idea an annoyance and
+probably a danger. Of those to whom socialism is repugnant, how many are
+there who have never examined the arguments for and against it, but turn
+away in disgust simply because the notion disturbs their mental universe
+and implies a drastic criticism on the order of things to which they are
+accustomed? And how many are there who would refuse to consider any
+proposals for altering our imperfect matrimonial institutions, because
+such an idea offends a mass of prejudice associated with religious
+sanctions? They may be right or not, but if they are, it is not their
+fault. They are actuated by the same motives which were a bar to
+progress in primitive societies. The existence of people of this
+mentality, reared in an atmosphere of freedom, side by side with others
+who are always looking out for new ideas and
+
+[12] regretting that there are not more about, enables us to realize
+how, when public opinion was formed by the views of such men, thought
+was fettered and the impediments to knowledge enormous.
+
+Although the liberty to publish one’s opinions on any subject without
+regard to authority or the prejudices of one’s neighbours is now a well-
+established principle, I imagine that only the minority of those who
+would be ready to fight to the death rather than surrender it could
+defend it on rational grounds. We are apt to take for granted that
+freedom of speech is a natural and inalienable birthright of man, and
+perhaps to think that this is a sufficient answer to all that can be
+said on the other side. But it is difficult to see how such a right can
+be established.
+
+If a man has any “natural rights,” the right to preserve his life and
+the right to reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societies
+impose upon their members restrictions in the exercise of both these
+rights. A starving man is prohibited from taking food which belongs to
+somebody else. Promiscuous reproduction is restricted by various laws or
+customs. It is admitted that society is justified in restricting these
+elementary rights, because without such restrictions an ordered society
+could not exist. If then we
+
+[13] concede that the expression of opinion is a right of the same kind,
+it is impossible to contend that on this ground it can claim immunity
+from interference or that society acts unjustly in regulating it. But
+the concession is too large. For whereas in the other cases the
+limitations affect the conduct of every one, restrictions on freedom of
+opinion affect only the comparatively small number who have any
+opinions, revolutionary or unconventional, to express. The truth is that
+no valid argument can be founded on the conception of natural rights,
+because it involves an untenable theory of the relations between society
+and its members.
+
+On the other hand, those who have the responsibility of governing a
+society can argue that it is as incumbent on them to prohibit the
+circulation of pernicious opinions as to prohibit any anti-social
+actions. They can argue that a man may do far more harm by propagating
+anti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbour’s horse or making
+love to his neighbour’s wife. They are responsible for the welfare of
+the State, and if they are convinced that an opinion is dangerous, by
+menacing the political, religious, or moral assumptions on which the
+society is based, it is their duty to protect society against it, as
+against any other danger.
+
+[14]
+
+The true answer to this argument for limiting freedom of thought will
+appear in due course. It was far from obvious. A long time was needed to
+arrive at the conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and only
+a part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far as I can
+judge, is the most important ever reached by men. It was the issue of a
+continuous struggle between authority and reason—the subject of this
+volume. The word authority requires some comment.
+
+If you ask somebody how he knows something, he may say, “I have it on
+good authority,” or, “I read it in a book,” or, “It is a matter of
+common knowledge,” or, “I learned it at school.” Any of these replies
+means that he has accepted information from others, trusting in their
+knowledge, without verifying their statements or thinking the matter out
+for himself. And the greater part of most men’s knowledge and beliefs is
+of this kind, taken without verification from their parents, teachers,
+acquaintances, books, newspapers. When an English boy learns French, he
+takes the conjugations and the meanings of the words on the authority of
+his teacher or his grammar. The fact that in a certain place, marked on
+the map, there is a populous city called Calcutta, is for most
+
+[15] people a fact accepted on authority. So is the existence of
+Napoleon or Julius Caesar. Familiar astronomical facts are known only in
+the same way, except by those who have studied astronomy. It is obvious
+that every one’s knowledge would be very limited indeed, if we were not
+justified in accepting facts on the authority of others.
+
+But we are justified only under one condition. The facts which we can
+safely accept must be capable of demonstration or verification. The
+examples I have given belong to this class. The boy can verify when he
+goes to France or is able to read a French book that the facts which he
+took on authority are true. I am confronted every day with evidence
+which proves to me that, if I took the trouble, I could verify the
+existence of Calcutta for myself. I cannot convince myself in this way
+of the existence of Napoleon, but if I have doubts about it, a simple
+process of reasoning shows me that there are hosts of facts which are
+incompatible with his non-existence. I have no doubt that the earth is
+some 93 millions of miles distant from the sun, because all astronomers
+agree that it has been demonstrated, and their agreement is only
+explicable on the supposition that this has been demonstrated and that,
+if I took the trouble to work out the calculation, I should reach the
+same result.
+
+[16]
+
+But all our mental furniture is not of this kind. The thoughts of the
+average man consist not only of facts open to verification, but also of
+many beliefs and opinions which he has accepted on authority and cannot
+verify or prove. Belief in the Trinity depends on the authority of the
+Church and is clearly of a different order from belief in the existence
+of Calcutta. We cannot go behind the authority and verify or prove it.
+If we accept it, we do so because we have such implicit faith in the
+authority that we credit its assertions though incapable of proof.
+
+The distinction may seem so obvious as to be hardly worth making. But it
+is important to be quite clear about it. The primitive man who had
+learned from his elders that there were bears in the hills and likewise
+evil spirits, soon verified the former statement by seeing a bear, but
+if he did not happen to meet an evil spirit, it did not occur to him,
+unless he was a prodigy, that there was a distinction between the two
+statements; he would rather have argued, if he argued at all, that as
+his tribesmen were right about the bears they were sure to be right also
+about the spirits. In the Middle Ages a man who believed on authority
+that there is a city called Constantinople and that comets are portents
+signifying divine wrath, would not
+
+[17] distinguish the nature of the evidence in the two cases. You may
+still sometimes hear arguments amounting to this: since I believe in
+Calcutta on authority, am I not entitled to believe in the Devil on
+authority?
+
+Now people at all times have been commanded or expected or invited to
+accept on authority alone—the authority, for instance, of public
+opinion, or a Church, or a sacred book—doctrines which are not proved or
+are not capable of proof. Most beliefs about nature and man, which were
+not founded on scientific observation, have served directly or
+indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been
+protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the
+inconvenient habit of using their reason. Nobody minds if his neighbour
+disbelieves a demonstrable fact. If a sceptic denies that Napoleon
+existed, or that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, he causes
+amusement or ridicule. But if he denies doctrines which cannot be
+demonstrated, such as the existence of a personal God or the immortality
+of the soul, he incurs serious disapprobation and at one time he might
+have been put to death. Our mediaeval friend would have only been called
+a fool if he doubted the existence of Constantinople, but if he had
+questioned the significance of comets he
+
+[18] might have got into trouble. It is possible that if he had been so
+mad as to deny the existence of Jerusalem he would not have escaped with
+ridicule, for Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible.
+
+In the Middle Ages a large field was covered by beliefs which authority
+claimed to impose as true, and reason was warned off the ground. But
+reason cannot recognize arbitrary prohibitions or barriers, without
+being untrue to herself. The universe of experience is her province, and
+as its parts are all linked together and interdependent, it is
+impossible for her to recognize any territory on which she may not
+tread, or to surrender any of her rights to an authority whose
+credentials she has not examined and approved.
+
+The uncompromising assertion by reason of her absolute rights throughout
+the whole domain of thought is termed rationalism, and the slight stigma
+which is still attached to the word reflects the bitterness of the
+struggle between reason and the forces arrayed against her. The term is
+limited to the field of theology, because it was in that field that the
+self-assertion of reason was most violently and pertinaciously opposed.
+In the same way free thought, the refusal of thought to be controlled by
+any authority but its own, has a definitely theological reference.
+Throughout
+
+[19] the conflict, authority has had great advantages. At any time the
+people who really care about reason have been a small minority, and
+probably will be so for a long time to come. Reason’s only weapon has
+been argument. Authority has employed physical and moral violence, legal
+coercion and social displeasure. Sometimes she has attempted to use the
+sword of her adversary, thereby wounding herself. Indeed the weakest
+point in the strategical position of authority was that her champions,
+being human, could not help making use of reasoning processes and the
+result was that they were divided among themselves. This gave reason her
+chance. Operating, as it were, in the enemy’s camp and professedly in
+the enemy’s cause, she was preparing her own victory.
+
+It may be objected that there is a legitimate domain for authority,
+consisting of doctrines which lie outside human experience and therefore
+cannot be proved or verified, but at the same time cannot be disproved.
+Of course, any number of propositions can be invented which cannot be
+disproved, and it is open to any one who possesses exuberant faith to
+believe them; but no one will maintain that they all deserve credence so
+long as their falsehood is not demonstrated. And if only some deserve
+credence, who, except reason,
+
+[20] is to decide which? If the reply is, Authority, we are confronted
+by the difficulty that many beliefs backed by authority have been
+finally disproved and are universally abandoned. Yet some people speak
+as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless
+we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the
+rejecter. I remember a conversation in which, when some disrespectful
+remark was made about hell, a loyal friend of that establishment said
+triumphantly, “But, absurd as it may seem, you cannot disprove it.” If
+you were told that in a certain planet revolving round Sirius there is a
+race of donkeys who talk the English language and spend their time in
+discussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it,
+on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would be
+prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the
+potent force of suggestion. This force, exercised largely by emphatic
+repetition (the theoretical basis, as has been observed, of the modern
+practice of advertising), has played a great part in establishing
+authoritative opinions and propagating religious creeds. Reason
+fortunately is able to avail herself of the same help.
+
+The following sketch is confined to Western
+
+[21] civilization. It begins with Greece and attempts to indicate the
+chief phases. It is the merest introduction to a vast and intricate
+subject, which, treated adequately, would involve not only the history
+of religion, of the Churches, of heresies, of persecution, but also the
+history of philosophy, of the natural sciences and of political
+theories. From the sixteenth century to the French Revolution nearly all
+important historical events bore in some way on the struggle for freedom
+of thought. It would require a lifetime to calculate, and many books to
+describe, all the directions and interactions of the intellectual and
+social forces which, since the fall of ancient civilization, have
+hindered and helped the emancipation of reason. All one can do, all one
+could do even in a much bigger volume than this, is to indicate the
+general course of the struggle and dwell on some particular aspects
+which the writer may happen to have specially studied.
+
+
+
+[21] CHAPTER II
+
+REASON FREE
+
+(GREECE AND ROME)
+
+WHEN we are asked to specify the debt which civilization owes to the
+Greeks, their
+
+[22] achievements in literature and art naturally occur to us first of
+all. But a truer answer may be that our deepest gratitude is due to them
+as the originators of liberty of thought and discussion. For this
+freedom of spirit was not only the condition of their speculations in
+philosophy, their progress in science, their experiments in political
+institutions; it was also a condition of their literary and artistic
+excellence. Their literature, for instance, could not have been what it
+is if they had been debarred from free criticism of life. But apart from
+what they actually accomplished, even if they had not achieved the
+wonderful things they did in most of the realms of human activity, their
+assertion of the principle of liberty would place them in the highest
+rank among the benefactors of the race; for it was one of the greatest
+steps in human progress.
+
+We do not know enough about the earliest history of the Greeks to
+explain how it was that they attained their free outlook upon the world
+and came to possess the will and courage to set no bounds to the range
+of their criticism and curiosity. We have to take this character as a
+fact. But it must be remembered that the Greeks consisted of a large
+number of separate peoples, who varied largely in temper, customs and
+traditions,
+
+[23] though they had important features common to all. Some were
+conservative, or backward, or unintellectual compared with others. In
+this chapter “the Greeks” does not mean all the Greeks, but only those
+who count most in the history of civilization, especially the Ionians
+and Athenians.
+
+Ionia in Asia Minor was the cradle of free speculation. The history of
+European science and European philosophy begins in Ionia. Here (in the
+sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) the early philosophers by using their
+reason sought to penetrate into the origin and structure of the world.
+They could not of course free their minds entirely from received
+notions, but they began the work of destroying orthodox views and
+religious faiths. Xenophanes may specially be named among these pioneers
+of thought (though he was not the most important or the ablest), because
+the toleration of his teaching illustrates the freedom of the atmosphere
+in which these men lived. He went about from city to city, calling in
+question on moral grounds the popular beliefs about the gods and
+goddesses, and ridiculing the anthropomorphic conceptions which the
+Greeks had formed of their divinities. “If oxen had hands and the
+capacities of men, they would make gods in the shape of oxen.” This
+attack on received
+
+[24] theology was an attack on the veracity of the old poets, especially
+Homer, who was considered the highest authority on mythology. Xenophanes
+criticized him severely for ascribing to the gods acts which, committed
+by men, would be considered highly disgraceful. We do not hear that any
+attempt was made to restrain him from thus assailing traditional beliefs
+and branding Homer as immoral. We must remember that the Homeric poems
+were never supposed to be the word of God. It has been said that Homer
+was the Bible of the Greeks. The remark exactly misses the truth. The
+Greeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expression
+and an important condition of their freedom. Homer’s poems were secular,
+not religious, and it may be noted that they are freer from immorality
+and savagery than sacred books that one could mention. Their authority
+was immense; but it was not binding like the authority of a sacred book,
+and so Homeric criticism was never hampered like Biblical criticism.
+
+In this connexion, notice may be taken of another expression and
+condition of freedom, the absence of sacerdotalism. The priests of the
+temples never became powerful castes, tyrannizing over the community in
+their own interests and able to silence voices raised against religious
+beliefs. The civil authorities
+
+[25] kept the general control of public worship in their own hands, and,
+if some priestly families might have considerable influence, yet as a
+rule the priests were virtually State servants whose voice carried no
+weight except concerning the technical details of ritual.
+
+To return to the early philosophers, who were mostly materialists, the
+record of their speculations is an interesting chapter in the history of
+rationalism. Two great names may be selected, Heraclitus and Democritus,
+because they did more perhaps than any of the others, by sheer hard
+thinking, to train reason to look upon the universe in new ways and to
+shock the unreasoned conceptions of common sense. It was startling to be
+taught, for the first time, by Heraclitus, that the appearance of
+stability and permanence which material things present to our senses is
+a false appearance, and that the world and everything in it are changing
+every instant. Democritus performed the amazing feat of working out an
+atomic theory of the universe, which was revived in the seventeenth
+century and is connected, in the history of speculation, with the most
+modern physical and chemical theories of matter. No fantastic tales of
+creation, imposed by sacred authority, hampered these powerful brains.
+
+All this philosophical speculation prepared
+
+[26] the way for the educationalists who were known as the Sophists.
+They begin to appear after the middle of the fifth century. They worked
+here and there throughout Greece, constantly travelling, training young
+men for public life, and teaching them to use their reason. As educators
+they had practical ends in view. They turned away from the problems of
+the physical universe to the problems of human life—morality and
+polities. Here they were confronted with the difficulty of
+distinguishing between truth and error, and the ablest of them
+investigated the nature of knowledge, the method of reason—logic— and
+the instrument of reason—speech. Whatever their particular theories
+might be, their general spirit was that of free inquiry and discussion.
+They sought to test everything by reason. The second half of the fifth
+century might be called the age of Illumination.
+
+It may be remarked that the knowledge of foreign countries which the
+Greeks had acquired had a considerable effect in promoting a sceptical
+attitude towards authority. When a man is acquainted only with the
+habits of his own country, they seem so much a matter of course that he
+ascribes them to nature, but when he travels abroad and finds totally
+different habits and standards of conduct prevailing, he begins to
+understand
+
+[27] the power of custom; and learns that morality and religion are
+matters of latitude. This discovery tends to weaken authority, and to
+raise disquieting reflections, as in the case of one who, brought up as
+a Christian, comes to realize that, if he had been born on the Ganges or
+the Euphrates, he would have firmly believed in entirely different
+dogmas.
+
+Of course these movements of intellectual freedom were, as in all ages,
+confined to the minority. Everywhere the masses were exceedingly
+superstitious. They believed that the safety of their cities depended on
+the good-will of their gods. If this superstitious spirit were alarmed,
+there was always a danger that philosophical speculations might be
+persecuted. And this occurred in Athens. About the middle of the fifth
+century Athens had not only become the most powerful State in Greece,
+but was also taking the highest place in literature and art. She was a
+full-fledged democracy. Political discussion was perfectly free. At this
+time she was guided by the statesman Pericles, who was personally a
+freethinker, or at least was in touch with all the subversive
+speculations of the day. He was especially intimate with the philosopher
+Anaxagoras who had come from Ionia to teach at Athens. In regard to the
+popular gods Anaxagoras was a thorough-going
+
+[28] unbeliever. The political enemies of Pericles struck at him by
+attacking his friend. They introduced and carried a blasphemy law, to
+the effect that unbelievers and those who taught theories about the
+celestial world might be impeached. It was easy to prove that Anaxagoras
+was a blasphemer who taught that the gods were abstractions and that the
+sun, to which the ordinary Athenian said prayers morning and evening,
+was a mass of flaming matter. The influence of Pericles saved him from
+death; he was heavily fined and left Athens for Lampsacus, where he was
+treated with consideration and honour.
+
+Other cases are recorded which show that anti-religious thought was
+liable to be persecuted. Protagoras, one of the greatest of the
+Sophists, published a book On the Gods, the object of which seems to
+have been to prove that one cannot know the gods by reason. The first
+words ran: “Concerning the gods, I cannot say that they exist nor yet
+that they do not exist. There are more reasons than one why we cannot
+know. There is the obscurity of the subject and there is the brevity of
+human life.” A charge of blasphemy was lodged against him and he fled
+from Athens. But there was no systematic policy of suppressing free
+thought. Copies of the work of Protagoras were collected and
+
+[29] burned, but the book of Anaxagoras setting forth the views for
+which he had been condemned was for sale on the Athenian book-stalls at
+a popular price. Rationalistic ideas moreover were venturing to appear
+on the stage, though the dramatic performances, at the feasts of the god
+Dionysus, were religious solemnities. The poet Euripides was saturated
+with modern speculation, and, while different opinions may be held as to
+the tendencies of some of his tragedies, he often allows his characters
+to express highly unorthodox views. He was prosecuted for impiety by a
+popular politician. We may suspect that during the last thirty years of
+the fifth century unorthodoxy spread considerably among the educated
+classes. There was a large enough section of influential rationalists to
+render impossible any organized repression of liberty, and the chief
+evil of the blasphemy law was that it could be used for personal or
+party reasons. Some of the prosecutions, about which we know, were
+certainly due to such motives, others may have been prompted by genuine
+bigotry and by the fear lest sceptical thought should extend beyond the
+highly educated and leisured class. It was a generally accepted
+principle among the Greeks, and afterwards among the Romans, that
+religion was a good and necessary thing
+
+[30] for the common people. Men who did not believe in its truth
+believed in its usefulness as a political institution, and as a rule
+philosophers did not seek to diffuse disturbing “truth” among the
+masses. It was the custom, much more than at the present day, for those
+who did not believe in the established cults to conform to them
+externally. Popular higher education was not an article in the programme
+of Greek statesmen or thinkers. And perhaps it may be argued that in the
+circumstances of the ancient world it would have been hardly
+practicable.
+
+There was, however, one illustrious Athenian, who thought
+differently—Socrates, the philosopher. Socrates was the greatest of the
+educationalists, but unlike the others he taught gratuitously, though he
+was a poor man. His teaching always took the form of discussion; the
+discussion often ended in no positive result, but had the effect of
+showing that some received opinion was untenable and that truth is
+difficult to ascertain. He had indeed certain definite views about
+knowledge and virtue, which are of the highest importance in the history
+of philosophy, but for our present purpose his significance lies in his
+enthusiasm for discussion and criticism. He taught those with whom he
+conversed—and he conversed indiscriminately
+
+[31] with all who would listen to him—to bring all popular beliefs
+before the bar of reason, to approach every inquiry with an open mind,
+and not to judge by the opinion of majorities or the dictate of
+authority; in short to seek for other tests of the truth of an opinion
+than the fact that it is held by a great many people. Among his
+disciples were all the young men who were to become the leading
+philosophers of the next generation and some who played prominent parts
+in Athenian history.
+
+If the Athenians had had a daily press, Socrates would have been
+denounced by the journalists as a dangerous person. They had a comic
+drama, which constantly held up to ridicule philosophers and sophists
+and their vain doctrines. We possess one play (the Clouds of
+Aristophanes) in which Socrates is pilloried as a typical representative
+of impious and destructive speculations. Apart from annoyances of this
+kind, Socrates reached old age, pursuing the task of instructing his
+fellow-citizens, without any evil befalling him. Then, at the age of
+seventy, he was prosecuted as an atheist and corrupter of youth and was
+put to death (399 B.C.). It is strange that if the Athenians really
+thought him dangerous they should have suffered him so long. There can,
+I think, be
+
+[32] little doubt that the motives of the accusation were political. [1]
+Socrates, looking at things as he did, could not be sympathetic with
+unlimited democracy, or approve of the principle that the will of the
+ignorant majority was a good guide. He was probably known to sympathize
+with those who wished to limit the franchise. When, after a struggle in
+which the constitution had been more than once overthrown, democracy
+emerged triumphant (403 B.C.), there was a bitter feeling against those
+who had not been its friends, and of these disloyal persons Socrates was
+chosen as a victim. If he had wished, he could easily have escaped. If
+he had given an undertaking to teach no more, he would almost certainly
+have been acquitted. As it was, of the 501 ordinary Athenians who were
+his judges, a very large minority voted for his acquittal. Even then, if
+he had adopted a different tone, he would not have been condemned to
+death.
+
+He rose to the great occasion and vindicated freedom of discussion in a
+wonderful unconventional speech. The Apology of Socrates, which was
+composed by his most brilliant pupil, Plato the philosopher, reproduces
+
+[33] the general tenor of his defence. It is clear that he was not able
+to meet satisfactorily the charge that he did not acknowledge the gods
+worshipped by the city, and his explanations on this point are the weak
+part of his speech. But he met the accusation that he corrupted the
+minds of the young by a splendid plea for free discussion. This is the
+most valuable section of the Apology; it is as impressive to-day as
+ever. I think the two principal points which he makes are these—
+
+(1) He maintains that the individual should at any cost refuse to be
+coerced by any human authority or tribunal into a course which his own
+mind condemns as wrong. That is, he asserts the supremacy of the
+individual conscience, as we should say, over human law. He represents
+his own life-work as a sort of religious quest; he feels convinced that
+in devoting himself to philosophical discussion he has done the bidding
+of a super-human guide; and he goes to death rather than be untrue to
+this personal conviction. “If you propose to acquit me,” he says, “on
+condition that I abandon my search for truth, I will say: I thank you, O
+Athenians, but I will obey God, who, as I believe, set me this task,
+rather than you, and so long as I have breath and strength I will never
+
+[34] cease from my occupation with philosophy. I will continue the
+practice of accosting whomever I meet and saying to him, ‘Are you not
+ashamed of setting your heart on wealth and honours while you have no
+care for wisdom and truth and making your soul better?’ I know not what
+death is—it may be a good thing, and I am not afraid of it. But I do
+know that it is a bad thing to desert one’s post and I prefer what may
+be good to what I know to be bad.”
+
+(2) He insists on the public value of free discussion. “In me you have a
+stimulating critic, persistently urging you with persuasion and
+reproaches, persistently testing your opinions and trying to show you
+that you are really ignorant of what you suppose you know. Daily
+discussion of the matters about which you hear me conversing is the
+highest good for man. Life that is not tested by such discussion is not
+worth living.”
+
+Thus in what we may call the earliest justification of liberty of
+thought we have two significant claims affirmed: the indefeasible right
+of the conscience of the individual —a claim on which later struggles
+for liberty were to turn; and the social importance of discussion and
+criticism. The former claim is not based on argument but on intuition;
+it rests in fact on the assumption
+
+[35] of some sort of superhuman moral principle, and to those who, not
+having the same personal experience as Socrates, reject this assumption,
+his pleading does not carry weight. The second claim, after the
+experience of more than 2,000 years, can be formulated more
+comprehensively now with bearings of which he did not dream.
+
+The circumstances of the trial of Socrates illustrate both the tolerance
+and the intolerance which prevailed at Athens. His long immunity, the
+fact that he was at last indicted from political motives and perhaps
+personal also, the large minority in his favour, all show that thought
+was normally free, and that the mass of intolerance which existed was
+only fitfully invoked, and perhaps most often to serve other purposes. I
+may mention the case of the philosopher Aristotle, who some seventy
+years later left Athens because he was menaced by a prosecution for
+blasphemy, the charge being a pretext for attacking one who belonged to
+a certain political party. The persecution of opinion was never
+organized.
+
+It may seem curious that to find the persecuting spirit in Greece we
+have to turn to the philosophers. Plato, the most brilliant disciple of
+Socrates, constructed in his later years an ideal State. In this State
+he instituted
+
+[36] a religion considerably different from the current religion, and
+proposed to compel all the citizens to believe in his gods on pain of
+death or imprisonment. All freedom of discussion was excluded under the
+cast-iron system which he conceived. But the point of interest in his
+attitude is that he did not care much whether a religion was true, but
+only whether it was morally useful; he was prepared to promote morality
+by edifying fables; and he condemned the popular mythology not because
+it was false, but because it did not make for righteousness.
+
+The outcome of the large freedom permitted at Athens was a series of
+philosophies which had a common source in the conversations of Socrates.
+Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Sceptics—it may be
+maintained that the efforts of thought represented by these names have
+had a deeper influence on the progress of man than any other continuous
+intellectual movement, at least until the rise of modern science in a
+new epoch of liberty.
+
+The doctrines of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics all aimed at
+securing peace and guidance for the individual soul. They were widely
+propagated throughout the Greek world from the third century B.C., and
+we may say that from this time onward most
+
+[37] well-educated Greeks were more or less rationalists. The teaching
+of Epicurus had a distinct anti-religious tendency. He considered fear
+to be the fundamental motive of religion, and to free men’s minds from
+this fear was a principal object of his teaching. He was a Materialist,
+explaining the world by the atomic theory of Democritus and denying any
+divine government of the universe. [2] He did indeed hold the existence
+of gods, but, so far as men are concerned, his gods are as if they were
+not—living in some remote abode and enjoying a “sacred and everlasting
+calm.” They just served as an example of the realization of the ideal
+Epicurean life.
+
+There was something in this philosophy which had the power to inspire a
+poet of singular genius to expound it in verse. The Roman Lucretius
+(first century B.C.) regarded Epicurus as the great deliverer of the
+human race and determined to proclaim the glad tidings of his philosophy
+in a poem On the Nature of the World. [3] With all the fervour
+
+[38] of a religious enthusiast he denounces religion, sounding every
+note of defiance, loathing, and contempt, and branding in burning words
+the crimes to which it had urged man on. He rides forth as a leader of
+the hosts of atheism against the walls of heaven. He explains the
+scientific arguments as if they were the radiant revelation of a new
+world; and the rapture of his enthusiasm is a strange accompaniment of a
+doctrine which aimed at perfect calm. Although the Greek thinkers had
+done all the work and the Latin poem is a hymn of triumph over prostrate
+deities, yet in the literature of free thought it must always hold an
+eminent place by the sincerity of its audacious, defiant spirit. In the
+history of rationalism its interest would be greater if it had exploded
+in the midst of an orthodox community. But the educated Romans in the
+days of Lucretius were sceptical in religious matters, some of them were
+Epicureans, and we may suspect that not many of those who read it were
+shocked or influenced by the audacities of the champion of irreligion.
+
+The Stoic philosophy made notable contributions to the cause of liberty
+and could hardly have flourished in an atmosphere where discussion was
+not free. It asserted the rights of individuals against public
+
+[39] authority. Socrates had seen that laws may be unjust and that
+peoples may go wrong, but he had found no principle for the guidance of
+society. The Stoics discovered it in the law of nature, prior and
+superior to all the customs and written laws of peoples, and this
+doctrine, spreading outside Stoic circles, caught hold of the Roman
+world and affected Roman legislation.
+
+These philosophies have carried us from Greece to Rome. In the later
+Roman Republic and the early Empire, no restrictions were imposed on
+opinion, and these philosophies, which made the individual the first
+consideration, spread widely. Most of the leading men were unbelievers
+in the official religion of the State, but they considered it valuable
+for the purpose of keeping the uneducated populace in order. A Greek
+historian expresses high approval of the Roman policy of cultivating
+superstition for the benefit of the masses. This was the attitude of
+Cicero, and the view that a false religion is indispensable as a social
+machine was general among ancient unbelievers. It is common, in one form
+or another, to-day; at least, religions are constantly defended on the
+ground not of truth but of utility. This defence belongs to the
+statecraft of Machiavelli, who taught that religion is necessary for
+government,
+
+[40] and that it may be the duty of a ruler to support a religion which
+he believes to be false.
+
+A word must be said of Lucian (second century A.D.), the last Greek man
+of letters whose writings appeal to everybody. He attacked the popular
+mythology with open ridicule. It is impossible to say whether his
+satires had any effect at the time beyond affording enjoyment to
+educated infidels who read them. Zeus in a Tragedy Part is one of the
+most effective. The situation which Lucian imagined here would be
+paralleled if a modern writer were blasphemously to represent the
+Persons of the Trinity with some eminent angels and saints discussing in
+a celestial smoke-room the alarming growth of unbelief in England and
+then by means of a telephonic apparatus overhearing a dispute between a
+freethinker and a parson on a public platform in London. The absurdities
+of anthropomorphism have never been the subject of more brilliant
+jesting than in Lucian’s satires.
+
+The general rule of Roman policy was to tolerate throughout the Empire
+all religions and all opinions. Blasphemy was not punished. The
+principle was expressed in the maxim of the Emperor Tiberius: “If the
+gods are insulted, let them see to it themselves.” An exception to the
+rule of tolerance
+
+[41] was made in the case of the Christian sect, and the treatment of
+this Oriental religion may be said to have inaugurated religious
+persecution in Europe. It is a matter of interest to understand why
+Emperors who were able, humane, and not in the least fanatical, adopted
+this exceptional policy.
+
+For a long time the Christians were only known to those Romans who
+happened to hear of them, as a sect of the Jews. The Jewish was the one
+religion which, on account of its exclusiveness and intolerance, was
+regarded by the tolerant pagans with disfavour and suspicion. But though
+it sometimes came into collision with the Roman authorities and some
+ill-advised attacks upon it were made, it was the constant policy of the
+Emperors to let it alone and to protect the Jews against the hatred
+which their own fanaticism aroused. But while the Jewish religion was
+endured so long as it was confined to those who were born into it, the
+prospect of its dissemination raised a new question. Grave misgivings
+might arise in the mind of a ruler at seeing a creed spreading which was
+aggressively hostile to all the other creeds of the world—creeds which
+lived together in amity—and had earned for its adherents the reputation
+of being the enemies of the human race. Might not its expansion
+
+[42] beyond the Israelites involve ultimately a danger to the Empire?
+For its spirit was incompatible with the traditions and basis of Roman
+society. The Emperor Domitian seems to have seen the question in this
+light, and he took severe measures to hinder the proselytizing of Roman
+citizens. Some of those whom he struck may have been Christians, but if
+he was aware of the distinction, there was from his point of view no
+difference. Christianity resembled Judaism, from which it sprang, in
+intolerance and in hostility towards Roman society, but it differed by
+the fact that it made many proselytes while Judaism made few.
+
+Under Trajan we find that the principle has been laid down that to be a
+Christian is an offence punishable by death. Henceforward Christianity
+remained an illegal religion. But in practice the law was not applied
+rigorously or logically. The Emperors desired, if possible, to extirpate
+Christianity without shedding blood. Trajan laid down that Christians
+were not to be sought out, that no anonymous charges were to be noticed,
+and that an informer who failed to make good his charge should be liable
+to be punished under the laws against calumny. Christians themselves
+recognized that this edict practically protected them. There were
+
+[43] some executions in the second century—not many that are well
+attested—and Christians courted the pain and glory of martyrdom. There
+is evidence to show that when they were arrested their escape was often
+connived at. In general, the persecution of the Christians was rather
+provoked by the populace than desired by the authorities. The populace
+felt a horror of this mysterious Oriental sect which openly hated all
+the gods and prayed for the destruction of the world. When floods,
+famines, and especially fires occurred they were apt to be attributed to
+the black magic of the Christians.
+
+When any one was accused of Christianity, he was required, as a means of
+testing the truth of the charge, to offer incense to the gods or to the
+statues of deified Emperors. His compliance at once exonerated him. The
+objection of the Christians—they and the Jews were the only objectors—to
+the worship of the Emperors was, in the eyes of the Romans, one of the
+most sinister signs that their religion was dangerous. The purpose of
+this worship was to symbolize the unity and solidarity of an Empire
+which embraced so many peoples of different beliefs and different gods;
+its intention was political, to promote union and loyalty; and it is not
+surprising that those who denounced it should
+
+[44] be suspected of a disloyal spirit. But it must be noted that there
+was no necessity for any citizen to take part in this worship. No
+conformity was required from any inhabitants of the Empire who were not
+serving the State as soldiers or civil functionaries. Thus the effect
+was to debar Christians from military and official careers.
+
+The Apologies for Christianity which appeared at this period (second
+century) might have helped, if the Emperors (to whom some of them were
+addressed) had read them, to confirm the view that it was a political
+danger. It would have been easy to read between the lines that, if the
+Christians ever got the upper hand, they would not spare the cults of
+the State. The contemporary work of Tatian (A Discourse to the Greeks)
+reveals what the Apologists more or less sought to disguise, invincible
+hatred towards the civilization in which they lived. Any reader of the
+Christian literature of the time could not fail to see that in a State
+where Christians had the power there would be no tolerance of other
+religious practices. [4] If the Emperors made an exception to their
+tolerant policy in the case of Christianity, their purpose was to
+safeguard tolerance.
+
+[45]
+
+In the third century the religion, though still forbidden, was quite
+openly tolerated; the Church organized itself without concealment;
+ecclesiastical councils assembled without interference. There were some
+brief and local attempts at repression, there was only one grave
+persecution (begun by Decius, A.D. 250, and continued by Valerian). In
+fact, throughout this century, there were not many victims, though
+afterwards the Christians invented a whole mythology of martyrdoms. Many
+cruelties were imputed to Emperors under whom we know that the Church
+enjoyed perfect peace.
+
+A long period of civil confusion, in which the Empire seemed to be
+tottering to its fall, had been terminated by the Emperor Diocletian,
+who, by his radical administrative reforms, helped to preserve the Roman
+power in its integrity for another century. He desired to support his
+work of political consolidation by reviving the Roman spirit, and he
+attempted to infuse new life into the official religion. To this end he
+determined to suppress the growing influence of the Christians, who,
+though a minority, were very numerous, and he organized a persecution.
+It was long, cruel and bloody; it was the most whole-hearted, general
+and systematic effort to crush the forbidden faith. It was a
+
+[46] failure, the Christians were now too numerous to be crushed. After
+the abdication of Diocletian, the Emperors who reigned in different
+parts of the realm did not agree as to the expediency of his policy, and
+the persecution ended by edicts of toleration (A.D. 311 and 313). These
+documents have an interest for the history of religious liberty.
+
+The first, issued in the eastern provinces, ran as follows:—
+
+“We were particularly desirous of reclaiming into the way of reason and
+nature the deluded Christians, who had renounced the religion and
+ceremonies instituted by their fathers and, presumptuously despising the
+practice of antiquity, had invented extravagant laws and opinions
+according to the dictates of their fancy, and had collected a various
+society from the different provinces of our Empire. The edicts which we
+have published to enforce the worship of the gods, having exposed many
+of the Christians to danger and distress, many having suffered death and
+many more, who still persist in their impious folly, being left
+destitute of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extend
+to those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency. We permit them,
+therefore, freely to profess their private opinions, and to assemble in
+their conventicles
+
+[47] without fear or molestation, provided always that they preserve a
+due respect to the established laws and government.” [5]
+
+The second, of which Constantine was the author, known as the Edict of
+Milan, was to a similar effect, and based toleration on the Emperor’s
+care for the peace and happiness of his subjects and on the hope of
+appeasing the Deity whose seat is in heaven.
+
+The relations between the Roman government and the Christians raised the
+general question of persecution and freedom of conscience. A State, with
+an official religion, but perfectly tolerant of all creeds and cults,
+finds that a society had arisen in its midst which is uncompromisingly
+hostile to all creeds but its own and which, if it had the power, would
+suppress all but its own. The government, in self-defence, decides to
+check the dissemination of these subversive ideas and makes the
+profession of that creed a crime, not on account of its particular
+tenets, but on account of the social consequences of those tenets. The
+members of the society cannot without violating their consciences and
+incurring damnation abandon their exclusive doctrine. The principle of
+freedom of conscience is asserted as superior to all obligations to the
+State, and the State, confronted
+
+[48] by this new claim, is unable to admit it. Persecution is the
+result.
+
+Even from the standpoint of an orthodox and loyal pagan the persecution
+of the Christians is indefensible, because blood was shed uselessly. In
+other words, it was a great mistake because it was unsuccessful. For
+persecution is a choice between two evils. The alternatives are violence
+(which no reasonable defender of persecution would deny to be an evil in
+itself) and the spread of dangerous opinions. The first is chosen simply
+to avoid the second, on the ground that the second is the greater evil.
+But if the persecution is not so devised and carried out as to
+accomplish its end, then you have two evils instead of one, and nothing
+can justify this. From their point of view, the Emperors had good
+reasons for regarding Christianity as dangerous and anti-social, but
+they should either have let it alone or taken systematic measures to
+destroy it. If at an early stage they had established a drastic and
+systematic inquisition, they might possibly have exterminated it. This
+at least would have been statesmanlike. But they had no conception of
+extreme measures, and they did not understand —they had no experience to
+guide them —the sort of problem they had to deal with. They hoped to
+succeed by intimidation.
+
+[49] Their attempts at suppression were vacillating, fitful, and
+ridiculously ineffectual. The later persecutions (of A.D. 250 and 303)
+had no prospect of success. It is particularly to be observed that no
+effort was made to suppress Christian literature.
+
+The higher problem whether persecution, even if it attains the desired
+end, is justifiable, was not considered. The struggle hinged on
+antagonism between the conscience of the individual and the authority
+and supposed interests of the State. It was the question which had been
+raised by Socrates, raised now on a wider platform in a more pressing
+and formidable shape: what is to happen when obedience to the law is
+inconsistent with obedience to an invisible master? Is it incumbent on
+the State to respect the conscience of the individual at all costs, or
+within what limits? The Christians did not attempt a solution, the
+general problem did not interest them. They claimed the right of freedom
+exclusively for themselves from a non-Christian government; and it is
+hardly going too far to suspect that they would have applauded the
+government if it had suppressed the Gnostic sects whom they hated and
+calumniated. In any case, when a Christian State was established, they
+would completely forget the principle which they
+
+[50] had invoked. The martyrs died for conscience, but not for liberty.
+To-day the greatest of the Churches demands freedom of conscience in the
+modern States which she does not control, but refuses to admit that,
+where she had the power, it would be incumbent on her to concede it.
+
+If we review the history of classical antiquity as a whole, we may
+almost say that freedom of thought was like the air men breathed. It was
+taken for granted and nobody thought about it. If seven or eight
+thinkers at Athens were penalized for heterodoxy, in some and perhaps in
+most of these cases heterodoxy was only a pretext. They do not
+invalidate the general facts that the advance of knowledge was not
+impeded by prejudice, or science retarded by the weight of unscientific
+authority. The educated Greeks were tolerant because they were friends
+of reason and did not set up any authority to overrule reason. Opinions
+were not imposed except by argument; you were not expected to receive
+some “kingdom of heaven” like a little child, or to prostrate your
+intellect before an authority claiming to be infallible.
+
+But this liberty was not the result of a conscious policy or deliberate
+conviction, and therefore it was precarious. The problems
+
+[51] of freedom of thought, religious liberty, toleration, had not been
+forced upon society and were never seriously considered. When
+Christianity confronted the Roman government, no one saw that in the
+treatment of a small, obscure, and, to pagan thinkers, uninteresting or
+repugnant sect, a principle of the deepest social importance was
+involved. A long experience of the theory and practice of persecution
+was required to base securely the theory of freedom of thought. The
+lurid policy of coercion which the Christian Church adopted, and its
+consequences, would at last compel reason to wrestle with the problem
+and discover the justification of intellectual liberty. The spirit of
+the Greeks and Romans, alive in their works, would, after a long period
+of obscuration, again enlighten the world and aid in re-establishing the
+reign of reason, which they had carelessly enjoyed without assuring its
+foundations.
+
+[1] This has been shown very clearly by Professor Jackson in the article
+on “Socrates” in the Encyclopoedia Britannica, last edition.
+
+[2] He stated the theological difficulty as to the origin of evil in
+this form: God either wishes to abolish evil and cannot, or can and will
+not, or neither can nor will, or both can and will. The first three are
+unthinkable, if he is a God worthy of the name; therefore the last
+alternative must be true. Why then does evil exist? The inference is
+that there is no God, in the sense of a governor of the world.
+
+[3] An admirable appreciation of the poem will be found in R. V.
+Tyrrell’s Lectures on Latin Poetry.
+
+[4] For the evidence of the Apologists see A. Bouché-Leclercq, Religious
+Intolerance and Politics (French, 1911) —a valuable review of the whole
+subject.
+
+[5] This is Gibbon’s translation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+REASON IN PRISON
+
+(THE MIDDLE AGES)
+
+ABOUT ten years after the Edict of Toleration, Constantine the Great
+adopted Christianity. This momentous decision inaugurated
+
+[52] a millennium in which reason was enchained, thought was enslaved,
+and knowledge made no progress.
+
+During the two centuries in which they had been a forbidden sect the
+Christians had claimed toleration on the ground that religious belief is
+voluntary and not a thing which can be enforced. When their faith became
+the predominant creed and had the power of the State behind it, they
+abandoned this view. They embarked on the hopeful enterprise of bringing
+about a complete uniformity in men’s opinions on the mysteries of the
+universe, and began a more or less definite policy of coercing thought.
+This policy was adopted by Emperors and Governments partly on political
+grounds; religious divisions, bitter as they were, seemed dangerous to
+the unity of the State. But the fundamental principle lay in the
+doctrine that salvation is to be found exclusively in the Christian
+Church. The profound conviction that those who did not believe in its
+doctrines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theological
+error as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally to
+persecution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine,
+seeing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hinder
+errors from spreading. Heretics were more
+
+[53] than ordinary criminals and the pains that man could inflict on
+them were as nothing to the tortures awaiting them in hell. To rid the
+earth of men who, however virtuous, were, through their religious
+errors, enemies of the Almighty, was a plain duty. Their virtues were no
+excuse. We must remember that, according to the humane doctrine of the
+Christians, pagan, that is, merely human, virtues were vices, and
+infants who died unbaptized passed the rest of time in creeping on the
+floor of hell. The intolerance arising from such views could not but
+differ in kind and intensity from anything that the world had yet
+witnessed.
+
+Besides the logic of its doctrines, the character of its Sacred Book
+must also be held partly accountable for the intolerant principles of
+the Christian Church. It was unfortunate that the early Christians had
+included in their Scripture the Jewish writings which reflect the ideas
+of a low stage of civilization and are full of savagery. It would be
+difficult to say how much harm has been done, in corrupting the morals
+of men, by the precepts and examples of inhumanity, violence, and
+bigotry which the reverent reader of the Old Testament, implicitly
+believing in its inspiration, is bound to approve. It furnished an
+armoury for the theory of
+
+[54] persecution. The truth is that Sacred Books are an obstacle to
+moral and intellectual progress, because they consecrate the ideas of a
+given epoch, and its customs, as divinely appointed. Christianity, by
+adopting books of a long past age, placed in the path of human
+development a particularly nasty stumbling-block. It may occur to one to
+wonder how history might have been altered —altered it surely would have
+been—if the Christians had cut Jehovah out of their programme and,
+content with the New Testament, had rejected the inspiration of the Old.
+
+Under Constantine the Great and his successors, edict after edict
+fulminated against the worship of the old pagan gods and against
+heretical Christian sects. Julian the Apostate, who in his brief reign
+(A.D. 361–3) sought to revive the old order of things, proclaimed
+universal toleration, but he placed Christians at a disadvantage by
+forbidding them to teach in schools. This was only a momentary check.
+Paganism was finally shattered by the severe laws of Theodosius I (end
+of fourth century). It lingered on here and there for more than another
+century, especially at Rome and Athens, but had little importance. The
+Christians were more concerned in striving among themselves than in
+
+[55] crushing the prostrate spirit of antiquity. The execution of the
+heretic Priscillian in Spain (fourth century) inaugurated the punishment
+of heresy by death. It is interesting to see a non-Christian of this age
+teaching the Christian sects that they should suffer one another.
+Themistius in an address to the Emperor Valens urged him to repeal his
+edicts against the Christians with whom he did not agree, and expounded
+a theory of toleration. “The religious beliefs of individuals are a
+field in which the authority of a government cannot be effective;
+compliance can only lead to hypocritical professions. Every faith should
+be allowed; the civil government should govern orthodox and heterodox to
+the common good. God himself plainly shows that he wishes various forms
+of worship; there are many roads by which one can reach him.”
+
+No father of the Church has been more esteemed or enjoyed higher
+authority than St. Augustine (died A.D. 410). He formulated the
+principle of persecution for the guidance of future generations, basing
+it on the firm foundation of Scripture—on words used by Jesus Christ in
+one of his parables, “Compel them to come in.” Till the end of the
+twelfth century the Church worked hard to suppress heterodoxies. There
+was much
+
+[56] persecution, but it was not systematic. There is reason to think
+that in the pursuit of heresy the Church was mainly guided by
+considerations of its temporal interest, and was roused to severe action
+only when the spread of false doctrine threatened to reduce its revenues
+or seemed a menace to society. At the end of the twelfth century
+Innocent III became Pope and under him the Church of Western Europe
+reached the height of its power. He and his immediate successors are
+responsible for imagining and beginning an organized movement to sweep
+heretics out of Christendom. Languedoc in Southwestern France was
+largely populated by heretics, whose opinions were considered
+particularly offensive, known as the Albigeois. They were the subjects
+of the Count of Toulouse, and were an industrious and respectable
+people. But the Church got far too little money out of this anti-
+clerical population, and Innocent called upon the Count to extirpate
+heresy from his dominion. As he would not obey, the Pope announced a
+Crusade against the Albigeois, and offered to all who would bear a hand
+the usual rewards granted to Crusaders, including absolution from all
+their sins. A series of sanguinary wars followed in which the
+Englishman, Simon de Montfort, took part. There were
+
+[57] wholesale burnings and hangings of men, women and children. The
+resistance of the people was broken down, though the heresy was not
+eradicated, and the struggle ended in 1229 with the complete humiliation
+of the Count of Toulouse. The important point of the episode is this:
+the Church introduced into the public law of Europe the new principle
+that a sovran held his crown on the condition that he should extirpate
+heresy. If he hesitated to persecute at the command of the Pope, he must
+be coerced; his lands were forfeited; and his dominions were thrown open
+to be seized by any one whom the Church could induce to attack him. The
+Popes thus established a theocratic system in which all other interests
+were to be subordinated to the grand duty of maintaining the purity of
+the Faith.
+
+But in order to root out heresy it was necessary to discover it in its
+most secret retreats. The Albigeois had been crushed, but the poison of
+their doctrine was not yet destroyed. The organized system of searching
+out heretics known as the Inquisition was founded by Pope Gregory IX
+about A.D. 1233, and fully established by a Bull of Innocent IV (A.D.
+1252) which regulated the machinery of persecution “as an integral part
+of the social edifice in every city and every
+
+[58] State.” This powerful engine for the suppression of the freedom of
+men’s religious opinions is unique in history.
+
+The bishops were not equal to the new talk undertaken by the Church, and
+in every ecclesiastical province suitable monks were selected and to
+them was delegated the authority of the Pope for discovering heretics.
+These inquisitors had unlimited authority, they were subject to no
+supervision and responsible to no man. It would not have been easy to
+establish this system but for the fact that contemporary secular rulers
+had inaugurated independently a merciless legislation against heresy.
+The Emperor Frederick II, who was himself undoubtedly a freethinker,
+made laws for his extensive dominions in Italy and Germany (between 1220
+and 1235), enacting that all heretics should be outlawed, that those who
+did not recant should be burned, those who recanted should be
+imprisoned, but if they relapsed should be executed; that their property
+should be confiscated, their houses destroyed, and their children, to
+the second generation, ineligible to positions of emolument unless they
+had betrayed their father or some other heretic.
+
+Frederick’s legislation consecrated the stake as the proper punishment
+for heresy. This
+
+[59] cruel form of death for that crime seems to have been first
+inflicted on heretics by a French king (1017). We must remember that in
+the Middle Ages, and much later, crimes of all kinds were punished with
+the utmost cruelty. In England in the reign of Henry VIII there is a
+case of prisoners being boiled to death. Heresy was the foulest of all
+crimes; and to prevail against it was to prevail against the legions of
+hell. The cruel enactments against heretics were strongly supported by
+the public opinion of the masses.
+
+When the Inquisition was fully developed it covered Western Christendom
+with a net from the meshes of which it was difficult for a heretic to
+escape. The inquisitors in the various kingdoms co-operated, and
+communicated information; there was “a chain of tribunals throughout
+continental Europe.” England stood outside the system, but from the age
+of Henry IV and Henry V the government repressed heresy by the stake
+under a special statute (A.D. 1400; repealed 1533; revived under Mary;
+finally repealed in 1676).
+
+In its task of imposing unity of belief the Inquisition was most
+successful in Spain. Here towards the end of the fifteenth century a
+system was instituted which had peculiarities of its own and was very
+jealous of
+
+[60] Roman interference. One of the achievements of the Spanish
+Inquisition (which was not abolished till the nineteenth century) was to
+expel the Moriscos or converted Moors, who retained many of their old
+Mohammedan opinions and customs. It is also said to have eradicated
+Judaism and to have preserved the country from the zeal of Protestant
+missionaries. But it cannot be proved that it deserves the credit of
+having protected Spain against Protestantism, for it is quite possible
+that if the seeds of Protestant opinion had been sown they would, in any
+case, have fallen dead on an uncongenial soil. Freedom of thought
+however was entirely suppressed.
+
+One of the most efficacious means for hunting down heresy was the “Edict
+of Faith,” which enlisted the people in the service of the Inquisition
+and required every man to be an informer. From time to time a certain
+district was visited and an edict issued commanding those who knew
+anything of any heresy to come forward and reveal it, under fearful
+penalties temporal and spiritual. In consequence, no one was free from
+the suspicion of his neighbours or even of his own family. “No more
+ingenious device has been invented to subjugate a whole population, to
+paralyze its intellect, and to reduce it
+
+[61] to blind obedience. It elevated delation to the rank of high
+religious duty.”
+
+The process employed in the trials of those accused of heresy in Spain
+rejected every reasonable means for the ascertainment of truth. The
+prisoner was assumed to be guilty, the burden of proving his innocence
+rested on him; his judge was virtually his prosecutor. All witnesses
+against him, however infamous, were admitted. The rules for allowing
+witnesses for the prosecution were lax; those for rejecting witnesses
+for the defence were rigid. Jews, Moriscos, and servants could give
+evidence against the prisoner but not for him, and the same rule applied
+to kinsmen to the fourth degree. The principle on which the Inquisition
+proceeded was that better a hundred innocent should suffer than one
+guilty person escape. Indulgences were granted to any one who
+contributed wood to the pile. But the tribunal of the Inquisition did
+not itself condemn to the stake, for the Church must not be guilty of
+the shedding of blood. The ecclesiastical judge pronounced the prisoner
+to be a heretic of whose conversion there was no hope, and handed him
+over (“relaxed” him was the official term) to the secular authority,
+asking and charging the magistrate “to treat him benignantly and
+mercifully.” But this
+
+[62] formal plea for mercy could not be entertained by the civil power;
+it had no choice but to inflict death; if it did otherwise, it was a
+promoter of heresy. All princes and officials, according to the Canon
+Law, must punish duly and promptly heretics handed over to them by the
+Inquisition, under pain of excommunication. It is to be noted that the
+number of deaths at the stake has been much over-estimated by popular
+imagination; but the sum of suffering caused by the methods of the
+system and the punishments that fell short of death can hardly be
+exaggerated.
+
+The legal processes employed by the Church in these persecutions
+exercised a corrupting influence on the criminal jurisprudence of the
+Continent. Lea, the historian of the Inquisition, observes: “Of all the
+curses which the Inquisition brought in its train, this perhaps was the
+greatest—that, until the closing years of the eighteenth century,
+throughout the greater part of Europe, the inquisitorial process, as
+developed for the destruction of heresy, became the customary method of
+dealing with all who were under any accusation.”
+
+The Inquisitors who, as Gibbon says, “defended nonsense by cruelties,”
+are often regarded as monsters. It may be said for them and for the
+kings who did their will that
+
+[63] they were not a bit worse than the priests and monarchs of
+primitive ages who sacrificed human beings to their deities. The Greek
+king, Agamemnon, who immolated his daughter Iphigenia to obtain
+favourable winds from the gods, was perhaps a most affectionate father,
+and the seer who advised him to do so may have been a man of high
+integrity. They acted according to their beliefs. And so in the Middle
+Ages and afterwards men of kindly temper and the purest zeal for
+morality were absolutely devoid of mercy where heresy was suspected.
+Hatred of heresy was a sort of infectious germ, generated by the
+doctrine of exclusive salvation.
+
+It has been observed that this dogma also injured the sense of truth. As
+man’s eternal fate was at stake, it seemed plainly legitimate or rather
+imperative to use any means to enforce the true belief—even falsehood
+and imposture. There was no scruple about the invention of miracles or
+any fictions that were edifying. A disinterested appreciation of truth
+will not begin to prevail till the seventeenth century.
+
+While this principle, with the associated doctrines of sin, hell, and
+the last judgment, led to such consequences, there were other doctrines
+and implications in Christianity which, forming a solid rampart against
+the
+
+[64] advance of knowledge, blocked the paths of science in the Middle
+Ages, and obstructed its progress till the latter half of the nineteenth
+century. In every important field of scientific research, the ground was
+occupied by false views which the Church declared to be true on the
+infallible authority of the Bible. The Jewish account of Creation and
+the Fall of Man, inextricably bound up with the Christian theory of
+Redemption, excluded from free inquiry geology, zoology, and
+anthropology. The literal interpretation of the Bible involved the truth
+that the sun revolves round the earth. The Church condemned the theory
+of the antipodes. One of the charges against Servetus (who was burned in
+the sixteenth century; see below, p. 79) was that he believed the
+statement of a Greek geographer that Judea is a wretched barren country
+in spite of the fact that the Bible describes it as a land flowing with
+milk and honey. The Greek physician Hippocrates had based the study of
+medicine and disease on experience and methodical research. In the
+Middle Ages men relapsed to the primitive notions of a barbarous age.
+Bodily ailments were ascribed to occult agencies—the malice of the Devil
+or the wrath of God. St. Augustine said that the diseases of Christians
+were caused by demons,
+
+[65] and Luther in the same way attributed them to Satan. It was only
+logical that supernatural remedies should be sought to counteract the
+effects of supernatural causes. There was an immense traffic in relics
+with miraculous virtues, and this had the advantage of bringing in a
+large revenue to the Church. Physicians were often exposed to suspicions
+of sorcery and unbelief. Anatomy was forbidden, partly perhaps on
+account of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The opposition
+of ecclesiastics to inoculation in the eighteenth century was a survival
+of the mediaeval view of disease. Chemistry (alchemy) was considered a
+diabolical art and in 1317 was condemned by the Pope. The long
+imprisonment of Roger Bacon (thirteenth century) who, while he professed
+zeal for orthodoxy, had an inconvenient instinct for scientific
+research, illustrates the mediaeval distrust of science.
+
+It is possible that the knowledge of nature would have progressed
+little, even if this distrust of science on theological grounds had not
+prevailed. For Greek science had ceased to advance five hundred years
+before Christianity became powerful. After about 200 B.C. no important
+discoveries were made. The explanation of this decay is not easy, but we
+may be sure that it is to be sought in the
+
+[66] social conditions of the Greek and Roman world. And we may suspect
+that the social conditions of the Middle Ages would have proved
+unfavourable to the scientific spirit— the disinterested quest of
+facts—even if the controlling beliefs had not been hostile. We may
+suspect that the rebirth of science would in any case have been
+postponed till new social conditions, which began to appear in the
+thirteenth century (see next Chapter), had reached a certain maturity.
+Theological prejudice may have injured knowledge principally by its
+survival after the Middle Ages had passed away. In other words, the harm
+done by Christian doctrines, in this respect, may lie less in the
+obscurantism of the dark interval between ancient and modern
+civilization, than in the obstructions which they offered when science
+had revived in spite of them and could no longer be crushed.
+
+The firm belief in witchcraft, magic, and demons was inherited by the
+Middle Ages from antiquity, but it became far more lurid and made the
+world terrible. Men believed that they were surrounded by fiends
+watching for every opportunity to harm them, that pestilences, storms,
+eclipses, and famines were the work of the Devil; but they believed as
+firmly that ecclesiastical rites were capable of coping with these
+enemies. Some of the
+
+[67] early Christian Emperors legislated against magic, but till the
+fourteenth century there was no systematic attempt to root out
+witchcraft. The fearful epidemic, known as the Black Death, which
+devastated Europe in that century, seems to have aggravated the haunting
+terror of the invisible world of demons. Trials for witchcraft
+multiplied, and for three hundred years the discovery of witchcraft and
+the destruction of those who were accused of practising it, chiefly
+women, was a standing feature of European civilization. Both the theory
+and the persecution were supported by Holy Scripture. “Thou shalt not
+suffer a witch to live” was the clear injunction of the highest
+authority. Pope Innocent VIII issued a Bull on the matter (1484) in
+which he asserted that plagues and storms are the work of witches, and
+the ablest minds believed in the reality of their devilish powers.
+
+No story is more painful than the persecution of witches, and nowhere
+was it more atrocious than in England and Scotland. I mention it because
+it was the direct result of theological doctrines, and because, as we
+shall see, it was rationalism which brought the long chapter of horrors
+to an end.
+
+In the period, then, in which the Church exercised its greatest
+influence, reason was
+
+[68] enchained in the prison which Christianity had built around the
+human mind. It was not indeed inactive, but its activity took the form
+of heresy; or, to pursue the metaphor, those who broke chains were
+unable for the most part to scale the walls of the prison; their freedom
+extended only so far as to arrive at beliefs, which, like orthodoxy
+itself, were based on Christian mythology. There were some exceptions to
+the rule. At the end of the twelfth century a stimulus from another
+world began to make itself felt. The philosophy of Aristotle became
+known to learned men in Western Christendom; their teachers were Jews
+and Mohammedans. Among the Mohammedans there was a certain amount of
+free thought, provoked by their knowledge of ancient Greek speculation.
+The works of the freethinker Averroes (twelfth century) which were based
+on Aristotle’s philosophy, propagated a small wave of rationalism in
+Christian countries. Averroes held the eternity of matter and denied the
+immortality of the soul; his general view may be described as pantheism.
+But he sought to avoid difficulties with the orthodox authorities of
+Islam by laying down the doctrine of double truth, that is the
+coexistence of two independent and contradictory truths, the one
+philosophical, and the other religious. This
+
+[69] did not save him from being banished from the court of the Spanish
+caliph. In the University of Paris his teaching produced a school of
+freethinkers who held that the Creation, the resurrection of the body,
+and other essential dogmas, might be true from the standpoint of
+religion but are false from the standpoint of reason. To a plain mind
+this seems much as if one said that the doctrine of immortality is true
+on Sundays but not on week-days, or that the Apostles’ Creed is false in
+the drawing-room and true in the kitchen. This dangerous movement was
+crushed, and the saving principle of double truth condemned, by Pope
+John XXI. The spread of Averroistic and similar speculations called
+forth the Theology of Thomas, of Aquino in South Italy (died 1274), a
+most subtle thinker, whose mind had a natural turn for scepticism. He
+enlisted Aristotle, hitherto the guide of infidelity, on the side of
+orthodoxy, and constructed an ingenious Christian philosophy which is
+still authoritative in the Roman Church. But Aristotle and reason are
+dangerous allies for faith, and the treatise of Thomas is perhaps more
+calculated to unsettle a believing mind by the doubts which it
+powerfully states than to quiet the scruples of a doubter by its
+solutions.
+
+There must always have been some private
+
+[70] and underground unbelief here and there, which did not lead to any
+serious consequences. The blasphemous statement that the world had been
+deceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, was current in
+the thirteenth century. It was attributed to the freethinking Emperor
+Frederick II (died 1250), who has been described as “the first modern
+man.” The same idea, in a milder form, was expressed in the story of the
+Three Rings, which is at least as old. A Mohammedan ruler, desiring to
+extort money from a rich Jew, summoned him to his court and laid a snare
+for him. “My friend,” he said, “I have often heard it reported that thou
+art a very wise man. Tell me therefore which of the three religions,
+that of the Jews, that of the Mohammedans, and that of the Christians,
+thou believest to be the truest.” The Jew saw that a trap was laid for
+him and answered as follows: “My lord, there was once a rich man who
+among his treasures had a ring of such great value that he wished to
+leave it as a perpetual heirloom to his successors. So he made a will
+that whichever of his sons should be found in possession of this ring
+after his death should be considered his heir. The son to whom he gave
+the ring acted in the same way as his father, and so the ring passed
+from hand to
+
+[71] hand. At last it came into the possession of a man who had three
+sons whom he loved equally. Unable to make up his mind to which of them
+he should leave the ring, he promised it to each of them privately, and
+then in order to satisfy them all caused a goldsmith to make two other
+rings so closely resembling the true ring that he was unable to
+distinguish them himself. On his death-bed he gave each of them a ring,
+and each claimed to be his heir, but no one could prove his title
+because the rings were indistinguishable, and the suit at law lasts till
+this day. It is even so, my lord, with the three religions, given by God
+to the three peoples. They each think they have the true religion, but
+which of them really has it, is a question, like that of the rings,
+still undecided.” This sceptical story became famous in the eighteenth
+century, when the German poet, Lessing, built upon it his drama Nathan
+the Sage, which was intended to show the unreasonableness of
+intolerance.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PROSPECT OF DELIVERANCE
+
+(THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION)
+
+THE intellectual and social movement which was to dispel the darkness of
+the
+
+[72] Middle Ages and prepare the way for those who would ultimately
+deliver reason from her prison, began in Italy in the thirteenth
+century. The misty veil woven of credulity and infantile naïveté which
+had hung over men’s souls and protected them from understanding either
+themselves or their relation to the world began to lift. The individual
+began to feel his separate individuality, to be conscious of his own
+value as a person apart from his race or country (as in the later ages
+of Greece and Rome); and the world around him began to emerge from the
+mists of mediaeval dreams. The change was due to the political and
+social conditions of the little Italian States, of which some were
+republics and others governed by tyrants.
+
+To the human world, thus unveiling itself, the individual who sought to
+make it serve his purposes required a guide; and the guide was found in
+the ancient literature of Greece and Rome. Hence the whole
+transformation, which presently extended from Italy to Northern Europe,
+is known as the Renaissance, or rebirth of classical antiquity. But the
+awakened interest in classical literature while it coloured the
+character and stimulated the growth of the movement, supplying new
+ideals and suggesting new points of view, was only the form in which the
+change of spirit
+
+[73] began to express itself in the fourteenth century. The change might
+conceivably have taken some other shape. Its true name is Humanism.
+
+At the time men hardly felt that they were passing into a new age of
+civilization, nor did the culture of the Renaissance immediately produce
+any open or general intellectual rebellion against orthodox beliefs. The
+world was gradually assuming an aspect decidedly unfriendly to the
+teaching of mediaeval orthodoxy; but there was no explosion of
+hostility; it was not till the seventeenth century that war between
+religion and authority was systematically waged. The humanists were not
+hostile to theological authority or to the claims of religious dogma;
+but they had discovered a purely human curiosity about this world and it
+absorbed their interest. They idolized pagan literature which abounded
+in poisonous germs; the secular side of education became all-important;
+religion and theology were kept in a separate compartment. Some
+speculative minds, which were sensitive to the contradiction, might seek
+to reconcile the old religion with new ideas; but the general tendency
+of thinkers in the Renaissance period was to keep the two worlds
+distinct, and to practise outward conformity to the creed without any
+real intellectual submission.
+
+[74]
+
+I may illustrate this double-facedness of the Renaissance by Montaigne
+(second half of sixteenth century). His Essays make for rationalism, but
+contain frequent professions of orthodox Catholicism, in which he was
+perfectly sincere. There is no attempt to reconcile the two points of
+view; in fact, he takes the sceptical position that there is no bridge
+between reason and religion. The human intellect is incapable in the
+domain of theology, and religion must be placed aloft, out of reach and
+beyond the interference of reason; to be humbly accepted. But while he
+humbly accepted it, on sceptical grounds which would have induced him to
+accept Mohammadanism if he had been born in Cairo, his soul was not in
+its dominion. It was the philosophers and wise men of antiquity, Cicero,
+and Seneca, and Plutarch, who moulded and possessed his mind. It is to
+them, and not to the consolations of Christianity, that he turns when he
+discusses the problem of death. The religious wars in France which he
+witnessed and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572) were
+calculated to confirm him in his scepticism. His attitude to persecution
+is expressed in the remark that “it is setting a high value on one’s
+opinions to roast men on account of them.”
+
+The logical results of Montaigne’s scepticism
+
+[75] were made visible by his friend Charron, who published a book On
+Wisdom in 1601. Here it is taught that true morality is not founded on
+religion, and the author surveys the history of Christianity to show the
+evils which it had produced. He says of immortality that it is the most
+generally received doctrine, the most usefully believed, and the most
+weakly established by human reasons; but he modified this and some other
+passages in a second edition. A contemporary Jesuit placed Charron in
+the catalogue of the most dangerous and wicked atheists. He was really a
+deist; but in those days, and long after, no one scrupled to call a non-
+Christian deist an atheist. His book would doubtless have been
+suppressed and he would have suffered but for the support of King Henry
+IV. It has a particular interest because it transports us directly from
+the atmosphere of the Renaissance, represented by Montaigne, into the
+new age of more or less aggressive rationalism.
+
+What Humanism did in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries,
+at first in Italy, then in other countries, was to create an
+intellectual atmosphere in which the emancipation of reason could begin
+and knowledge could resume its progress. The period saw the invention of
+printing and
+
+[76] the discovery of new parts of the globe, and these things were to
+aid powerfully in the future defeat of authority.
+
+But the triumph of freedom depended on other causes also; it was not to
+be brought about by the intellect alone. The chief political facts of
+the period were the decline of the power of the Pope in Europe, the
+decay of the Holy Roman Empire, and the growth of strong monarchies, in
+which worldly interests determined and dictated ecclesiastical policy,
+and from which the modern State was to develop. The success of the
+Reformation was made possible by these conditions. Its victory in North
+Germany was due to the secular interest of the princes, who profited by
+the confiscation of Church lands. In England there was no popular
+movement; the change was carried through by the government for its own
+purposes.
+
+The principal cause of the Reformation was the general corruption of the
+Church and the flagrancy of its oppression. For a long time the Papacy
+had had no higher aim than to be a secular power exploiting its
+spiritual authority for the purpose of promoting its worldly interests,
+by which it was exclusively governed. All the European States based
+their diplomacy on this assumption. Since the fourteenth century every
+one acknowledged
+
+[77] the need of reforming the Church, and reform had been promised, but
+things went from bad to worse, and there was no resource but rebellion.
+The rebellion led by Luther was the result not of a revolt of reason
+against dogmas, but of widely spread anti-clerical feeling due to the
+ecclesiastical methods of extorting money, particularly by the sale of
+Indulgences, the most glaring abuse of the time. It was his study of the
+theory of Papal Indulgences that led Luther on to his theological
+heresies.
+
+It is an elementary error, but one which is still shared by many people
+who have read history superficially, that the Reformation established
+religious liberty and the right of private judgment. What it did was to
+bring about a new set of political and social conditions, under which
+religious liberty could ultimately be secured, and, by virtue of its
+inherent inconsistencies, to lead to results at which its leaders would
+have shuddered. But nothing was further from the minds of the leading
+Reformers than the toleration of doctrines differing from their own.
+They replaced one authority by another. They set up the authority of the
+Bible instead of that of the Church, but it was the Bible according to
+Luther or the Bible according to Calvin. So far as the spirit of
+intolerance went, there
+
+[78] was nothing to choose between the new and the old Churches. The
+religious wars were not for the cause of freedom, but for particular
+sets of doctrines; and in France, if the Protestants had been
+victorious, it is certain that they would not have given more liberal
+terms to the Catholics than the Catholics gave to them.
+
+Luther was quite opposed to liberty of conscience and worship, a
+doctrine which was inconsistent with Scripture as he read it. He might
+protest against coercion and condemn the burning of heretics, when he
+was in fear that he and his party might be victims, but when he was safe
+and in power, he asserted his real view that it was the duty of the
+State to impose the true doctrine and exterminate heresy, which was an
+abomination, that unlimited obedience to their prince in religious as in
+other matters was the duty of subjects, and that the end of the State
+was to defend the faith. He held that Anabaptists should be put to the
+sword. With Protestants and Catholics alike the dogma of exclusive
+salvation led to the same place.
+
+Calvin’s fame for intolerance is blackest. He did not, like Luther,
+advocate the absolute power of the civil ruler; he stood for the control
+of the State by the Church—a form of government which is commonly called
+theocracy;
+
+[79] and he established a theocracy at Geneva. Here liberty was
+completely crushed; false doctrines were put down by imprisonment,
+exile, and death. The punishment of Servetus is the most famous exploit
+of Calvin’s warfare against heresy. The Spaniard Servetus, who had
+written against the dogma of the Trinity, was imprisoned at Lyons
+(partly through the machinations of Calvin) and having escaped came
+rashly to Geneva. He was tried for heresy and committed to the flames
+(1553), though Geneva had no jurisdiction over him. Melanchthon, who
+formulated the principles of persecution, praised this act as a
+memorable example to posterity. Posterity however was one day to be
+ashamed of that example. In 1903 the Calvinists of Geneva felt impelled
+to erect an expiatory monument, in which Calvin “our great Reformer” is
+excused as guilty of an error “which was that of his century.”
+
+Thus the Reformers, like the Church from which they parted, cared
+nothing for freedom, they only cared for “truth.” If the mediaeval ideal
+was to purge the world of heretics, the object of the Protestant was to
+exclude all dissidents from his own land. The people at large were to be
+driven into a fold, to accept their faith at the command of their
+sovran. This was the principle laid down in the
+
+[80] religious peace which (1555) composed the struggle between the
+Catholic Emperor and the Protestant German princes. It was recognized by
+Catherine de’ Medici when she massacred the French Protestants and
+signified to Queen Elizabeth that she might do likewise with English
+Catholics.
+
+Nor did the Protestant creeds represent enlightenment. The Reformation
+on the Continent was as hostile to enlightenment as it was to liberty;
+and science, if it seemed to contradict the Bible, has as little chance
+with Luther as with the Pope. The Bible, interpreted by the Protestants
+or the Roman Church, was equally fatal to witches. In Germany the
+development of learning received a long set-back.
+
+Yet the Reformation involuntarily helped the cause of liberty. The
+result was contrary to the intentions of its leaders, was indirect, and
+long delayed. In the first place, the great rent in Western
+Christianity, substituting a number of theological authorities instead
+of one—several gods, we may say, instead of one God—produced a weakening
+of ecclesiastical authority in general. The religious tradition was
+broken. In the second place, in the Protestant States, the supreme
+ecclesiastical power was vested in the sovran; the sovran had other
+interests besides those of
+
+[81] the Church to consider; and political reasons would compel him
+sooner or later to modify the principle of ecclesiastical intolerance.
+Catholic States in the same way were forced to depart from the duty of
+not suffering heretics. The religious wars in France ended in a limited
+toleration of Protestants. The policy of Cardinal Richelieu, who
+supported the Protestant cause in Germany, illustrates how secular
+interests obstructed the cause of faith.
+
+Again, the intellectual justification of the Protestant rebellion
+against the Church had been the right of private judgment, that is, the
+principle of religious liberty. But the Reformers had asserted it only
+for themselves, and as soon as they had framed their own articles of
+faith, they had practically repudiated it. This was the most glaring
+inconsistency in the Protestant position; and the claim which they had
+thrust aside could not be permanently suppressed. Once more, the
+Protestant doctrines rested on an insecure foundation which no logic
+could defend, and inevitably led from one untenable position to another.
+If we are to believe on authority, why should we prefer the upstart
+dictation of the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg or the English Thirty-
+nine Articles to the venerable authority of the Church of Rome? If we
+decide against Rome, we must do so by means
+
+[82] of reason; but once we exercise reason in the matter, why should we
+stop where Luther or Calvin or any of the other rebels stopped, unless
+we assume that one of them was inspired? If we reject superstitions
+which they rejected, there is nothing except their authority to prevent
+us from rejecting all or some of the superstitions which they retained.
+Moreover, their Bible-worship promoted results which they did not
+foresee. [1] The inspired record on which the creeds depend became an
+open book. Public attention was directed to it as never before, though
+it cannot be said to have been universally read before the nineteenth
+century. Study led to criticism, the difficulties of the dogma of
+inspiration were appreciated, and the Bible was ultimately to be
+submitted to a remorseless dissection which has altered at least the
+quality of its authority in the eyes of intelligent believers. This
+process of Biblical criticism has been conducted mainly in a Protestant
+atmosphere and the new position in which the Bible was placed by the
+Reformation must be held partly accountable. In these ways,
+Protestantism was adapted to be a stepping-stone to rationalism, and
+thus served the cause of freedom.
+
+[83]
+
+That cause however was powerfully and directly promoted by one sect of
+Reformers, who in the eyes of all the others were blasphemers and of
+whom most people never think when they talk of the Reformation. I mean
+the Socinians. Of their far-reaching influence something will be said in
+the next chapter.
+
+Another result of the Reformation has still to be mentioned, its
+renovating effect on the Roman Church, which had now to fight for its
+existence. A new series of Popes who were in earnest about religion
+began with Paul III (1534) and reorganized the Papacy and its resources
+for a struggle of centuries. [2] The institution of the Jesuit order,
+the establishment of the Inquisition at Rome, the Council of Trent, the
+censorship of the Press (Index of Forbidden Books) were the expression
+of the new spirit and the means to cope with the new situation. The
+reformed Papacy was good fortune for believing children of the Church,
+but what here concerns us is that one of its chief objects was to
+repress freedom more effectually. Savonarola who preached right living
+at Florence had been executed (1498) under Pope Alexander VI who was a
+notorious profligate. If Savonarola had lived
+
+[84] in the new era he might have been canonized, but Giordano Bruno was
+burned.
+
+Giordano Bruno had constructed a religious philosophy, based partly upon
+Epicurus, from whom he took the theory of the infinity of the universe.
+But Epicurean materialism was transformed into a pantheistic mysticism
+by the doctrine that God is the soul of matter. Accepting the recent
+discovery of Copernicus, which Catholics and Protestants alike rejected,
+that the earth revolves round the sun, Bruno took the further step of
+regarding the fixed stars as suns, each with its invisible satellites.
+He sought to come to an understanding with the Bible, which (he held)
+being intended for the vulgar had to accommodate itself to their
+prejudices. Leaving Italy, because he was suspected of heresy, he lived
+successively in Switzerland, France, England, and Germany, and in 1592,
+induced by a false friend to return to Venice he was seized by order of
+the Inquisition. Finally condemned in Rome, he was burned (1600) in the
+Campo de’ Fiori, where a monument now stands in his honour, erected some
+years ago, to the great chagrin of the Roman Church.
+
+Much is made of the fate of Bruno because he is one of the world’s
+famous men. No country has so illustrious a victim of that era to
+commemorate as Italy, but in other lands
+
+[85] blood just as innocent was shed for heterodox opinions. In France
+there was rather more freedom than elsewhere under the relatively
+tolerant government of Henry IV and of the Cardinals Richelieu and
+Mazarin, till about 1660. But at Toulouse (1619) Lucilio Vanini, a
+learned Italian who like Bruno wandered about Europe, was convicted as
+an atheist and blasphemer; his tongue was torn out and he was burned.
+Protestant England, under Elizabeth and James I, did not lag behind the
+Roman Inquisition, but on account of the obscurity of the victims her
+zeal for faith has been unduly forgotten. Yet, but for an accident, she
+might have covered herself with the glory of having done to death a
+heretic not less famous than Giordano Bruno. The poet Marlowe was
+accused of atheism, but while the prosecution was hanging over him he
+was killed in a sordid quarrel in a tavern (1593). Another dramatist
+(Kyd) who was implicated in the charge was put to the torture. At the
+same time Sir Walter Raleigh was prosecuted for unbelief but not
+convicted. Others were not so fortunate. Three or four persons were
+burned at Norwich in the reign of Elizabeth for unchristian doctrines,
+among them Francis Kett who had been a Fellow of Corpus Christi,
+Cambridge. Under James I, who
+
+[86] interested himself personally in such matters, Bartholomew Legate
+was charged with holding various pestilent opinions. The king summoned
+him to his presence and asked him whether he did not pray daily to Jesus
+Christ. Legate replied he had prayed to Christ in the days of his
+ignorance, but not for the last seven years. “Away, base fellow,” said
+James, spurning him with his foot, “it shall never be said that one
+stayeth in my palace that hath never prayed to our Saviour for seven
+years together.” Legate, having been imprisoned for some time in
+Newgate, was declared an incorrigible heretic and burned at Smithfield
+(1611). Just a month later, one Wightman was burned at Lichfield, by the
+Bishop of Coventry, for heterodox doctrines. It is possible that public
+opinion was shocked by these two burnings. They were the last cases in
+England of death for unbelief. Puritan intolerance, indeed, passed an
+ordinance in 1648, by which all who denied the Trinity, Christ’s
+divinity, the inspiration of Scripture, or a future state, were liable
+to death, and persons guilty of other heresies, to imprisonment. But
+this did not lead to any executions.
+
+The Renaissance age saw the first signs of the beginning of modern
+science, but the mediaeval prejudices against the investigation
+
+[87] of nature were not dissipated till the seventeenth century, and in
+Italy they continued to a much later period. The history of modern
+astronomy begins in 1543, with the publication of the work of Copernicus
+revealing the truth about the motions of the earth. The appearance of
+this work is important in the history of free thought, because it raised
+a clear and definite issue between science and Scripture; and Osiander,
+who edited it (Copernicus was dying), forseeing the outcry it would
+raise, stated untruly in the preface that the earth’s motion was put
+forward only as a hypothesis. The theory was denounced by Catholics and
+Reformers, and it did not convince some men (e.g. Bacon) who were not
+influenced by theological prejudice. The observations of the Italian
+astronomer Galileo de’ Galilei demonstrated the Copernican theory beyond
+question. His telescope discovered the moons of Jupiter, and his
+observation of the spots in the sun confirmed the earth’s rotation. In
+the pulpits of Florence, where he lived under the protection of the
+Grand Duke, his sensational discoveries were condemned. “Men of Galilee,
+why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” He was then denounced to the Holy
+Office of the Inquisition by two Dominican monks. Learning that his
+investigations were being considered
+
+[88] at Rome, Galileo went thither, confident that he would be able to
+convince the ecclesiastical authorities of the manifest truth of
+Copernicanism. He did not realize what theology was capable of. In
+February 1616 the Holy Office decided that the Copernican system was in
+itself absurd, and, in respect of Scripture, heretical. Cardinal
+Bellarmin, by the Pope’s direction, summoned Galileo and officially
+admonished him to abandon his opinion and cease to teach it, otherwise
+the Inquisition would proceed against him. Galileo promised to obey. The
+book of Copernicus was placed on the Index. It has been remarked that
+Galileo’s book on Solar Spots contains no mention of Scripture, and thus
+the Holy Office, in its decree which related to that book, passed
+judgment on a scientific, not a theological, question.
+
+Galileo was silenced for a while, but it was impossible for him to be
+mute for ever. Under a new Pope (Urban VIII) he looked for greater
+liberty, and there were many in the Papal circle who were well disposed
+to him. He hoped to avoid difficulties by the device of placing the
+arguments for the old and the new theories side by side, and pretending
+not to judge between them. He wrote a treatise on the two systems (the
+Ptolemaic and the Copernican) in the form
+
+[89] of Dialogues, of which the preface declares that the purpose is to
+explain the pros and cons of the two views. But the spirit of the work
+is Copernican. He received permission, quite definite as he thought,
+from Father Riccardi (master of the Sacred Palace) to print it, and it
+appeared in 1632. The Pope however disapproved of it, the book was
+examined by a commission, and Galileo was summoned before the
+Inquisition. He was old and ill, and the humiliations which he had to
+endure are a painful story. He would probably have been more severely
+treated, if one of the members of the tribunal had not been a man of
+scientific training (Macolano, a Dominican), who was able to appreciate
+his ability. Under examination, Galileo denied that he had upheld the
+motion of the earth in the Dialogues, and asserted that he had shown the
+reasons of Copernicus to be inconclusive. This defence was in accordance
+with the statement in his preface, but contradicted his deepest
+conviction. In struggling with such a tribunal, it was the only line
+which a man who was not a hero could take. At a later session, he forced
+himself ignominiously to confess that some of the arguments on the
+Copernican side had been put too strongly and to declare himself ready
+to confute the
+
+[90] theory. In the final examination, he was threatened with torture.
+He said that before the decree of 1616 he had held the truth of the
+Copernican system to be arguable, but since then he had held the
+Ptolemaic to be true. Next day, he publicly abjured the scientific truth
+which he had demonstrated. He was allowed to retire to the country, on
+condition that he saw no one. In the last months of his life he wrote to
+a friend to this effect: “The falsity of the Copernican system cannot be
+doubted, especially by us Catholics. It is refuted by the irrefragable
+authority of Scripture. The conjectures of Copernicus and his disciples
+were all disposed of by the one solid argument: God’s omnipotence can
+operate in infinitely various ways. If something appears to our
+observation to happen in one particular way, we must not curtail God’s
+arm, and sustain a thing in which we may be deceived.” The irony is
+evident.
+
+Rome did not permit the truth about the solar system to be taught till
+after the middle of the eighteenth century, and Galileo’s books remained
+on the Index till 1835. The prohibition was fatal to the study of
+natural science in Italy.
+
+The Roman Index reminds us of the significance of the invention of
+printing in the struggle for freedom of thought, by making
+
+[91] it easy to propagate new ideas far and wide. Authority speedily
+realized the danger, and took measures to place its yoke on the new
+contrivance, which promised to be such a powerful ally of reason. Pope
+Alexander VI inaugurated censorship of the Press by his Bull against
+unlicensed printing (1501). In France King Henry II made printing
+without official permission punishable by death. In Germany, censorship
+was introduced in 1529. In England, under Elizabeth, books could not be
+printed without a license, and printing presses were not allowed except
+in London, Oxford, and Cambridge; the regulation of the Press was under
+the authority of the Star Chamber. Nowhere did the Press become really
+free till the nineteenth century.
+
+While the Reformation and the renovated Roman Church meant a reaction
+against the Renaissance, the vital changes which the Renaissance
+signified—individualism, a new intellectual attitude to the world, the
+cultivation of secular knowledge—were permanent and destined to lead,
+amid the competing intolerances of Catholic and Protestant powers, to
+the goal of liberty. We shall see how reason and the growth of knowledge
+undermined the bases of theological authority. At each step in this
+process, in which philosophical speculation, historical
+
+[92] criticism, natural science have all taken part, the opposition
+between reason and faith deepened; doubt, clear or vague, increased; and
+secularism, derived from the Humanists, and always implying scepticism,
+whether latent or conscious, substituted an interest in the fortunes of
+the human race upon earth for the interest in a future world. And along
+with this steady intellectual advance, toleration gained ground and
+freedom won more champions. In the meantime the force of political
+circumstances was compelling governments to mitigate their maintenance
+of one religious creed by measures of relief to other Christian sects,
+and the principle of exclusiveness was broken down for reasons of
+worldly expediency. Religious liberty was an important step towards
+complete freedom of opinion.
+
+[1] The danger, however, was felt in Germany, and in the seventeenth
+century the study of Scripture was not encouraged at German
+Universities.
+
+[2] See Barry, Papacy and Modern Times (in this series), 113 seq.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
+
+IN the third century B.C. the Indian king Asoka, a man of religious zeal
+but of tolerant spirit, confronted by the struggle between two hostile
+religions (Brahmanism and Buddhism), decided that both should be equally
+privileged and honoured in his dominions. His ordinances on the matter
+are memorable
+
+[93] as the earliest existing Edicts of toleration. In Europe, as we
+saw, the principle of toleration was for the first time definitely
+expressed in the Roman Imperial Edicts which terminated the persecution
+of the Christians.
+
+The religious strife of the sixteenth century raised the question in its
+modern form, and for many generations it was one of the chief problems
+of statesmen and the subject of endless controversial pamphlets.
+Toleration means incomplete religious liberty, and there are many
+degrees of it. It might be granted to certain Christian sects; it might
+be granted to Christian sects, but these alone; it might be granted to
+all religions, but not to freethinkers; or to deists, but not to
+atheists. It might mean the concession of some civil rights, but not of
+others; it might mean the exclusion of those who are tolerated from
+public offices or from certain professions. The religious liberty now
+enjoyed in Western lands has been gained through various stages of
+toleration.
+
+We owe the modern principle of toleration to the Italian group of
+Reformers, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and were the fathers
+of Unitarianism. The Reformation movement had spread to Italy, but Rome
+was successful in suppressing it, and many heretics fled to Switzerland.
+The anti-Trinitarian
+
+[94] group were forced by the intolerance of Calvin to flee to
+Transylvania and Poland where they propagated their doctrines. The
+Unitarian creed was moulded by Fausto Sozzini, generally known as
+Socinus, and in the catechism of his sect (1574) persecution is
+condemned. This repudiation of the use of force in the interest of
+religion is a consequence of the Socinian doctrines. For, unlike Luther
+and Calvin, the Socinians conceded such a wide room to individual
+judgment in the interpretation of Scripture that to impose Socinianism
+would have been inconsistent with its principles. In other words, there
+was a strong rationalistic element which was lacking in the Trinitarian
+creeds.
+
+It was under the influence of the Socinian spirit that Castellion of
+Savoy sounded the trumpet of toleration in a pamphlet denouncing the
+burning of Servetus, whereby he earned the malignant hatred of Calvin.
+He maintained the innocence of error and ridiculed the importance which
+the Churches laid on obscure questions such as predestination and the
+Trinity. “To discuss the difference between the Law and the Gospel,
+gratuitous remission of sins or imputed righteousness, is as if a man
+were to discuss whether a prince was to come on horseback,
+
+[95] or in a chariot, or dressed in white or in red.” [1] Religion is a
+curse if persecution is a necessary part of it.
+
+For a long time the Socinians and those who came under their influence
+when, driven from Poland, they passed into Germany and Holland, were the
+only sects which advocated toleration. It was adopted from them by the
+Anabaptists and by the Arminian section of the Reformed Church of
+Holland. And in Holland, the founder of the English Congregationalists,
+who (under the name of Independents) played such an important part in
+the history of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, learned the principle
+of liberty of conscience.
+
+Socinus thought that this principle could be realized without abolishing
+the State Church. He contemplated a close union between the State and
+the prevailing Church, combined with complete toleration for other
+sects. It is under this system (which has been called jurisdictional)
+that religious liberty has been realized in European States. But there
+is another and simpler method, that of separating Church from State and
+placing all religions on an equality. This was the solution which the
+Anabaptists would have preferred. They detested the State; and the
+doctrine of religious liberty was not
+
+[96] precious to them. Their ideal system would have been an Anabaptist
+theocracy; separation was the second best.
+
+In Europe, public opinion was not ripe for separation, inasmuch as the
+most powerful religious bodies were alike in regarding toleration as
+wicked indifference. But it was introduced in a small corner of the new
+world beyond the Atlantic in the seventeenth century. The Puritans who
+fled from the intolerance of the English Church and State and founded
+colonies in New England, were themselves equally intolerant, not only to
+Anglicans and Catholics, but to Baptists and Quakers. They set up
+theocratical governments from which all who did not belong to their own
+sect were excluded. Roger Williams had imbibed from the Dutch Arminians
+the idea of separation of Church from State. On account of this heresy
+he was driven from Massachusetts, and he founded Providence to be a
+refuge for those whom the Puritan colonists persecuted. Here he set up a
+democratic constitution in which the magistrates had power only in civil
+matters and could not interfere with religion. Other towns were
+presently founded in Rhode Island, and a charter of Charles II (1663)
+confirmed the constitution, which secured to all citizens professing
+Christianity, of whatever
+
+[97] form, the full enjoyment of political rights. Non-Christians were
+tolerated, but were not admitted to the political rights of Christians.
+So far, the new State fell short of perfect liberty. But the fact that
+Jews were soon admitted, notwithstanding, to full citizenship shows how
+free the atmosphere was. To Roger Williams belongs the glory of having
+founded the first modern State which was really tolerant and was based
+on the principle of taking the control of religious matters entirely out
+of the hands of the civil government.
+
+Toleration was also established in the Roman Catholic colony of
+Maryland, but in a different way. Through the influence of Lord
+Baltimore an Act of Toleration was passed in 1649, notable as the first
+decree, voted by a legal assembly, granting complete freedom to all
+Christians. No one professing faith in Christ was to be molested in
+regard to his religion. But the law was heavy on all outside this pale.
+Any one who blasphemed God or attacked the Trinity or any member of the
+Trinity was threatened by the penalty of death. The tolerance of
+Maryland attracted so many Protestant settlers from Virginia that the
+Protestants became a majority, and as soon as they won political
+preponderance, they introduced an Act (1654)
+
+[98] excluding Papists and Prelatists from toleration. The rule of the
+Baltimores was restored after 1660, and the old religious freedom was
+revived, but with the accession of William III the Protestants again
+came into power and the toleration which the Catholics had instituted in
+Maryland came to an end.
+
+It will be observed that in both these cases freedom was incomplete; but
+it was much larger and more fundamental in Rhode Island, where it had
+been ultimately derived from the doctrine of Socinus. [2] When the
+colonies became independent of England the Federal Constitution which
+they set up was absolutely secular, but it was left to each member of
+the Union to adopt Separation or not (1789). If separation has become
+the rule in the American States, it may be largely due to the fact that
+on any other system the governments would have found it difficult to
+impose mutual tolerance on the sects. It must be added that in Maryland
+and a few southern States atheists still suffer from some political
+disabilities.
+
+In England, the experiment of Separation would have been tried under the
+Commonwealth, if the Independents had had their way. This policy was
+overruled by Cromwell.
+
+[99] The new national Church included Presbyterians, Independents, and
+Baptists, but liberty of worship was granted to all Christian sects,
+except Roman Catholics and Anglicans. If the parliament had had the
+power, this toleration would have been a mere name. The Presbyterians
+regarded toleration as a work of the Devil, and would have persecuted
+the Independents if they could. But under Cromwell’s autocratic rule
+even the Anglicans lived in peace, and toleration was extended to the
+Jews. In these days, voices were raised from various quarters advocating
+toleration on general grounds. [3] The most illustrious advocate was
+Milton, the poet, who was in favour of the severance of Church from
+State.
+
+In Milton’s Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed
+printing (1644), the freedom of the Press is eloquently sustained by
+arguments which are valid for freedom of thought in general. It is shown
+that the censorship will conduce “to the discouragement of all learning
+and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our
+abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the
+discovery that might be yet further made, both in religious
+
+[100] and civil wisdom.” For knowledge is advanced through the utterance
+of new opinions, and truth is discovered by free discussion. If the
+waters of truth “flow not in a perpetual progression they sicken into a
+muddy pool of conformity and tradition.” Books which are authorized by
+the licensers are apt to be, as Bacon said, “but the language of the
+times,” and do not contribute to progress. The examples of the countries
+where the censorship is severe do not suggest that it is useful for
+morals: “look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple
+the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the
+inquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books.” Spain indeed
+could reply, “We are, what is more important, more orthodox.” It is
+interesting to notice that Milton places freedom of thought above civil
+liberty: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely
+according to conscience, above all other liberties.”
+
+With the restoration of the Monarchy and the Anglican Church, religious
+liberty was extinguished by a series of laws against Dissenters. To the
+Revolution we owe the Act of Toleration (1689) from which the religious
+freedom which England enjoys at present is derived. It granted freedom
+of worship to Presbyterians, Congregationalists,
+
+[101] Baptists and Quakers, but only to these; Catholics and Unitarians
+were expressly excepted and the repressive legislation of Charles II
+remained in force against them. It was a characteristically English
+measure, logically inconsistent and absurd, a mixture of tolerance and
+intolerance, but suitable to the circumstances and the state of public
+opinion at the time.
+
+In the same year John Locke’s famous (first) Letter concerning
+Toleration appeared in Latin. Three subsequent letters developed and
+illustrated his thesis. The main argument is based on the principle that
+the business of civil government is quite distinct from that of
+religion, that the State is a society constituted only for preserving
+and promoting the civil interests of its members —civil interests
+meaning life, liberty, health, and the possession of property. The care
+of souls is not committed to magistrates more than to other men. For the
+magistrate can only use outward force; but true religion means the
+inward persuasion of the mind, and the mind is so made that force cannot
+compel it to believe. So too it is absurd for a State to make laws to
+enforce a religion, for laws are useless without penalties, and
+penalties are impertinent because they cannot convince.
+
+Moreover, even if penalties could change
+
+[102] men’s beliefs, this would not conduce to the salvation of souls.
+Would more men be saved if all blindly resigned themselves to the will
+of their rulers and accepted the religion of their country? For as the
+princes of the world are divided in religion, one country alone would be
+in the right, and all the rest of the world would have to follow their
+princes to destruction; “and that which heightens the absurdity, and
+very ill suits the notion of a deity, men would owe their eternal
+happiness or their eternal misery to the places of their nativity.” This
+is a principle on which Locke repeatedly insists. If a State is
+justified in imposing a creed, it follows that in all the lands, except
+the one or few in which the true faith prevails, it is the duty of the
+subjects to embrace a false religion. If Protestantism is promoted in
+England, Popery by the same rule will be promoted in France. “What is
+true and good in England will be true and good at Rome too, in China, or
+Geneva.” Toleration is the principle which gives to the true faith the
+best chance of prevailing.
+
+Locke would concede full liberty to idolaters, by whom he means the
+Indians of North America, and he makes some scathing remarks on the
+ecclesiastical zeal which forced these “innocent pagans” to forsake
+
+[103] their ancient religion. But his toleration, though it extends
+beyond the Christian pale, is not complete. He excepts in the first
+place Roman Catholics, not on account of their theological dogmas but
+because they “teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics,” that
+“kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms,” and because
+they deliver themselves up to the protection and service of a foreign
+prince—the Pope. In other words, they are politically dangerous. His
+other exception is atheists. “Those are not all to be tolerated who deny
+the being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of
+human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God,
+though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by
+their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence
+of religion to challenge the privilege of a Toleration.”
+
+Thus Locke is not free from the prejudices of his time. These exceptions
+contradict his own principle that “it is absurd that things should be
+enjoined by laws which are not in men’s power to perform. And to believe
+this or that to be true does not depend upon our will.” This applies to
+Roman Catholics as to Protestants, to atheists as to deists. Locke,
+however, perhaps thought
+
+[104] that the speculative opinion of atheism, which was uncommon in his
+day, does depend on the will. He would have excluded from his State his
+great contemporary Spinoza.
+
+But in spite of its limitations Locke’s Toleration is a work of the
+highest value, and its argument takes us further than its author went.
+It asserts unrestrictedly the secular principle, and its logical issue
+is Disestablishment. A Church is merely “a free and voluntary society.”
+I may notice the remark that if infidels were to be converted by force,
+it was easier for God to do it “with armies of heavenly legions than for
+any son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.” This
+is a polite way of stating a maxim analogous to that of the Emperor
+Tiberius (above, p. 41). If false beliefs are an offence to God, it is,
+really, his affair.
+
+The toleration of Nonconformists was far from pleasing extreme
+Anglicans, and the influence of this party at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century menaced the liberty of Dissenters. The situation
+provoked Defoe, who was a zealous Nonconformist, to write his pamphlet,
+The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), an ironical attack upon the
+principle of toleration. It pretends to show that the Dissenters are at
+heart incorrigible rebels, that a gentle policy is useless, and suggests
+
+[105] that all preachers at conventicles should be hanged and all
+persons found attending such meetings should be banished. This
+exceedingly amusing but terribly earnest caricature of the sentiments of
+the High Anglican party at first deceived and alarmed the Dissenters
+themselves. But the High Churchmen were furious. Defoe was fined,
+exposed in the pillory three times, and sent to Newgate prison.
+
+But the Tory reaction was only temporary. During the eighteenth century
+a relatively tolerant spirit prevailed among the Christian sects and new
+sects were founded. The official Church became less fanatical; many of
+its leading divines were influenced by rationalistic thought. If it had
+not been for the opposition of King George III, the Catholics might have
+been freed from their disabilities before the end of the century. This
+measure, eloquently advocated by Burke and desired by Pitt, was not
+carried till 1829, and then under the threat of a revolution in Ireland.
+In the meantime legal toleration had been extended to the Unitarians in
+1813, but they were not relieved from all disabilities till the forties.
+Jews were not admitted to the full rights of citizenship till 1858.
+
+The achievement of religious liberty in England in the nineteenth
+century has been mainly the work of Liberals. The Liberal
+
+[106] party has been moving towards the ultimate goal of complete
+secularization and the separation of the Church from the State— the
+logical results of Locke’s theory of civil government. The
+Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1869 partly realized this
+ideal, and now more than forty years later the Liberal party is seeking
+to apply the principle to Wales. It is highly characteristic of English
+politics and English psychology that the change should be carried out in
+this piecemeal fashion. In the other countries of the British Empire the
+system of Separation prevails; there is no connection between the State
+and any sect; no Church is anything more than a voluntary society. But
+secularization has advanced under the State Church system. It is enough
+to mention the Education Act of 1870 and the abolition of religious
+tests at Universities (1871). Other gains for freedom will be noticed
+when I come to speak in another chapter of the progress of rationalism.
+
+If we compare the religious situation in France in the seventeenth with
+that in the eighteenth century, it seems to be sharply contrasted with
+the development in England. In England there was a great advance towards
+religious liberty, in France there was a falling away. Until 1676 the
+French Protestants
+
+[107] (Huguenots) were tolerated; for the next hundred years they were
+outlaws. But the toleration, which their charter (the Edict of Nantes,
+1598) secured them, was of a limited kind. They were excluded, for
+instance, from the army; they were excluded from Paris and other cities
+and districts. And the liberty which they enjoyed was confined to them;
+it was not granted to any other sect. The charter was faithfully
+maintained by the two great Cardinals (Richelieu and Mazarin) who
+governed France under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, but when the latter
+assumed the active power in 1661 he began a series of laws against the
+Protestants which culminated in the revoking of the charter (1676) and
+the beginning of a Protestant persecution.
+
+The French clergy justified this policy by the notorious text “Compel
+them to come in,” and appealed to St. Augustine. Their arguments evoked
+a defence of toleration by Bayle, a French Protestant who had taken
+refuge in Holland. It was entitled a Philosophical Commentary on the
+text “Compel them to come in” (1686) and in importance stands beside
+Locke’s work which was being composed at the same time. Many of the
+arguments urged by the two writers are identical. They agreed, and for
+the same reasons, in excluding Roman Catholics. The
+
+[108] most characteristic thing in Bayle’s treatise is his sceptical
+argument that, even if it were a right principle to suppress error by
+force, no truth is certain enough to justify us in applying the theory.
+We shall see (next chapter) this eminent scholar’s contribution to
+rationalism.
+
+Though there was an immense exodus of Protestants from France, Louis did
+not succeed in his design of extirpating heresy from his lands. In the
+eighteenth century, under Louis XV, the presence of Protestants was
+tolerated though they were outlaws; their marriages were not recognized
+as legal, and they were liable at any moment to persecution. About the
+middle of the century a literary agitation began, conducted mainly by
+rationalists, but finally supported by enlightened Catholics, to relieve
+the affliction of the oppressed sect. It resulted at last in an Edict of
+Toleration (1787), which made the position of the Protestants endurable,
+though it excluded them from certain careers.
+
+The most energetic and forceful leader in the campaign against
+intolerance was Voltaire (see next chapter), and his exposure of some
+glaring cases of unjust persecution did more than general arguments to
+achieve the object. The most infamous case was that of Jean Calas, a
+Protestant merchant of Toulouse, whose son committed suicide. A report
+
+[109] was set abroad that the young man had decided to join the Catholic
+Church, and that his father, mother, and brother, filled with Protestant
+bigotry, killed him, with the help of a friend. They were all put in
+irons, tried, and condemned, though there were no arguments for their
+guilt, except the conjecture of bigotry. Jean Calas was broken on the
+wheel, his son and daughter cast into convents, his wife left to starve.
+Through the activity of Voltaire, then living near Geneva, the widow was
+induced to go to Paris, where she was kindly received, and assisted by
+eminent lawyers; a judicial inquiry was made; the Toulouse sentence was
+reversed and the King granted pensions to those who had suffered. This
+scandal could only have happened in the provinces, according to
+Voltaire: “at Paris,” he says, “fanaticism, powerful though it may be,
+is always controlled by reason.”
+
+The case of Sirven, though it did not end tragically, was similar, and
+the government of Toulouse was again responsible. He was accused of
+having drowned his daughter in a well to hinder her from becoming a
+Catholic, and was, with his wife, sentenced to death. Fortunately he and
+his family had escaped to Switzerland, where they persuaded Voltaire of
+their innocence. To get the sentence reversed was the work of nine
+years, and this
+
+[110] time it was reversed at Toulouse. When Voltaire visited Paris in
+1778 he was acclaimed by crowds as the “defender of Calas and the
+Sirvens.” His disinterested practical activity against persecution was
+of far more value than the treatise on Toleration which he wrote in
+connexion with the Calas episode. It is a poor work compared with those
+of Locke and Bayle. The tolerance which he advocates is of a limited
+kind; he would confine public offices and dignities to those who belong
+to the State religion.
+
+But if Voltaire’s system of toleration is limited, it is wide compared
+with the religious establishment advocated by his contemporary,
+Rousseau. Though of Swiss birth, Rousseau belongs to the literature and
+history of France; but it was not for nothing that he was brought up in
+the traditions of Calvinistic Geneva. His ideal State would, in its way,
+have been little better than any theocracy. He proposed to establish a
+“civil religion” which was to be a sort of undogmatic Christianity. But
+certain dogmas, which he considered essential, were to be imposed on all
+citizens on pain of banishment. Such were the existence of a deity, the
+future bliss of the good and punishment of the bad, the duty of
+tolerance towards all those who accepted the fundamental
+
+[111] articles of faith. It may be said that a State founded on this
+basis would be fairly inclusive—that all Christian sects and many deists
+could find a place in it. But by imposing indispensable beliefs, it
+denies the principle of toleration. The importance of Rousseau’s idea
+lies in the fact that it inspired one of the experiments in religious
+policy which were made during the French Revolution.
+
+The Revolution established religious liberty in France. Most of the
+leaders were unorthodox. Their rationalism was naturally of the
+eighteenth-century type, and in the preamble to the Declaration of
+Rights (1789) deism was asserted by the words “in the presence and under
+the auspices of the Supreme Being” (against which only one voice
+protested). The Declaration laid down that no one was to be vexed on
+account of his religious opinions provided he did not thereby trouble
+public order. Catholicism was retained as the “dominant” religion;
+Protestants (but not Jews) were admitted to public office. Mirabeau, the
+greatest statesman of the day, protested strongly against the use of
+words like “tolerance” and “dominant.” He said: “The most unlimited
+liberty of religion is in my eyes a right so sacred that to express it
+by the word ‘toleration’ seems to me itself a sort of tyranny,
+
+[112] since the authority which tolerates might also not tolerate.” The
+same protest was made in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man which appeared two
+years later: “Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the
+counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes itself the right
+of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it.”
+Paine was an ardent deist, and he added: “Were a bill brought into any
+parliament, entitled ‘An Act to tolerate or grant liberty to the
+Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or a Turk,’ or ‘to prohibit the
+Almighty from receiving it,’ all men would startle and call it
+blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption of toleration in
+religious matters would then present itself unmasked.”
+
+The Revolution began well, but the spirit of Mirabeau was not in the
+ascendant throughout its course. The vicissitudes in religious policy
+from 1789 to 1801 have a particular interest, because they show that the
+principle of liberty of conscience was far from possessing the minds of
+the men who were proud of abolishing the intolerance of the government
+which they had overthrown. The State Church was reorganized by the Civil
+Constitution of the Clergy (1790), by which French citizens were
+forbidden to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and
+
+[113] the appointment of Bishops was transferred to the Electors of the
+Departments, so that the commanding influence passed from the Crown to
+the nation. Doctrine and worship were not touched. Under the democratic
+Republic which succeeded the fall of the monarchy (1792–5) this
+Constitution was maintained, but a movement to dechristianize France was
+inaugurated, and the Commune of Paris ordered the churches of all
+religions to be closed. The worship of Reason, with rites modelled on
+the Catholic, was organized in Paris and the provinces. The government,
+violently anti-Catholic, did not care to use force against the prevalent
+faith; direct persecution would have weakened the national defence and
+scandalized Europe. They naïvely hoped that the superstition would
+disappear by degrees. Robespierre declared against the policy of
+unchristianizing France, and when he had the power (April, 1795), he
+established as a State religion the worship of the Supreme Being. “The
+French people recognizes the existence of the Supreme Being and the
+immortality of the Soul”; the liberty of other cults was maintained.
+Thus, for a few months, Rousseau’s idea was more or less realized. It
+meant intolerance. Atheism was regarded as a vice, and “all were
+atheists who did not think like Robespierre.”
+
+[114]
+
+The democratic was succeeded by the middle-class Republic (1795–9), and
+the policy of its government was to hinder the preponderance of any one
+religious group; to hold the balance among all the creeds, but with a
+certain partiality against the strongest, the Catholic, which
+threatened, as was thought, to destroy the others or even the Republic.
+The plan was to favour the growth of new rationalistic cults, and to
+undermine revealed religion by a secular system of education.
+Accordingly the Church was separated from the State by the Constitution
+of 1795, which affirmed the liberty of all worship and withdrew from the
+Catholic clergy the salaries which the State had hitherto paid. The
+elementary schools were laicized. The Declaration of Rights, the
+articles of the Constitution, and republican morality were taught
+instead of religion. An enthusiast declared that “the religion of
+Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero would soon be the religion of the
+world.”
+
+A new rationalistic religion was introduced under the name of
+Theophilanthropy. It was the “natural religion” of the philosophers and
+poets of the century, of Voltaire and the English deists—not the
+purified Christianity of Rousseau, but anterior and superior to
+Christianity. Its doctrines, briefly formulated,
+
+[115] were: God, immortality, fraternity, humanity; no attacks on other
+religions, but respect and honour towards all; gatherings in a family,
+or in a temple, to encourage one another to practise morality. Protected
+by the government sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, it had a certain
+success among the cultivated classes.
+
+The idea of the lay State was popularized under this rule, and by the
+end of the century there was virtually religious peace in France. Under
+the Consulate (from 1799) the same system continued, but Napoleon ceased
+to protect Theophilanthropy. In 1801, though there seems to have been
+little discontent with the existing arrangement, Napoleon decided to
+upset it and bring the Pope upon the scene. The Catholic religion, as
+that of the majority, was again taken under the special protection of
+the State, the salaries of the clergy again paid by the nation, and the
+Papal authority over the Church again recognized within well-defined
+limits; while full toleration of other religions was maintained. This
+was the effect of the Concordat between the French Republic and the
+Pope. It is the judgment of a high authority that the nation, if it had
+been consulted, would have pronounced against the change. It may be
+doubted whether this is true. But Napoleon’s policy
+
+[116] seems to have been prompted by the calculation that, using the
+Pope as an instrument, he could control the consciences of men, and more
+easily carry out his plans of empire.
+
+Apart from its ecclesiastical policies and its experiments in new creeds
+based on the principles of rationalistic thinkers, the French Revolution
+itself has an interest, in connexion with our subject, as an example of
+the coercion of reason by an intolerant faith.
+
+The leaders believed that, by applying certain principles, they could
+regenerate France and show the world how the lasting happiness of
+mankind can be secured. They acted in the name of reason, but their
+principles were articles of faith, which were accepted just as blindly
+and irrationally as the dogmas of any supernatural creed. One of these
+dogmas was the false doctrine of Rousseau that man is a being who is
+naturally good and loves justice and order. Another was the illusion
+that all men are equal by nature. The puerile conviction prevailed that
+legislation could completely blot out the past and radically transform
+the character of a society. “Liberty, equality, and fraternity” was as
+much a creed as the Creed of the Apostles; it hypnotized men’s minds
+like a revelation from on high; and reason had as little part in its
+propagation as in the spread
+
+[117] of Christianity or of Protestantism. It meant anything but
+equality, fraternity, or liberty, especially liberty, when it was
+translated into action by the fanatical apostles of “Reason,” who were
+blind to the facts of human nature and defied the facts of econnomics.
+Terror, the usual instrument in propagating religions, was never more
+mercilessly applied. Any one who questioned the doctrines was a heretic
+and deserved a heretic’s fate. And, as in most religious movements, the
+milder and less unreasonable spirits succumbed to the fanatics. Never
+was the name of reason more grievously abused than by those who believed
+they were inaugurating her reign.
+
+Religious liberty, however, among other good things, did emerge from the
+Revolution, at first in the form of Separation, and then under the
+Concordat. The Concordat lasted for more than a century, under
+monarchies and republics, till it was abolished in December, 1905, when
+the system of Separation was introduced again.
+
+In the German States the history of religious liberty differs in many
+ways, but it resembles the development in France in so far as toleration
+in a limited form was at first brought about by war. The Thirty Years’
+War, which divided Germany in the first half
+
+[118] of the seventeenth century, and in which, as in the English Civil
+War, religion and politics were mixed, was terminated by the Peace of
+Westphalia (1648). By this act, three religions, the Catholic, the
+Lutheran, and the Reformed [4] were legally recognized by the Holy Roman
+Empire, and placed on an equality; all other religious were excluded.
+But it was left to each of the German States, of which the Empire
+consisted, to tolerate or not any religion it pleased. That is, every
+prince could impose on his subjects whichever of the three religions he
+chose, and refuse to tolerate the others in his territory. But he might
+also admit one or both of the others, and he might allow the followers
+of other creeds to reside in his dominion, and practise their religion
+within the precincts of their own houses. Thus toleration varied, from
+State to State, according to the policy of each particular prince.
+
+As elsewhere, so in Germany, considerations of political expediency
+promoted the growth of toleration, especially in Prussia; and as
+elsewhere, theoretical advocates exercised great influence on public
+opinion. But the case for toleration was based by its German defenders
+chiefly on legal, not, as in
+
+[119] England and France, on moral and intellectual grounds. They
+regarded it as a question of law, and discussed it from the point of
+view of the legal relations between State and Church. It had been
+considered long ago from this standpoint by an original Italian thinker,
+Marsilius of Padua (thirteenth century), who had maintained that the
+Church had no power to employ physical coercion, and that if the lay
+authority punished heretics, the punishment was inflicted for the
+violation not of divine ordinances but of the law of the State, which
+excluded heretics from its territory.
+
+Christian Thomasius may be taken as a leading exponent of the theory
+that religious liberty logically follows from a right conception of law.
+He laid down in a series of pamphlets (1693–1697) that the prince, who
+alone has the power of coercion, has no right to interfere in spiritual
+matters, while the clergy step beyond their province if they interfere
+in secular matters or defend their faith by any other means than
+teaching. But the secular power has no legal right to coerce heretics
+unless heresy is a crime. And heresy is not a crime, but an error; for
+it is not a matter of will. Thomasius, moreover, urges the view that the
+public welfare has nothing to gain from unity of faith, that it makes no
+
+[120] difference what faith a man professes so long as he is loyal to
+the State. His toleration indeed is not complete. He was much influenced
+by the writings of his contemporary Locke, and he excepts from the
+benefit of toleration the same classes which Locke excepted.
+
+Besides the influence of the jurists, we may note that the Pietistic
+movement—a reaction of religious enthusiasm against the formal theology
+of the Lutheran divines—was animated by a spirit favourable to
+toleration; and that the cause was promoted by the leading men of
+letters, especially by Lessing, in the second half of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+But perhaps the most important fact of all in hastening the realization
+of religious liberty in Germany was the accession of a rationalist to
+the throne of Prussia, in the person of Frederick the Great. A few
+months after his accession (1740) he wrote in the margin of a State
+paper, in which a question of religious policy occurred, that every one
+should be allowed to get to heaven in his own way. His view that
+morality was independent of religion and therefore compatible with all
+religions, and that thus a man could be a good citizen—the only thing
+which the State was entitled to demand—whatever faith he might profess,
+led to the logical consequence of complete religious liberty. Catholics
+
+[121] were placed on an equality with Protestants, and the Treaty of
+Westphalia was violated by the extension of full toleration to all the
+forbidden sects. Frederick even conceived the idea of introducing
+Mohammedan settlers into some parts of his realm. Contrast England under
+George III, France under Louis XV, Italy under the shadow of the Popes.
+It is an important fact in history, which has hardly been duly
+emphasized, that full religious liberty was for the first time, in any
+country in modern Europe, realized under a free-thinking ruler, the
+friend of the great “blasphemer” Voltaire.
+
+The policy and principles of Frederick were formulated in the Prussian
+Territorial Code of 1794, by which unrestricted liberty of conscience
+was guaranteed, and the three chief religions, the Lutheran, the
+Reformed, and the Catholic, were placed on the same footing and enjoyed
+the same privileges. The system is “jurisdictional”; only, three
+Churches here occupy the position which the Anglican Church alone
+occupies in England. The rest of Germany did not begin to move in the
+direction pointed out by Prussia until, by one of the last acts of the
+Holy Roman Empire (1803), the Westphalian settlement had been modified.
+Before the foundation of the new Empire (1870), freedom was established
+throughout Germany.
+
+[122]
+
+In Austria, the Emperor Joseph II issued an Edict of Toleration in 1781,
+which may be considered a broad measure for a Catholic State at that
+time. Joseph was a sincere Catholic, but he was not impervious to the
+enlightened ideas of his age; he was an admirer of Frederick, and his
+edict was prompted by a genuinely tolerant spirit, such as had not
+inspired the English Act of 1689. It extended only to the Lutheran and
+Reformed sects and the communities of the Greek Church which had entered
+into union with Rome, and it was of a limited kind. Religious liberty
+was not established till 1867.
+
+The measure of Joseph applied to the Austrian States in Italy, and
+helped to prepare that country for the idea of religious freedom. It is
+notable that in Italy in the eighteenth century toleration found its
+advocate, not in a rationalist or a philosopher, but in a Catholic
+ecclesiastic, Tamburinni, who (under the name of his friend
+Trautmansdorf) published a work On Ecclesiastical and Civil Toleration
+(1783). A sharp line is drawn between the provinces of the Church and
+the State, persecution and the Inquisition are condemned, coercion of
+conscience is declared inconsistent with the Christian spirit, and the
+principle is laid down that the sovran should only exercise coercion
+where
+
+[123] the interests of public safety are concerned. Like Locke, the
+author thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion.
+
+The new States which Napoleon set up in Italy exhibited toleration in
+various degrees, but real liberty was first introduced in Piedmont by
+Cavour (1848), a measure which prepared the way for the full liberty
+which was one of the first-fruits of the foundation of the Italian
+kingdom in 1870. The union of Italy, with all that it meant, is the most
+signal and dramatic act in the triumph of the ideas of the modern State
+over the traditional principles of the Christian Church. Rome, which
+preserved those principles most faithfully, has offered a steadfast, we
+may say a heroic, resistance to the liberal ideas which swept Europe in
+the nineteenth century. The guides of her policy grasped thoroughly the
+danger which liberal thought meant for an institution which, founded in
+a remote past, claimed to be unchangeable and never out of date. Gregory
+XVI issued a solemn protest maintaining authority against freedom, the
+mediaeval against the modern ideal, in an Encyclical Letter (1832),
+which was intended as a rebuke to some young French Catholics (Lamennais
+and his friends) who had conceived the promising idea of transforming
+the Church by the Liberal spirit
+
+[124] of the day. The Pope denounces “the absurd and erroneous maxim, or
+rather insanity, that liberty of conscience should be procured and
+guaranteed to every one. The path to this pernicious error is prepared
+by that full and unlimited liberty of thought which is spread abroad to
+the misfortune of Church and State and which certain persons, with
+excessive impudence, venture to represent as an advantage for religion.
+Hence comes the corruption of youth, contempt for religion and for the
+most venerable laws, and a general mental change in the world—in short
+the most deadly scourge of society; since the experience of history has
+shown that the States which have shone by their wealth and power and
+glory have perished just by this evil— immoderate freedom of opinion,
+licence of conversation, and love of novelties. With this is connected
+the liberty of publishing any writing of any kind. This is a deadly and
+execrable liberty for which we cannot feel sufficient horror, though
+some men dare to acclaim it noisily and enthusiastically.” A generation
+later Pius IX was to astonish the world by a similar manifesto—his
+Syllabus of Modern Errors (1864). Yet, notwithstanding the fundamental
+antagonism between the principles of the Church and the drift of modern
+civilization, the Papacy survives,
+
+[125] powerful and respected, in a world where the ideas which it
+condemned have become the commonplace conditions of life.
+
+The progress of Western nations from the system of unity which prevailed
+in the fifteenth, to the system of liberty which was the rule in the
+nineteenth century, was slow and painful, illogical and wavering,
+generally dictated by political necessities, seldom inspired by
+deliberate conviction. We have seen how religious liberty has been
+realized, so far as the law is concerned, under two distinct systems,
+“Jurisdiction” and “Separation.” But legal toleration may coexist with
+much practical intolerance, and liberty before the law is compatible
+with serious disabilities of which the law cannot take account. For
+instance, the expression of unorthodox opinions may exclude a man from
+obtaining a secular post or hinder his advancement. The question has
+been asked, which of the two systems is more favourable to the creation
+of a tolerant social atmosphere? Ruffini (of whose excellent work on
+Religious Liberty I have made much use in this chapter) decides in
+favour of Jurisdiction. He points out that while Socinus, a true friend
+of liberty of thought, contemplated this system, the Anabaptists, whose
+spirit was intolerant, sought Separation. More important
+
+[126] is the observation that in Germany, England, and Italy, where the
+most powerful Church or Churches are under the control of the State,
+there is more freedom, more tolerance of opinion, than in many of the
+American States where Separation prevails. A hundred years ago the
+Americans showed appalling ingratitude to Thomas Paine, who had done
+them eminent service in the War of Independence, simply because he
+published a very unorthodox book. It is notorious that free thought is
+still a serious hindrance and handicap to an American, even in most of
+the Universities. This proves that Separation is not an infallible
+receipt for producing tolerance. But I see no reason to suppose that
+public opinion in America would be different, if either the Federal
+Republic or the particular States had adopted Jurisdiction. Given legal
+liberty under either system, I should say that the tolerance of public
+opinion depends on social conditions and especially on the degree of
+culture among the educated classes.
+
+From this sketch it will be seen that toleration was the outcome of new
+political circumstances and necessities, brought about by the disunion
+of the Church through the Reformation. But it meant that in those States
+which granted toleration the opinion of
+
+[127] a sufficiently influential group of the governing class was ripe
+for the change, and this new mental attitude was in a great measure due
+to the scepticism and rationalism which were diffused by the Renaissance
+movement, and which subtly and unconsciously had affected the minds of
+many who were sincerely devoted to rigidly orthodox beliefs; so
+effective is the force of suggestion. In the next two chapters the
+advance of reason at the expense of faith will be traced through the
+seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
+
+[1] Translated by Lecky.
+
+[2] Complete toleration was established by Penn in the Quaker Colony of
+Pennsylvania in 1682.
+
+[3] Especially Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants (1637), and
+Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying (1646).
+
+[4] The Reformed Church consists of the followers of Calvin and Zwingli.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GROWTH OF RATIONALISM
+
+(SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES)
+
+DURING the last three hundred years reason has been slowly but steadily
+destroying Christian mythology and exposing the pretensions of
+supernatural revelation. The progress of rationalism falls naturally
+into two periods. (1) In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries those
+thinkers who rejected Christian theology and the book on which it relies
+were mainly influenced by the inconsistencies, contradictions, and
+absurdities which they discovered in the evidence, and by the moral
+
+[128] difficulties of the creed. Some scientific facts were known which
+seemed to reflect on the accuracy of Revelation, but arguments based on
+science were subsidiary. (2) In the nineteenth century the discoveries
+of science in many fields bore with full force upon fabrics which had
+been constructed in a naïve and ignorant age; and historical criticism
+undermined methodically the authority of the sacred documents which had
+hitherto been exposed chiefly to the acute but unmethodical criticisms
+of common sense.
+
+A disinterested love of facts, without any regard to the bearing which
+those facts may have on one’s hopes or fears or destiny, is a rare
+quality in all ages, and it had been very rare indeed since the ancient
+days of Greece and Rome. It means the scientific spirit. Now in the
+seventeenth century we may say (without disrespect to a few precursors)
+that the modern study of natural science began, and in the same period
+we have a series of famous thinkers who were guided by a disinterested
+love of truth. Of the most acute minds some reached the conclusion that
+the Christian scheme of the world is irrational, and according to their
+temperament some rejected it, whilst others, like the great Frenchman
+Pascal, fell back upon an unreasoning act of faith. Bacon, who professed
+
+[129] orthodoxy, was perhaps at heart a deist, but in any case the whole
+spirit of his writings was to exclude authority from the domain of
+scientific investigation which he did so much to stimulate. Descartes,
+illustrious not only as the founder of modern metaphysics but also by
+his original contributions to science, might seek to conciliate the
+ecclesiastical authorities—his temper was timid— but his philosophical
+method was a powerful incentive to rationalistic thought. The general
+tendency of superior intellects was to exalt reason at the expense of
+authority; and in England this principle was established so firmly by
+Locke, that throughout the theological warfare of the eighteenth century
+both parties relied on reason, and no theologian of repute assumed faith
+to be a higher faculty.
+
+A striking illustration of the gradual encroachments of reason is the
+change which was silently wrought in public opinion on the subject of
+witchcraft. The famous efforts of James I to carry out the Biblical
+command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” were outdone by the
+zeal of the Puritans under the Commonwealth to suppress the wicked old
+women who had commerce with Satan. After the Restoration, the belief in
+witchcraft declined among educated people—though
+
+[130] some able writers maintained it—and there were few executions. The
+last trial of a witch was in 1712, when some clergymen in Hertfordshire
+prosecuted Jane Wenham. The jury found her guilty, but the judge, who
+had summed up in her favour, was able to procure the remission of her
+sentence; and the laws against witchcraft were repealed in 1735. John
+Wesley said with perfect truth that to disbelieve in witchcraft is to
+disbelieve in the Bible. In France and in Holland the decline of belief
+and interest in this particular form of Satan’s activity was
+simultaneous. In Scotland, where theology was very powerful, a woman was
+burnt in 1722. It can be no mere coincidence that the general decline of
+this superstition belongs to the age which saw the rise of modern
+science and modern philosophy.
+
+Hobbes, who was perhaps the most brilliant English thinker of the
+seventeenth century, was a freethinker and materialist. He had come
+under the influence of his friend the French philosopher Gassendi, who
+had revived materialism in its Epicurean shape. Yet he was a champion
+not of freedom of conscience but of coercion in its most uncompromising
+form. In the political theory which he expounded in Leviathan, the
+sovran has autocratic power in the domain of doctrine,
+
+[131] as in everything else, and it is the duty of subjects to conform
+to the religion which the sovran imposes. Religious persecution is thus
+defended, but no independent power is left to the Church. But the
+principles on which Hobbes built up his theory were rationalistic. He
+separated morality from religion and identified “the true moral
+philosophy” with the “true doctrine of the laws of nature.” What he
+really thought of religion could be inferred from his remark that the
+fanciful fear of things invisible (due to ignorance) is the natural seed
+of that feeling which, in himself, a man calls religion, but, in those
+who fear or worship the invisible power differently, superstition. In
+the reign of Charles II Hobbes was silenced and his books were burned.
+
+Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher of Holland, owed a great deal to
+Descartes and (in political speculation) to Hobbes, but his philosophy
+meant a far wider and more open breach with orthodox opinion than either
+of his masters had ventured on. He conceived ultimate reality, which he
+called God, as an absolutely perfect, impersonal Being, a substance
+whose nature is constituted by two “attributes”— thought and spatial
+extension. When Spinoza speaks of love of God, in which he considered
+happiness to consist, he means knowledge
+
+[132] and contemplation of the order of nature, including human nature,
+which is subject to fixed, invariable laws. He rejects free-will and the
+“superstition,” as he calls it, of final causes in nature. If we want to
+label his philosophy, we may say that it is a form of pantheism. It has
+often been described as atheism. If atheism means, as I suppose in
+ordinary use it is generally taken to mean, rejection of a personal God,
+Spinoza was an atheist. It should be observed that in the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries atheist was used in the wildest way as a term
+of abuse for freethinkers, and when we read of atheists (except in
+careful writers) we may generally assume that the persons so stigmatized
+were really deists, that is, they believed in a personal God but not in
+Revelation. [1]
+
+Spinoza’s daring philosophy was not in harmony with the general trend of
+speculation at the time, and did not exert any profound influence on
+thought till a much later period. The thinker whose writings appealed
+most to the men of his age and were most opportune and effective was
+John Locke, who professed more or less orthodox Anglicanism. His great
+contribution to philosophy is equivalent to a very powerful defence
+
+[133] of reason against the usurpations of authority. The object of his
+Essay on the Human Understanding (1690) is to show that all knowledge is
+derived from experience. He subordinated faith completely to reason.
+While he accepted the Christian revelation, he held that revelation if
+it contradicted the higher tribunal of reason must be rejected, and that
+revelation cannot give us knowledge as certain as the knowledge which
+reason gives. “He that takes away reason to make room for revelation
+puts out the light of both; and does much what the same as if he would
+persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote
+light of an invisible star by a telescope.” He wrote a book to show that
+the Christian revelation is not contrary to reason, and its title, The
+Reasonableness of Christianity, sounds the note of all religious
+controversy in England during the next hundred years. Both the orthodox
+and their opponents warmly agreed that reasonableness was the only test
+of the claims of revealed religion. It was under the direct influence of
+Locke that Toland, an Irishman who had been converted from Roman
+Catholicism, composed a sensational book, Christianity Not Mysterious
+(1696). He assumes that Christianity is true and argues that there can
+be no mysteries in it, because mysteries, that
+
+[134] is, unintelligible dogmas, cannot be accepted by reason. And if a
+reasonable Deity gave a revelation, its purpose must be to enlighten,
+not to puzzle. The assumption of the truth of Christianity was a mere
+pretence, as an intelligent reader could not fail to see. The work was
+important because it drew the logical inference from Locke’s philosophy,
+and it had a wide circulation. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met a Turkish
+Effendi at Belgrade who asked her for news of Mr. Toland.
+
+It is characteristic of this stage of the struggle between reason and
+authority that (excepting the leading French thinkers in the eighteenth
+century) the rationalists, who attacked theology, generally feigned to
+acknowledge the truth of the ideas which they were assailing. They
+pretended that their speculations did not affect religion; they could
+separate the domains of reason and of faith; they could show that
+Revelation was superfluous without questioning it; they could do homage
+to orthodoxy and lay down views with which orthodoxy was irreconcilable.
+The errors which they exposed in the sphere of reason were ironically
+allowed to be truths in the sphere of theology. The mediaeval principle
+of double truth and other shifts were resorted to, in self-protection
+
+[135] against the tyranny of orthodoxy—though they did not always avail;
+and in reading much of the rationalistic literature of this period we
+have to read between the lines. Bayle is an interesting instance.
+
+If Locke’s philosophy, by setting authority in its place and deriving
+all knowledge from experience, was a powerful aid to rationalism, his
+contemporary Bayle worked in the same direction by the investigation of
+history. Driven from France (see above, p. 107), he lived at Amsterdam,
+where he published his Philosophical Dictionary. He was really a
+freethinker, but he never dropped the disguise of orthodoxy, and this
+lends a particular piquancy to his work. He takes a delight in
+marshalling all the objections which heretics had made to essential
+Christian dogmas. He exposed without mercy the crimes and brutalities of
+David, and showed that this favourite of the Almighty was a person with
+whom one would refuse to shake hands. There was a great outcry at this
+unedifying candour. Bayle, in replying, adopted the attitude of
+Montaigne and Pascal, and opposed faith to reason.
+
+The theological virtue of faith, he said, consists in believing revealed
+truths simply and solely on God’s authority. If you believe in the
+immortality of the soul for
+
+[136] philosophical reasons, you are orthodox, but you have no part in
+faith. The merit of faith becomes greater, in proportion as the revealed
+truth surpasses all the powers of our mind; the more incomprehensible
+the truth and the more repugnant to reason, the greater is the sacrifice
+we make in accepting it, the deeper our submission to God. Therefore a
+merciless inventory of the objections which reason has to urge against
+fundamental doctrines serves to exalt the merits of faith.
+
+The Dictionary was also criticized for the justice done to the moral
+excellencies of persons who denied the existence of God. Bayle replies
+that if he had been able to find any atheistical thinkers who lived bad
+lives, he would have been delighted to dwell on their vices, but he knew
+of none such. As for the criminals you meet in history, whose abominable
+actions make you tremble, their impieties and blasphemies prove they
+believed in a Divinity. This is a natural consequence of the theological
+doctrine that the Devil, who is incapable of atheism, is the instigator
+of all the sins of men. For man’s wickedness must clearly resemble that
+of the Devil and must therefore be joined to a belief in God’s
+existence, since the Devil is not an atheist. And is it not a proof of
+the infinite wisdom of God that the worst criminals
+
+[137] are not atheists, and that most of the atheists whose names are
+recorded have been honest men? By this arrangement Providence sets
+bounds to the corruption of man; for if atheism and moral wickedness
+were united in the same persons, the societies of earth would be exposed
+to a fatal inundation of sin.
+
+There was much more in the same vein; and the upshot was, under the thin
+veil of serving faith, to show that the Christian dogmas were
+essentially unreasonable.
+
+Bayle’s work, marked by scholarship and extraordinary learning, had a
+great influence in England as well as in France. It supplied weapons to
+assailants of Christianity in both countries. At first the assault was
+carried on with most vigour and ability by the English deists, who,
+though their writings are little read now, did memorable work by their
+polemic against the authority of revealed religion.
+
+The controversy between the deists and their orthodox opponents turned
+on the question whether the Deity of natural religion —the God whose
+existence, as was thought, could be proved by reason—can be identified
+with the author of the Christian revelation. To the deists this seemed
+impossible. The nature of the alleged revelation seemed inconsistent
+with the character
+
+[138] of the God to whom reason pointed. The defenders of revelation, at
+least all the most competent, agreed with the deists in making reason
+supreme, and through this reliance on reason some of them fell into
+heresies. Clarke, for instance, one of the ablest, was very unsound on
+the dogma of the Trinity. It is also to be noticed that with both
+sections the interest of morality was the principal motive. The orthodox
+held that the revealed doctrine of future rewards and punishments is
+necessary for morality; the deists, that morality depends on reason
+alone, and that revelation contains a great deal that is repugnant to
+moral ideals. Throughout the eighteenth century morality was the guiding
+consideration with Anglican Churchmen, and religious emotion, finding no
+satisfaction within the Church, was driven, as it were, outside, and
+sought an outlet in the Methodism of Wesley and Whitefield.
+
+Spinoza had laid down the principle that Scripture must be interpreted
+like any other book (1670), [2] and with the deists this principle was
+fundamental. In order to avoid persecution they generally veiled their
+conclusions
+
+[139] under sufficiently thin disguises. Hitherto the Press Licensing
+Act (1662) had very effectually prevented the publication of heterodox
+works, and it is from orthodox works denouncing infidel opinions that we
+know how rationalism was spreading. But in 1695, the Press Law was
+allowed to drop, and immediately deistic literature began to appear.
+There was, however, the danger of prosecution under the Blasphemy laws.
+There were three legal weapons for coercing those who attacked
+Christianity: (1) The Ecclesiastical Courts had and have the power of
+imprisoning for a maximum term of six months, for atheism, blasphemy,
+heresy, and damnable opinions. (2) The common law as interpreted by Lord
+Chief Justice Hale in 1676, when a certain Taylor was charged with
+having said that religion was a cheat and blasphemed against Christ. The
+accused was condemned to a fine and the pillory by the Judge, who ruled
+that the Court of King’s Bench has jurisdiction in such a case, inasmuch
+as blasphemous words of the kind are an offence against the laws and the
+State, and to speak against Christianity is to speak in subversion of
+the law, since Christianity is “parcel of the laws of England.” (3) The
+statute of 1698 enacts that if any person educated in the Christian
+religion “shall by
+
+[140] writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking deny any one of
+the persons in the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall assert or maintain
+there are more gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be
+true, or shall deny the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to
+be of divine authority,” is convicted, he shall for the first offence be
+adjudged incapable to hold any public offices or employments, and on the
+second shall lose his civil rights and be imprisoned for three years.
+This Statute expressly states as its motive the fact that “many persons
+have of late years openly avowed and published many blasphemous and
+impious opinions contrary to the doctrine and principles of the
+Christian religion.”
+
+As a matter of fact, most trials for blasphemy during the past two
+hundred years fall under the second head. But the new Statute of 1698
+was very intimidating, and we can easily understand how it drove
+heterodox writers to ambiguous disguises. One of these disguises was
+allegorical interpretation of Scripture. They showed that literal
+interpretation led to absurdities or to inconsistencies with the wisdom
+and justice of God, and pretended to infer that allegorical
+interpretation must be substituted. But they meant the reader to reject
+their pretended
+
+[141] solution and draw a conclusion damaging to Revelation.
+
+Among the arguments used in favour of the truth of Revelation the
+fulfilment of prophecies and the miracles of the New Testament were
+conspicuous. Anthony Collins, a country gentleman who was a disciple of
+Locke, published in 1733 his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the
+Christian Religion, in which he drastically exposed the weakness of the
+evidence for fulfilment of prophecy, depending as it does on forced and
+unnatural figurative interpretations. Twenty years before he had written
+a Discourse of Free-thinking (in which Bayle’s influence is evident)
+pleading for free discussion and the reference of all religious
+questions to reason. He complained of the general intolerance which
+prevailed; but the same facts which testify to intolerance testify also
+to the spread of unbelief.
+
+Collins escaped with comparative impunity, but Thomas Woolston, a Fellow
+of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, who wrote six aggressive Discourses
+on the Miracles of our Saviour (1727—1730) paid the penalty for his
+audacity. Deprived of his Fellowship, he was prosecuted for libel, and
+sentenced to a fine of £100 and a year’s imprisonment. Unable to pay, he
+died in prison. He does
+
+[142] not adopt the line of arguing that miracles are incredible or
+impossible. He examines the chief miracles related in the Gospels, and
+shows with great ability and shrewd common sense that they are absurd or
+unworthy of the performer. He pointed out, as Huxley was to point out in
+a controversy with Gladstone, that the miraculous driving of devils into
+a herd of swine was an unwarrantable injury to somebody’s property. On
+the story of the Divine blasting of the fig tree, he remarks: “What if a
+yeoman of Kent should go to look for pippins in his orchard at Easter
+(the supposed time that Jesus sought for these figs) and because of a
+disappointment cut down his trees? What then would his neighbours make
+of him? Nothing less than a laughing-stock; and if the story got into
+our Publick News, he would be the jest and ridicule of mankind.”
+
+Or take his comment on the miracle of the Pool of Bethesda, where an
+angel used to trouble the waters and the man who first entered the pool
+was cured of his infirmity. “An odd and a merry way of conferring a
+Divine mercy. And one would think that the angels of God did this for
+their own diversion more than to do good to mankind. Just as some throw
+a bone among a kennel of hounds for the pleasure of seeing them
+
+[143] quarrel for it, or as others cast a piece of money among a company
+of boys for the sport of seeing them scramble for it, so was the pastime
+of the angels here.” In dealing with the healing of the woman who
+suffered from a bloody flux, he asks: “What if we had been told of the
+Pope’s curing an haemorrhage like this before us, what would Protestants
+have said to it? Why, ‘that a foolish, credulous, and superstitious
+woman had fancied herself cured of some slight indisposition, and the
+crafty Pope and his adherents, aspiring after popular applause,
+magnified the presumed cure into a miracle.’ The application of such a
+supposed story of a miracle wrought by the Pope is easy; and if
+Infidels, Jews, and Mahometans, who have no better opinion of Jesus than
+we have of the Pope, should make it, there’s no help for it.”
+
+Woolston professed no doubts of the inspiration of Scripture. While he
+argued that it was out of the question to suppose the miracles literally
+true, he pretended to believe in the fantastic theory that they were
+intended allegorically as figures of Christ’s mysterious operations in
+the soul of man. Origen, a not very orthodox Christian Father, had
+employed the allegorical method, and Woolston quotes him in his favour.
+His
+
+[144] vigorous criticisms vary in value, but many of them hit the nail
+on the head, and the fashion of some modern critics to pass over
+Woolston’s productions as unimportant because they are “ribald” or
+coarse, is perfectly unjust. The pamphlets had an enormous sale, and
+Woolston’s notoriety is illustrated by the anecdote of the “jolly young
+woman” who met him walking abroad and accosted him with “You old rogue,
+are you not hanged yet?” Mr. Woolston answered, “Good woman, I know you
+not; pray what have I done to offend you?” “You have writ against my
+Saviour,” she said; “what would become of my poor sinful soul if it was
+not for my dear Saviour?”
+
+About the same time, Matthew Tindal (a Fellow of All Souls) attacked
+Revelation from a more general point of view. In his Christianity as old
+as the Creation (1730) he undertook to show that the Bible as a
+revelation is superfluous, for it adds nothing to natural religion,
+which God revealed to man from the very first by the sole light of
+reason. He argues that those who defend Revealed religion by its
+agreement with Natural religion, and thus set up a double government of
+reason and authority, fall between the two. “It ’s an odd jumble,” he
+observes, “to prove the truth of a book by the truth
+
+[145] of the doctrines it contains, and at the same time conclude those
+doctrines to be true because contained in that book.” He goes on to
+criticize the Bible in detail. In order to maintain its infallibility,
+without doing violence to reason, you have, when you find irrational
+statements, to torture them and depart from the literal sense. Would you
+think that a Mohammedan was governed by his Koran, who on all occasions
+departed from the literal sense? “Nay, would you not tell him that his
+inspired book fell infinitely short of Cicero’s uninspired writings,
+where there is no such occasion to recede from the letter?”
+
+As to chronological and physical errors, which seemed to endanger the
+infallibility of the Scriptures, a bishop had met the argument by
+saying, reasonably enough, that in the Bible God speaks according to the
+conceptions of those to whom he speaks, and that it is not the business
+of Revelation to rectify their opinions in such matters. Tindal made
+this rejoinder:—
+
+“Is there no difference between God’s not rectifying men’s sentiments in
+those matters and using himself such sentiments as needs be rectified;
+or between God’s not mending men’s logic and rhetoric where ’t is
+defective and using such himself; or between God’s
+
+[146] not contradicting vulgar notions and confirming them by speaking
+according to them? Can infinite wisdom despair of gaining or keeping
+people’s affections without having recourse to such mean acts?”
+
+He exposes with considerable effect the monstrosity of the doctrine of
+exclusive salvation. Must we not consider, he asks, whether one can be
+said to be sent as a Saviour of mankind, if he comes to shut Heaven’s
+gate against those to whom, before he came, it was open provided they
+followed the dictates of their reason? He criticizes the inconsistency
+of the impartial and universal goodness of God, known to us by the light
+of nature, with acts committed by Jehovah or his prophets. Take the
+cases in which the order of nature is violated to punish men for crimes
+of which they were not guilty, such as Elijah’s hindering rain from
+falling for three years and a half. If God could break in upon the
+ordinary rules of his providence to punish the innocent for the guilty,
+we have no guarantee that if he deals thus with us in this life, he will
+not act in the same way in the life to come, “since if the eternal rules
+of justice are once broken how can we imagine any stop?” But the ideals
+of holiness and justice in the Old Testament are strange indeed. The
+holier men
+
+[147] are represented to be, the more cruel they seem and the more
+addicted to cursing. How surprising to find the holy prophet Elisha
+cursing in the name of the Lord little children for calling him Bald-
+pate! And, what is still more surprising, two she-bears immediately
+devoured forty-two little children.
+
+I have remarked that theologians at this time generally took the line of
+basing Christianity on reason and not on faith. An interesting little
+book, Christianity not founded on Argument, couched in the form of a
+letter to a young gentleman at Oxford, by Henry Dodwell (Junior),
+appeared in 1741, and pointed out the dangers of such confidence in
+reason. It is an ironical development of the principle of Bayle, working
+out the thesis that Christianity is essentially unreasonable, and that
+if you want to believe, reasoning is fatal. The cultivation of faith and
+reasoning produce contrary effects; the philosopher is disqualified for
+Divine influences by his very progress in carnal wisdom; the Gospel must
+be received with all the obsequious submission of a babe who has no
+other disposition but to learn his lesson. Christ did not propose his
+doctrines to investigation; he did not lay the arguments for his mission
+before his disciples and give them time to consider
+
+[148] calmly of their force, and liberty to determine as their reason
+should direct them; the apostles had no qualifications for the task,
+being the most artless and illiterate persons living. Dodwell exposes
+the absurdity of the Protestant position. To give all men liberty to
+judge for themselves and to expect at the same time that they shall be
+of the Preacher’s mind is such a scheme for unanimity as one would
+scarcely imagine any one could be weak enough to devise in speculation
+and much less that any could ever be found hardy enough to avow and
+propose it to practice. The men of Rome “shall rise up in the judgment
+(of all considering persons) against this generation and shall condemn
+it; for they invented but the one absurdity of infallibility, and behold
+a greater absurdity than infallibility is here.”
+
+I have still to speak of the (Third) Earl of Shaftesbury, whose style
+has rescued his writings from entire neglect. His special interest was
+ethics. While the valuable work of most of the heterodox writers of this
+period lay in their destructive criticism of supernatural religion, they
+clung, as we have seen, to what was called natural religion— the belief
+in a kind and wise personal God, who created the world, governs it by
+natural laws, and desires our happiness. The idea
+
+[149] was derived from ancient philosophers and had been revived by Lord
+Herbert of Cherbury in his Latin treatise On Truth (in the reign of
+James I). The deists contended that this was a sufficient basis for
+morality and that the Christian inducements to good behaviour were
+unnecessary. Shaftesbury in his Inquiry concerning Virtue (1699) debated
+the question and argued that the scheme of heaven and hell, with the
+selfish hopes and fears which they inspire, corrupts morality and that
+the only worthy motive for conduct is the beauty of virtue in itself. He
+does not even consider deism a necessary assumption for a moral code; he
+admits that the opinion of atheists does not undermine ethics. But he
+thinks that the belief in a good governor of the universe is a powerful
+support to the practice of virtue. He is a thorough optimist, and is
+perfectly satisfied with the admirable adaptation of means to ends,
+whereby it is the function of one animal to be food for another. He
+makes no attempt to reconcile the red claws and teeth of nature with the
+beneficence of its powerful artist. “In the main all things are kindly
+and well disposed.” The atheist might have said that he preferred to be
+at the mercy of blind chance than in the hands of an autocrat who, if he
+pleased Lord Shaftesbury’s sense
+
+[150] of order, had created flies to be devoured by spiders. But this
+was an aspect of the universe which did not much trouble thinkers in the
+eighteenth century. On the other hand, the character of the God of the
+Old Testament roused Shaftesbury’s aversion. He attacks Scripture not
+directly, but by allusion or with irony. He hints that if there is a
+God, he would be less displeased with atheists than with those who
+accepted him in the guise of Jehovah. As Plutarch said, “I had rather
+men should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a one as
+Plutarch, than they should say ‘There was a Plutarch, an unsteady,
+changeable, easily provokable and revengeful man.’ ” Shaftesbury’s
+significance is that he built up a positive theory of morals, and
+although it had no philosophical depth, his influence on French and
+German thinkers of the eighteenth century was immense.
+
+In some ways perhaps the ablest of the deists, and certainly the most
+scholarly, was Rev. Conyers Middleton, who remained within the Church.
+He supported Christianity on grounds of utility. Even if it is an
+imposture, he said, it would be wrong to destroy it. For it is
+established by law and it has a long tradition behind it. Some
+traditional religion is necessary and it would
+
+[151] be hopeless to supplant Christianity by reason. But his writings
+contain effective arguments which go to undermine Revelation. The most
+important was his Free Inquiry into Christian miracles (1748), which put
+in a new and dangerous light an old question: At what time did the
+Church cease to have the power of performing miracles? We shall see
+presently how Gibbon applied Middleton’s method.
+
+The leading adversaries of the deists appealed, like them, to reason,
+and, in appealing to reason, did much to undermine authority. The ablest
+defence of the faith, Bishop Butler’s Analogy (1736), is suspected of
+having raised more doubts than it appeased. This was the experience of
+William Pitt the Younger, and the Analogy made James Mill (the
+utilitarian) an unbeliever. The deists, argued that the unjust and cruel
+God of Revelation could not be the God of nature; Butler pointed to
+nature and said, There you behold cruelty and injustice. The argument
+was perfectly good against the optimism of Shaftesbury, but it plainly
+admitted of the conclusion—opposite to that which Butler wished to
+establish—that a just and beneficent God does not exist. Butler is
+driven to fall back on the sceptical argument that we are extremely
+ignorant; that all things
+
+[152] are possible, even eternal hell fire; and that therefore the safe
+and prudent course is to accept the Christian doctrine. It may be
+remarked that this reasoning, with a few modifications, could be used in
+favour of other religions, at Mecca or at Timbuctoo. He has, in effect,
+revived the argument used by Pascal that if there is one chance in any
+very large number that Christianity is true, it is a man’s interest to
+be a Christian; for, if it prove false, it will do him no harm to have
+believed it; if it prove true, he will be infinitely the gainer. Butler
+seeks indeed to show that the chances in favour amount to a probability,
+but his argument is essentially of the same intellectual and moral value
+as Pascal’s. It has been pointed out that it leads by an easy logical
+step from the Anglican to the Roman Church. Catholics and Protestants
+(as King Henry IV of France argued) agree that a Catholic may be saved;
+the Catholics assert that a Protestant will be damned; therefore the
+safe course is to embrace Catholicism. [3]
+
+I have dwelt at some length upon some of the English deists, because,
+while they occupy an important place in the history of
+
+[153] rationalism in England, they also supplied, along with Bayle, a
+great deal of the thought which, manipulated by brilliant writers on the
+other side of the Channel, captured the educated classes in France. We
+are now in the age of Voltaire. He was a convinced deist. He considered
+that the nature of the universe proved that it was made by a conscious
+architect, he held that God was required in the interests of conduct,
+and he ardently combated atheism. His great achievements were his
+efficacious labour in the cause of toleration, and his systematic
+warfare against superstitions. He was profoundly influenced by English
+thinkers, especially Locke and Bolingbroke. This statesman had concealed
+his infidelity during his lifetime except from his intimates; he had
+lived long as an exile in France; and his rationalistic essays were
+published (1754) after his death. Voltaire, whose literary genius
+converted the work of the English thinkers into a world-force, did not
+begin his campaign against Christianity till after the middle of the
+century, when superstitious practices and religious persecutions were
+becoming a scandal in his country. He assailed the Catholic Church in
+every field with ridicule and satire. In a little work called The Tomb
+of Fanaticism (written 1736,
+
+[154] published 1767), he begins by observing that a man who accepts his
+religion (as most people do) without examining it is like an ox which
+allows itself to be harnessed, and proceeds to review the difficulties
+in the Bible, the rise of Christianity, and the course of Church
+history; from which he concludes that every sensible man should hold the
+Christian sect in horror. “Men are blind to prefer an absurd and
+sanguinary creed, supported by executioners and surrounded by fiery
+faggots, a creed which can only be approved by those to whom it gives
+power and riches, a particular creed only accepted in a small part of
+the world—to a simple and universal religion.” In the Sermon of the
+Fifty and the Questions of Zapata we can see what he owed to Bayle and
+English critics, but his touch is lighter and his irony more telling.
+His comment on geographical mistakes in the Old Testament is: “God was
+evidently not strong in geography.” Having called attention to the
+“horrible crime” of Lot’s wife in looking backward, and her conversion
+into a pillar of salt, he hopes that the stories of Scripture will make
+us better, if they do not make us more enlightened. One of his favourite
+methods is to approach Christian doctrines as a person who had just
+heard of the existence of Christians or Jews for the first time in his
+life.
+
+[155]
+
+His drama, Saul (1763), which the police tried to suppress, presents the
+career of David, the man after God’s own heart, in all its naked horror.
+The scene in which Samuel reproves Saul for not having slain Agag will
+give an idea of the spirit of the piece. SAMUEL: God commands me to tell
+you that he repents of having made you king. SAUL: God repents! Only
+they who commit errors repent. His eternal wisdom cannot be unwise. God
+cannot commit errors. SAMUEL: He can repent of having set on the throne
+those who do. SAUL: Well, who does not? Tell me, what is my fault?
+SAMUEL: You have pardoned a king. AGAG: What! Is the fairest of virtues
+considered a crime in Judea? SAMUEL (to Agag): Silence! do not
+blaspheme. (To Saul). Saul, formerly king of the Jews, did not God
+command you by my mouth to destroy all the Amalekites, without sparing
+women, or maidens, or children at the breast? AGAG: Your god—gave such a
+command! You are mistaken, you meant to say, your devil. SAMUEL: Saul,
+did you obey God? SAUL: I did not suppose such a command
+
+[156] was positive. I thought that goodness was the first attribute of
+the Supreme Being, and that a compassionate heart could not displease
+him. SAMUEL: You are mistaken, unbeliever. God reproves you, your
+sceptre will pass into other hands.
+
+Perhaps no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom than
+Voltaire. He was looked on as a sort of anti-Christ. That was natural;
+his attacks were so tremendously effective at the time. But he has been
+sometimes decried on the ground that he only demolished and made no
+effort to build up where he had pulled down. This is a narrow complaint.
+It might be replied that when a sewer is spreading plague in a town, we
+cannot wait to remove it till we have a new system of drains, and it may
+fairly be said that religion as practised in contemporary France was a
+poisonous sewer. But the true answer is that knowledge, and therefore
+civilization, are advanced by criticism and negation, as well as by
+construction and positive discovery. When a man has the talent to attack
+with effect falsehood, prejudice, and imposture, it is his duty, if
+there are any social duties, to use it.
+
+For constructive thinking we must go to the other great leader of French
+thought,
+
+[157] Rousseau, who contributed to the growth of freedom in a different
+way. He was a deist, but his deism, unlike that of Voltaire, was
+religious and emotional. He regarded Christianity with a sort of
+reverent scepticism. But his thought was revolutionary and repugnant to
+orthodoxy; it made against authority in every sphere; and it had an
+enormous influence. The clergy perhaps dreaded his theories more than
+the scoffs and negations of Voltaire. For some years he was a fugitive
+on the face of the earth. Émile, his brilliant contribution to the
+theory of education, appeared in 1762. It contains some remarkable pages
+on religion, “the profession of faith of a Savoyard vicar,” in which the
+author’s deistic faith is strongly affirmed and revelation and theology
+rejected. The book was publicly burned in Paris and an order issued for
+Rousseau’s arrest. Forced by his friends to flee, he was debarred from
+returning to Geneva, for the government of that canton followed the
+example of Paris. He sought refuge in the canton of Bern and was ordered
+to quit. He then fled to the principality of Neufchâtel which belonged
+to Prussia. Frederick the Great, the one really tolerant ruler of the
+age, gave him protection, but he was persecuted and calumniated by the
+local clergy, who but for Frederick would
+
+[158] have expelled him, and he went to England for a few months (1766),
+then returning to France, where he was left unmolested till his death.
+The religious views of Rousseau are only a minor point in his heretical
+speculations. It was by his daring social and political theories that he
+set the world on fire. His Social Contract in which these theories were
+set forth was burned at Geneva. Though his principles will not stand
+criticism for a moment, and though his doctrine worked mischief by its
+extraordinary power of turning men into fanatics, yet it contributed to
+progress, by helping to discredit privilege and to establish the view
+that the object of a State is to secure the wellbeing of all its
+members.
+
+Deism—whether in the semi-Christian form of Rousseau or the anti-
+Christian form of Voltaire—was a house built on the sand, and thinkers
+arose in France, England, and Germany to shatter its foundations. In
+France, it proved to be only a half-way inn to atheism. In 1770, French
+readers were startled by the appearance of Baron D’Holbach’s System of
+Nature, in which God’s existence and the immortality of the soul were
+denied and the world declared to be matter spontaneously moving.
+
+Holbach was a friend of Diderot, who had also come to reject deism. All
+the leading
+
+[159] ideas in the revolt against the Church had a place in Diderot’s
+great work, the Encyclopedia, in which a number of leading thinkers
+collaborated with him. It was not merely a scientific book of reference.
+It was representative of the whole movement of the enemies of faith. It
+was intended to lead men from Christianity with its original sin to a
+new conception of the world as a place which can be made agreeable and
+in which the actual evils are due not to radical faults of human nature
+but to perverse institutions and perverse education. To divert interest
+from the dogmas of religion to the improvement of society, to persuade
+the world that man’s felicity depends not on Revelation but on social
+transformation—this was what Diderot and Rousseau in their different
+ways did so much to effect. And their work influenced those who did not
+abandon orthodoxy; it affected the spirit of the Church itself. Contrast
+the Catholic Church in France in the eighteenth and in the nineteenth
+century. Without the work of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and their
+fellow-combatants, would it have been reformed? “The Christian Churches”
+(I quote Lord Morley) “are assimilating as rapidly as their formulae
+will permit, the new light and the more generous moral ideas and the
+higher spirituality of
+
+[160] teachers who have abandoned all churches and who are
+systematically denounced as enemies of the souls of men.”
+
+In England the prevalent deistic thought did not lead to the same
+intellectual consequences as in France; yet Hume, the greatest English
+philosopher of the century, showed that the arguments commonly adduced
+for a personal God were untenable. I may first speak of his discussion
+on miracles in his Essay on Miracles and in his philosophical Inquiry
+concerning Human Understanding (1748). Hitherto the credibility of
+miracles had not been submitted to a general examination independent of
+theological assumptions. Hume, pointing out that there must be a uniform
+experience against every miraculous event (otherwise it would not merit
+the name of miracle), and that it will require stronger testimony to
+establish a miracle than an event which is not contrary to experience,
+lays down the general maxim that “no testimony is sufficient to
+establish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that its
+falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to
+establish.” But, as a matter of fact, no testimony exists of which the
+falsehood would be a prodigy. We cannot find in history any miracle
+attested by a sufficient number of men of such unquestionable good
+
+[161] sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all
+delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to place them
+beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit in
+the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their
+being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting facts
+performed in such a public manner as to render detection unavoidable
+—all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in
+the testimony of men.
+
+In the Dialogues on Natural Religion which were not published till after
+his death (1776), Hume made an attack on the “argument from design,” on
+which deists and Christians alike relied to prove the existence of a
+Deity. The argument is that the world presents clear marks of design,
+endless adaptation of means to ends, which can only be explained as due
+to the deliberate plan of a powerful intelligence. Hume disputes the
+inference on the ground that a mere intelligent being is not a
+sufficient cause to explain the effect. For the argument must be that
+the system of the material world demands as a cause a corresponding
+system of interconnected ideas; but such a mental system would demand an
+explanation of its existence just as much as the material world; and
+thus we find ourselves
+
+[162] committed to an endless series of causes. But in any case, even if
+the argument held, it would prove only the existence of a Deity whose
+powers, though superior to man’s, might be very limited and whose
+workmanship might be very imperfect. For this world may be very faulty,
+compared to a superior standard. It may be the first rude experiment “of
+some infant Deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame
+performance”; or the work of some inferior Deity at which his superior
+would scoff; or the production of some old superannuated Deity which
+since his death has pursued an adventurous career from the first impulse
+which he gave it. An argument which leaves such deities in the running
+is worse than useless for the purposes of Deism or of Christianity.
+
+The sceptical philosophy of Hume had less influence on the general
+public than Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of the
+numerous freethinking books that appeared in England in the eighteenth
+century, this is the only one which is still a widely read classic. In
+what a lady friend of Dr. Johnson called “the two offensive chapters”
+(XV and XVI) the causes of the rise and success of Christianity are for
+the first time critically investigated as a simple historical
+phenomenon. Like most freethinkers of the
+
+[163] time Gibbon thought it well to protect himself and his work
+against the possibility of prosecution by paying ironical lip-homage to
+the orthodox creed. But even if there had been no such danger, he could
+not have chosen a more incisive weapon for his merciless criticism of
+orthodox opinion than the irony which he wielded with superb ease.
+Having pointed out that the victory of Christianity is obviously and
+satisfactorily explained by the convincing evidence of the doctrine and
+by the ruling providence of its great Author, he proceeds “with becoming
+submission” to inquire into the secondary causes. He traces the history
+of the faith up to the time of Constantine in such a way as clearly to
+suggest that the hypothesis of divine interposition is superfluous and
+that we have to do with a purely human development. He marshals, with
+ironical protests, the obvious objections to the alleged evidence for
+supernatural control. He does not himself criticize Moses and the
+prophets, but he reproduces the objections which were made against their
+authority by “the vain science of the gnostics.” He notes that the
+doctrine of immortality is omitted in the law of Moses, but this
+doubtless was a mysterious dispensation of Providence. We cannot
+entirely remove “the imputation of ignorance and
+
+[164] obscurity which has been so arrogantly cast on the first
+proselytes of Christianity,” but we must “convert the occasion of
+scandal into a subject of edification” and remember that “the lower we
+depress the temporal condition of the first Christians, the more reason
+we shall find to admire their merit and success.”
+
+Gibbon’s treatment of miracles from the purely historical point of view
+(he owed a great deal to Middleton, see above, p. 150) was particularly
+disconcerting. In the early age of Christianity “the laws of nature were
+frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of
+Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the
+ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any
+alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the
+reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of
+the Roman Empire, was involved in a praeternatural darkness of three
+hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the
+wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without
+notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime
+of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate
+effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of
+these
+
+[165] philosophers in a laborious work has recorded all the great
+phenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which
+his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other
+have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye
+has been witness since the creation of the globe.” How “shall we excuse
+the supine inattention of the pagan and philosophic world to those
+evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their
+reason, but to their senses?”
+
+Again, if every believer is convinced of the reality of miracles, every
+reasonable man is convinced of their cessation. Yet every age bears
+testimony to miracles, and the testimony seems no less respectable than
+that of the preceding generation. When did they cease? How was it that
+the generation which saw the last genuine miracles performed could not
+distinguish them from the impostures which followed? Had men so soon
+forgotten “the style of the divine artist”? The inference is that
+genuine and spurious miracles are indistinguishable. But the credulity
+or “softness of temper” among early believers was beneficial to the
+cause of truth and religion. “In modern times, a latent and even
+involuntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their
+
+[166] admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent
+than a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe
+and to respect the invariable order of nature, our reason, or at least
+our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible
+action of the Deity.”
+
+Gibbon had not the advantage of the minute critical labours which in the
+following century were expended on his sources of information, but his
+masterly exposure of the conventional history of the early Church
+remains in many of its most important points perfectly valid to-day. I
+suspect that his artillery has produced more effect on intelligent minds
+in subsequent generations than the archery of Voltaire. For his book
+became indispensable as the great history of the Middle Ages; the most
+orthodox could not do without it; and the poison must have often worked.
+
+We have seen how theological controversy in the first half of the
+eighteenth century had turned on the question whether the revealed
+religion was consistent and compatible with natural religion. The
+deistic attacks, on this line, were almost exhausted by the middle of
+the century, and the orthodox thought that they had been satisfactorily
+answered. But it was not enough to show that the revelation
+
+[167] is reasonable; it was necessary to prove that it is real and rests
+on a solid historical basis. This was the question raised in an acute
+form by the criticisms of Hume and Middleton (1748) on miracles. The
+ablest answer was given by Paley in his Evidences of Christianity
+(1794), the only one of the apologies of that age which is still read,
+though it has ceased to have any value. Paley’s theology illustrates how
+orthodox opinions are coloured, unconsciously, by the spirit of the
+time. He proved (in his Natural Theology) the existence of God by the
+argument from design —without taking any account of the criticisms of
+Hume on that argument. Just as a watchmaker is inferred from a watch, so
+a divine workman is inferred from contrivances in nature. Paley takes
+his instances of such contrivance largely from the organs and
+constitution of the human body. His idea of God is that of an ingenious
+contriver dealing with rather obstinate material. Paley’s “God” (Mr.
+Leslie Stephen remarked) “has been civilized like man; he has become
+scientific and ingenious; he is superior to Watt or Priestley in
+devising mechanical and chemical contrivances, and is therefore made in
+the image of that generation of which Watt and Priestley were
+conspicuous lights.” When a God of this kind
+
+[168] is established there is no difficulty about miracles, and it is on
+miracles that Paley bases the case for Christianity—all other arguments
+are subsidiary. And his proof of the New Testament miracles is that the
+apostles who were eye-witnesses believed in them, for otherwise they
+would not have acted and suffered in the cause of their new religion.
+Paley’s defence is the performance of an able legal adviser to the
+Almighty.
+
+The list of the English deistic writers of the eighteenth century closes
+with one whose name is more familiar than any of his predecessors,
+Thomas Paine. A Norfolk man, he migrated to America and played a leading
+part in the Revolution. Then he returned to England and in 1791
+published his Rights of Man in two parts. I have been considering,
+almost exclusively, freedom of thought in religion, because it may be
+taken as the thermometer for freedom of thought in general. At this
+period it was as dangerous to publish revolutionary opinions in politics
+as in theology. Paine was an enthusiastic admirer of the American
+Constitution and a supporter of the French Revolution (in which also he
+was to play a part). His Rights of Man is an indictment of the
+monarchical form of government, and a plea for representative democracy.
+It had an enormous
+
+[169] sale, a cheap edition was issued, and the government, finding that
+it was accessible to the poorer classes, decided to prosecute. Paine
+escaped to France, and received a brilliant ovation at Calais, which
+returned him as deputy to the National Convention. His trial for high
+treason came on at the end of 1792. Among the passages in his book, on
+which the charge was founded, were these: “All hereditary government is
+in its nature tyranny.” “The time is not very distant when England will
+laugh at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick for
+men” [meaning King William III and King George I] “at the expense of a
+million a year who understood neither her laws, her language, nor her
+interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the
+office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such
+hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
+for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in England.”
+Erskine was Paine’s counsel, and he made a fine oration in defence of
+freedom of speech.
+
+“Constraint,” he said, “is the natural parent of resistance, and a
+pregnant proof that reason is not on the side of those who use it. You
+must all remember, gentlemen, Lucian’s pleasant story: Jupiter and a
+countryman
+
+[170] were walking together, conversing with great freedom and
+familiarity upon the subject of heaven and earth. The countryman
+listened with attention and acquiescence while Jupiter strove only to
+convince him; but happening to hint a doubt, Jupiter turned hastily
+around and threatened him with his thunder. ‘Ah, ha!’ says the
+countryman, ‘now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are always
+wrong when you appeal to your thunder.’ This is the case with me. I can
+reason with the people of England, but I cannot fight against the
+thunder of authority.”
+
+Paine was found guilty and outlawed. He soon committed a new offence by
+the publication of an anti-Christian work, The Age of Reason (1794 and
+1796), which he began to write in the Paris prison into which he had
+been thrown by Robespierre. This book is remarkable as the first
+important English publication in which the Christian scheme of salvation
+and the Bible are assailed in plain language without any disguise or
+reserve. In the second place it was written in such a way as to reach
+the masses. And, thirdly, while the criticisms on the Bible are in the
+same vein as those of the earlier deists, Paine is the first to present
+with force the incongruity of the Christian scheme with the conception
+of the universe attained by astronomical science.
+
+[171]
+
+“Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system that this
+world that we inhabit is the whole of the inhabitable globe, yet it is
+so worked up therewith—from what is called the Mosaic account of the
+creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that
+story, the death of the Son of God—that to believe otherwise (that is,
+to believe that God created a plurality of worlds at least as numerous
+as what we call stars) renders the Christian system of faith at once
+little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the
+air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he
+who thinks that he believes both has thought but little of either.”
+
+As an ardent deist, who regarded nature as God’s revelation, Paine was
+able to press this argument with particular force. Referring to some of
+the tales in the Old Testament, he says: “When we contemplate the
+immensity of that Being who directs and governs the incomprehensible
+Whole, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part,
+we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the Word of God.”
+
+The book drew a reply from Bishop Watson, one of those admirable
+eighteenth-century divines, who admitted the right of private judgment
+and thought that argument
+
+[172] should be met by argument and not by force. His reply had the
+rather significant title, An Apology for the Bible. George III remarked
+that he was not aware that any apology was needed for that book. It is a
+weak defence, but is remarkable for the concessions which it makes to
+several of Paine’s criticisms of Scripture—admissions which were
+calculated to damage the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible.
+
+It was doubtless in consequence of the enormous circulation of the Age
+of Reason that a Society for the Suppression of Vice decided to
+prosecute the publisher. Unbelief was common among the ruling class, but
+the view was firmly held that religion was necessary for the populace
+and that any attempt to disseminate unbelief among the lower classes
+must be suppressed. Religion was regarded as a valuable instrument to
+keep the poor in order. It is notable that of the earlier rationalists
+(apart from the case of Woolston) the only one who was punished was
+Peter Annet, a schoolmaster, who tried to popularize freethought and was
+sentenced for diffusing “diabolical” opinions to the pillory and hard
+labour (1763). Paine held that the people at large had the right of
+access to all new ideas, and he wrote so as to reach the people. Hence
+his book must be suppressed.
+
+[173] At the trial (1797) the judge placed every obstacle in the way of
+the defence. The publisher was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
+
+This was not the end of Paine prosecutions. In 1811 a Third Part of the
+Age of Reason appeared, and Eaton the publisher was condemned to
+eighteen months’ imprisonment and to stand in the pillory once a month.
+The judge, Lord Ellenborough, said in his charge, that “to deny the
+truths of the book which is the foundation of our faith has never been
+permitted.” The poet Shelley addressed to Lord Ellenborough a scathing
+letter. “Do you think to convert Mr. Eaton to your religion by
+embittering his existence? You might force him by torture to profess
+your tenets, but he could not believe them except you should make them
+credible, which perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please the
+God you worship by this exhibition of your zeal? If so, the demon to
+whom some nations offer human hecatombs is less barbarous than the deity
+of civilized society!” In 1819 Richard Carlisle was prosecuted for
+publishing the Age of Reason and sentenced to a large fine and three
+years’ imprisonment. Unable to pay the fine he was kept in prison for
+three years. His wife and sister, who carried on the business
+
+[174] and continued to sell the book, were fined and imprisoned soon
+afterwards and a whole host of shop assistants.
+
+If his publishers suffered in England, the author himself suffered in
+America where bigotry did all it could to make the last years of his
+life bitter.
+
+The age of enlightenment began in Germany in the middle of the
+eighteenth century. In most of the German States, thought was
+considerably less free than in England. Under Frederick the Great’s
+father, the philosopher Wolff was banished from Prussia for according to
+the moral teachings of the Chinese sage Confucius a praise which, it was
+thought, ought to be reserved for Christianity. He returned after the
+accession of Frederick, under whose tolerant rule Prussia was an asylum
+for those writers who suffered for their opinions in neighbouring
+States. Frederick, indeed, held the view which was held by so many
+English rationalists of the time, and is still held widely enough, that
+freethought is not desirable for the multitude, because they are
+incapable of understanding philosophy. Germany felt the influence of the
+English Deists, of the French freethinkers, and of Spinoza; but in the
+German rationalistic propaganda of this period there is nothing very
+original or interesting.
+
+[175] The names of Edelmann and Bahrdt may be mentioned. The works of
+Edelmann, who attacked the inspiration of the Bible, were burned in
+various cities, and he was forced to seek Frederick’s protection at
+Berlin. Bahrdt was more aggressive than any other writer of the time.
+Originally a preacher, it was by slow degrees that he moved away from
+the orthodox faith. His translation of the New Testament cut short his
+ecclesiastical career. His last years were spent as an inn-keeper. His
+writings, for instance his popular Letters on the Bible, must have had a
+considerable effect, if we may judge by the hatred which he excited
+among theologians.
+
+It was not, however, in direct rationalistic propaganda, but in
+literature and philosophy, that the German enlightenment of this century
+expressed itself. The most illustrious men of letters, Goethe (who was
+profoundly influenced by Spinoza) and Schiller, stood outside the
+Churches, and the effect of their writings and of the whole literary
+movement of the time made for the freest treatment of human experience.
+
+One German thinker shook the world—the philosopher Kant. His Critic of
+Pure Reason demonstrated that when we attempt to prove by the fight of
+the intellect the existence of
+
+[176] God and the immortality of the Soul, we fall helplessly into
+contradictions. His destructive criticism of the argument from design
+and all natural theology was more complete than that of Hume; and his
+philosophy, different though his system was, issued in the same
+practical result as that of Locke, to confine knowledge to experience.
+It is true that afterwards, in the interest of ethics, he tried to
+smuggle in by a back-door the Deity whom he had turned out by the front
+gate, but the attempt was not a success. His philosophy—while it led to
+new speculative systems in which the name of God was used to mean
+something very different from the Deistic conception—was a significant
+step further in the deliverance of reason from the yoke of authority.
+
+[1] For the sake of simplicity I use “deist” in this sense throughout,
+though “theist” is now the usual term.
+
+[2] Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise, which deals with the
+interpretation of Scripture, was translated into English in 1689.
+
+[3] See Benn, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, vol. i, p. 138
+seq., for a good exposure of the fallacies and sophistries of Butler.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE PROGRESS OF RATIONALISM
+
+(NINETEENTH CENTURY)
+
+MODERN science, heralded by the researches of Copernicus, was founded in
+the seventeenth century, which saw the demonstration of the Copernican
+theory, the discovery of gravitation, the discovery of the circulation
+of the blood, and the foundation
+
+[177] of modern chemistry and physics. The true nature of comets was
+ascertained, and they ceased to be regarded as signs of heavenly wrath.
+But several generations were to pass before science became, in
+Protestant countries, an involuntary arch-enemy of theology. Till the
+nineteenth century, it was only in minor points, such as the movement of
+the earth, that proved scientific facts seemed to conflict with
+Scripture, and it was easy enough to explain away these inconsistencies
+by a new interpretation of the sacred texts. Yet remarkable facts were
+accumulating which, though not explained by science, seemed to menace
+the credibility of Biblical history. If the story of Noah’s Ark and the
+Flood is true, how was it that beasts unable to swim or fly inhabit
+America and the islands of the Ocean? And what about the new species
+which were constantly being found in the New World and did not exist in
+the Old? Where did the kangaroos of Australia drop from? The only
+explanation compatible with received theology seemed to be the
+hypothesis of innumerable new acts of creation, later than the Flood. It
+was in the field of natural history that scientific men of the
+eighteenth century suffered most from the coercion of authority.
+Linnaeus felt it in Sweden, Buffon
+
+[178] in France. Buffon was compelled to retract hypotheses which he put
+forward about the formation of the earth in his Natural History (1749),
+and to state that he believed implicitly in the Bible account of
+Creation.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century Laplace worked out the
+mechanics of the universe, on the nebular hypothesis. His results
+dispensed, as he said to Napoleon, with the hypothesis of God, and were
+duly denounced. His theory involved a long physical process before the
+earth and solar system came to be formed; but this was not fatal, for a
+little ingenuity might preserve the credit of the first chapter of
+Genesis. Geology was to prove a more formidable enemy to the Biblical
+story of the Creation and the Deluge. The theory of a French naturalist
+(Cuvier) that the earth had repeatedly experienced catastrophes, each of
+which necessitated a new creative act, helped for a time to save the
+belief in divine intervention, and Lyell, in his Principles of Geology
+(1830), while he undermined the assumption of catastrophes, by showing
+that the earth’s history could be explained by the ordinary processes
+which we still see in operation, yet held fast to successive acts of
+creation. It was not till 1863 that he presented fully, in his Antiquity
+of Man, the
+
+[179] evidence which showed that the human race had inhabited the earth
+for a far longer period than could be reconciled with the record of
+Scripture. That record might be adapted to the results of science in
+regard not only to the earth itself but also to the plants and lower
+animals, by explaining the word “day” in the Jewish story of creation to
+signify some long period of time. But this way out was impossible in the
+case of the creation of man, for the sacred chronology is quite
+definite. An English divine of the seventeenth century ingeniously
+calculated that man was created by the Trinity on October 23, B.C. 4004,
+at 9 o’clock in the morning, and no reckoning of the Bible dates could
+put the event much further back. Other evidence reinforced the
+conclusions from geology, but geology alone was sufficient to damage
+irretrievably the historical truth of the Jewish legend of Creation. The
+only means of rescuing it was to suppose that God had created misleading
+evidence for the express purpose of deceiving man.
+
+Geology shook the infallibility of the Bible, but left the creation of
+some prehistoric Adam and Eve a still admissible hypothesis. Here
+however zoology stepped in, and pronounced upon the origin of man. It
+was an old conjecture that the higher forms of life, including
+
+[180] man, had developed out of lower forms, and advanced thinkers had
+been reaching the conclusion that the universe, as we find it, is the
+result of a continuous process, unbroken by supernatural interference,
+and explicable by uniform natural laws. But while the reign of law in
+the world of non-living matter seemed to be established, the world of
+life could be considered a field in which the theory of divine
+intervention is perfectly valid, so long as science failed to assign
+satisfactory causes for the origination of the various kinds of animals
+and plants. The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 is,
+therefore, a landmark not only in science but in the war between science
+and theology. When this book appeared, Bishop Wilberforce truly said
+that “the principle of natural selection is incompatible with the word
+of God,” and theologians in Germany and France as well as in England
+cried aloud against the threatened dethronement of the Deity. The
+appearance of the Descent of Man (1871), in which the evidence for the
+pedigree of the human race from lower animals was marshalled with
+masterly force, renewed the outcry. The Bible said that God created man
+in his own image, Darwin said that man descended from an ape. The
+feelings of the orthodox world may be
+
+[181] expressed in the words of Mr. Gladstone: “Upon the grounds of what
+is called evolution God is relieved of the labour of creation, and in
+the name of unchangeable laws is discharged from governing the world.”
+It was a discharge which, as Spencer observed, had begun with Newton’s
+discovery of gravitation. If Darwin did not, as is now recognized,
+supply a complete explanation of the origin of species, his researches
+shattered the supernatural theory and confirmed the view to which many
+able thinkers had been led that development is continuous in the living
+as in the non-living world. Another nail was driven into the coffin of
+Creation and the Fall of Adam, and the doctrine of redemption could only
+be rescued by making it independent of the Jewish fable on which it was
+founded.
+
+Darwinism, as it is called, has had the larger effect of discrediting
+the theory of the adaptation of means to ends in nature by an external
+and infinitely powerful intelligence. The inadequacy of the argument
+from design, as a proof of God’s existence, had been shown by the logic
+of Hume and Kant; but the observation of the life-processes of nature
+shows that the very analogy between nature and art, on which the
+argument depends, breaks down. The impropriety of the analogy has been
+
+[182] pointed out, in a telling way, by a German writer (Lange). If a
+man wants to shoot a hare which is in a certain field, he does not
+procure thousands of guns, surround the field, and cause them all to be
+fired off; or if he wants a house to live in, he does not build a whole
+town and abandon to weather and decay all the houses but one. If he did
+either of these things we should say he was mad or amazingly
+unintelligent; his actions certainly would not be held to indicate a
+powerful mind, expert in adapting means to ends. But these are the sort
+of things that nature does. Her wastefulness in the propagation of life
+is reckless. For the production of one life she sacrifices innumerable
+germs. The “end” is achieved in one case out of thousands; the rule is
+destruction and failure. If intelligence had anything to do with this
+bungling process, it would be an intelligence infinitely low. And the
+finished product, if regarded as a work of design, points to
+incompetence in the designer. Take the human eye. An illustrious man of
+science (Helmholtz) said, “If an optician sent it to me as an
+instrument, I should send it back with reproaches for the carelessness
+of his work and demand the return of my money. Darwin showed how the
+phenomena might be explained as events not brought about
+
+[183] intentionally, but due to exceptional concurrences of
+circumstances.
+
+The phenomena of nature are a system of things which co-exist and follow
+each other according to invariable laws. This deadly proposition was
+asserted early in the nineteenth century to be an axiom of science. It
+was formulated by Mill (in his System of Logic, 1843) as the foundation
+on which scientific induction rests. It means that at any moment the
+state of the whole universe is the effect of its state at the preceding
+moment; the casual sequence between two successive states is not broken
+by any arbitrary interference suppressing or altering the relation
+between cause and effect. Some ancient Greek philosophers were convinced
+of this principle; the work done by modern science in every field seems
+to be a verification of it. But it need not be stated in such an
+absolute form. Recently, scientific men have been inclined to express
+the axiom with more reserve and less dogmatically. They are prepared to
+recognize that it is simply a postulate without which the scientific
+comprehension of the universe would be impossible, and they are inclined
+to state it not as a law of causation—for the idea of causation leads
+into metaphysics—but rather as uniformity of experience. But they are
+not
+
+[184] readier to admit exceptions to this uniformity than their
+predecessors were to admit exceptions to the law of causation.
+
+The idea of development has been applied not only to nature, but to the
+mind of man and to the history of civilization, including thought and
+religion. The first who attempted to apply this idea methodically to the
+whole universe was not a student of natural science, but a
+metaphysician, Hegel. His extremely difficult philosophy had such a wide
+influence on thought that a few words must be said about its tendency.
+He conceived the whole of existence as what he called the Absolute Idea,
+which is not in space or time and is compelled by the laws of its being
+to manifest itself in the process of the world, first externalizing
+itself in nature, and then becoming conscious of itself as spirit in
+individual minds. His system is hence called Absolute Idealism. The
+attraction which it exercised has probably been in great measure due to
+the fact that it was in harmony with nineteenth-century thought, in so
+far as it conceived the process of the world, both in nature and spirit,
+as a necessary development from lower to higher stages. In this respect
+indeed Hegel’s vision was limited. He treats the process as if it were
+practically complete already, and does not take into account
+
+[185] the probability of further development in the future, to which
+other thinkers of his own time were turning their attention. But what
+concerns us here is that, while Hegel’s system is “idealistic,” finding
+the explanation of the universe in thought and not in matter, it tended
+as powerfully as any materialistic system to subvert orthodox beliefs.
+It is true that some have claimed it as supporting Christianity. A
+certain colour is lent to this by Hegel’s view that the Christian creed,
+as the highest religion, contains doctrines which express imperfectly
+some of the ideas of the highest philosophy—his own; along with the fact
+that he sometimes speaks of the Absolute Idea as if it were a person,
+though personality would be a limitation inconsistent with his
+conception of it. But it is sufficient to observe that, whatever value
+be assigned to Christianity, he regarded it from the superior standpoint
+of a purely intellectual philosophy, not as a special revelation of
+truth, but as a certain approximation to the truth which philosophy
+alone can reach; and it may be said with some confidence that any one
+who comes under Hegel’s spell feels that he is in possession of a theory
+of the universe which relieves him from the need or desire of any
+revealed religion. His influence in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere has
+entirely made for highly unorthodox thought.
+
+[186]
+
+Hegel was not aggressive, he was superior. His French contemporary,
+Comte, who also thought out a comprehensive system, aggressively and
+explicitly rejected theology as an obsolete way of explaining the
+universe. He rejected metaphysics likewise, and all that Hegel stood
+for, as equally useless, on the ground that metaphysicians explain
+nothing, but merely describe phenomena in abstract terms, and that
+questions about the origin of the world and why it exists are quite
+beyond the reach of reason. Both theology and metaphysics are superseded
+by science—the investigation of causes and effects and coexistences; and
+the future progress of society will be guided by the scientific view of
+the world which confines itself to the positive data of experience.
+Comte was convinced that religion is a social necessity, and, to supply
+the place of the theological religions which he pronounced to be doomed,
+he invented a new religion—the religion of Humanity. It differs from the
+great religions of the world in having no supernatural or non-rational
+articles of belief, and on that account he had few adherents. But the
+“Positive Philosophy” of Comte has exercised great influence, not least
+in England, where its principles have been promulgated especially by Mr.
+Frederic Harrison, who in the latter
+
+[187] half of the nineteenth century has been one of the most
+indefatigable workers in the cause of reason against authority.
+
+Another comprehensive system was worked out by an Englishman, Herbert
+Spencer. Like Comte’s, it was based on science, and attempts to show
+how, starting with a nebular universe, the whole knowable world,
+psychical and social as well as physical, can be deduced. His Synthetic
+Philosophy perhaps did more than anything else to make the idea of
+evolution familiar in England.
+
+I must mention one other modern explanation of the world, that of
+Haeckel, the zoologist, professor at Jena, who may be called the prophet
+of evolution. His Creation of Man (1868) covered the same ground as
+Darwin’s Descent, had an enormous circulation, and was translated, I
+believe, into fourteen languages. His World-riddles (1899) enjoys the
+same popularity. He has taught, like Spencer, that the principle of
+evolution applies not only to the history of nature, but also to human
+civilization and human thought. He differs from Spencer and Comte in not
+assuming any unknowable reality behind natural phenomena. His
+adversaries commonly stigmatize his theory as materialism, but this is a
+mistake. Like Spinoza he recognizes matter and mind, body and thought,
+as
+
+[188] two inseparable sides of ultimate reality, which he calls God; in
+fact, he identifies his philosophy with that of Spinoza. And he
+logically proceeds to conceive material atoms as thinking. His idea of
+the physical world is based on the old mechanical conception of matter,
+which in recent years has been discredited. But Haeckel’s Monism, [1] as
+he called his doctrine, has lately been reshaped and in its new form
+promises to exercise wide influence on thoughtful people in Germany. I
+will return later to this Monistic movement.
+
+It had been a fundamental principle of Comte that human actions and
+human history are as strictly subject as nature is, to the law of
+causation. Two psychological works appeared in England in 1855 (Bain’s
+Senses and Intellect and Spencer’s Principles of Psychology), which
+taught that our volitions are completely determined, being the
+inevitable consequences of chains of causes and effects. But a far
+deeper impression was produced two years later by the first volume of
+Buckle’s History of Civilization in England (a work of much less
+permanent value), which attempted to apply this principle to history.
+Men act in consequence of motives; their motives are the results of
+preceding facts; so that “if we were acquainted with the whole of the
+antecedents
+
+[189] and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring
+certainty predict the whole of their immediate results.” Thus history is
+an unbroken chain of causes and effects. Chance is excluded; it is a
+mere name for the defects of our knowledge. Mysterious and providential
+interference is excluded. Buckle maintained God’s existence, but
+eliminated him from history; and his book dealt a resounding blow at the
+theory that human actions are not submitted to the law of universal
+causation.
+
+The science of anthropology has in recent years aroused wide interest.
+Inquiries into the condition of early man have shown (independently of
+Darwinism) that there is nothing to be said for the view that he fell
+from a higher to a lower state; the evidence points to a slow rise from
+mere animality. The origin of religious beliefs has been investigated,
+with results disquieting for orthodoxy. The researches of students of
+anthropology and comparative religion—such as Tylor, Robertson Smith,
+and Frazer—have gone to show that mysterious ideas and dogma and rites
+which were held to be peculiar to the Christian revelation are derived
+from the crude ideas of primitive religions. That the mystery of the
+Eucharist comes from the common savage rite of eating a dead god,
+
+[190] that the death and resurrection of a god in human form, which form
+the central fact of Christianity, and the miraculous birth of a Saviour
+are features which it has in common with pagan religions—such
+conclusions are supremely unedifying. It may be said that in themselves
+they are not fatal to the claims of the current theology. It may be
+held, for instance, that, as part of Christian revelation, such ideas
+acquired a new significance and that God wisely availed himself of
+familiar beliefs—which, though false and leading to cruel practices, he
+himself had inspired and permitted—in order to construct a scheme of
+redemption which should appeal to the prejudices of man. Some minds may
+find satisfaction in this sort of explanation, but it may be suspected
+that most of the few who study modern researches into the origin of
+religious beliefs will feel the lines which were supposed to mark off
+the Christian from all other faiths dissolving before their eyes.
+
+The general result of the advance of science, including anthropology,
+has been to create a coherent view of the world, in which the Christian
+scheme, based on the notions of an unscientific age and on the arrogant
+assumption that the universe was made for man, has no suitable or
+reasonable place. If Paine felt this a hundred years ago, it is far
+
+[191] more apparent now. All minds however are not equally impressed
+with this incongruity. There are many who will admit the proofs
+furnished by science that the Biblical record as to the antiquity of man
+is false, but are not affected by the incongruity between the scientific
+and theological conceptions of the world.
+
+For such minds science has only succeeded in carrying some
+entrenchments, which may be abandoned without much harm. It has made the
+old orthodox view of the infallibility of the Bible untenable, and upset
+the doctrine of the Creation and Fall. But it would still be possible
+for Christianity to maintain the supernatural claim, by modifying its
+theory of the authority of the Bible and revising its theory of
+redemption, if the evidence of natural science were the only group of
+facts with which it collided. It might be argued that the law of
+universal causation is a hypothesis inferred from experience, but that
+experience includes the testimonies of history and must therefore take
+account of the clear evidence of miraculous occurrences in the New
+Testament (evidence which is valid, even if that book was not inspired).
+Thus, a stand could be taken against the generalization of science on
+the firm ground of historical fact. That solid ground, however, has
+given
+
+[192] way, undermined by historical criticism, which has been more
+deadly than the common-sense criticism of the eighteenth century.
+
+The methodical examination of the records contained in the Bible,
+dealing with them as if they were purely human documents, is the work of
+the nineteenth century. Something, indeed, had already been done.
+Spinoza, for instance (above, p. 138), and Simon, a Frenchman whose
+books were burnt, were pioneers; and the modern criticism of the Old
+Testament was begun by Astruc (professor of medicine at Paris), who
+discovered an important clue for distinguishing different documents used
+by the compiler of the Book of Genesis (1753). His German contemporary,
+Reimarus, a student of the New Testament, anticipated the modern
+conclusion that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion, and
+saw that the Gospel of St. John presents a different figure from the
+Jesus of the other evangelists.
+
+But in the nineteenth century the methods of criticism, applied by
+German scholars to Homer and to the records of early Roman history, were
+extended to the investigation of the Bible. The work has been done
+principally in Germany. The old tradition that the Pentateuch was
+written by Moses has been completely discredited. It is now
+
+[193] agreed unanimously by all who have studied the facts that the
+Pentateuch was put together from a number of different documents of
+different ages, the earliest dating from the ninth, the last from the
+fifth, century B.C.; and there are later minor additions. An important,
+though undesigned, contribution was made to this exposure by an
+Englishman, Colenso, Bishop of Natal. It had been held that the oldest
+of the documents which had been distinguished was a narrative which
+begins in Genesis, Chapter I, but there was the difficulty that this
+narrative seemed to be closely associated with the legislation of
+Leviticus which could be proved to belong to the fifth century. In 1862
+Colenso published the first part of his Pentateuch and the Book of
+Joshua Critically Examined. His doubts of the truth of Old Testament
+history had been awakened by a converted Zulu who asked the intelligent
+question whether he could really believe in the story of the Flood,
+“that all the beasts and birds and creeping things upon the earth, large
+and small, from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs and entered
+into the ark with Noah? And did Noah gather food for them all, for the
+beasts and birds of prey as well as the rest?” The Bishop then proceeded
+to test the accuracy of the inspired books by examining
+
+[194] the numerical statements which they contain. The results were
+fatal to them as historical records. Quite apart from miracles (the
+possibility of which he did not question), he showed that the whole
+story of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and the wilderness was
+full of absurdities and impossibilities. Colenso’s book raised a storm
+of indignation in England—he was known as “the wicked bishop”; but on
+the Continent its reception was very different. The portions of the
+Pentateuch and Joshua, which he proved to be unhistorical, belonged
+precisely to the narrative which had caused perplexity; and critics were
+led by his results to conclude that, like the Levitical laws with which
+it was connected, it was as late as the fifth century.
+
+One of the most striking results of the researches on the Old Testament
+has been that the Jews themselves handled their traditions freely. Each
+of the successive documents, which were afterwards woven together, was
+written by men who adopted a perfectly free attitude towards the older
+traditions, and having no suspicion that they were of divine origin did
+not bow down before their authority. It was reserved for the Christians
+to invest with infallible authority the whole indiscriminate lump of
+these Jewish documents, inconsistent not
+
+[195] only in their tendencies (since they reflect the spirit of
+different ages), but also in some respects in substance. The examination
+of most of the other Old Testament books has led to conclusions likewise
+adverse to the orthodox view of their origin and character. New
+knowledge on many points has been derived from the Babylonian literature
+which has been recovered during the last half century. One of the
+earliest (1872) and most sensational discoveries was that the Jews got
+their story of the Flood from Babylonian mythology.
+
+Modern criticism of the New Testament began with the stimulating works
+of Baur and of Strauss, whose Life of Jesus (1835), in which the
+supernatural was entirely rejected, had an immense success and caused
+furious controversy. Both these rationalists were influenced by Hegel.
+At the same time a classical scholar, Lachmann, laid the foundations of
+the criticism of the Greek text of the New Testament, by issuing the
+first scientific edition. Since then seventy years of work have led to
+some certain results which are generally accepted.
+
+In the first place, no intelligent person who has studied modern
+criticism holds the old view that each of the four biographies of Jesus
+is an independent work and an independent
+
+[196] testimony to the facts which are related. It is acknowledged that
+those portions which are common to more than one and are written in
+identical language have the same origin and represent only one
+testimony. In the second place, it is allowed that the first Gospel is
+not the oldest and that the apostle Matthew was not its author. There is
+also a pretty general agreement that Mark’s book is the oldest. The
+authorship of the fourth Gospel, which like the first was supposed to
+have been written by an eye-witness, is still contested, but even those
+who adhere to the tradition admit that it represents a theory about
+Jesus which is widely different from the view of the three other
+biographers.
+
+The result is that it can no longer be said that for the life of Jesus
+there is the evidence of eye-witnesses. The oldest account (Mark) was
+composed at the earliest some thirty years after the Crucifixion. If
+such evidence is considered good enough to establish the supernatural
+events described in that document, there are few alleged supernatural
+occurrences which we shall not be equally entitled to believe. As a
+matter of fact, an interval of thirty years makes little difference, for
+we know that legends require little time to grow. In the East, you will
+hear of miracles which happened the day before
+
+[197] yesterday. The birth of religions is always enveloped in legend,
+and the miraculous thing would be, as M. Salomon Reinach has observed,
+if the story of the birth of Christianity were pure history.
+
+Another disturbing result of unprejudiced examination of the first three
+Gospels is that, if you take the recorded words of Jesus to be genuine
+tradition, he had no idea of founding a new religion. And he was fully
+persuaded that the end of the world was at hand. At present, the chief
+problem of advanced criticism seems to be whether his entire teaching
+was not determined by this delusive conviction.
+
+It may be said that the advance of knowledge has thrown no light on one
+of the most important beliefs that we are asked to accept on authority,
+the doctrine of immortality. Physiology and psychology have indeed
+emphasized the difficulties of conceiving a thinking mind without a
+nervous system. Some are sanguine enough to think that, by scientific
+examination of psychical phenomena, we may possibly come to know whether
+the “spirits” of dead people exist. If the existence of such a world of
+spirits were ever established, it would possibly be the greatest blow
+ever sustained by Christianity. For the great appeal of this and of some
+other religions
+
+[198] lies in the promise of a future life of which otherwise we should
+have no knowledge. If existence after death were proved and became a
+scientific fact like the law of gravitation, a revealed religion might
+lose its power. For the whole point of a revealed religion is that it is
+not based on scientific facts. So far as I know, those who are
+convinced, by spiritualistic experiments, that they have actual converse
+with spirits of the dead, and for whom this converse, however delusive
+the evidence may be, is a fact proved by experience, cease to feel any
+interest in religion. They possess knowledge and can dispense with
+faith.
+
+The havoc which science and historical criticism have wrought among
+orthodox beliefs during the last hundred years was not tamely submitted
+to, and controversy was not the only weapon employed. Strauss was
+deprived of his professorship at Tübingen, and his career was ruined.
+Renan, whose sensational Life of Jesus also rejected the supernatural,
+lost his chair in the Collège de France. Büchner was driven from
+Tübingen (1855) for his book on Force and Matter, which, appealing to
+the general public, set forth the futility of supernatural explanations
+of the universe. An attempt was made to chase Haeckel from Jena. In
+recent years,
+
+[199] a French Catholic, the Abbé Loisy, has made notable contributions
+to the study of the New Testament and he was rewarded by major
+excommunication in 1907.
+
+Loisy is the most prominent figure in a growing movement within the
+Catholic Church known as Modernism—a movement which some think is the
+gravest crisis in the history of the Church since the thirteenth
+century. The Modernists do not form an organized party; they have no
+programme. They are devoted to the Church, to its traditions and
+associations, but they look on Christianity as a religion which has
+developed, and whose vitality depends upon its continuing to develop.
+They are bent on reinterpreting the dogmas in the light of modern
+science and criticism. The idea of development had already been applied
+by Cardinal Newman to Catholic theology. He taught that it was a
+natural, and therefore legitimate, development of the primitive creed.
+But he did not draw the conclusion which the Modernists draw that if
+Catholicism is not to lose its power of growth and die, it must
+assimilate some of the results of modern thought. This is what they are
+attempting to do for it.
+
+Pope Pius X has made every effort to suppress the Modernists. In 1907
+(July) he
+
+[200] issued a decree denouncing various results of modern Biblical
+criticism which are defended in Loisy’s works. The two fundamental
+propositions that “the organic constitution of the Church is not
+immutable, but that Christian society is subject, like every human
+society, to a perpetual evolution,” and that “the dogmas which the
+Church regards as revealed are not fallen from heaven but are an
+interpretation of religious facts at which the human mind laboriously
+arrived”—both of which might be deduced from Newman’s writings—are
+condemned. Three months later the Pope issued a long Encyclical letter,
+containing an elaborate study of Modernist opinions, and ordaining
+various measures for stamping out the evil. No Modernist would admit
+that this document represents his views fairly. Yet some of the remarks
+seem very much to the point. Take one of their books: “one page might be
+signed by a Catholic; turn over and you think you are reading the work
+of a rationalist. In writing history, they make no mention of Christ’s
+divinity; in the pulpit, they proclaim it loudly.”
+
+A plain man may be puzzled by these attempts to retain the letter of old
+dogmas emptied of their old meaning, and may think it natural enough
+that the head of the Catholic
+
+[201] Church should take a clear and definite stand against the new
+learning which, seems fatal to its fundamental doctrines. For many years
+past, liberal divines in the Protestant Churches have been doing what
+the Modernists are doing. The phrase “Divinity of Christ” is used, but
+is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous birth. The Resurrection
+is preached, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous bodily
+resurrection. The Bible is said to be an inspired book, but inspiration
+is used in a vague sense, much as when one says that Plato was inspired;
+and the vagueness of this new idea of inspiration is even put forward as
+a merit. Between the extreme views which discard the miraculous
+altogether, and the old orthodoxy, there are many gradations of belief.
+In the Church of England to-day it would be difficult to say what is the
+minimum belief required either from its members or from its clergy.
+Probably every leading ecclesiastic would give a different answer.
+
+The rise of rationalism within the English Church is interesting and
+illustrates the relations between Church and State.
+
+The pietistic movement known as Evangelicalism, which Wilberforce’s
+Practical View of Christianity (1797) did much to make popular,
+introduced the spirit of Methodism
+
+[202] within the Anglican Church, and soon put an end to the delightful
+type of eighteenth-century divine, who, as Gibbon says, “subscribed with
+a sigh or a smile” the articles of faith. The rigorous taboo of the
+Sabbath was revived, the theatre was denounced, the corruption of human
+nature became the dominant theme, and the Bible more a fetish than ever.
+The success of this religious “reaction,” as it is called, was aided,
+though not caused, by the common belief that the French Revolution had
+been mainly due to infidelity; the Revolution was taken for an object
+lesson showing the value of religion for keeping the people in order.
+There was also a religious “reaction” in France itself. But in both
+cases this means not that free thought was less prevalent, but that the
+beliefs of the majority were more aggressive and had powerful spokesmen,
+while the eighteenth-century form of rationalism fell out of fashion. A
+new form of rationalism, which sought to interpret orthodoxy in such a
+liberal way as to reconcile it with philosophy, was represented by
+Coleridge, who was influenced by German philosophers. Coleridge was a
+supporter of the Church, and he contributed to the foundation of a
+school of liberal theology which was to make itself felt after the
+middle of the century.
+
+[203] Newman, the most eminent of the new High Church party, said that
+he indulged in a liberty of speculation which no Christian could
+tolerate. The High Church movement which marked the second quarter of
+the century was as hostile as Evangelicalism to the freedom of religious
+thought.
+
+The change came after the middle of the century, when the effects of the
+philosophies of Hegel and Comte, and of foreign Biblical criticism,
+began to make themselves felt within the English Church. Two remarkable
+freethinking books appeared at this period which were widely read, F. W.
+Newman’s Phases of Faith and W. R. Greg’s Creed of Christendom (both in
+1850). Newman (brother of Cardinal Newman) entirely broke with
+Christianity, and in his book he describes the mental process by which
+he came to abandon the beliefs he had once held. Perhaps the most
+interesting point he makes is the deficiency of the New Testament
+teaching as a system of morals. Greg was a Unitarian. He rejected dogma
+and inspiration, but he regarded himself as a Christian. Sir J. F.
+Stephen wittily described his position as that of a disciple “who had
+heard the Sermon on the Mount, whose attention had not been called to
+the Miracles, and who died before the Resurrection.”
+
+[204]
+
+There were a few English clergymen (chiefly Oxford men) who were
+interested in German criticism and leaned to broad views, which to the
+Evangelicals and High Churchmen seemed indistinguishable from
+infidelity. We may call them the Broad Church—though the name did not
+come in till later. In 1855 Jowett (afterwards Master of Balliol)
+published an edition of some of St. Paul’s Epistles, in which he showed
+the cloven hoof. It contained an annihilating criticism of the doctrine
+of the Atonement, an explicit rejection of original sin, and a
+rationalistic discussion of the question of God’s existence. But this
+and some other unorthodox works of liberal theologians attracted little
+public attention, though their authors had to endure petty persecution.
+Five years later, Jowett and some other members of the small liberal
+group decided to defy the “abominable system of terrorism which prevents
+the statement of the plainest fact,” and issued a volume of Essays and
+Reviews (1860) by seven writers of whom six were clergymen. The views
+advocated in these essays seem mild enough to-day, and many of them
+would be accepted by most well-educated clergymen, but at the time they
+produced a very painful impression. The authors were called the “Seven
+against Christ.” It was
+
+[205] laid down that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book.
+“It is not a useful lesson for the young student to apply to Scripture
+principles which he would hesitate to apply to other books; to make
+formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not think of
+reconciling in ordinary history; to divide simple words into double
+meanings; to adopt the fancies or conjectures of Fathers and
+Commentators as real knowledge.” It is suggested that the Hebrew
+prophecies do not contain the element of prediction. Contradictory
+accounts, or accounts which can only be reconciled by conjecture, cannot
+possibly have been dictated by God. The discrepancies between the
+genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, or between the accounts of the
+Resurrection, can be attributed “neither to any defect in our capacities
+nor to any reasonable presumption of a hidden wise design, nor to any
+partial spiritual endowments in the narrators.” The orthodox arguments
+which lay stress on the assertion of witnesses as the supreme evidence
+of fact, in support of miraculous occurrences, are set aside on the
+ground that testimony is a blind guide and can avail nothing against
+reason and the strong grounds we have for believing in permanent order.
+It is argued that, under the Thirty-nine
+
+[206] Articles, it is permissible to accept as “parable or poetry or
+legend” such stories as that of an ass speaking with a man’s voice, of
+waters standing in a solid heap, of witches and a variety of
+apparitions, and to judge for ourselves of such questions as the
+personality of Satan or the primeval institution of the Sabbath. The
+whole spirit of this volume is perhaps expressed in the observation that
+if any one perceives “to how great an extent the origin itself of
+Christianity rests upon probable evidence, his principle will relieve
+him from many difficulties which might otherwise be very disturbing. For
+relations which may repose on doubtful grounds as matters of history,
+and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yet
+be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain”—that
+is, they may have a spiritual significance although they are
+historically false.
+
+The most daring Essay was the Rev. Baden Powell’s Study of the Evidences
+of Christianity. He was a believer in evolution, who accepted Darwinism,
+and considered miracles impossible. The volume was denounced by the
+Bishops, and in 1862 two of the contributors, who were beneficed
+clergymen and thus open to a legal attack, were prosecuted and tried in
+the Ecclesiastical Court. Condemned on
+
+[207] certain points, acquitted on others, they were sentenced to be
+suspended for a year, and they appealed to the Privy Council. Lord
+Westbury (Lord Chancellor) pronounced the judgment of the Judicial
+Committee of the Council, which reversed the decision of the
+Ecclesiastical Court. The Committee held, among other things, that it is
+not essential for a clergyman to believe in eternal punishment. This
+prompted the following epitaph on Lord Westbury: “Towards the close of
+his earthly career he dismissed Hell with costs and took away from
+Orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting
+damnation.”
+
+This was a great triumph for the Broad Church party, and it is an
+interesting event in the history of the English State-Church. Laymen
+decided (overruling the opinion of the Archbishops of Canterbury and
+York) what theological doctrines are and are not binding on a clergyman,
+and granted within the Church a liberty of opinion which the majority of
+the Church’s representatives regarded as pernicious. This liberty was
+formally established in 1865 by an Act of Parliament, which altered the
+form in which clergymen were required to subscribe the Thirty-nine
+Articles. The episode of Essays and Reviews is a landmark in the history
+of religious thought in England.
+
+[208]
+
+The liberal views of the Broad Churchmen and their attitude to the Bible
+gradually produced some effect upon those who differed most from them;
+and nowadays there is probably no one who would not admit, at least,
+that such a passage as Genesis, Chapter XIX, might have been composed
+without the direct inspiration of the Deity.
+
+During the next few years orthodox public opinion was shocked or
+disturbed by the appearance of several remarkable books which
+criticized, ignored, or defied authority—Lyell’s Antiquity of Man,
+Seeley’s Ecce Homo (which the pious Lord Shaftesbury said was “vomited
+from the jaws of hell”), Lecky’s History of Rationalism. And a new poet
+of liberty arose who did not fear to sound the loudest notes of defiance
+against all that authority held sacred. All the great poets of the
+nineteenth century were more or less unorthodox; Wordsworth in the years
+of his highest inspiration was a pantheist; and the greatest of all,
+Shelley, was a declared atheist. In fearless utterance, in unfaltering
+zeal against the tyranny of Gods and Governments, Swinburne was like
+Shelley. His drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865), even though a poet is
+strictly not answerable for what the persons in his drama say, yet with
+its denunciation of “the supreme evil, God,” heralded the coming
+
+[209] of a new champion who would defy the fortresses of authority. And
+in the following year his Poems and Ballads expressed the spirit of a
+pagan who flouted all the prejudices and sanctities of the Christian
+world.
+
+But the most intense and exciting period of literary warfare against
+orthodoxy in England began about 1869, and lasted for about a dozen
+years, during which enemies of dogma, of all complexions, were less
+reticent and more aggressive than at any other time in the century. Lord
+Morley has observed that “the force of speculative literature always
+hangs on practical opportuneness,” and this remark is illustrated by the
+rationalistic literature of the seventies. It was a time of hope and
+fear, of progress and danger. Secularists and rationalists were
+encouraged by the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland (1869), by
+the Act which allowed atheists to give evidence in a court of justice
+(1869), by the abolition of religious tests at all the universities (a
+measure frequently attempted in vain) in 1871. On the other hand, the
+Education Act of 1870, progressive though it was, disappointed the
+advocates of secular education, and was an unwelcome sign of the
+strength of ecclesiastical influence. Then there was the general alarm
+felt in Europe by all outside the Roman Church,
+
+[210] and by some within it, at the decree of the infallibility of the
+Pope (by the Vatican Council 1869–70), and an Englishman (Cardinal
+Manning) was one of the most active spirits in bringing about this
+decree. It would perhaps have caused less alarm if the Pope’s
+denunciation of modern errors had not been fresh in men’s memories. At
+the end of 1864 he startled the world by issuing a Syllabus “embracing
+the principal errors of our age.” Among these were the propositions,
+that every man is free to adopt and profess the religion he considers
+true, according to the light of reason; that the Church has no right to
+employ force; that metaphysics can and ought to be pursued without
+reference to divine and ecclesiastical authority; that Catholic states
+are right to allow foreign immigrants to exercise their own religion in
+public; that the Pope ought to make terms with progress, liberalism, and
+modern civilization. The document was taken as a declaration of war
+against enlightenment, and the Vatican Council as the first strategic
+move of the hosts of darkness. It seemed that the powers of obscurantism
+were lifting up their heads with a new menace, and there was an
+instinctive feeling that all the forces of reason should be brought into
+the field. The history of the last forty years shows that the theory of
+
+[211] Infallibility, since it has become a dogma, is not more harmful
+than it was before. But the efforts of the Catholic Church in the years
+following the Council to overthrow the French Republic and to rupture
+the new German Empire were sufficiently disquieting. Against this was to
+be set the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes and the
+complete freedom of Italy. This event was the sunrise of Swinburne’s
+Songs before Sunrise (which appeared in 1871), a seedplot of atheism and
+revolution, sown with implacable hatred of creeds and tyrants. The most
+wonderful poem in the volume, the Hymn of Man, was written while the
+Vatican Council was sitting. It is a song of triumph over the God of the
+priests, stricken by the doom of the Pope’s temporal power. The
+concluding verses will show the spirit.
+
+“By thy name that in hellfire was written, and burned at the point of
+thy sword, Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death is
+upon thee, O Lord. And the lovesong of earth as thou diest resounds
+through the wind of her wings— Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is
+the master of things.”
+
+[212]
+
+The fact that such a volume could appear with impunity vividly
+illustrates the English policy of enforcing the laws for blasphemy only
+in the case of publications addressed to the masses.
+
+Political circumstances thus invited and stimulated rationalists to come
+forward boldly, but we must not leave out of account the influence of
+the Broad Church movement and of Darwinism. The Descent of Man appeared
+precisely in 1871. A new, undogmatic Christianity was being preached in
+pulpits. Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked (1873) that “it may be said, with
+little exaggeration, that there is not only no article in the creeds
+which may not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is none
+which may not be contradicted in a sermon calculated to win the
+reputation of orthodoxy and be regarded as a judicious bid for a
+bishopric. The popular state of mind seems to be typified in the well-
+known anecdote of the cautious churchwarden, who, whilst commending the
+general tendency of his incumbent’s sermon, felt bound to hazard a
+protest upon one point. ‘You see, sir,’ as he apologetically explained,
+‘I think there be a God.’ He thought it an error of taste or perhaps of
+judgment, to hint a doubt as to the first article of the creed.”
+
+The influence exerted among the cultivated
+
+[213] classes by the aesthetic movement (Ruskin, Morris, the Pre-
+Raphaelite painters; then Pater’s Lectures on the Renaissance, 1873) was
+also a sign of the times. For the attitude of these critics, artists,
+and poets was essentially pagan. The saving truths of theology were for
+them as if they did not exist. The ideal of happiness was found in a
+region in which heaven was ignored.
+
+The time then seemed opportune for speaking out. Of the unorthodox books
+and essays, [2] which influenced the young and alarmed believers, in
+these exciting years, most were the works of men who may be most fairly
+described by the comprehensive term agnostics—a name which had been
+recently invented by Professor Huxley.
+
+The agnostic holds that there are limits to human reason, and that
+theology lies outside those limits. Within those limits lies the world
+with which science (including psychology) deals. Science deals entirely
+with phenomena, and has nothing to say to the nature of the ultimate
+reality which may lie behind phenomena. There are four possible
+
+[214] attitudes to this ultimate reality. There is the attitude of the
+metaphysician and theologian, who are convinced not only that it exists
+but that it can be at least partly known. There is the attitude of the
+man who denies that it exists; but he must be also a metaphysician, for
+its existence can only be disproved by metaphysical arguments. Then
+there are those who assert that it exists but deny that we can know
+anything about it. And finally there are those who say that we cannot
+know whether it exists or not. These last are “agnostics” in the strict
+sense of the term, men who profess not to know. The third class go
+beyond phenomena in so far as they assert that there is an ultimate
+though unknowable reality beneath phenomena. But agnostic is commonly
+used in a wide sense so as to include the third as well as the fourth
+class—those who assume an unknowable, as well as those who do not know
+whether there is an unknowable or not. Comte and Spencer, for instance,
+who believed in an unknowable, are counted as agnostics. The difference
+between an agnostic and an atheist is that the atheist positively denies
+the existence of a personal God, the agnostic does not believe in it.
+
+The writer of this period who held agnosticism
+
+[215] in its purest form, and who turned the dry light of reason on to
+theological opinions with the most merciless logic, was Mr. Leslie
+Stephen. His best-known essay, “An Agnostic’s Apology” (Fortnightly
+Review, 1876), raises the question, have the dogmas of orthodox
+theologians any meaning? Do they offer, for this is what we want, an
+intelligible reconciliation of the discords in the universe? It is shown
+in detail that the various theological explanations of the dealings of
+God with man, when logically pressed, issue in a confession of
+ignorance. And what is this but agnosticism? You may call your doubt a
+mystery, but mystery is only the theological phrase for agnosticism.
+“Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate
+problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in
+pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and
+ignorant? We are a company of ignorant beings, dimly discerning light
+enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt
+to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one
+of us ventures to declare that we don’t know the map of the Universe as
+well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled,
+
+[216] and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his
+faithlessness.” The characteristic of Leslie Stephen’s essays is that
+they are less directed to showing that orthodox theology is untrue as
+that there is no reality about it, and that its solutions of
+difficulties are sham solutions. If it solved any part of the mystery,
+it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. It
+is “a mere edifice of moonshine.” The writer makes no attempt to prove
+by logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason.
+He bases this conclusion on the fact that all philosophers hopelessly
+contradict one another; if the subject-matter of philosophy were, like
+physical science, within the reach of the intelligence, some agreement
+must have been reached.
+
+The Broad Church movement, the attempts to liberalize Christianity, to
+pour its old wine into new bottles, to make it unsectarian and
+undogmatic, to find compromises between theology and science, found no
+favour in Leslie Stephen’s eyes, and he criticized all this with a
+certain contempt. There was a controversy about the efficacy of prayer.
+Is it reasonable, for instance, to pray for rain? Here science and
+theology were at issue on a practical
+
+[217] point which comes within the domain of science. Some theologians
+adopted the compromise that to pray against an eclipse would be foolish,
+but to pray for rain might be sensible. “One phenomenon,” Stephen wrote,
+“is just as much the result of fixed causes as the other; but it is
+easier for the imagination to suppose the interference of a divine agent
+to be hidden away somewhere amidst the infinitely complex play of
+forces, which elude our calculations in meteorological phenomena, than
+to believe in it where the forces are simple enough to admit of
+prediction. The distinction is of course invalid in a scientific sense.
+Almighty power can interfere as easily with the events which are, as
+with those which are not, in the Nautical Almanac. One cannot suppose
+that God retreats as science advances, and that he spoke in thunder and
+lightning till Franklin unravelled the laws of their phenomena.”
+
+Again, when a controversy about hell engaged public attention, and some
+otherwise orthodox theologians bethought themselves that eternal
+punishment was a horrible doctrine and then found that the evidence for
+it was not quite conclusive and were bold enough to say so, Leslie
+Stephen stepped in to point out that, if so, historical
+
+[218] Christianity deserves all that its most virulent enemies have said
+about it in this respect. When the Christian creed really ruled men’s
+consciences, nobody could utter a word against the truth of the dogma of
+hell. If that dogma had not an intimate organic connection with the
+creed, if it had been a mere unimportant accident, it could not have
+been so vigorous and persistent wherever Christianity was strongest. The
+attempt to eliminate it or soften it down is a sign of decline. “Now, at
+last, your creed is decaying. People have discovered that you know
+nothing about it; that heaven and hell belong to dreamland; that the
+impertinent young curate who tells me that I shall be burnt
+everlastingly for not sharing his superstition is just as ignorant as I
+am myself, and that I know as much as my dog. And then you calmly say
+again, ‘It is all a mistake. Only believe in a something —and we will
+make it as easy for you as possible. Hell shall have no more than a fine
+equable temperature, really good for the constitution; there shall be
+nobody in it except Judas Iscariot and one or two others; and even the
+poor Devil shall have a chance if he will resolve to mend his ways.’ ”
+
+Mr. Matthew Arnold may, I suppose, be numbered among the agnostics, but
+he was
+
+[219] of a very different type. He introduced a new kind of criticism of
+the Bible—literary criticism. Deeply concerned for morality and
+religion, a supporter of the Established Church, he took the Bible under
+his special protection, and in three works, St. Paul and Protestantism,
+1870, Literature and Dogma, 1873, and God and the Bible, 1875, he
+endeavoured to rescue that book from its orthodox exponents, whom he
+regarded as the corrupters of Christianity. It would be just, he says,
+“but hardly perhaps Christian,” to fling back the word infidel at the
+orthodox theologians for their bad literary and scientific criticisms of
+the Bible and to speak of “the torrent of infidelity which pours every
+Sunday from our pulpits!” The corruption of Christianity has been due to
+theology “with its insane licence of affirmation about God, its insane
+licence of affirmation about immortality”; to the hypothesis of “a
+magnified and non-natural man at the head of mankind’s and the world’s
+affairs”; and the fancy account of God “made up by putting scattered
+expressions of the Bible together and taking them literally.” He
+chastises with urbane persiflage the knowledge which the orthodox think
+they possess about the proceedings and plans of God. “To think they know
+what passed in the Council of the
+
+[220] Trinity is not hard to them; they could easily think they even
+knew what were the hangings of the Trinity’s council-chamber.” Yet “the
+very expression, the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and character of
+Bible-religion; but, lest the Socinian should be unduly elated at
+hearing this, let us hasten to add that so too, and just as much, does
+the expression, a great Personal First Cause.” He uses God as the least
+inadequate name for that universal order which the intellect feels after
+as a law, and the heart feels after as a benefit; and defines it as “the
+stream of tendency by which all things strive to fulfil the law of their
+being.” He defined it further as a Power that makes for righteousness,
+and thus went considerably beyond the agnostic position. He was
+impatient of the minute criticism which analyzes the Biblical documents
+and discovers inconsistencies and absurdities, and he did not appreciate
+the importance of the comparative study of religions. But when we read
+of a dignitary in a recent Church congress laying down that the
+narratives in the books of Jonah and Daniel must be accepted because
+Jesus quoted them, we may wish that Arnold were here to reproach the
+orthodox for “want of intellectual seriousness.”
+
+These years also saw the appearance of
+
+[221] Mr. John Morley’s sympathetic studies of the French freethinkers
+of the eighteenth century, Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), and Diderot
+(1878). He edited the Fortnightly Review, and for some years this
+journal was distinguished by brilliant criticisms on the popular
+religion, contributed by able men writing from many points of view. A
+part of the book which he afterwards published under the title
+Compromise appeared in the Fortnightly in 1874. In Compromise, “the
+whole system of objective propositions which make up the popular belief
+of the day” is condemned as mischievous, and it is urged that those who
+disbelieve should speak out plainly. Speaking out is an intellectual
+duty. Englishmen have a strong sense of political responsibility, and a
+correspondingly weak sense of intellectual responsibility. Even minds
+that are not commonplace are affected for the worse by the political
+spirit which “is the great force in throwing love of truth and accurate
+reasoning into a secondary place.” And the principles which have
+prevailed in politics have been adopted by theology for her own use. In
+the one case, convenience first, truth second; in the other, emotional
+comfort first, truth second. If the immorality is less gross in the case
+of religion,
+
+[222] there is “the stain of intellectual improbity.” And this is a
+crime against society, for “they who tamper with veracity from whatever
+motive are tampering with the vital force of human progress.” The
+intellectual insincerity which is here blamed is just as prevalent to-
+day. The English have not changed their nature, the “political” spirit
+is still rampant, and we are ruled by the view that because compromise
+is necessary in politics it is also a good thing in the intellectual
+domain.
+
+The Fortnightly under Mr. Morley’s guidance was an effective organ of
+enlightenment. I have no space to touch on the works of other men of
+letters and of men of science in these combative years, but it is to be
+noted that, while denunciations of modern thought poured from the
+pulpits, a popular diffusion of freethought was carried on, especially
+by Mr. Bradlaugh in public lectures and in his paper, the National
+Reformer, not without collisions with the civil authorities.
+
+If we take the cases in which the civil authorities in England have
+intervened to repress the publication of unorthodox opinions during the
+last two centuries, we find that the object has always been to prevent
+the spread of freethought among the masses.
+
+[223] The victims have been either poor, uneducated people, or men who
+propagated freethought in a popular form. I touched upon this before in
+speaking of Paine, and it is borne out by the prosecutions of the
+nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The unconfessed motive has been fear
+of the people. Theology has been regarded as a good instrument for
+keeping the poor in order, and unbelief as a cause or accompaniment of
+dangerous political opinions. The idea has not altogether disappeared
+that free thought is peculiarly indecent in the poor, that it is highly
+desirable to keep them superstitious in order to keep them contented,
+that they should be duly thankful for all the theological as well as
+social arrangements which have been made for them by their betters. I
+may quote from an essay of Mr. Frederic Harrison an anecdote which
+admirably expresses the becoming attitude of the poor towards
+ecclesiastical institutions. “The master of a workhouse in Essex was
+once called in to act as chaplain to a dying pauper. The poor soul
+faintly murmured some hopes of heaven. But this the master abruptly cut
+short and warned him to turn his last thoughts towards hell. ‘And
+thankful you ought to be,’ said he, ‘that you have a hell to go to.’ ”
+
+[224]
+
+The most important English freethinkers who appealed to the masses were
+Holyoake, [3] the apostle of “secularism,” and Bradlaugh. The great
+achievement for which Bradlaugh will be best remembered was the securing
+of the right of unbelievers to sit in Parliament without taking an oath
+(1888). The chief work to which Holyoake (who in his early years was
+imprisoned for blasphemy) contributed was the abolition of taxes on the
+Press, which seriously hampered the popular diffusion of knowledge. [4]
+In England, censorship of the Press had long ago disappeared (above, p.
+139); in most other European countries it was abolished in the course of
+the nineteenth century. [5]
+
+In the progressive countries of Europe there has been a marked growth of
+tolerance (I do not mean legal toleration, but the tolerance
+
+[225] of public opinion) during the last thirty years. A generation ago
+Lord Morley wrote: “The preliminary stage has scarcely been reached—the
+stage in which public opinion grants to every one the unrestricted right
+of shaping his own beliefs, independently of those of the people who
+surround him.” I think this preliminary stage has now been passed. Take
+England. We are now far from the days when Dr. Arnold would have sent
+the elder Mill to Botany Bay for irreligious opinions. But we are also
+far from the days when Darwin’s Descent created an uproar. Darwin has
+been buried in Westminster Abbey. To-day books can appear denying the
+historical existence of Jesus without causing any commotion. It may be
+doubted whether what Lord Acton wrote in 1877 would be true now: “There
+are in our day many educated men who think it right to persecute.” In
+1895, Lecky was a candidate for the representation of Dublin University.
+His rationalistic opinions were indeed brought up against him, but he
+was successful, though the majority of the constituents were orthodox.
+In the seventies his candidature would have been hopeless. The old
+commonplace that a freethinker is sure to be immoral is no longer heard.
+We may say that we have now
+
+[226] reached a stage at which it is admitted by every one who counts
+(except at the Vatican), that there is nothing in earth or heaven which
+may not legitimately be treated without any of the assumptions which in
+old days authority used to impose.
+
+In this brief review of the triumphs of reason in the nineteenth
+century, we have been considering the discoveries of science and
+criticism which made the old orthodoxy logically untenable. But the
+advance in freedom of thought, the marked difference in the general
+attitude of men in all lands towards theological authority to-day from
+the attitude of a hundred years ago, cannot altogether be explained by
+the power of logic. It is not so much criticism of old ideas as the
+appearance of new ideas and interests that changes the views of men at
+large. It is not logical demonstrations but new social conceptions that
+bring about a general transformation of attitude towards ultimate
+problems. Now the idea of the progress of the human race must, I think,
+be held largely answerable for this change of attitude. It must, I
+think, be held to have operated powerfully as a solvent of theological
+beliefs. I have spoken of the teaching of Diderot and his friends that
+man’s energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant. A
+
+[227] new ideal was substituted for the old ideal based on theological
+propositions. It inspired the English Utilitarian philosophers (Bentham,
+James Mill, J. S. Mill, Grote) who preached the greatest happiness of
+the greatest number as the supreme object of action and the basis of
+morality. This ideal was powerfully reinforced by the doctrine of
+historical progress, which was started in France (1750) by Turgot, who
+made progress the organic principle of history. It was developed by
+Condorcet (1793), and put forward by Priestley in England. The idea was
+seized upon by the French socialistic philosophers, Saint-Simon and
+Fourier. The optimism of Fourier went so far as to anticipate the time
+when the sea would be turned by man’s ingenuity into lemonade, when
+there would be 37 million poets as great as Homer, 37 million writers as
+great as Molière, 37 million men of science equal to Newton. But it was
+Comte who gave the doctrine weight and power. His social philosophy and
+his religion of Humanity are based upon it. The triumphs of science
+endorsed it; it has been associated with, though it is not necessarily
+implied in, the scientific theory of evolution; and it is perhaps fair
+to say that it has been the guiding spiritual force of the nineteenth
+century. It has introduced
+
+[228] the new ethical principle of duty to posterity. We shall hardly be
+far wrong if we say that the new interest in the future and the progress
+of the race has done a great deal to undermine unconsciously the old
+interest in a life beyond the grave; and it has dissolved the blighting
+doctrine of the radical corruption of man.
+
+Nowhere has the theory of progress been more emphatically recognized
+than in the Monistic movement which has been exciting great interest in
+Germany (1910–12). This movement is based on the ideas of Haeckel, who
+is looked up to as the master; but those ideas have been considerably
+changed under the influence of Ostwald, the new leader. While Haeckel is
+a biologist, Ostwald’s brilliant work was done in chemistry and physics.
+The new Monism differs from the old, in the first place, in being much
+less dogmatic. It declares that all that is in our experience can be the
+object of a corresponding science. It is much more a method than a
+system, for its sole ultimate object is to comprehend all human
+experience in unified knowledge. Secondly, while it maintains, with
+Haeckel, evolution as the guiding principle in the history of living
+things, it rejects his pantheism and his theory of thinking atoms. The
+old mechanical theory of the
+
+[229] physical world has been gradually supplanted by the theory of
+energy, and Ostwald, who was one of the foremost exponents of energy,
+has made it a leading idea of Monism. What has been called matter is, so
+far as we know now, simply a complex of energies, and he has sought to
+extend the “energetic” principle from physical or chemical to
+biological, psychical, and social phenomena. But it is to be observed
+that no finality is claimed for the conception of energy; it is simply
+an hypothesis which corresponds to our present stage of knowledge, and
+may, as knowledge advances, be superseded.
+
+Monism resembles the positive philosophy and religion of Comte in so far
+as it means an outlook on life based entirely on science and excluding
+theology, mysticism, and metaphysics. It may be called a religion, if we
+adopt Mr. MacTaggart’s definition of religion as “an emotion resting on
+a conviction of the harmony between ourselves and the universe at
+large.” But it is much better not to use the word religion in connexion
+with it, and the Monists have no thought of finding a Monistic, as Comte
+founded a Positivist, church. They insist upon the sharp opposition
+between the outlook of science and the outlook of religion, and find the
+mark of spiritual progress in the fact that religion is
+
+[230] gradually becoming less indispensable. The further we go back in
+the past, the more valuable is religion as an element in civilization;
+as we advance, it retreats more and more into the background, to be
+replaced by science. Religions have been, in principle, pessimistic, so
+far as the present world is concerned; Monism is, in principle,
+optimistic, for it recognizes that the process of his evolution has
+overcome, in increasing measure, the bad element in man, and will go on
+overcoming it still more. Monism proclaims that development and progress
+are the practical principles of human conduct, while the Churches,
+especially the Catholic Church, have been steadily conservative, and
+though they have been unable to put a stop to progress have endeavoured
+to suppress its symptoms—to bottle up the steam. [6] The Monistic
+congress at Hamburg in 1911 had a success which surprised its promoters.
+The movement bids fair to be a powerful influence in diffusing
+rationalistic thought. [7]
+
+If we take the three large States of
+
+[231] Western Europe, in which the majority of Christians are Catholics,
+we see how the ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of
+ecclesiastical power go together. In Spain, where the Church has
+enormous power and wealth and can still dictate to the Court and the
+politicians, the idea of progress, which is vital in France and Italy,
+has not yet made its influence seriously felt. Liberal thought indeed is
+widely spread in the small educated class, but the great majority of the
+whole population are illiterate, and it is the interest of the Church to
+keep them so. The education of the people, as all enlightened Spaniards
+confess, is the pressing need of the country. How formidable are the
+obstacles which will have to be overcome before modern education is
+allowed to spread was shown four years ago by the tragedy of Francisco
+Ferrer, which reminded everybody that in one corner of Western Europe
+the mediaeval spirit is still vigorous. Ferrer had devoted himself to
+the founding of modern schools in the province of Catalonia (since
+1901). He was a rationalist, and his schools, which had a marked
+success, were entirely secular. The ecclesiastical authorities execrated
+him, and in the summer of 1909 chance gave them the means of destroying
+him. A strike of workmen at
+
+[232] Barcelona developed into a violent revolution, Ferrer happened to
+be in Barcelona for some days at the beginning of the movement, with
+which he had no connection whatever, and his enemies seized the
+opportunity to make him responsible for it. False evidence (including
+forged documents) was manufactured. Evidence which would have helped his
+case was suppressed. The Catholic papers agitated against him, and the
+leading ecclesiastics of Barcelona urged the Government not to spare the
+man who founded the modern schools, the root of all the trouble. Ferrer
+was condemned by a military tribunal and shot (Oct. 13). He suffered in
+the cause of reason and freedom of thought, though, as there is no
+longer an Inquisition, his enemies had to kill him under the false
+charge of anarchy and treason. It is possible that the indignation which
+was felt in Europe and was most loudly expressed in France may prevent
+the repetition of such extreme measures, but almost anything may happen
+in a country where the Church is so powerful and so bigoted, and the
+politicians so corrupt.
+
+[1] From Greek monos, alone.
+
+[2] Besides the works referred to in the text, may be mentioned: Winwood
+Reade, Martyrdom of Man, 1871; Mill, Three Essays on Religion; W. R.
+Cassels, Supernatural Religion; Tyndall, Address to British Association
+at Belfast; Huxley, Animal Automatism; W. K. Clifford, Body and Mind;
+all in 1874.
+
+[3] It may be noted that Holyoake towards the end of his life helped to
+found the Rationalist Press Association, of which Mr. Edward Clodd has
+been for many years Chairman. This is the chief society in England for
+propagating rationalism, and its main object is to diffuse in a cheap
+form the works of freethinkers of mark (cp. Bibliography). I understand
+that more than two million copies of its cheap reprints have been sold.
+
+[4] The advertisement tax was abolished in 1853, the stamp tax in 1855,
+the paper duty in 1861, and the optional duty in 1870.
+
+[5] In Austria-Hungary the police have the power to suppress printed
+matter provisionally. In Russia the Press was declared free in 1905 by
+an Imperial decree, which, however, has become a dead letter. The
+newspapers are completely under the control of the police.
+
+[6] I have taken these points, illustrating the Monistic attitude to the
+Churches, from Ostwald’s Monistic Sunday Sermons (German), 1911, 1912.
+
+[7] I may note here that, as this is not a history of thought, I make no
+reference to recent philosophical speculations (in America, England, and
+France) which are sometimes claimed as tending to bolster up theology.
+But they are all profoundly unorthodox.
+
+
+
+[233]
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE JUSTIFICATION OF LIBERTY OF THOUGHT
+
+MOST men who have been brought up in the free atmosphere of a modern
+State sympathize with liberty in its long struggle with authority and
+may find it difficult to see that anything can be said for the
+tyrannical, and as they think extraordinarily perverse, policy by which
+communities and governments persistently sought to stifle new ideas and
+suppress free speculation. The conflict sketched in these pages appears
+as a war between light and darkness. We exclaim that altar and throne
+formed a sinister conspiracy against the progress of humanity. We look
+back with horror at the things which so many champions of reason endured
+at the hands of blind, if not malignant, bearers of authority.
+
+But a more or less plausible case can be made out for coercion. Let us
+take the most limited view of the lawful powers of society over its
+individual members. Let us lay down, with Mill, that “the sole end for
+which mankind are warranted, individually and collectively, in
+interfering with the liberty of action of any of their members is self-
+protection,” and that coercion is only justified
+
+[234] for the prevention of harm to others. This is the minimum claim
+the State can make, and it will be admitted that it is not only the
+right but the duty of the State to prevent harm to its members. That is
+what it is for. Now no abstract or independent principle is
+discoverable, why liberty of speech should be a privileged form of
+liberty of action, or why society should lay down its arms of defence
+and fold its hands, when it is persuaded that harm is threatened to it
+through the speech of any of its members. The Government has to judge of
+the danger, and its judgment may be wrong; but if it is convinced that
+harm is being done, is it not its plain duty to interfere?
+
+This argument supplies an apology for the suppression of free opinion by
+Governments in ancient and modern times. It can be urged for the
+Inquisition, for Censorship of the Press, for Blasphemy laws, for all
+coercive measures of the kind, that, if excessive or ill-judged, they
+were intended to protect society against what their authors sincerely
+believed to be grave injury, and were simple acts of duty. (This
+apology, of course, does not extend to acts done for the sake of the
+alleged good of the victims themselves, namely, to secure their future
+salvation.)
+
+Nowadays we condemn all such measures
+
+[235] and disallow the right of the State to interfere with the free
+expression of opinion. So deeply is the doctrine of liberty seated in
+our minds that we find it difficult to make allowances for the coercive
+practices of our misguided ancestors. How is this doctrine justified? It
+rests on no abstract basis, on no principle independent of society
+itself, but entirely on considerations of utility.
+
+We saw how Socrates indicated the social value of freedom of discussion.
+We saw how Milton observed that such freedom was necessary for the
+advance of knowledge. But in the period during which the cause of
+toleration was fought for and practically won, the argument more
+generally used was the injustice of punishing a man for opinions which
+he honestly held and could not help holding, since conviction is not a
+matter of will; in other words, the argument that error is not a crime
+and that it is therefore unjust to punish it. This argument, however,
+does not prove the case for freedom of discussion. The advocate of
+coercion may reply: We admit that it is unjust to punish a man for
+private erroneous beliefs; but it is not unjust to forbid the
+propagation of such beliefs if we are convinced that they are harmful;
+it is not unjust to punish him, not for holding them, but for publishing
+them. The truth
+
+[236] is that, in examining principles, the word just is misleading. All
+the virtues are based on experience, physiological or social, and
+justice is no exception. Just designates a class of rules or principles
+of which the social utility has been found by experience to be paramount
+and which are recognized to be so important as to override all
+considerations of immediate expediency. And social utility is the only
+test. It is futile, therefore, to say to a Government that it acts
+unjustly in coercing opinion, unless it is shown that freedom of opinion
+is a principle of such overmastering social utility as to render other
+considerations negligible. Socrates had a true instinct in taking the
+line that freedom is valuable to society.
+
+The reasoned justification of liberty of thought is due to J. S. Mill,
+who set it forth in his work On Liberty, published in 1859. This book
+treats of liberty in general, and attempts to fix the frontier of the
+region in which individual freedom should be considered absolute and
+unassailable. The second chapter considers liberty of thought and
+discussion, and if many may think that Mill unduly minimized the
+functions of society, underrating its claims as against the individual,
+few will deny the justice of the chief arguments or question the general
+soundness of his conclusions.
+
+[237]
+
+Pointing out that no fixed standard was recognized for testing the
+propriety of the interference on the part of the community with its
+individual members, he finds the test in self-protection, that is, the
+prevention of harm to others. He bases the proposition not on abstract
+rights, but on “utility, in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent
+interests of man as a progressive being.” He then uses the following
+argument to show that to silence opinion and discussion is always
+contrary to those permanent interests. Those who would suppress an
+opinion (it is assumed that they are honest) deny its truth, but they
+are not infallible. They may be wrong, or right, or partly wrong and
+partly right. (1) If they are wrong and the opinion they would crush is
+true, they have robbed, or done their utmost to rob, mankind of a truth.
+They will say: But we were justified, for we exercised our judgment to
+the best of our ability, and are we to be told that because our judgment
+is fallible we are not to use it? We forbade the propagation of an
+opinion which we were sure was false and pernicious; this implies no
+greater claim to infallibility than any act done by public authority. If
+we are to act at all, we must assume our own opinion to be true. To this
+Mill acutely replies: “There is the greatest difference
+
+[238] between assuming an opinion to be true, because with every
+opportunity for contesting it it has not been refuted, and assuming its
+truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty
+of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which
+justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action, and on no
+other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance
+of being right.”
+
+(2) If the received opinion which it is sought to protect against the
+intrusion of error is true, the suppression of discussion is still
+contrary to general utility. A received opinion may happen to be true
+(it is very seldom entirely true); but a rational certainty that it is
+so can only be secured by the fact that it has been fully canvassed but
+has not been shaken.
+
+Commoner and more important is (3) the case where the conflicting
+doctrines share the truth between them. Here Mill has little difficulty
+in proving the utility of supplementing one-sided popular truths by
+other truths which popular opinion omits to consider. And he observes
+that if either of the opinions which share the truth has a claim not
+merely to be tolerated but to be encouraged, it is the one which happens
+to be held by the minority, since this is the one “which
+
+[239] for the time being represents the neglected interests.” He takes
+the doctrines of Rousseau, which might conceivably have been suppressed
+as pernicious. To the self-complacent eighteenth century those doctrines
+came as “a salutary shock, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided
+opinion.” The current opinions were indeed nearer to the truth than
+Rousseau’s, they contained much less of error; “nevertheless there lay
+in Rousseau’s doctrine, and has floated down the stream of opinion along
+with it, a considerable amount of exactly those truths which the popular
+opinion wanted; and these are the deposit which we left behind when the
+flood subsided.”
+
+Such is the drift of Mill’s main argument. The present writer would
+prefer to state the justification of freedom of opinion in a somewhat
+different form, though in accordance with Mill’s reasoning. The progress
+of civilization, if it is partly conditioned by circumstances beyond
+man’s control, depends more, and in an increasing measure, on things
+which are within his own power. Prominent among these are the
+advancement of knowledge and the deliberate adaptation of his habits and
+institutions to new conditions. To advance knowledge and to correct
+errors, unrestricted freedom of discussion is required.
+
+[240] History shows that knowledge grew when speculation was perfectly
+free in Greece, and that in modern times, since restrictions on inquiry
+have been entirely removed, it has advanced with a velocity which would
+seem diabolical to the slaves of the mediaeval Church. Then, it is
+obvious that in order to readjust social customs, institutions, and
+methods to new needs and circumstances, there must be unlimited freedom
+of canvassing and criticizing them, of expressing the most unpopular
+opinions, no matter how offensive to prevailing sentiment they may be.
+If the history of civilization has any lesson to teach it is this: there
+is one supreme condition of mental and moral progress which it is
+completely within the power of man himself to secure, and that is
+perfect liberty of thought and discussion. The establishment of this
+liberty may be considered the most valuable achievement of modern
+civilization, and as a condition of social progress it should be deemed
+fundamental. The considerations of permanent utility on which it rests
+must outweigh any calculations of present advantage which from time to
+time might be thought to demand its violation.
+
+It is evident that this whole argument depends on the assumption that
+the progress of the race, its intellectual and moral development,
+
+[241] is a reality and is valuable. The argument will not appeal to any
+one who holds with Cardinal Newman that “our race’s progress and
+perfectibility is a dream, because revelation contradicts it”; and he
+may consistently subscribe to the same writer’s conviction that “it
+would be a gain to this country were it vastly more superstitious, more
+bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it
+shows itself to be.”
+
+While Mill was writing his brilliant Essay, which every one should read,
+the English Government of the day (1858) instituted prosecutions for the
+circulation of the doctrine that it is lawful to put tyrants to death,
+on the ground that the doctrine is immoral. Fortunately the prosecutions
+were not persisted in. Mill refers to the matter, and maintains that
+such a doctrine as tyrannicide (and, let us add, anarchy) does not form
+any exception to the rule that “there ought to exist the fullest liberty
+of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any
+doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”
+
+Exceptions, cases where the interference of the authorities is proper,
+are only apparent, for they really come under another rule. For
+instance, if there is a direct instigation
+
+[242] to particular acts of violence, there may be a legitimate case for
+interference. But the incitement must be deliberate and direct. If I
+write a book condemning existing societies and defending a theory of
+anarchy, and a man who reads it presently commits an outrage, it may
+clearly be established that my book made the man an anarchist and
+induced him to commit the crime, but it would be illegitimate to punish
+me or suppress the book unless it contained a direct incitement to the
+specific crime which he committed.
+
+It is conceivable that difficult cases might arise where a government
+might be strongly tempted, and might be urged by public clamour, to
+violate the principle of liberty. Let us suppose a case, very
+improbable, but which will make the issue clear and definite. Imagine
+that a man of highly magnetic personality, endowed with a wonderful
+power of infecting others with his own ideas however irrational, in
+short a typical religious leader, is convinced that the world will come
+to an end in the course of a few months. He goes about the country
+preaching and distributing pamphlets; his words have an electrical
+effect; and the masses of the uneducated and half-educated are persuaded
+that they have indeed only a few weeks to prepare for the day of
+Judgment. Multitudes leave their
+
+[243] occupations, abandon their work, in order to spend the short time
+that remains in prayer and listening to the exhortations of the prophet.
+The country is paralyzed by the gigantic strike; traffic and industries
+come to a standstill. The people have a perfect legal right to give up
+their work, and the prophet has a perfect legal right to propagate his
+opinion that the end of the world is at hand —an opinion which Jesus
+Christ and his followers in their day held quite as erroneously. It
+would be said that desperate ills have desperate remedies, and there
+would be a strong temptation to suppress the fanatic. But to arrest a
+man who is not breaking the law or exhorting any one to break it, or
+causing a breach of the peace, would be an act of glaring tyranny. Many
+will hold that the evil of setting back the clock of liberty would out-
+balance all the temporary evils, great as they might be, caused by the
+propagation of a delusion. It would be absurd to deny that liberty of
+speech may sometimes cause particular harm. Every good thing sometimes
+does harm. Government, for instance, which makes fatal mistakes; law,
+which so often bears hardly and inequitably in individual cases. And can
+the Christians urge any other plea for their religion when they are
+unpleasantly reminded that it has caused untold
+
+[244] suffering by its principle of exclusive salvation?
+
+Once the principle of liberty of thought is accepted as a supreme
+condition of social progress, it passes from the sphere of ordinary
+expediency into the sphere of higher expediency which we call justice.
+In other words it becomes a right on which every man should be able to
+count. The fact that this right is ultimately based on utility does not
+justify a government in curtailing it, on the ground of utility, in
+particular cases.
+
+The recent rather alarming inflictions of penalties for blasphemy in
+England illustrate this point. It was commonly supposed that the
+Blasphemy laws (see above, p. 139), though unrepealed, were a dead
+letter. But since December, 1911, half a dozen persons have been
+imprisoned for this offence. In these cases Christian doctrines were
+attacked by poor and more or less uneducated persons in language which
+may be described as coarse and offensive. Some of the judges seem to
+have taken the line that it is not blasphemy to attack the fundamental
+doctrines provided “the decencies of controversy” are preserved, but
+that “indecent” attacks constitute blasphemy. This implies a new
+definition of legal blasphemy, and is entirely contrary to the intention
+of the laws. Sir
+
+[245] J. F. Stephen pointed out that the decisions of judges from the
+time of Lord Hale (XVIIth century) to the trial of Foote (1883) laid
+down the same doctrine and based it on the same principle: the doctrine
+being that it is a crime either to deny the truth of the fundamental
+doctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up to contempt or
+ridicule; and the principle being that Christianity is a part of the law
+of the land.
+
+The apology offered for such prosecutions is that their object is to
+protect religious sentiment from insult and ridicule. Sir J. F. Stephen
+observed: “If the law were really impartial and punished blasphemy only,
+because it offends the feelings of believers, it ought also to punish
+such preaching as offends the feelings of unbelievers. All the more
+earnest and enthusiastic forms of religion are extremely offensive to
+those who do not believe them.” If the law does not in any sense
+recognize the truth of Christian doctrine, it would have to apply the
+same rule to the Salvation Army. In fact the law “can be explained and
+justified only on what I regard as its true principle—the principle of
+persecution.” The opponents of Christianity may justly say: If
+Christianity is false, why is it to be attacked only in polite language?
+Its goodness depends on its truth. If you
+
+[246] grant its falsehood, you cannot maintain that it deserves special
+protection. But the law imposes no restraint on the Christian, however
+offensive his teaching may be to those who do not agree with him;
+therefore it is not based on an impartial desire to prevent the use of
+language which causes offence; therefore it is based on the hypothesis
+that Christianity is true; and therefore its principle is persecution.
+
+Of course, the present administration of the common law in regard to
+blasphemy does not endanger the liberty of those unbelievers who have
+the capacity for contributing to progress. But it violates the supreme
+principle of liberty of opinion and discussion. It hinders uneducated
+people from saying in the only ways in which they know how to say it,
+what those who have been brought up differently say, with impunity, far
+more effectively and far more insidiously. Some of the men who have been
+imprisoned during the last two years, only uttered in language of
+deplorable taste views that are expressed more or less politely in books
+which are in the library of a bishop unless he is a very ignorant
+person, and against which the law, if it has any validity, ought to have
+been enforced. Thus the law, as now administered, simply penalizes bad
+taste and places disabilities
+
+[247] upon uneducated freethinkers. If their words offend their audience
+so far as to cause a disturbance, they should be prosecuted for a breach
+of public order, [1] not because their words are blasphemous. A man who
+robs or injures a church, or even an episcopal palace, is not prosecuted
+for sacrilege, but for larceny or malicious damage or something of the
+kind.
+
+The abolition of penalties for blasphemy was proposed in the House of
+Commons (by Bradlaugh) in 1889 and rejected. The reform is urgently
+needed. It would “prevent the recurrence at irregular intervals of
+scandalous prosecutions which have never in any one instance benefited
+any one, least of all the cause which they were intended to serve, and
+which sometimes afford a channel for the gratification of private malice
+under the cloak of religion.” [2]
+
+The struggle of reason against authority has ended in what appears now
+to be a decisive and permanent victory for liberty. In the most
+civilized and progressive countries, freedom of discussion is recognized
+as a
+
+[248] fundamental principle. In fact, we may say it is accepted as a
+test of enlightenment, and the man in the street is forward in
+acknowledging that countries like Russia and Spain, where opinion is
+more or less fettered, must on that account be considered less civilized
+than their neighbours. All intellectual people who count take it for
+granted that there is no subject in heaven or earth which ought not to
+be investigated without any deference or reference to theological
+assumptions. No man of science has any fear of publishing his
+researches, whatever consequences they may involve for current beliefs.
+Criticism of religious doctrines and of political and social
+institutions is free. Hopeful people may feel confident that the victory
+is permanent; that intellectual freedom is now assured to mankind as a
+possession for ever; that the future will see the collapse of those
+forces which still work against it and its gradual diffusion in the more
+backward parts of the earth. Yet history may suggest that this prospect
+is not assured. Can we be certain that there may not come a great set-
+back? For freedom of discussion and speculation was, as we saw, fully
+realized in the Greek and Roman world, and then an unforeseen force, in
+the shape of Christianity, came in and laid chains upon the human mind
+and
+
+[249] suppressed freedom and imposed upon man a weary struggle to
+recover the freedom which he had lost. Is it not conceivable that
+something of the same kind may occur again? that some new force,
+emerging from the unknown, may surprise the world and cause a similar
+set-back?
+
+The possibility cannot be denied, but there are some considerations
+which render it improbable (apart from a catastrophe sweeping away
+European culture). There are certain radical differences between the
+intellectual situation now and in antiquity. The facts known to the
+Greeks about the nature of the physical universe were few. Much that was
+taught was not proved. Compare what they knew and what we know about
+astronomy and geography—to take the two branches in which (besides
+mathematics) they made most progress. When there were so few
+demonstrated facts to work upon, there was the widest room for
+speculation. Now to suppress a number of rival theories in favour of one
+is a very different thing from suppressing whole systems of established
+facts. If one school of astronomers holds that the earth goes round the
+sun, another that the sun goes round the earth, but neither is able to
+demonstrate its proposition, it is easy for an authority, which has
+coercive power,
+
+[250] to suppress one of them successfully. But once it is agreed by all
+astronomers that the earth goes round the sun, it is a hopeless task for
+any authority to compel men to accept a false view. In short, because
+she is in possession of a vast mass of ascertained facts about the
+nature of the universe, reason holds a much stronger position now than
+at the time when Christian theology led her captive. All these facts are
+her fortifications. Again, it is difficult to see what can arrest the
+continuous progress of knowledge in the future. In ancient times this
+progress depended on a few; nowadays, many nations take part in the
+work. A general conviction of the importance of science prevails to-day,
+which did not prevail in Greece. And the circumstance that the advance
+of material civilization depends on science is perhaps a practical
+guarantee that scientific research will not come to an abrupt halt. In
+fact science is now a social institution, as much as religion.
+
+But if science seems pretty safe, it is always possible that in
+countries where the scientific spirit is held in honour, nevertheless,
+serious restrictions may be laid on speculations touching social,
+political, and religious questions. Russia has men of science inferior
+to none, and Russia has its notorious censorship. It
+
+[251] is by no means inconceivable that in lands where opinion is now
+free coercion might be introduced. If a revolutionary social movement
+prevailed, led by men inspired by faith in formulas (like the men of the
+French Revolution) and resolved to impose their creed, experience shows
+that coercion would almost inevitably be resorted to. Nevertheless,
+while it would be silly to suppose that attempts may not be made in the
+future to put back the clock, liberty is in a far more favourable
+position now than under the Roman Empire. For at that time the social
+importance of freedom of opinion was not appreciated, whereas now, in
+consequence of the long conflict which was necessary in order to re-
+establish it, men consciously realize its value. Perhaps this conviction
+will be strong enough to resist all conspiracies against liberty.
+Meanwhile, nothing should be left undone to impress upon the young that
+freedom of thought is an axiom of human progress. It may be feared,
+however, that this is not likely to be done for a long time to come. For
+our methods of early education are founded on authority. It is true that
+children are sometimes exhorted to think for themselves. But the parent
+or instructor who gives this excellent advice is confident that the
+results of the child’s thinking for
+
+[252] himself will agree with the opinions which his elders consider
+desirable. It is assumed that he will reason from principles which have
+already been instilled into him by authority. But if his thinking for
+himself takes the form of questioning these principles, whether moral or
+religious, his parents and teachers, unless they are very exceptional
+persons, will be extremely displeased, and will certainly discourage
+him. It is, of course, only singularly promising children whose freedom
+of thought will go so far. In this sense it might be said that “distrust
+thy father and mother” is the first commandment with promise. It should
+be a part of education to explain to children, as soon as they are old
+enough to understand, when it is reasonable, and when it is not, to
+accept what they are told, on authority.
+
+[1] Blasphemy is an offence in Germany; but it must be proved that
+offence has actually been given, and the penalty does not exceed
+imprisonment for three days.
+
+[2] The quotations are from Sir J. F. Stephen’s article, “Blasphemy and
+Blasphemous Libel,” in the Fortnightly Review, March, 1884, pp. 289–318.
+
+[253]
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+        General
+Lecky, W. E. H., History of the Rise and Influence of the
+   Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols. (originally published
+   in 1865). White, A. D., A History of the Warfare
+   of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols., 1896.
+   Robertson, J. M., A Short History of Free-thought, Ancient
+   and Modern, 2 vols., 1906.       [Comprehensive, but the
+   notices of the leading freethinkers are necessarily brief, as
+   the field covered is so large.   The judgments are always
+   independent.]    Benn, A. W., The History of English
+   Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., 1906.
+   [Very full and valuable]
+
+        Greek Thought
+Gomperz, Th., Greek Thinkers (English translation), 4 vols.
+   (1901-12).
+
+        English Deists
+Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
+   Century, vol. i, 1881.
+
+        French Freethinkers of Eighteenth Century
+Morley,   J., Voltaire; Diderot     and     the Encyclopaedists;
+   Rousseau (see above, Chapter VI).
+
+        Rationalistic Criticism of the Bible
+           (Nineteenth Century)
+Articles in Encyclopoedia Biblica, 4 vols.  Duff, A., History of
+   Old Testament Criticism, 1910.   Conybeare, F. C., History
+   of New Testament Criticism, 1910.
+
+        Persecution and Inquisition
+Lea, H., A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3
+   vols., 1888; A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols.,
+   1906.  Haynes, E. S. P., Religious Persecution, 1904.
+   For the case of Ferrer see Archer, W., The Life, Trial
+   and Death of Francisco Ferrer, 1911, and McCabe, J.,
+   The Martyrdom of Ferrer, 1909.
+
+        Toleration
+Ruffini, F., Religious Liberty (English translation), 1912.
+   The essays of L. Luzzatti. Liberty of Conscience and
+   Science (Italian), are suggestive.
+
+[254]
+
+INDEX
+
+Aesthetic movement, 213
+Agnosticism, meaning of, 213 sq.
+Albigeois, persecution of, 58
+Anabaptists, 78, 95, 125
+Anatomy, 65
+Anaxagoras, 27
+Annet, Peter, 172
+Anthropology, 189
+Anthropomorphism. 23
+Aristotle, 35, 68, 69
+Arnold, Matthew, 218 sqq.
+Asoka, 92
+Astronomy, 87—90
+Atheism, 103, 113, 123, 132, 158
+Athens, 27 sqq.
+Augustine, St., 55
+Austria-Hungary, 122, 224
+Authority, meaning of, 14 sqq.
+Averroism, 88
+
+Bacon, Roger, 85
+Bahrdt, 175
+Rain, A., 188
+Bayle, 107 sq., 135 sqq.
+Benn, A. W, 152
+Bible, O. T., 192 sqq.; N. T., 195 sqq
+Bible-worship, 82, 201
+Blasphemy laws, 23, 88, 139 sq., 244 sqq.
+Bolingbroke, 153
+Bradlaugh, 228, 247
+Bruno, Giordano, 84
+Büchner, 188
+Buckle, 188
+Butler, Bishop, Analogy, 151 sq.
+
+Calvin, 78
+Cassels, W
+Castellion, 94
+Causation, Law of, 183 sq.
+Charron. 75
+Cicero, 39
+Clifford, W. K., 213
+Clodd, Edward, 224
+Colenso, Bishop, 193
+Collins, Anthony, 141
+Comte, Auguste. 188 sq., 229
+Concordat of 1801, French, 115
+
+Condorcet, 227
+Congregationalists (Independents), 95, 99, 100
+Constantine I, Emperor, 47, 51
+Copernicus, 87
+
+Darwin; Darwinism, 180, 182, 225
+Defoe, Daniel, 104 sq.
+Deism, 137 sqq.
+Democritus, 25
+Descartes, 129, 131
+Design, argument from, 181, 178
+D’Holbach, 158
+Diderot, 158 sq.
+Diocletian, Emperor, 45
+Disestablishment, 104, 108
+Dodwell, Henry, 147
+Domitian, Emperor, 42
+Double Truth, 68 sq., 134
+
+Edelmann, 175
+Epicureanism, 36 sqq., 84
+Essays and Review, 204 sqq.
+Euripides, 29
+Exclusive salvation, 52 sq., 63, 78
+
+Ferrer, Francisco, 231 sq.
+Fortnightly Review, 221
+Fourier, 227
+France, 74, 100 sqq., 152 sqq.
+Frederick the Great, 120 sq.
+Frederick II, Emperor, 58, 70
+Free thought, meaning of, 18
+
+Galileo de’ Galilei, 87 sqq.
+Gassendi, 130
+Geology, 178 sq.
+Germany, 78 sqq., 117 sqq., 174 sqq.
+Gibbon, 82, 162 sqq.
+Goethe, 175
+Greg, W. R., 203
+Gregory IX, Pope, 57
+Gregory XVI, Encyclical of, 123 sq.
+
+Haeckel, 187, 228
+Hale, Lord Chief Justice, 139
+Harrison, Frederic, 188, 223
+Hegel, 184 sqq.
+Hell, controversy on, 217
+
+[255]
+Helmholtz, 182
+Heraclitus, 25
+Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 149
+Hippocrates, 64
+Hobbes, 130 sq.
+Holland, 95, 107, 130, 131
+Holyoake, 224
+Homer, 24
+Hume, 160 sqq.
+Huxley, 213
+
+Independents, 95, 98 sq.
+Infallibility, Papal, 210 sq.
+Innocent III, Pope, 56
+Innocent IV, Pope, 57
+Innocent VIII, Pope, 67
+Inquisition, 57 sqq.;  Spanish, 59 sqq.; Roman, 83, 84, 87 sqq.
+Italy, 122 sqq., 210
+
+James I (England). 85 sq.
+Jews, 41 sqq., 68, 99, 105, 111, 194
+Joseph II, Emperor, 122
+Jowett, Benjamin, 204 sq.
+Julian, Emperor, 54
+Justice, arguments from, 235
+
+Kant, 175 sq.
+Kett, Francis, 85
+Kyd, 85
+
+Laplace, 178
+Lecky. W. H., 208, 225
+Legate, Bartholomew, 86
+Lessing, 71, 120
+Linnaeus, 177
+Locke, 101 sqq., 120, 132 sq.
+Loisy, Abbé, 200 sq.
+Lucian, 40
+Lucretius, 37 sq.
+Luther, 77 sq., 81
+Lyell, 178, 208
+
+Manning, Cardinal, 210
+Marlowe, Christopher, 85
+Marsilius, 119
+Maryland, 97 sq.
+Mazarin, Cardinal, 85, 107
+Middleton, Conyers, 150, 164
+Mill, James, 151, 227
+Mill, J. S., 182, 213, 227, 233, 235 sqq.
+Milton, 99 sq.
+Mirabeau, 112
+Miracles, 141 sqq., 151, 180, 164 sq., 206
+Modernism, 199 sqq.
+Mohammedan free thought, 68
+Monism, 188, 228 sqq.
+
+Montaigne, 74
+Morley, Lord (Mr. John), 159, 209, 221 sq., 225
+
+Nantes, Edict of, 107
+Napoleon I, 115
+Newman, Cardinal, 199, 241
+Newman, F. W., 203
+
+Ostwald, Professor, 228 sqq.
+
+Paine, Thomas, 112, 168 sqq.
+Paley, 167 sqq.
+Pascal, 123, 152 sq.
+Pater, 213
+Pentateuch, 192 sq.
+Pericles, 27
+Persecution, theory of, 47 sqq., 232 sqq.
+Pitt, William, 151
+Pius IX, Syllabus, 210 sq.
+Pius X, Pope, 199 sq.
+Plato, 36 sq.
+Plutarch, 150
+Prayer, controversy on, 216
+Press, censorship, 91 sq., 224 sq.
+Priestley, 227
+Priscillian, 55
+Progress, idea of, 226 sqq.
+Protagoras, 25
+
+Raleigh, Sir W., 85
+Rationalism, meaning of, 18
+Reade, Winwood, 213
+Reinach, S., 197
+Renan, 198
+Revolution, French, 111 sqq.
+Rhode Island, 98
+Richelieu, Cardinal, 85, 107
+Rousseau. 111, 156 sqq., 239
+Ruffini, Professor, 125
+Russia, 224
+
+Sacred books, 24, 53 sq., 191
+Science, physical, 64 sq., 176 sqq.
+Secularism, 224
+Seeley, J. R., 208
+Servetus, 79
+Shaftesbury. 148 sqq., 151
+Shelley, 173, 208
+Socinianism, 83, 93 sqq.
+Socrates, 30 sqq., 39, 235, 236
+Sophists, Greek, 26
+Spain, 59 sqq., 231 sq.
+Spencer, Herbert. 187
+Spinoza, 131 sq., 138, 191
+Stephen. Leslie, 167, 215 sqq.
+Stephen, J. F.. 203, 245 sq., 247
+Stoicism, 36, 38 sq.
+
+[256]
+Strauss, David, 195, 198
+Swinburne. 208, 211 sq.
+
+Tamburini. 122
+Tatian, 44
+Themistius, 55
+Theodosius I, Emperor, 54
+Theophilanthropy, 114 sq.
+Thomas Aquinas, 69
+Thomasius, Chr., 119
+Three Rings, story of, 70
+Tiherius, Emperor, 40
+Tindal, Matthew, 144 sqq.
+Toland, 133 sq.
+Toleration, 46 sqq., 92 sqq.
+Trajan, Emperor, 42
+Turgot, 227
+Tyndall, 213
+
+Unitarians, 93, 105
+United States, 96 sqq., 128
+Universities, tests at, 108
+Utilitarianism, 227
+
+Vanini, Lucilio, 85
+Vatican Council (1869—70), 210
+Voltaire, 108 sqq., 114, 121, 153 sqq.
+
+Wesley, 130
+Westbury, Lord, 207
+Wilberforce, 201
+Williams, Roger, 96 sq.
+Witchcraft, 66 sq., 80, 129 sq.
+Woolston, 141 sqq.
+
+Xenophanes, 23 sq.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Freedom of Thought
+by John Bagnell Bury
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10684 ***