Note: Numbers enclosed in square brackets are page numbers. HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARYOF 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 hinderedfrom 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 experienceand the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of privatethinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful tothe thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughtsto others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours. Moreoverit is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over themind. If a man’s thinking leads him to call in question ideas andcustoms which regulate the behaviour of those about him, to rejectbeliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those theyfollow, it is almost [8] impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his ownreasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitudethat he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Somehave preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face deathrather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in anyvaluable sense, includes freedom of speech. At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is takenas a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are soaccustomed to it that we look on it as a natural right. But this righthas been acquired only in quite recent times, and the way to itsattainment has lain through lakes of blood. It has taken centuries topersuade the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one’sopinions and to discuss all questions is a good and not a bad thing. Human societies (there are some brilliant exceptions) have beengenerally opposed to freedom of thought, or, in other words, to newideas, and it is easy to see why. The average brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of leastresistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefswhich he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmlyattached; he is instinctively hostile to anything which [9] would upset the established order of this familiar world. A newidea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means thenecessity 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 onestablished beliefs and institutions, seem evil because they aredisagreeable. The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positivefeeling of fear. The conservative instinct hardens into the conservativedoctrine that the foundations of society are endangered by anyalterations in the structure. It is only recently that men have beenabandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigidstability and on the preservation of its traditions and institutionsunchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to bedangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenientquestions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles isconsidered a pestilent person. The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine which is itsconsequence, are strengthened by superstition. If the social structure, including the whole body of customs and opinions, is associatedintimately [10] with religious belief and is supposed to be under divine patronage, criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while criticism of thereligious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of supernaturalpowers. The psychological motives which produce a conservative spirit hostile tonew ideas are reinforced by the active opposition of certain powerfulsections of the community, such as a class, a caste, or a priesthood, whose interests are bound up with the maintenance of the establishedorder and the ideas on which it rests. Let us suppose, for instance, that a people believes that solar eclipsesare signs employed by their Deity for the special purpose ofcommunicating useful information to them, and that a clever mandiscovers the true cause of eclipses. His compatriots in the first placedislike his discovery because they find it very difficult to reconcilewith their other ideas; in the second place, it disturbs them, becauseit upsets an arrangement which they consider highly advantageous totheir community; finally, it frightens them, as an offence to theirDivinity. The priests, one of whose functions is to interpret the divinesigns, 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 whichprogressed, and hindered some communities from progressing at all. Butthey have continued to operate more or less throughout history, obstructing knowledge and progress. We can observe them at work to-dayeven in the most advanced societies, where they have no longer the powerto arrest development or repress the publication of revolutionaryopinions. We still meet people who consider a new idea an annoyance andprobably a danger. Of those to whom socialism is repugnant, how many arethere who have never examined the arguments for and against it, but turnaway in disgust simply because the notion disturbs their mental universeand implies a drastic criticism on the order of things to which they areaccustomed? And how many are there who would refuse to consider anyproposals for altering our imperfect matrimonial institutions, becausesuch an idea offends a mass of prejudice associated with religioussanctions? They may be right or not, but if they are, it is not theirfault. They are actuated by the same motives which were a bar toprogress in primitive societies. The existence of people of thismentality, reared in an atmosphere of freedom, side by side with otherswho are always looking out for new ideas and [12] regretting that there are not more about, enables us to realizehow, when public opinion was formed by the views of such men, thoughtwas fettered and the impediments to knowledge enormous. Although the liberty to publish one’s opinions on any subject withoutregard to authority or the prejudices of one’s neighbours is now a well-established principle, I imagine that only the minority of those whowould be ready to fight to the death rather than surrender it coulddefend it on rational grounds. We are apt to take for granted thatfreedom of speech is a natural and inalienable birthright of man, andperhaps to think that this is a sufficient answer to all that can besaid on the other side. But it is difficult to see how such a right canbe established. If a man has any “natural rights, ” the right to preserve his life andthe right to reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societiesimpose upon their members restrictions in the exercise of both theserights. A starving man is prohibited from taking food which belongs tosomebody else. Promiscuous reproduction is restricted by various laws orcustoms. It is admitted that society is justified in restricting theseelementary rights, because without such restrictions an ordered societycould 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 immunityfrom interference or that society acts unjustly in regulating it. Butthe concession is too large. For whereas in the other cases thelimitations affect the conduct of every one, restrictions on freedom ofopinion affect only the comparatively small number who have anyopinions, revolutionary or unconventional, to express. The truth is thatno valid argument can be founded on the conception of natural rights, because it involves an untenable theory of the relations between societyand its members. On the other hand, those who have the responsibility of governing asociety can argue that it is as incumbent on them to prohibit thecirculation of pernicious opinions as to prohibit any anti-socialactions. They can argue that a man may do far more harm by propagatinganti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbour’s horse or makinglove to his neighbour’s wife. They are responsible for the welfare ofthe State, and if they are convinced that an opinion is dangerous, bymenacing the political, religious, or moral assumptions on which thesociety is based, it is their duty to protect society against it, asagainst any other danger. [14] The true answer to this argument for limiting freedom of thought willappear in due course. It was far from obvious. A long time was needed toarrive at the conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and onlya part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far as I canjudge, is the most important ever reached by men. It was the issue of acontinuous struggle between authority and reason—the subject of thisvolume. The word authority requires some comment. If you ask somebody how he knows something, he may say, “I have it ongood authority, ” or, “I read it in a book, ” or, “It is a matter ofcommon knowledge, ” or, “I learned it at school. ” Any of these repliesmeans that he has accepted information from others, trusting in theirknowledge, without verifying their statements or thinking the matter outfor himself. And the greater part of most men’s knowledge and beliefs isof this kind, taken without verification from their parents, teachers, acquaintances, books, newspapers. When an English boy learns French, hetakes the conjugations and the meanings of the words on the authority ofhis teacher or his grammar. The fact that in a certain place, marked onthe map, there is a populous city called Calcutta, is for most [15] people a fact accepted on authority. So is the existence ofNapoleon or Julius Caesar. Familiar astronomical facts are known only inthe same way, except by those who have studied astronomy. It is obviousthat every one’s knowledge would be very limited indeed, if we were notjustified in accepting facts on the authority of others. But we are justified only under one condition. The facts which we cansafely accept must be capable of demonstration or verification. Theexamples I have given belong to this class. The boy can verify when hegoes to France or is able to read a French book that the facts which hetook on authority are true. I am confronted every day with evidencewhich proves to me that, if I took the trouble, I could verify theexistence of Calcutta for myself. I cannot convince myself in this wayof the existence of Napoleon, but if I have doubts about it, a simpleprocess of reasoning shows me that there are hosts of facts which areincompatible with his non-existence. I have no doubt that the earth issome 93 millions of miles distant from the sun, because all astronomersagree that it has been demonstrated, and their agreement is onlyexplicable on the supposition that this has been demonstrated and that, if I took the trouble to work out the calculation, I should reach thesame result. [16] But all our mental furniture is not of this kind. The thoughts of theaverage man consist not only of facts open to verification, but also ofmany beliefs and opinions which he has accepted on authority and cannotverify or prove. Belief in the Trinity depends on the authority of theChurch and is clearly of a different order from belief in the existenceof 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 theauthority that we credit its assertions though incapable of proof. The distinction may seem so obvious as to be hardly worth making. But itis important to be quite clear about it. The primitive man who hadlearned from his elders that there were bears in the hills and likewiseevil spirits, soon verified the former statement by seeing a bear, butif 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 twostatements; he would rather have argued, if he argued at all, that ashis tribesmen were right about the bears they were sure to be right alsoabout the spirits. In the Middle Ages a man who believed on authoritythat there is a city called Constantinople and that comets are portentssignifying divine wrath, would not [17] distinguish the nature of the evidence in the two cases. You maystill sometimes hear arguments amounting to this: since I believe inCalcutta on authority, am I not entitled to believe in the Devil onauthority? Now people at all times have been commanded or expected or invited toaccept on authority alone—the authority, for instance, of publicopinion, or a Church, or a sacred book—doctrines which are not proved orare not capable of proof. Most beliefs about nature and man, which werenot founded on scientific observation, have served directly orindirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have beenprotected by force against the criticisms of persons who have theinconvenient habit of using their reason. Nobody minds if his neighbourdisbelieves a demonstrable fact. If a sceptic denies that Napoleonexisted, or that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, he causesamusement or ridicule. But if he denies doctrines which cannot bedemonstrated, such as the existence of a personal God or the immortalityof the soul, he incurs serious disapprobation and at one time he mighthave been put to death. Our mediaeval friend would have only been calleda fool if he doubted the existence of Constantinople, but if he hadquestioned the significance of comets he [18] might have got into trouble. It is possible that if he had been somad as to deny the existence of Jerusalem he would not have escaped withridicule, for Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible. In the Middle Ages a large field was covered by beliefs which authorityclaimed to impose as true, and reason was warned off the ground. Butreason cannot recognize arbitrary prohibitions or barriers, withoutbeing untrue to herself. The universe of experience is her province, andas its parts are all linked together and interdependent, it isimpossible for her to recognize any territory on which she may nottread, or to surrender any of her rights to an authority whosecredentials she has not examined and approved. The uncompromising assertion by reason of her absolute rights throughoutthe whole domain of thought is termed rationalism, and the slight stigmawhich is still attached to the word reflects the bitterness of thestruggle between reason and the forces arrayed against her. The term islimited to the field of theology, because it was in that field that theself-assertion of reason was most violently and pertinaciously opposed. In the same way free thought, the refusal of thought to be controlled byany authority but its own, has a definitely theological reference. Throughout [19] the conflict, authority has had great advantages. At any time thepeople who really care about reason have been a small minority, andprobably will be so for a long time to come. Reason’s only weapon hasbeen argument. Authority has employed physical and moral violence, legalcoercion and social displeasure. Sometimes she has attempted to use thesword of her adversary, thereby wounding herself. Indeed the weakestpoint in the strategical position of authority was that her champions, being human, could not help making use of reasoning processes and theresult was that they were divided among themselves. This gave reason herchance. Operating, as it were, in the enemy’s camp and professedly inthe 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 thereforecannot be proved or verified, but at the same time cannot be disproved. Of course, any number of propositions can be invented which cannot bedisproved, and it is open to any one who possesses exuberant faith tobelieve them; but no one will maintain that they all deserve credence solong as their falsehood is not demonstrated. And if only some deservecredence, who, except reason, [20] is to decide which? If the reply is, Authority, we are confrontedby the difficulty that many beliefs backed by authority have beenfinally disproved and are universally abandoned. Yet some people speakas if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unlesswe can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon therejecter. I remember a conversation in which, when some disrespectfulremark was made about hell, a loyal friend of that establishment saidtriumphantly, “But, absurd as it may seem, you cannot disprove it. ” Ifyou were told that in a certain planet revolving round Sirius there is arace of donkeys who talk the English language and spend their time indiscussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would beprepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through thepotent force of suggestion. This force, exercised largely by emphaticrepetition (the theoretical basis, as has been observed, of the modernpractice of advertising), has played a great part in establishingauthoritative opinions and propagating religious creeds. Reasonfortunately 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 thechief phases. It is the merest introduction to a vast and intricatesubject, which, treated adequately, would involve not only the historyof religion, of the Churches, of heresies, of persecution, but also thehistory of philosophy, of the natural sciences and of politicaltheories. From the sixteenth century to the French Revolution nearly allimportant historical events bore in some way on the struggle for freedomof thought. It would require a lifetime to calculate, and many books todescribe, all the directions and interactions of the intellectual andsocial forces which, since the fall of ancient civilization, havehindered and helped the emancipation of reason. All one can do, all onecould do even in a much bigger volume than this, is to indicate thegeneral course of the struggle and dwell on some particular aspectswhich 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 theGreeks, their [22] achievements in literature and art naturally occur to us first ofall. But a truer answer may be that our deepest gratitude is due to themas the originators of liberty of thought and discussion. For thisfreedom of spirit was not only the condition of their speculations inphilosophy, their progress in science, their experiments in politicalinstitutions; it was also a condition of their literary and artisticexcellence. Their literature, for instance, could not have been what itis if they had been debarred from free criticism of life. But apart fromwhat they actually accomplished, even if they had not achieved thewonderful things they did in most of the realms of human activity, theirassertion of the principle of liberty would place them in the highestrank among the benefactors of the race; for it was one of the greateststeps in human progress. We do not know enough about the earliest history of the Greeks toexplain how it was that they attained their free outlook upon the worldand came to possess the will and courage to set no bounds to the rangeof their criticism and curiosity. We have to take this character as afact. But it must be remembered that the Greeks consisted of a largenumber of separate peoples, who varied largely in temper, customs andtraditions, [23] though they had important features common to all. Some wereconservative, or backward, or unintellectual compared with others. Inthis chapter “the Greeks” does not mean all the Greeks, but only thosewho count most in the history of civilization, especially the Ioniansand Athenians. Ionia in Asia Minor was the cradle of free speculation. The history ofEuropean science and European philosophy begins in Ionia. Here (in thesixth and fifth centuries B. C. ) the early philosophers by using theirreason sought to penetrate into the origin and structure of the world. They could not of course free their minds entirely from receivednotions, but they began the work of destroying orthodox views andreligious faiths. Xenophanes may specially be named among these pioneersof thought (though he was not the most important or the ablest), becausethe toleration of his teaching illustrates the freedom of the atmospherein which these men lived. He went about from city to city, calling inquestion on moral grounds the popular beliefs about the gods andgoddesses, and ridiculing the anthropomorphic conceptions which theGreeks had formed of their divinities. “If oxen had hands and thecapacities of men, they would make gods in the shape of oxen. ” Thisattack on received [24] theology was an attack on the veracity of the old poets, especiallyHomer, who was considered the highest authority on mythology. Xenophanescriticized him severely for ascribing to the gods acts which, committedby men, would be considered highly disgraceful. We do not hear that anyattempt was made to restrain him from thus assailing traditional beliefsand branding Homer as immoral. We must remember that the Homeric poemswere never supposed to be the word of God. It has been said that Homerwas the Bible of the Greeks. The remark exactly misses the truth. TheGreeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expressionand an important condition of their freedom. Homer’s poems were secular, not religious, and it may be noted that they are freer from immoralityand savagery than sacred books that one could mention. Their authoritywas 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 andcondition of freedom, the absence of sacerdotalism. The priests of thetemples never became powerful castes, tyrannizing over the community intheir own interests and able to silence voices raised against religiousbeliefs. 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 arule the priests were virtually State servants whose voice carried noweight except concerning the technical details of ritual. To return to the early philosophers, who were mostly materialists, therecord of their speculations is an interesting chapter in the history ofrationalism. Two great names may be selected, Heraclitus and Democritus, because they did more perhaps than any of the others, by sheer hardthinking, to train reason to look upon the universe in new ways and toshock the unreasoned conceptions of common sense. It was startling to betaught, for the first time, by Heraclitus, that the appearance ofstability and permanence which material things present to our senses isa false appearance, and that the world and everything in it are changingevery instant. Democritus performed the amazing feat of working out anatomic theory of the universe, which was revived in the seventeenthcentury and is connected, in the history of speculation, with the mostmodern physical and chemical theories of matter. No fantastic tales ofcreation, 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 workedhere and there throughout Greece, constantly travelling, training youngmen for public life, and teaching them to use their reason. As educatorsthey had practical ends in view. They turned away from the problems ofthe physical universe to the problems of human life—morality andpolities. Here they were confronted with the difficulty ofdistinguishing between truth and error, and the ablest of theminvestigated the nature of knowledge, the method of reason—logic— andthe instrument of reason—speech. Whatever their particular theoriesmight be, their general spirit was that of free inquiry and discussion. They sought to test everything by reason. The second half of the fifthcentury might be called the age of Illumination. It may be remarked that the knowledge of foreign countries which theGreeks had acquired had a considerable effect in promoting a scepticalattitude towards authority. When a man is acquainted only with thehabits of his own country, they seem so much a matter of course that heascribes them to nature, but when he travels abroad and finds totallydifferent habits and standards of conduct prevailing, he begins tounderstand [27] the power of custom; and learns that morality and religion arematters of latitude. This discovery tends to weaken authority, and toraise disquieting reflections, as in the case of one who, brought up asa Christian, comes to realize that, if he had been born on the Ganges orthe Euphrates, he would have firmly believed in entirely differentdogmas. Of course these movements of intellectual freedom were, as in all ages, confined to the minority. Everywhere the masses were exceedinglysuperstitious. They believed that the safety of their cities depended onthe good-will of their gods. If this superstitious spirit were alarmed, there was always a danger that philosophical speculations might bepersecuted. And this occurred in Athens. About the middle of the fifthcentury Athens had not only become the most powerful State in Greece, but was also taking the highest place in literature and art. She was afull-fledged democracy. Political discussion was perfectly free. At thistime she was guided by the statesman Pericles, who was personally afreethinker, or at least was in touch with all the subversivespeculations of the day. He was especially intimate with the philosopherAnaxagoras who had come from Ionia to teach at Athens. In regard to thepopular gods Anaxagoras was a thorough-going [28] unbeliever. The political enemies of Pericles struck at him byattacking his friend. They introduced and carried a blasphemy law, tothe effect that unbelievers and those who taught theories about thecelestial world might be impeached. It was easy to prove that Anaxagoraswas a blasphemer who taught that the gods were abstractions and that thesun, to which the ordinary Athenian said prayers morning and evening, was a mass of flaming matter. The influence of Pericles saved him fromdeath; he was heavily fined and left Athens for Lampsacus, where he wastreated with consideration and honour. Other cases are recorded which show that anti-religious thought wasliable to be persecuted. Protagoras, one of the greatest of theSophists, published a book On the Gods, the object of which seems tohave been to prove that one cannot know the gods by reason. The firstwords ran: “Concerning the gods, I cannot say that they exist nor yetthat they do not exist. There are more reasons than one why we cannotknow. There is the obscurity of the subject and there is the brevity ofhuman life. ” A charge of blasphemy was lodged against him and he fledfrom Athens. But there was no systematic policy of suppressing freethought. Copies of the work of Protagoras were collected and [29] burned, but the book of Anaxagoras setting forth the views forwhich he had been condemned was for sale on the Athenian book-stalls ata popular price. Rationalistic ideas moreover were venturing to appearon the stage, though the dramatic performances, at the feasts of the godDionysus, were religious solemnities. The poet Euripides was saturatedwith modern speculation, and, while different opinions may be held as tothe tendencies of some of his tragedies, he often allows his charactersto express highly unorthodox views. He was prosecuted for impiety by apopular politician. We may suspect that during the last thirty years ofthe fifth century unorthodoxy spread considerably among the educatedclasses. There was a large enough section of influential rationalists torender impossible any organized repression of liberty, and the chiefevil of the blasphemy law was that it could be used for personal orparty reasons. Some of the prosecutions, about which we know, werecertainly due to such motives, others may have been prompted by genuinebigotry and by the fear lest sceptical thought should extend beyond thehighly educated and leisured class. It was a generally acceptedprinciple among the Greeks, and afterwards among the Romans, thatreligion was a good and necessary thing [30] for the common people. Men who did not believe in its truthbelieved in its usefulness as a political institution, and as a rulephilosophers did not seek to diffuse disturbing “truth” among themasses. It was the custom, much more than at the present day, for thosewho did not believe in the established cults to conform to themexternally. Popular higher education was not an article in the programmeof Greek statesmen or thinkers. And perhaps it may be argued that in thecircumstances of the ancient world it would have been hardlypracticable. There was, however, one illustrious Athenian, who thoughtdifferently—Socrates, the philosopher. Socrates was the greatest of theeducationalists, but unlike the others he taught gratuitously, though hewas a poor man. His teaching always took the form of discussion; thediscussion often ended in no positive result, but had the effect ofshowing that some received opinion was untenable and that truth isdifficult to ascertain. He had indeed certain definite views aboutknowledge and virtue, which are of the highest importance in the historyof philosophy, but for our present purpose his significance lies in hisenthusiasm for discussion and criticism. He taught those with whom heconversed—and he conversed indiscriminately [31] with all who would listen to him—to bring all popular beliefsbefore the bar of reason, to approach every inquiry with an open mind, and not to judge by the opinion of majorities or the dictate ofauthority; in short to seek for other tests of the truth of an opinionthan the fact that it is held by a great many people. Among hisdisciples were all the young men who were to become the leadingphilosophers of the next generation and some who played prominent partsin Athenian history. If the Athenians had had a daily press, Socrates would have beendenounced by the journalists as a dangerous person. They had a comicdrama, which constantly held up to ridicule philosophers and sophistsand their vain doctrines. We possess one play (the Clouds ofAristophanes) in which Socrates is pilloried as a typical representativeof impious and destructive speculations. Apart from annoyances of thiskind, Socrates reached old age, pursuing the task of instructing hisfellow-citizens, without any evil befalling him. Then, at the age ofseventy, he was prosecuted as an atheist and corrupter of youth and wasput to death (399 B. C. ). It is strange that if the Athenians reallythought 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 withunlimited democracy, or approve of the principle that the will of theignorant majority was a good guide. He was probably known to sympathizewith those who wished to limit the franchise. When, after a struggle inwhich the constitution had been more than once overthrown, democracyemerged triumphant (403 B. C. ), there was a bitter feeling against thosewho had not been its friends, and of these disloyal persons Socrates waschosen as a victim. If he had wished, he could easily have escaped. Ifhe had given an undertaking to teach no more, he would almost certainlyhave been acquitted. As it was, of the 501 ordinary Athenians who werehis judges, a very large minority voted for his acquittal. Even then, ifhe had adopted a different tone, he would not have been condemned todeath. He rose to the great occasion and vindicated freedom of discussion in awonderful unconventional speech. The Apology of Socrates, which wascomposed by his most brilliant pupil, Plato the philosopher, reproduces [33] the general tenor of his defence. It is clear that he was not ableto meet satisfactorily the charge that he did not acknowledge the godsworshipped by the city, and his explanations on this point are the weakpart of his speech. But he met the accusation that he corrupted theminds of the young by a splendid plea for free discussion. This is themost valuable section of the Apology; it is as impressive to-day asever. I think the two principal points which he makes are these— (1) He maintains that the individual should at any cost refuse to becoerced by any human authority or tribunal into a course which his ownmind condemns as wrong. That is, he asserts the supremacy of theindividual conscience, as we should say, over human law. He representshis own life-work as a sort of religious quest; he feels convinced thatin devoting himself to philosophical discussion he has done the biddingof a super-human guide; and he goes to death rather than be untrue tothis personal conviction. “If you propose to acquit me, ” he says, “oncondition that I abandon my search for truth, I will say: I thank you, OAthenians, 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 thepractice of accosting whomever I meet and saying to him, ‘Are you notashamed of setting your heart on wealth and honours while you have nocare for wisdom and truth and making your soul better?’ I know not whatdeath is—it may be a good thing, and I am not afraid of it. But I doknow that it is a bad thing to desert one’s post and I prefer what maybe good to what I know to be bad. ” (2) He insists on the public value of free discussion. “In me you have astimulating critic, persistently urging you with persuasion andreproaches, persistently testing your opinions and trying to show youthat you are really ignorant of what you suppose you know. Dailydiscussion of the matters about which you hear me conversing is thehighest good for man. Life that is not tested by such discussion is notworth living. ” Thus in what we may call the earliest justification of liberty ofthought we have two significant claims affirmed: the indefeasible rightof the conscience of the individual —a claim on which later strugglesfor liberty were to turn; and the social importance of discussion andcriticism. 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, nothaving the same personal experience as Socrates, reject this assumption, his pleading does not carry weight. The second claim, after theexperience of more than 2, 000 years, can be formulated morecomprehensively now with bearings of which he did not dream. The circumstances of the trial of Socrates illustrate both the toleranceand the intolerance which prevailed at Athens. His long immunity, thefact that he was at last indicted from political motives and perhapspersonal also, the large minority in his favour, all show that thoughtwas normally free, and that the mass of intolerance which existed wasonly fitfully invoked, and perhaps most often to serve other purposes. Imay mention the case of the philosopher Aristotle, who some seventyyears later left Athens because he was menaced by a prosecution forblasphemy, the charge being a pretext for attacking one who belonged toa certain political party. The persecution of opinion was neverorganized. It may seem curious that to find the persecuting spirit in Greece wehave to turn to the philosophers. Plato, the most brilliant disciple ofSocrates, constructed in his later years an ideal State. In this Statehe instituted [36] a religion considerably different from the current religion, andproposed to compel all the citizens to believe in his gods on pain ofdeath or imprisonment. All freedom of discussion was excluded under thecast-iron system which he conceived. But the point of interest in hisattitude is that he did not care much whether a religion was true, butonly whether it was morally useful; he was prepared to promote moralityby edifying fables; and he condemned the popular mythology not becauseit was false, but because it did not make for righteousness. The outcome of the large freedom permitted at Athens was a series ofphilosophies which had a common source in the conversations of Socrates. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Sceptics—it may bemaintained that the efforts of thought represented by these names havehad a deeper influence on the progress of man than any other continuousintellectual movement, at least until the rise of modern science in anew epoch of liberty. The doctrines of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics all aimed atsecuring peace and guidance for the individual soul. They were widelypropagated throughout the Greek world from the third century B. C. , andwe may say that from this time onward most [37] well-educated Greeks were more or less rationalists. The teachingof Epicurus had a distinct anti-religious tendency. He considered fearto be the fundamental motive of religion, and to free men’s minds fromthis fear was a principal object of his teaching. He was a Materialist, explaining the world by the atomic theory of Democritus and denying anydivine government of the universe. [2] He did indeed hold the existenceof gods, but, so far as men are concerned, his gods are as if they werenot—living in some remote abode and enjoying a “sacred and everlastingcalm. ” They just served as an example of the realization of the idealEpicurean life. There was something in this philosophy which had the power to inspire apoet of singular genius to expound it in verse. The Roman Lucretius(first century B. C. ) regarded Epicurus as the great deliverer of thehuman race and determined to proclaim the glad tidings of his philosophyin a poem On the Nature of the World. [3] With all the fervour [38] of a religious enthusiast he denounces religion, sounding everynote of defiance, loathing, and contempt, and branding in burning wordsthe crimes to which it had urged man on. He rides forth as a leader ofthe hosts of atheism against the walls of heaven. He explains thescientific arguments as if they were the radiant revelation of a newworld; and the rapture of his enthusiasm is a strange accompaniment of adoctrine which aimed at perfect calm. Although the Greek thinkers haddone all the work and the Latin poem is a hymn of triumph over prostratedeities, yet in the literature of free thought it must always hold aneminent place by the sincerity of its audacious, defiant spirit. In thehistory of rationalism its interest would be greater if it had explodedin the midst of an orthodox community. But the educated Romans in thedays of Lucretius were sceptical in religious matters, some of them wereEpicureans, and we may suspect that not many of those who read it wereshocked or influenced by the audacities of the champion of irreligion. The Stoic philosophy made notable contributions to the cause of libertyand could hardly have flourished in an atmosphere where discussion wasnot free. It asserted the rights of individuals against public [39] authority. Socrates had seen that laws may be unjust and thatpeoples may go wrong, but he had found no principle for the guidance ofsociety. The Stoics discovered it in the law of nature, prior andsuperior to all the customs and written laws of peoples, and thisdoctrine, spreading outside Stoic circles, caught hold of the Romanworld and affected Roman legislation. These philosophies have carried us from Greece to Rome. In the laterRoman Republic and the early Empire, no restrictions were imposed onopinion, and these philosophies, which made the individual the firstconsideration, spread widely. Most of the leading men were unbelieversin the official religion of the State, but they considered it valuablefor the purpose of keeping the uneducated populace in order. A Greekhistorian expresses high approval of the Roman policy of cultivatingsuperstition for the benefit of the masses. This was the attitude ofCicero, and the view that a false religion is indispensable as a socialmachine was general among ancient unbelievers. It is common, in one formor another, to-day; at least, religions are constantly defended on theground not of truth but of utility. This defence belongs to thestatecraft of Machiavelli, who taught that religion is necessary forgovernment, [40] and that it may be the duty of a ruler to support a religion whichhe believes to be false. A word must be said of Lucian (second century A. D. ), the last Greek manof letters whose writings appeal to everybody. He attacked the popularmythology with open ridicule. It is impossible to say whether hissatires had any effect at the time beyond affording enjoyment toeducated infidels who read them. Zeus in a Tragedy Part is one of themost effective. The situation which Lucian imagined here would beparalleled if a modern writer were blasphemously to represent thePersons of the Trinity with some eminent angels and saints discussing ina celestial smoke-room the alarming growth of unbelief in England andthen by means of a telephonic apparatus overhearing a dispute between afreethinker and a parson on a public platform in London. The absurditiesof anthropomorphism have never been the subject of more brilliantjesting than in Lucian’s satires. The general rule of Roman policy was to tolerate throughout the Empireall religions and all opinions. Blasphemy was not punished. Theprinciple was expressed in the maxim of the Emperor Tiberius: “If thegods are insulted, let them see to it themselves. ” An exception to therule of tolerance [41] was made in the case of the Christian sect, and the treatment ofthis Oriental religion may be said to have inaugurated religiouspersecution in Europe. It is a matter of interest to understand whyEmperors who were able, humane, and not in the least fanatical, adoptedthis exceptional policy. For a long time the Christians were only known to those Romans whohappened to hear of them, as a sect of the Jews. The Jewish was the onereligion which, on account of its exclusiveness and intolerance, wasregarded by the tolerant pagans with disfavour and suspicion. But thoughit sometimes came into collision with the Roman authorities and someill-advised attacks upon it were made, it was the constant policy of theEmperors to let it alone and to protect the Jews against the hatredwhich their own fanaticism aroused. But while the Jewish religion wasendured so long as it was confined to those who were born into it, theprospect of its dissemination raised a new question. Grave misgivingsmight arise in the mind of a ruler at seeing a creed spreading which wasaggressively hostile to all the other creeds of the world—creeds whichlived together in amity—and had earned for its adherents the reputationof 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 Romansociety. The Emperor Domitian seems to have seen the question in thislight, and he took severe measures to hinder the proselytizing of Romancitizens. Some of those whom he struck may have been Christians, but ifhe was aware of the distinction, there was from his point of view nodifference. Christianity resembled Judaism, from which it sprang, inintolerance and in hostility towards Roman society, but it differed bythe fact that it made many proselytes while Judaism made few. Under Trajan we find that the principle has been laid down that to be aChristian is an offence punishable by death. Henceforward Christianityremained an illegal religion. But in practice the law was not appliedrigorously or logically. The Emperors desired, if possible, to extirpateChristianity without shedding blood. Trajan laid down that Christianswere 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 liableto be punished under the laws against calumny. Christians themselvesrecognized that this edict practically protected them. There were [43] some executions in the second century—not many that are wellattested—and Christians courted the pain and glory of martyrdom. Thereis evidence to show that when they were arrested their escape was oftenconnived at. In general, the persecution of the Christians was ratherprovoked by the populace than desired by the authorities. The populacefelt a horror of this mysterious Oriental sect which openly hated allthe gods and prayed for the destruction of the world. When floods, famines, and especially fires occurred they were apt to be attributed tothe black magic of the Christians. When any one was accused of Christianity, he was required, as a means oftesting the truth of the charge, to offer incense to the gods or to thestatues of deified Emperors. His compliance at once exonerated him. Theobjection of the Christians—they and the Jews were the only objectors—tothe worship of the Emperors was, in the eyes of the Romans, one of themost sinister signs that their religion was dangerous. The purpose ofthis worship was to symbolize the unity and solidarity of an Empirewhich embraced so many peoples of different beliefs and different gods;its intention was political, to promote union and loyalty; and it is notsurprising that those who denounced it should [44] be suspected of a disloyal spirit. But it must be noted that therewas no necessity for any citizen to take part in this worship. Noconformity was required from any inhabitants of the Empire who were notserving the State as soldiers or civil functionaries. Thus the effectwas to debar Christians from military and official careers. The Apologies for Christianity which appeared at this period (secondcentury) might have helped, if the Emperors (to whom some of them wereaddressed) had read them, to confirm the view that it was a politicaldanger. It would have been easy to read between the lines that, if theChristians ever got the upper hand, they would not spare the cults ofthe State. The contemporary work of Tatian (A Discourse to the Greeks)reveals what the Apologists more or less sought to disguise, invinciblehatred towards the civilization in which they lived. Any reader of theChristian literature of the time could not fail to see that in a Statewhere Christians had the power there would be no tolerance of otherreligious practices. [4] If the Emperors made an exception to theirtolerant policy in the case of Christianity, their purpose was tosafeguard tolerance. [45] In the third century the religion, though still forbidden, was quiteopenly tolerated; the Church organized itself without concealment;ecclesiastical councils assembled without interference. There were somebrief and local attempts at repression, there was only one gravepersecution (begun by Decius, A. D. 250, and continued by Valerian). Infact, throughout this century, there were not many victims, thoughafterwards the Christians invented a whole mythology of martyrdoms. Manycruelties were imputed to Emperors under whom we know that the Churchenjoyed perfect peace. A long period of civil confusion, in which the Empire seemed to betottering to its fall, had been terminated by the Emperor Diocletian, who, by his radical administrative reforms, helped to preserve the Romanpower in its integrity for another century. He desired to support hiswork of political consolidation by reviving the Roman spirit, and heattempted to infuse new life into the official religion. To this end hedetermined 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, generaland systematic effort to crush the forbidden faith. It was a [46] failure, the Christians were now too numerous to be crushed. Afterthe abdication of Diocletian, the Emperors who reigned in differentparts of the realm did not agree as to the expediency of his policy, andthe persecution ended by edicts of toleration (A. D. 311 and 313). Thesedocuments 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 andnature the deluded Christians, who had renounced the religion andceremonies instituted by their fathers and, presumptuously despising thepractice of antiquity, had invented extravagant laws and opinionsaccording to the dictates of their fancy, and had collected a varioussociety from the different provinces of our Empire. The edicts which wehave published to enforce the worship of the gods, having exposed manyof the Christians to danger and distress, many having suffered death andmany more, who still persist in their impious folly, being leftdestitute of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extendto those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency. We permit them, therefore, freely to profess their private opinions, and to assemble intheir conventicles [47] without fear or molestation, provided always that they preserve adue respect to the established laws and government. ” [5] The second, of which Constantine was the author, known as the Edict ofMilan, was to a similar effect, and based toleration on the Emperor’scare for the peace and happiness of his subjects and on the hope ofappeasing the Deity whose seat is in heaven. The relations between the Roman government and the Christians raised thegeneral question of persecution and freedom of conscience. A State, withan official religion, but perfectly tolerant of all creeds and cults, finds that a society had arisen in its midst which is uncompromisinglyhostile to all creeds but its own and which, if it had the power, wouldsuppress all but its own. The government, in self-defence, decides tocheck the dissemination of these subversive ideas and makes theprofession of that creed a crime, not on account of its particulartenets, but on account of the social consequences of those tenets. Themembers of the society cannot without violating their consciences andincurring damnation abandon their exclusive doctrine. The principle offreedom of conscience is asserted as superior to all obligations to theState, and the State, confronted [48] by this new claim, is unable to admit it. Persecution is theresult. Even from the standpoint of an orthodox and loyal pagan the persecutionof the Christians is indefensible, because blood was shed uselessly. Inother words, it was a great mistake because it was unsuccessful. Forpersecution is a choice between two evils. The alternatives are violence(which no reasonable defender of persecution would deny to be an evil initself) and the spread of dangerous opinions. The first is chosen simplyto 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 toaccomplish its end, then you have two evils instead of one, and nothingcan justify this. From their point of view, the Emperors had goodreasons for regarding Christianity as dangerous and anti-social, butthey should either have let it alone or taken systematic measures todestroy it. If at an early stage they had established a drastic andsystematic inquisition, they might possibly have exterminated it. Thisat least would have been statesmanlike. But they had no conception ofextreme measures, and they did not understand —they had no experience toguide them —the sort of problem they had to deal with. They hoped tosucceed by intimidation. [49] Their attempts at suppression were vacillating, fitful, andridiculously ineffectual. The later persecutions (of A. D. 250 and 303)had no prospect of success. It is particularly to be observed that noeffort was made to suppress Christian literature. The higher problem whether persecution, even if it attains the desiredend, is justifiable, was not considered. The struggle hinged onantagonism between the conscience of the individual and the authorityand supposed interests of the State. It was the question which had beenraised by Socrates, raised now on a wider platform in a more pressingand formidable shape: what is to happen when obedience to the law isinconsistent with obedience to an invisible master? Is it incumbent onthe State to respect the conscience of the individual at all costs, orwithin what limits? The Christians did not attempt a solution, thegeneral problem did not interest them. They claimed the right of freedomexclusively for themselves from a non-Christian government; and it ishardly going too far to suspect that they would have applauded thegovernment if it had suppressed the Gnostic sects whom they hated andcalumniated. In any case, when a Christian State was established, theywould 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 themodern 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 mayalmost say that freedom of thought was like the air men breathed. It wastaken for granted and nobody thought about it. If seven or eightthinkers at Athens were penalized for heterodoxy, in some and perhaps inmost of these cases heterodoxy was only a pretext. They do notinvalidate the general facts that the advance of knowledge was notimpeded by prejudice, or science retarded by the weight of unscientificauthority. The educated Greeks were tolerant because they were friendsof reason and did not set up any authority to overrule reason. Opinionswere not imposed except by argument; you were not expected to receivesome “kingdom of heaven” like a little child, or to prostrate yourintellect before an authority claiming to be infallible. But this liberty was not the result of a conscious policy or deliberateconviction, and therefore it was precarious. The problems [51] of freedom of thought, religious liberty, toleration, had not beenforced upon society and were never seriously considered. WhenChristianity confronted the Roman government, no one saw that in thetreatment of a small, obscure, and, to pagan thinkers, uninteresting orrepugnant sect, a principle of the deepest social importance wasinvolved. A long experience of the theory and practice of persecutionwas required to base securely the theory of freedom of thought. Thelurid policy of coercion which the Christian Church adopted, and itsconsequences, would at last compel reason to wrestle with the problemand discover the justification of intellectual liberty. The spirit ofthe Greeks and Romans, alive in their works, would, after a long periodof obscuration, again enlighten the world and aid in re-establishing thereign of reason, which they had carelessly enjoyed without assuring itsfoundations. [1] This has been shown very clearly by Professor Jackson in the articleon “Socrates” in the Encyclopoedia Britannica, last edition. [2] He stated the theological difficulty as to the origin of evil inthis form: God either wishes to abolish evil and cannot, or can and willnot, or neither can nor will, or both can and will. The first three areunthinkable, if he is a God worthy of the name; therefore the lastalternative must be true. Why then does evil exist? The inference isthat 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, ReligiousIntolerance and Politics (French, 1911) —a valuable review of the wholesubject. [5] This is Gibbon’s translation. CHAPTER III REASON IN PRISON (THE MIDDLE AGES) ABOUT ten years after the Edict of Toleration, Constantine the Greatadopted 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 theChristians had claimed toleration on the ground that religious belief isvoluntary and not a thing which can be enforced. When their faith becamethe predominant creed and had the power of the State behind it, theyabandoned this view. They embarked on the hopeful enterprise of bringingabout a complete uniformity in men’s opinions on the mysteries of theuniverse, and began a more or less definite policy of coercing thought. This policy was adopted by Emperors and Governments partly on politicalgrounds; religious divisions, bitter as they were, seemed dangerous tothe unity of the State. But the fundamental principle lay in thedoctrine that salvation is to be found exclusively in the ChristianChurch. The profound conviction that those who did not believe in itsdoctrines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theologicalerror as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally topersecution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine, seeing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hindererrors from spreading. Heretics were more [53] than ordinary criminals and the pains that man could inflict onthem were as nothing to the tortures awaiting them in hell. To rid theearth of men who, however virtuous, were, through their religiouserrors, enemies of the Almighty, was a plain duty. Their virtues were noexcuse. We must remember that, according to the humane doctrine of theChristians, pagan, that is, merely human, virtues were vices, andinfants who died unbaptized passed the rest of time in creeping on thefloor of hell. The intolerance arising from such views could not butdiffer in kind and intensity from anything that the world had yetwitnessed. Besides the logic of its doctrines, the character of its Sacred Bookmust also be held partly accountable for the intolerant principles ofthe Christian Church. It was unfortunate that the early Christians hadincluded in their Scripture the Jewish writings which reflect the ideasof a low stage of civilization and are full of savagery. It would bedifficult to say how much harm has been done, in corrupting the moralsof men, by the precepts and examples of inhumanity, violence, andbigotry which the reverent reader of the Old Testament, implicitlybelieving in its inspiration, is bound to approve. It furnished anarmoury for the theory of [54] persecution. The truth is that Sacred Books are an obstacle tomoral and intellectual progress, because they consecrate the ideas of agiven epoch, and its customs, as divinely appointed. Christianity, byadopting books of a long past age, placed in the path of humandevelopment a particularly nasty stumbling-block. It may occur to one towonder how history might have been altered —altered it surely would havebeen—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 edictfulminated against the worship of the old pagan gods and againstheretical Christian sects. Julian the Apostate, who in his brief reign(A. D. 361–3) sought to revive the old order of things, proclaimeduniversal toleration, but he placed Christians at a disadvantage byforbidding them to teach in schools. This was only a momentary check. Paganism was finally shattered by the severe laws of Theodosius I (endof fourth century). It lingered on here and there for more than anothercentury, especially at Rome and Athens, but had little importance. TheChristians were more concerned in striving among themselves than in [55] crushing the prostrate spirit of antiquity. The execution of theheretic Priscillian in Spain (fourth century) inaugurated the punishmentof heresy by death. It is interesting to see a non-Christian of this ageteaching the Christian sects that they should suffer one another. Themistius in an address to the Emperor Valens urged him to repeal hisedicts against the Christians with whom he did not agree, and expoundeda theory of toleration. “The religious beliefs of individuals are afield in which the authority of a government cannot be effective;compliance can only lead to hypocritical professions. Every faith shouldbe allowed; the civil government should govern orthodox and heterodox tothe common good. God himself plainly shows that he wishes various formsof worship; there are many roads by which one can reach him. ” No father of the Church has been more esteemed or enjoyed higherauthority than St. Augustine (died A. D. 410). He formulated theprinciple of persecution for the guidance of future generations, basingit on the firm foundation of Scripture—on words used by Jesus Christ inone of his parables, “Compel them to come in. ” Till the end of thetwelfth century the Church worked hard to suppress heterodoxies. Therewas much [56] persecution, but it was not systematic. There is reason to thinkthat in the pursuit of heresy the Church was mainly guided byconsiderations of its temporal interest, and was roused to severe actiononly when the spread of false doctrine threatened to reduce its revenuesor seemed a menace to society. At the end of the twelfth centuryInnocent III became Pope and under him the Church of Western Europereached the height of its power. He and his immediate successors areresponsible for imagining and beginning an organized movement to sweepheretics out of Christendom. Languedoc in Southwestern France waslargely populated by heretics, whose opinions were consideredparticularly offensive, known as the Albigeois. They were the subjectsof the Count of Toulouse, and were an industrious and respectablepeople. But the Church got far too little money out of this anti-clerical population, and Innocent called upon the Count to extirpateheresy from his dominion. As he would not obey, the Pope announced aCrusade against the Albigeois, and offered to all who would bear a handthe usual rewards granted to Crusaders, including absolution from alltheir sins. A series of sanguinary wars followed in which theEnglishman, Simon de Montfort, took part. There were [57] wholesale burnings and hangings of men, women and children. Theresistance of the people was broken down, though the heresy was noteradicated, and the struggle ended in 1229 with the complete humiliationof the Count of Toulouse. The important point of the episode is this:the Church introduced into the public law of Europe the new principlethat a sovran held his crown on the condition that he should extirpateheresy. If he hesitated to persecute at the command of the Pope, he mustbe coerced; his lands were forfeited; and his dominions were thrown opento be seized by any one whom the Church could induce to attack him. ThePopes thus established a theocratic system in which all other interestswere to be subordinated to the grand duty of maintaining the purity ofthe Faith. But in order to root out heresy it was necessary to discover it in itsmost secret retreats. The Albigeois had been crushed, but the poison oftheir doctrine was not yet destroyed. The organized system of searchingout heretics known as the Inquisition was founded by Pope Gregory IXabout A. D. 1233, and fully established by a Bull of Innocent IV (A. D. 1252) which regulated the machinery of persecution “as an integral partof the social edifice in every city and every [58] State. ” This powerful engine for the suppression of the freedom ofmen’s religious opinions is unique in history. The bishops were not equal to the new talk undertaken by the Church, andin every ecclesiastical province suitable monks were selected and tothem was delegated the authority of the Pope for discovering heretics. These inquisitors had unlimited authority, they were subject to nosupervision and responsible to no man. It would not have been easy toestablish this system but for the fact that contemporary secular rulershad 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 1220and 1235), enacting that all heretics should be outlawed, that those whodid not recant should be burned, those who recanted should beimprisoned, but if they relapsed should be executed; that their propertyshould be confiscated, their houses destroyed, and their children, tothe second generation, ineligible to positions of emolument unless theyhad betrayed their father or some other heretic. Frederick’s legislation consecrated the stake as the proper punishmentfor heresy. This [59] cruel form of death for that crime seems to have been firstinflicted on heretics by a French king (1017). We must remember that inthe Middle Ages, and much later, crimes of all kinds were punished withthe utmost cruelty. In England in the reign of Henry VIII there is acase of prisoners being boiled to death. Heresy was the foulest of allcrimes; and to prevail against it was to prevail against the legions ofhell. The cruel enactments against heretics were strongly supported bythe public opinion of the masses. When the Inquisition was fully developed it covered Western Christendomwith a net from the meshes of which it was difficult for a heretic toescape. The inquisitors in the various kingdoms co-operated, andcommunicated information; there was “a chain of tribunals throughoutcontinental Europe. ” England stood outside the system, but from the ageof Henry IV and Henry V the government repressed heresy by the stakeunder 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 mostsuccessful in Spain. Here towards the end of the fifteenth century asystem was instituted which had peculiarities of its own and was veryjealous of [60] Roman interference. One of the achievements of the SpanishInquisition (which was not abolished till the nineteenth century) was toexpel the Moriscos or converted Moors, who retained many of their oldMohammedan opinions and customs. It is also said to have eradicatedJudaism and to have preserved the country from the zeal of Protestantmissionaries. But it cannot be proved that it deserves the credit ofhaving protected Spain against Protestantism, for it is quite possiblethat if the seeds of Protestant opinion had been sown they would, in anycase, have fallen dead on an uncongenial soil. Freedom of thoughthowever was entirely suppressed. One of the most efficacious means for hunting down heresy was the “Edictof Faith, ” which enlisted the people in the service of the Inquisitionand required every man to be an informer. From time to time a certaindistrict was visited and an edict issued commanding those who knewanything of any heresy to come forward and reveal it, under fearfulpenalties temporal and spiritual. In consequence, no one was free fromthe suspicion of his neighbours or even of his own family. “No moreingenious device has been invented to subjugate a whole population, toparalyze its intellect, and to reduce it [61] to blind obedience. It elevated delation to the rank of highreligious duty. ” The process employed in the trials of those accused of heresy in Spainrejected every reasonable means for the ascertainment of truth. Theprisoner was assumed to be guilty, the burden of proving his innocencerested on him; his judge was virtually his prosecutor. All witnessesagainst him, however infamous, were admitted. The rules for allowingwitnesses for the prosecution were lax; those for rejecting witnessesfor the defence were rigid. Jews, Moriscos, and servants could giveevidence against the prisoner but not for him, and the same rule appliedto kinsmen to the fourth degree. The principle on which the Inquisitionproceeded was that better a hundred innocent should suffer than oneguilty person escape. Indulgences were granted to any one whocontributed wood to the pile. But the tribunal of the Inquisition didnot itself condemn to the stake, for the Church must not be guilty ofthe shedding of blood. The ecclesiastical judge pronounced the prisonerto be a heretic of whose conversion there was no hope, and handed himover (“relaxed” him was the official term) to the secular authority, asking and charging the magistrate “to treat him benignantly andmercifully. ” 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 apromoter of heresy. All princes and officials, according to the CanonLaw, must punish duly and promptly heretics handed over to them by theInquisition, under pain of excommunication. It is to be noted that thenumber of deaths at the stake has been much over-estimated by popularimagination; but the sum of suffering caused by the methods of thesystem and the punishments that fell short of death can hardly beexaggerated. The legal processes employed by the Church in these persecutionsexercised a corrupting influence on the criminal jurisprudence of theContinent. Lea, the historian of the Inquisition, observes: “Of all thecurses which the Inquisition brought in its train, this perhaps was thegreatest—that, until the closing years of the eighteenth century, throughout the greater part of Europe, the inquisitorial process, asdeveloped for the destruction of heresy, became the customary method ofdealing 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 thekings who did their will that [63] they were not a bit worse than the priests and monarchs ofprimitive ages who sacrificed human beings to their deities. The Greekking, Agamemnon, who immolated his daughter Iphigenia to obtainfavourable 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 highintegrity. They acted according to their beliefs. And so in the MiddleAges and afterwards men of kindly temper and the purest zeal formorality were absolutely devoid of mercy where heresy was suspected. Hatred of heresy was a sort of infectious germ, generated by thedoctrine of exclusive salvation. It has been observed that this dogma also injured the sense of truth. Asman’s eternal fate was at stake, it seemed plainly legitimate or ratherimperative to use any means to enforce the true belief—even falsehoodand imposture. There was no scruple about the invention of miracles orany fictions that were edifying. A disinterested appreciation of truthwill not begin to prevail till the seventeenth century. While this principle, with the associated doctrines of sin, hell, andthe last judgment, led to such consequences, there were other doctrinesand implications in Christianity which, forming a solid rampart againstthe [64] advance of knowledge, blocked the paths of science in the MiddleAges, and obstructed its progress till the latter half of the nineteenthcentury. In every important field of scientific research, the ground wasoccupied by false views which the Church declared to be true on theinfallible authority of the Bible. The Jewish account of Creation andthe Fall of Man, inextricably bound up with the Christian theory ofRedemption, excluded from free inquiry geology, zoology, andanthropology. The literal interpretation of the Bible involved the truththat the sun revolves round the earth. The Church condemned the theoryof the antipodes. One of the charges against Servetus (who was burned inthe sixteenth century; see below, p. 79) was that he believed thestatement of a Greek geographer that Judea is a wretched barren countryin spite of the fact that the Bible describes it as a land flowing withmilk and honey. The Greek physician Hippocrates had based the study ofmedicine and disease on experience and methodical research. In theMiddle Ages men relapsed to the primitive notions of a barbarous age. Bodily ailments were ascribed to occult agencies—the malice of the Devilor the wrath of God. St. Augustine said that the diseases of Christianswere caused by demons, [65] and Luther in the same way attributed them to Satan. It was onlylogical that supernatural remedies should be sought to counteract theeffects of supernatural causes. There was an immense traffic in relicswith miraculous virtues, and this had the advantage of bringing in alarge revenue to the Church. Physicians were often exposed to suspicionsof sorcery and unbelief. Anatomy was forbidden, partly perhaps onaccount of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The oppositionof ecclesiastics to inoculation in the eighteenth century was a survivalof the mediaeval view of disease. Chemistry (alchemy) was considered adiabolical art and in 1317 was condemned by the Pope. The longimprisonment of Roger Bacon (thirteenth century) who, while he professedzeal for orthodoxy, had an inconvenient instinct for scientificresearch, illustrates the mediaeval distrust of science. It is possible that the knowledge of nature would have progressedlittle, even if this distrust of science on theological grounds had notprevailed. For Greek science had ceased to advance five hundred yearsbefore Christianity became powerful. After about 200 B. C. No importantdiscoveries were made. The explanation of this decay is not easy, but wemay be sure that it is to be sought in the [66] social conditions of the Greek and Roman world. And we may suspectthat the social conditions of the Middle Ages would have provedunfavourable to the scientific spirit— the disinterested quest offacts—even if the controlling beliefs had not been hostile. We maysuspect that the rebirth of science would in any case have beenpostponed till new social conditions, which began to appear in thethirteenth century (see next Chapter), had reached a certain maturity. Theological prejudice may have injured knowledge principally by itssurvival after the Middle Ages had passed away. In other words, the harmdone by Christian doctrines, in this respect, may lie less in theobscurantism of the dark interval between ancient and moderncivilization, than in the obstructions which they offered when sciencehad revived in spite of them and could no longer be crushed. The firm belief in witchcraft, magic, and demons was inherited by theMiddle Ages from antiquity, but it became far more lurid and made theworld terrible. Men believed that they were surrounded by fiendswatching for every opportunity to harm them, that pestilences, storms, eclipses, and famines were the work of the Devil; but they believed asfirmly that ecclesiastical rites were capable of coping with theseenemies. Some of the [67] early Christian Emperors legislated against magic, but till thefourteenth century there was no systematic attempt to root outwitchcraft. The fearful epidemic, known as the Black Death, whichdevastated Europe in that century, seems to have aggravated the hauntingterror of the invisible world of demons. Trials for witchcraftmultiplied, and for three hundred years the discovery of witchcraft andthe destruction of those who were accused of practising it, chieflywomen, was a standing feature of European civilization. Both the theoryand the persecution were supported by Holy Scripture. “Thou shalt notsuffer a witch to live” was the clear injunction of the highestauthority. Pope Innocent VIII issued a Bull on the matter (1484) inwhich he asserted that plagues and storms are the work of witches, andthe ablest minds believed in the reality of their devilish powers. No story is more painful than the persecution of witches, and nowherewas it more atrocious than in England and Scotland. I mention it becauseit was the direct result of theological doctrines, and because, as weshall see, it was rationalism which brought the long chapter of horrorsto an end. In the period, then, in which the Church exercised its greatestinfluence, reason was [68] enchained in the prison which Christianity had built around thehuman mind. It was not indeed inactive, but its activity took the formof heresy; or, to pursue the metaphor, those who broke chains wereunable for the most part to scale the walls of the prison; their freedomextended only so far as to arrive at beliefs, which, like orthodoxyitself, were based on Christian mythology. There were some exceptions tothe rule. At the end of the twelfth century a stimulus from anotherworld began to make itself felt. The philosophy of Aristotle becameknown to learned men in Western Christendom; their teachers were Jewsand Mohammedans. Among the Mohammedans there was a certain amount offree thought, provoked by their knowledge of ancient Greek speculation. The works of the freethinker Averroes (twelfth century) which were basedon Aristotle’s philosophy, propagated a small wave of rationalism inChristian countries. Averroes held the eternity of matter and denied theimmortality of the soul; his general view may be described as pantheism. But he sought to avoid difficulties with the orthodox authorities ofIslam by laying down the doctrine of double truth, that is thecoexistence of two independent and contradictory truths, the onephilosophical, and the other religious. This [69] did not save him from being banished from the court of the Spanishcaliph. In the University of Paris his teaching produced a school offreethinkers who held that the Creation, the resurrection of the body, and other essential dogmas, might be true from the standpoint ofreligion but are false from the standpoint of reason. To a plain mindthis seems much as if one said that the doctrine of immortality is trueon Sundays but not on week-days, or that the Apostles’ Creed is false inthe drawing-room and true in the kitchen. This dangerous movement wascrushed, and the saving principle of double truth condemned, by PopeJohn XXI. The spread of Averroistic and similar speculations calledforth the Theology of Thomas, of Aquino in South Italy (died 1274), amost subtle thinker, whose mind had a natural turn for scepticism. Heenlisted Aristotle, hitherto the guide of infidelity, on the side oforthodoxy, and constructed an ingenious Christian philosophy which isstill authoritative in the Roman Church. But Aristotle and reason aredangerous allies for faith, and the treatise of Thomas is perhaps morecalculated to unsettle a believing mind by the doubts which itpowerfully states than to quiet the scruples of a doubter by itssolutions. There must always have been some private [70] and underground unbelief here and there, which did not lead to anyserious consequences. The blasphemous statement that the world had beendeceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, was current inthe thirteenth century. It was attributed to the freethinking EmperorFrederick II (died 1250), who has been described as “the first modernman. ” The same idea, in a milder form, was expressed in the story of theThree Rings, which is at least as old. A Mohammedan ruler, desiring toextort money from a rich Jew, summoned him to his court and laid a snarefor him. “My friend, ” he said, “I have often heard it reported that thouart 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 forhim and answered as follows: “My lord, there was once a rich man whoamong his treasures had a ring of such great value that he wished toleave it as a perpetual heirloom to his successors. So he made a willthat whichever of his sons should be found in possession of this ringafter his death should be considered his heir. The son to whom he gavethe ring acted in the same way as his father, and so the ring passedfrom hand to [71] hand. At last it came into the possession of a man who had threesons whom he loved equally. Unable to make up his mind to which of themhe should leave the ring, he promised it to each of them privately, andthen in order to satisfy them all caused a goldsmith to make two otherrings so closely resembling the true ring that he was unable todistinguish 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 titlebecause the rings were indistinguishable, and the suit at law lasts tillthis day. It is even so, my lord, with the three religions, given by Godto the three peoples. They each think they have the true religion, butwhich of them really has it, is a question, like that of the rings, still undecided. ” This sceptical story became famous in the eighteenthcentury, when the German poet, Lessing, built upon it his drama Nathanthe Sage, which was intended to show the unreasonableness ofintolerance. CHAPTER IV PROSPECT OF DELIVERANCE (THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION) THE intellectual and social movement which was to dispel the darkness ofthe [72] Middle Ages and prepare the way for those who would ultimatelydeliver reason from her prison, began in Italy in the thirteenthcentury. The misty veil woven of credulity and infantile naïveté whichhad hung over men’s souls and protected them from understanding eitherthemselves or their relation to the world began to lift. The individualbegan to feel his separate individuality, to be conscious of his ownvalue as a person apart from his race or country (as in the later agesof Greece and Rome); and the world around him began to emerge from themists of mediaeval dreams. The change was due to the political andsocial conditions of the little Italian States, of which some wererepublics and others governed by tyrants. To the human world, thus unveiling itself, the individual who sought tomake it serve his purposes required a guide; and the guide was found inthe ancient literature of Greece and Rome. Hence the wholetransformation, which presently extended from Italy to Northern Europe, is known as the Renaissance, or rebirth of classical antiquity. But theawakened interest in classical literature while it coloured thecharacter and stimulated the growth of the movement, supplying newideals and suggesting new points of view, was only the form in which thechange of spirit [73] began to express itself in the fourteenth century. The change mightconceivably have taken some other shape. Its true name is Humanism. At the time men hardly felt that they were passing into a new age ofcivilization, nor did the culture of the Renaissance immediately produceany open or general intellectual rebellion against orthodox beliefs. Theworld was gradually assuming an aspect decidedly unfriendly to theteaching of mediaeval orthodoxy; but there was no explosion ofhostility; it was not till the seventeenth century that war betweenreligion and authority was systematically waged. The humanists were nothostile to theological authority or to the claims of religious dogma;but they had discovered a purely human curiosity about this world and itabsorbed their interest. They idolized pagan literature which aboundedin poisonous germs; the secular side of education became all-important;religion and theology were kept in a separate compartment. Somespeculative minds, which were sensitive to the contradiction, might seekto reconcile the old religion with new ideas; but the general tendencyof thinkers in the Renaissance period was to keep the two worldsdistinct, and to practise outward conformity to the creed without anyreal intellectual submission. [74] I may illustrate this double-facedness of the Renaissance by Montaigne(second half of sixteenth century). His Essays make for rationalism, butcontain frequent professions of orthodox Catholicism, in which he wasperfectly sincere. There is no attempt to reconcile the two points ofview; in fact, he takes the sceptical position that there is no bridgebetween reason and religion. The human intellect is incapable in thedomain of theology, and religion must be placed aloft, out of reach andbeyond the interference of reason; to be humbly accepted. But while hehumbly accepted it, on sceptical grounds which would have induced him toaccept Mohammadanism if he had been born in Cairo, his soul was not inits dominion. It was the philosophers and wise men of antiquity, Cicero, and Seneca, and Plutarch, who moulded and possessed his mind. It is tothem, and not to the consolations of Christianity, that he turns when hediscusses the problem of death. The religious wars in France which hewitnessed and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572) werecalculated to confirm him in his scepticism. His attitude to persecutionis expressed in the remark that “it is setting a high value on one’sopinions 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 OnWisdom in 1601. Here it is taught that true morality is not founded onreligion, and the author surveys the history of Christianity to show theevils which it had produced. He says of immortality that it is the mostgenerally received doctrine, the most usefully believed, and the mostweakly established by human reasons; but he modified this and some otherpassages in a second edition. A contemporary Jesuit placed Charron inthe catalogue of the most dangerous and wicked atheists. He was really adeist; but in those days, and long after, no one scrupled to call a non-Christian deist an atheist. His book would doubtless have beensuppressed and he would have suffered but for the support of King HenryIV. It has a particular interest because it transports us directly fromthe atmosphere of the Renaissance, represented by Montaigne, into thenew 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 anintellectual atmosphere in which the emancipation of reason could beginand knowledge could resume its progress. The period saw the invention ofprinting and [76] the discovery of new parts of the globe, and these things were toaid powerfully in the future defeat of authority. But the triumph of freedom depended on other causes also; it was not tobe brought about by the intellect alone. The chief political facts ofthe period were the decline of the power of the Pope in Europe, thedecay of the Holy Roman Empire, and the growth of strong monarchies, inwhich worldly interests determined and dictated ecclesiastical policy, and from which the modern State was to develop. The success of theReformation was made possible by these conditions. Its victory in NorthGermany was due to the secular interest of the princes, who profited bythe confiscation of Church lands. In England there was no popularmovement; the change was carried through by the government for its ownpurposes. The principal cause of the Reformation was the general corruption of theChurch and the flagrancy of its oppression. For a long time the Papacyhad had no higher aim than to be a secular power exploiting itsspiritual authority for the purpose of promoting its worldly interests, by which it was exclusively governed. All the European States basedtheir diplomacy on this assumption. Since the fourteenth century everyone acknowledged [77] the need of reforming the Church, and reform had been promised, butthings 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 reasonagainst dogmas, but of widely spread anti-clerical feeling due to theecclesiastical methods of extorting money, particularly by the sale ofIndulgences, the most glaring abuse of the time. It was his study of thetheory of Papal Indulgences that led Luther on to his theologicalheresies. It is an elementary error, but one which is still shared by many peoplewho have read history superficially, that the Reformation establishedreligious liberty and the right of private judgment. What it did was tobring about a new set of political and social conditions, under whichreligious liberty could ultimately be secured, and, by virtue of itsinherent inconsistencies, to lead to results at which its leaders wouldhave shuddered. But nothing was further from the minds of the leadingReformers than the toleration of doctrines differing from their own. They replaced one authority by another. They set up the authority of theBible instead of that of the Church, but it was the Bible according toLuther or the Bible according to Calvin. So far as the spirit ofintolerance went, there [78] was nothing to choose between the new and the old Churches. Thereligious wars were not for the cause of freedom, but for particularsets of doctrines; and in France, if the Protestants had beenvictorious, it is certain that they would not have given more liberalterms to the Catholics than the Catholics gave to them. Luther was quite opposed to liberty of conscience and worship, adoctrine which was inconsistent with Scripture as he read it. He mightprotest against coercion and condemn the burning of heretics, when hewas in fear that he and his party might be victims, but when he was safeand in power, he asserted his real view that it was the duty of theState to impose the true doctrine and exterminate heresy, which was anabomination, that unlimited obedience to their prince in religious as inother matters was the duty of subjects, and that the end of the Statewas to defend the faith. He held that Anabaptists should be put to thesword. With Protestants and Catholics alike the dogma of exclusivesalvation 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 controlof the State by the Church—a form of government which is commonly calledtheocracy; [79] and he established a theocracy at Geneva. Here liberty wascompletely crushed; false doctrines were put down by imprisonment, exile, and death. The punishment of Servetus is the most famous exploitof Calvin’s warfare against heresy. The Spaniard Servetus, who hadwritten against the dogma of the Trinity, was imprisoned at Lyons(partly through the machinations of Calvin) and having escaped camerashly to Geneva. He was tried for heresy and committed to the flames(1553), though Geneva had no jurisdiction over him. Melanchthon, whoformulated the principles of persecution, praised this act as amemorable example to posterity. Posterity however was one day to beashamed of that example. In 1903 the Calvinists of Geneva felt impelledto erect an expiatory monument, in which Calvin “our great Reformer” isexcused as guilty of an error “which was that of his century. ” Thus the Reformers, like the Church from which they parted, carednothing for freedom, they only cared for “truth. ” If the mediaeval idealwas to purge the world of heretics, the object of the Protestant was toexclude all dissidents from his own land. The people at large were to bedriven into a fold, to accept their faith at the command of theirsovran. This was the principle laid down in the [80] religious peace which (1555) composed the struggle between theCatholic Emperor and the Protestant German princes. It was recognized byCatherine de’ Medici when she massacred the French Protestants andsignified to Queen Elizabeth that she might do likewise with EnglishCatholics. Nor did the Protestant creeds represent enlightenment. The Reformationon the Continent was as hostile to enlightenment as it was to liberty;and science, if it seemed to contradict the Bible, has as little chancewith Luther as with the Pope. The Bible, interpreted by the Protestantsor the Roman Church, was equally fatal to witches. In Germany thedevelopment of learning received a long set-back. Yet the Reformation involuntarily helped the cause of liberty. Theresult was contrary to the intentions of its leaders, was indirect, andlong delayed. In the first place, the great rent in WesternChristianity, substituting a number of theological authorities insteadof one—several gods, we may say, instead of one God—produced a weakeningof ecclesiastical authority in general. The religious tradition wasbroken. In the second place, in the Protestant States, the supremeecclesiastical power was vested in the sovran; the sovran had otherinterests besides those of [81] the Church to consider; and political reasons would compel himsooner or later to modify the principle of ecclesiastical intolerance. Catholic States in the same way were forced to depart from the duty ofnot suffering heretics. The religious wars in France ended in a limitedtoleration of Protestants. The policy of Cardinal Richelieu, whosupported the Protestant cause in Germany, illustrates how secularinterests obstructed the cause of faith. Again, the intellectual justification of the Protestant rebellionagainst the Church had been the right of private judgment, that is, theprinciple of religious liberty. But the Reformers had asserted it onlyfor themselves, and as soon as they had framed their own articles offaith, they had practically repudiated it. This was the most glaringinconsistency in the Protestant position; and the claim which they hadthrust aside could not be permanently suppressed. Once more, theProtestant doctrines rested on an insecure foundation which no logiccould defend, and inevitably led from one untenable position to another. If we are to believe on authority, why should we prefer the upstartdictation of the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg or the English Thirty-nine Articles to the venerable authority of the Church of Rome? If wedecide against Rome, we must do so by means [82] of reason; but once we exercise reason in the matter, why should westop where Luther or Calvin or any of the other rebels stopped, unlesswe assume that one of them was inspired? If we reject superstitionswhich they rejected, there is nothing except their authority to preventus from rejecting all or some of the superstitions which they retained. Moreover, their Bible-worship promoted results which they did notforesee. [1] The inspired record on which the creeds depend became anopen book. Public attention was directed to it as never before, thoughit cannot be said to have been universally read before the nineteenthcentury. Study led to criticism, the difficulties of the dogma ofinspiration were appreciated, and the Bible was ultimately to besubmitted to a remorseless dissection which has altered at least thequality of its authority in the eyes of intelligent believers. Thisprocess of Biblical criticism has been conducted mainly in a Protestantatmosphere and the new position in which the Bible was placed by theReformation must be held partly accountable. In these ways, Protestantism was adapted to be a stepping-stone to rationalism, andthus served the cause of freedom. [83] That cause however was powerfully and directly promoted by one sect ofReformers, who in the eyes of all the others were blasphemers and ofwhom most people never think when they talk of the Reformation. I meanthe Socinians. Of their far-reaching influence something will be said inthe next chapter. Another result of the Reformation has still to be mentioned, itsrenovating effect on the Roman Church, which had now to fight for itsexistence. A new series of Popes who were in earnest about religionbegan with Paul III (1534) and reorganized the Papacy and its resourcesfor a struggle of centuries. [2] The institution of the Jesuit order, the establishment of the Inquisition at Rome, the Council of Trent, thecensorship of the Press (Index of Forbidden Books) were the expressionof the new spirit and the means to cope with the new situation. Thereformed Papacy was good fortune for believing children of the Church, but what here concerns us is that one of its chief objects was torepress freedom more effectually. Savonarola who preached right livingat Florence had been executed (1498) under Pope Alexander VI who was anotorious profligate. If Savonarola had lived [84] in the new era he might have been canonized, but Giordano Bruno wasburned. Giordano Bruno had constructed a religious philosophy, based partly uponEpicurus, from whom he took the theory of the infinity of the universe. But Epicurean materialism was transformed into a pantheistic mysticismby the doctrine that God is the soul of matter. Accepting the recentdiscovery of Copernicus, which Catholics and Protestants alike rejected, that the earth revolves round the sun, Bruno took the further step ofregarding 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 theirprejudices. Leaving Italy, because he was suspected of heresy, he livedsuccessively in Switzerland, France, England, and Germany, and in 1592, induced by a false friend to return to Venice he was seized by order ofthe Inquisition. Finally condemned in Rome, he was burned (1600) in theCampo de’ Fiori, where a monument now stands in his honour, erected someyears ago, to the great chagrin of the Roman Church. Much is made of the fate of Bruno because he is one of the world’sfamous men. No country has so illustrious a victim of that era tocommemorate as Italy, but in other lands [85] blood just as innocent was shed for heterodox opinions. In Francethere was rather more freedom than elsewhere under the relativelytolerant government of Henry IV and of the Cardinals Richelieu andMazarin, till about 1660. But at Toulouse (1619) Lucilio Vanini, alearned Italian who like Bruno wandered about Europe, was convicted asan atheist and blasphemer; his tongue was torn out and he was burned. Protestant England, under Elizabeth and James I, did not lag behind theRoman Inquisition, but on account of the obscurity of the victims herzeal for faith has been unduly forgotten. Yet, but for an accident, shemight have covered herself with the glory of having done to death aheretic not less famous than Giordano Bruno. The poet Marlowe wasaccused of atheism, but while the prosecution was hanging over him hewas killed in a sordid quarrel in a tavern (1593). Another dramatist(Kyd) who was implicated in the charge was put to the torture. At thesame time Sir Walter Raleigh was prosecuted for unbelief but notconvicted. Others were not so fortunate. Three or four persons wereburned 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 Legatewas charged with holding various pestilent opinions. The king summonedhim to his presence and asked him whether he did not pray daily to JesusChrist. Legate replied he had prayed to Christ in the days of hisignorance, but not for the last seven years. “Away, base fellow, ” saidJames, spurning him with his foot, “it shall never be said that onestayeth in my palace that hath never prayed to our Saviour for sevenyears together. ” Legate, having been imprisoned for some time inNewgate, was declared an incorrigible heretic and burned at Smithfield(1611). Just a month later, one Wightman was burned at Lichfield, by theBishop of Coventry, for heterodox doctrines. It is possible that publicopinion was shocked by these two burnings. They were the last cases inEngland of death for unbelief. Puritan intolerance, indeed, passed anordinance in 1648, by which all who denied the Trinity, Christ’sdivinity, the inspiration of Scripture, or a future state, were liableto death, and persons guilty of other heresies, to imprisonment. Butthis did not lead to any executions. The Renaissance age saw the first signs of the beginning of modernscience, but the mediaeval prejudices against the investigation [87] of nature were not dissipated till the seventeenth century, and inItaly they continued to a much later period. The history of modernastronomy begins in 1543, with the publication of the work of Copernicusrevealing the truth about the motions of the earth. The appearance ofthis work is important in the history of free thought, because it raiseda clear and definite issue between science and Scripture; and Osiander, who edited it (Copernicus was dying), forseeing the outcry it wouldraise, stated untruly in the preface that the earth’s motion was putforward only as a hypothesis. The theory was denounced by Catholics andReformers, and it did not convince some men (e. G. Bacon) who were notinfluenced by theological prejudice. The observations of the Italianastronomer Galileo de’ Galilei demonstrated the Copernican theory beyondquestion. His telescope discovered the moons of Jupiter, and hisobservation of the spots in the sun confirmed the earth’s rotation. Inthe pulpits of Florence, where he lived under the protection of theGrand Duke, his sensational discoveries were condemned. “Men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” He was then denounced to the HolyOffice of the Inquisition by two Dominican monks. Learning that hisinvestigations were being considered [88] at Rome, Galileo went thither, confident that he would be able toconvince the ecclesiastical authorities of the manifest truth ofCopernicanism. He did not realize what theology was capable of. InFebruary 1616 the Holy Office decided that the Copernican system was initself absurd, and, in respect of Scripture, heretical. CardinalBellarmin, by the Pope’s direction, summoned Galileo and officiallyadmonished him to abandon his opinion and cease to teach it, otherwisethe Inquisition would proceed against him. Galileo promised to obey. Thebook of Copernicus was placed on the Index. It has been remarked thatGalileo’s book on Solar Spots contains no mention of Scripture, and thusthe Holy Office, in its decree which related to that book, passedjudgment on a scientific, not a theological, question. Galileo was silenced for a while, but it was impossible for him to bemute for ever. Under a new Pope (Urban VIII) he looked for greaterliberty, and there were many in the Papal circle who were well disposedto him. He hoped to avoid difficulties by the device of placing thearguments for the old and the new theories side by side, and pretendingnot to judge between them. He wrote a treatise on the two systems (thePtolemaic and the Copernican) in the form [89] of Dialogues, of which the preface declares that the purpose is toexplain the pros and cons of the two views. But the spirit of the workis Copernican. He received permission, quite definite as he thought, from Father Riccardi (master of the Sacred Palace) to print it, and itappeared in 1632. The Pope however disapproved of it, the book wasexamined by a commission, and Galileo was summoned before theInquisition. He was old and ill, and the humiliations which he had toendure are a painful story. He would probably have been more severelytreated, if one of the members of the tribunal had not been a man ofscientific training (Macolano, a Dominican), who was able to appreciatehis ability. Under examination, Galileo denied that he had upheld themotion of the earth in the Dialogues, and asserted that he had shown thereasons of Copernicus to be inconclusive. This defence was in accordancewith the statement in his preface, but contradicted his deepestconviction. In struggling with such a tribunal, it was the only linewhich a man who was not a hero could take. At a later session, he forcedhimself ignominiously to confess that some of the arguments on theCopernican side had been put too strongly and to declare himself readyto 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 theCopernican system to be arguable, but since then he had held thePtolemaic to be true. Next day, he publicly abjured the scientific truthwhich he had demonstrated. He was allowed to retire to the country, oncondition that he saw no one. In the last months of his life he wrote toa friend to this effect: “The falsity of the Copernican system cannot bedoubted, especially by us Catholics. It is refuted by the irrefragableauthority of Scripture. The conjectures of Copernicus and his discipleswere all disposed of by the one solid argument: God’s omnipotence canoperate in infinitely various ways. If something appears to ourobservation to happen in one particular way, we must not curtail God’sarm, and sustain a thing in which we may be deceived. ” The irony isevident. Rome did not permit the truth about the solar system to be taught tillafter the middle of the eighteenth century, and Galileo’s books remainedon the Index till 1835. The prohibition was fatal to the study ofnatural science in Italy. The Roman Index reminds us of the significance of the invention ofprinting in the struggle for freedom of thought, by making [91] it easy to propagate new ideas far and wide. Authority speedilyrealized the danger, and took measures to place its yoke on the newcontrivance, which promised to be such a powerful ally of reason. PopeAlexander VI inaugurated censorship of the Press by his Bull againstunlicensed printing (1501). In France King Henry II made printingwithout official permission punishable by death. In Germany, censorshipwas introduced in 1529. In England, under Elizabeth, books could not beprinted without a license, and printing presses were not allowed exceptin London, Oxford, and Cambridge; the regulation of the Press was underthe authority of the Star Chamber. Nowhere did the Press become reallyfree till the nineteenth century. While the Reformation and the renovated Roman Church meant a reactionagainst the Renaissance, the vital changes which the Renaissancesignified—individualism, a new intellectual attitude to the world, thecultivation of secular knowledge—were permanent and destined to lead, amid the competing intolerances of Catholic and Protestant powers, tothe goal of liberty. We shall see how reason and the growth of knowledgeundermined the bases of theological authority. At each step in thisprocess, in which philosophical speculation, historical [92] criticism, natural science have all taken part, the oppositionbetween reason and faith deepened; doubt, clear or vague, increased; andsecularism, derived from the Humanists, and always implying scepticism, whether latent or conscious, substituted an interest in the fortunes ofthe human race upon earth for the interest in a future world. And alongwith this steady intellectual advance, toleration gained ground andfreedom won more champions. In the meantime the force of politicalcircumstances was compelling governments to mitigate their maintenanceof one religious creed by measures of relief to other Christian sects, and the principle of exclusiveness was broken down for reasons ofworldly expediency. Religious liberty was an important step towardscomplete freedom of opinion. [1] The danger, however, was felt in Germany, and in the seventeenthcentury the study of Scripture was not encouraged at GermanUniversities. [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 zealbut of tolerant spirit, confronted by the struggle between two hostilereligions (Brahmanism and Buddhism), decided that both should be equallyprivileged and honoured in his dominions. His ordinances on the matterare memorable [93] as the earliest existing Edicts of toleration. In Europe, as wesaw, the principle of toleration was for the first time definitelyexpressed in the Roman Imperial Edicts which terminated the persecutionof the Christians. The religious strife of the sixteenth century raised the question in itsmodern form, and for many generations it was one of the chief problemsof statesmen and the subject of endless controversial pamphlets. Toleration means incomplete religious liberty, and there are manydegrees of it. It might be granted to certain Christian sects; it mightbe granted to Christian sects, but these alone; it might be granted toall religions, but not to freethinkers; or to deists, but not toatheists. It might mean the concession of some civil rights, but not ofothers; it might mean the exclusion of those who are tolerated frompublic offices or from certain professions. The religious liberty nowenjoyed in Western lands has been gained through various stages oftoleration. We owe the modern principle of toleration to the Italian group ofReformers, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and were the fathersof Unitarianism. The Reformation movement had spread to Italy, but Romewas successful in suppressing it, and many heretics fled to Switzerland. The anti-Trinitarian [94] group were forced by the intolerance of Calvin to flee toTransylvania and Poland where they propagated their doctrines. TheUnitarian creed was moulded by Fausto Sozzini, generally known asSocinus, and in the catechism of his sect (1574) persecution iscondemned. This repudiation of the use of force in the interest ofreligion is a consequence of the Socinian doctrines. For, unlike Lutherand Calvin, the Socinians conceded such a wide room to individualjudgment in the interpretation of Scripture that to impose Socinianismwould have been inconsistent with its principles. In other words, therewas a strong rationalistic element which was lacking in the Trinitariancreeds. It was under the influence of the Socinian spirit that Castellion ofSavoy sounded the trumpet of toleration in a pamphlet denouncing theburning of Servetus, whereby he earned the malignant hatred of Calvin. He maintained the innocence of error and ridiculed the importance whichthe Churches laid on obscure questions such as predestination and theTrinity. “To discuss the difference between the Law and the Gospel, gratuitous remission of sins or imputed righteousness, is as if a manwere 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 acurse if persecution is a necessary part of it. For a long time the Socinians and those who came under their influencewhen, driven from Poland, they passed into Germany and Holland, were theonly sects which advocated toleration. It was adopted from them by theAnabaptists and by the Arminian section of the Reformed Church ofHolland. And in Holland, the founder of the English Congregationalists, who (under the name of Independents) played such an important part inthe history of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, learned the principleof liberty of conscience. Socinus thought that this principle could be realized without abolishingthe State Church. He contemplated a close union between the State andthe prevailing Church, combined with complete toleration for othersects. It is under this system (which has been called jurisdictional)that religious liberty has been realized in European States. But thereis another and simpler method, that of separating Church from State andplacing all religions on an equality. This was the solution which theAnabaptists would have preferred. They detested the State; and thedoctrine of religious liberty was not [96] precious to them. Their ideal system would have been an Anabaptisttheocracy; separation was the second best. In Europe, public opinion was not ripe for separation, inasmuch as themost powerful religious bodies were alike in regarding toleration aswicked indifference. But it was introduced in a small corner of the newworld beyond the Atlantic in the seventeenth century. The Puritans whofled from the intolerance of the English Church and State and foundedcolonies in New England, were themselves equally intolerant, not only toAnglicans and Catholics, but to Baptists and Quakers. They set uptheocratical governments from which all who did not belong to their ownsect were excluded. Roger Williams had imbibed from the Dutch Arminiansthe idea of separation of Church from State. On account of this heresyhe was driven from Massachusetts, and he founded Providence to be arefuge for those whom the Puritan colonists persecuted. Here he set up ademocratic constitution in which the magistrates had power only in civilmatters and could not interfere with religion. Other towns werepresently founded in Rhode Island, and a charter of Charles II (1663)confirmed the constitution, which secured to all citizens professingChristianity, of whatever [97] form, the full enjoyment of political rights. Non-Christians weretolerated, but were not admitted to the political rights of Christians. So far, the new State fell short of perfect liberty. But the fact thatJews were soon admitted, notwithstanding, to full citizenship shows howfree the atmosphere was. To Roger Williams belongs the glory of havingfounded the first modern State which was really tolerant and was basedon the principle of taking the control of religious matters entirely outof the hands of the civil government. Toleration was also established in the Roman Catholic colony ofMaryland, but in a different way. Through the influence of LordBaltimore an Act of Toleration was passed in 1649, notable as the firstdecree, voted by a legal assembly, granting complete freedom to allChristians. No one professing faith in Christ was to be molested inregard 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 theTrinity was threatened by the penalty of death. The tolerance ofMaryland attracted so many Protestant settlers from Virginia that theProtestants became a majority, and as soon as they won politicalpreponderance, they introduced an Act (1654) [98] excluding Papists and Prelatists from toleration. The rule of theBaltimores was restored after 1660, and the old religious freedom wasrevived, but with the accession of William III the Protestants againcame into power and the toleration which the Catholics had instituted inMaryland came to an end. It will be observed that in both these cases freedom was incomplete; butit was much larger and more fundamental in Rhode Island, where it hadbeen ultimately derived from the doctrine of Socinus. [2] When thecolonies became independent of England the Federal Constitution whichthey set up was absolutely secular, but it was left to each member ofthe Union to adopt Separation or not (1789). If separation has becomethe rule in the American States, it may be largely due to the fact thaton any other system the governments would have found it difficult toimpose mutual tolerance on the sects. It must be added that in Marylandand a few southern States atheists still suffer from some politicaldisabilities. In England, the experiment of Separation would have been tried under theCommonwealth, if the Independents had had their way. This policy wasoverruled by Cromwell. [99] The new national Church included Presbyterians, Independents, andBaptists, but liberty of worship was granted to all Christian sects, except Roman Catholics and Anglicans. If the parliament had had thepower, this toleration would have been a mere name. The Presbyteriansregarded toleration as a work of the Devil, and would have persecutedthe Independents if they could. But under Cromwell’s autocratic ruleeven the Anglicans lived in peace, and toleration was extended to theJews. In these days, voices were raised from various quarters advocatingtoleration on general grounds. [3] The most illustrious advocate wasMilton, the poet, who was in favour of the severance of Church fromState. In Milton’s Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensedprinting (1644), the freedom of the Press is eloquently sustained byarguments which are valid for freedom of thought in general. It is shownthat the censorship will conduce “to the discouragement of all learningand the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting ourabilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping thediscovery that might be yet further made, both in religious [100] and civil wisdom. ” For knowledge is advanced through the utteranceof new opinions, and truth is discovered by free discussion. If thewaters of truth “flow not in a perpetual progression they sicken into amuddy pool of conformity and tradition. ” Books which are authorized bythe licensers are apt to be, as Bacon said, “but the language of thetimes, ” and do not contribute to progress. The examples of the countrieswhere the censorship is severe do not suggest that it is useful formorals: “look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruplethe better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all theinquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books. ” Spain indeedcould reply, “We are, what is more important, more orthodox. ” It isinteresting to notice that Milton places freedom of thought above civilliberty: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freelyaccording to conscience, above all other liberties. ” With the restoration of the Monarchy and the Anglican Church, religiousliberty was extinguished by a series of laws against Dissenters. To theRevolution we owe the Act of Toleration (1689) from which the religiousfreedom which England enjoys at present is derived. It granted freedomof worship to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, [101] Baptists and Quakers, but only to these; Catholics and Unitarianswere expressly excepted and the repressive legislation of Charles IIremained in force against them. It was a characteristically Englishmeasure, logically inconsistent and absurd, a mixture of tolerance andintolerance, but suitable to the circumstances and the state of publicopinion at the time. In the same year John Locke’s famous (first) Letter concerningToleration appeared in Latin. Three subsequent letters developed andillustrated his thesis. The main argument is based on the principle thatthe business of civil government is quite distinct from that ofreligion, that the State is a society constituted only for preservingand promoting the civil interests of its members —civil interestsmeaning life, liberty, health, and the possession of property. The careof souls is not committed to magistrates more than to other men. For themagistrate can only use outward force; but true religion means theinward persuasion of the mind, and the mind is so made that force cannotcompel it to believe. So too it is absurd for a State to make laws toenforce a religion, for laws are useless without penalties, andpenalties 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 willof their rulers and accepted the religion of their country? For as theprinces of the world are divided in religion, one country alone would bein the right, and all the rest of the world would have to follow theirprinces to destruction; “and that which heightens the absurdity, andvery ill suits the notion of a deity, men would owe their eternalhappiness or their eternal misery to the places of their nativity. ” Thisis a principle on which Locke repeatedly insists. If a State isjustified in imposing a creed, it follows that in all the lands, exceptthe one or few in which the true faith prevails, it is the duty of thesubjects to embrace a false religion. If Protestantism is promoted inEngland, Popery by the same rule will be promoted in France. “What istrue and good in England will be true and good at Rome too, in China, orGeneva. ” Toleration is the principle which gives to the true faith thebest chance of prevailing. Locke would concede full liberty to idolaters, by whom he means theIndians of North America, and he makes some scathing remarks on theecclesiastical zeal which forced these “innocent pagans” to forsake [103] their ancient religion. But his toleration, though it extendsbeyond the Christian pale, is not complete. He excepts in the firstplace Roman Catholics, not on account of their theological dogmas butbecause they “teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics, ” that“kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms, ” and becausethey deliver themselves up to the protection and service of a foreignprince—the Pope. In other words, they are politically dangerous. Hisother exception is atheists. “Those are not all to be tolerated who denythe being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds ofhuman society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that bytheir atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretenceof religion to challenge the privilege of a Toleration. ” Thus Locke is not free from the prejudices of his time. These exceptionscontradict his own principle that “it is absurd that things should beenjoined by laws which are not in men’s power to perform. And to believethis or that to be true does not depend upon our will. ” This applies toRoman Catholics as to Protestants, to atheists as to deists. Locke, however, perhaps thought [104] that the speculative opinion of atheism, which was uncommon in hisday, does depend on the will. He would have excluded from his State hisgreat contemporary Spinoza. But in spite of its limitations Locke’s Toleration is a work of thehighest value, and its argument takes us further than its author went. It asserts unrestrictedly the secular principle, and its logical issueis 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 forany son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons. ” Thisis a polite way of stating a maxim analogous to that of the EmperorTiberius (above, p. 41). If false beliefs are an offence to God, it is, really, his affair. The toleration of Nonconformists was far from pleasing extremeAnglicans, and the influence of this party at the beginning of theeighteenth century menaced the liberty of Dissenters. The situationprovoked Defoe, who was a zealous Nonconformist, to write his pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), an ironical attack upon theprinciple of toleration. It pretends to show that the Dissenters are atheart incorrigible rebels, that a gentle policy is useless, and suggests [105] that all preachers at conventicles should be hanged and allpersons found attending such meetings should be banished. Thisexceedingly amusing but terribly earnest caricature of the sentiments ofthe High Anglican party at first deceived and alarmed the Dissentersthemselves. 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 centurya relatively tolerant spirit prevailed among the Christian sects and newsects were founded. The official Church became less fanatical; many ofits leading divines were influenced by rationalistic thought. If it hadnot been for the opposition of King George III, the Catholics might havebeen freed from their disabilities before the end of the century. Thismeasure, eloquently advocated by Burke and desired by Pitt, was notcarried till 1829, and then under the threat of a revolution in Ireland. In the meantime legal toleration had been extended to the Unitarians in1813, 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 nineteenthcentury has been mainly the work of Liberals. The Liberal [106] party has been moving towards the ultimate goal of completesecularization and the separation of the Church from the State— thelogical results of Locke’s theory of civil government. TheDisestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1869 partly realized thisideal, and now more than forty years later the Liberal party is seekingto apply the principle to Wales. It is highly characteristic of Englishpolitics and English psychology that the change should be carried out inthis piecemeal fashion. In the other countries of the British Empire thesystem of Separation prevails; there is no connection between the Stateand any sect; no Church is anything more than a voluntary society. Butsecularization has advanced under the State Church system. It is enoughto mention the Education Act of 1870 and the abolition of religioustests at Universities (1871). Other gains for freedom will be noticedwhen I come to speak in another chapter of the progress of rationalism. If we compare the religious situation in France in the seventeenth withthat in the eighteenth century, it seems to be sharply contrasted withthe development in England. In England there was a great advance towardsreligious liberty, in France there was a falling away. Until 1676 theFrench Protestants [107] (Huguenots) were tolerated; for the next hundred years they wereoutlaws. But the toleration, which their charter (the Edict of Nantes, 1598) secured them, was of a limited kind. They were excluded, forinstance, from the army; they were excluded from Paris and other citiesand districts. And the liberty which they enjoyed was confined to them;it was not granted to any other sect. The charter was faithfullymaintained by the two great Cardinals (Richelieu and Mazarin) whogoverned France under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, but when the latterassumed the active power in 1661 he began a series of laws against theProtestants which culminated in the revoking of the charter (1676) andthe beginning of a Protestant persecution. The French clergy justified this policy by the notorious text “Compelthem to come in, ” and appealed to St. Augustine. Their arguments evokeda defence of toleration by Bayle, a French Protestant who had takenrefuge in Holland. It was entitled a Philosophical Commentary on thetext “Compel them to come in” (1686) and in importance stands besideLocke’s work which was being composed at the same time. Many of thearguments urged by the two writers are identical. They agreed, and forthe same reasons, in excluding Roman Catholics. The [108] most characteristic thing in Bayle’s treatise is his scepticalargument that, even if it were a right principle to suppress error byforce, no truth is certain enough to justify us in applying the theory. We shall see (next chapter) this eminent scholar’s contribution torationalism. Though there was an immense exodus of Protestants from France, Louis didnot succeed in his design of extirpating heresy from his lands. In theeighteenth century, under Louis XV, the presence of Protestants wastolerated though they were outlaws; their marriages were not recognizedas legal, and they were liable at any moment to persecution. About themiddle of the century a literary agitation began, conducted mainly byrationalists, but finally supported by enlightened Catholics, to relievethe affliction of the oppressed sect. It resulted at last in an Edict ofToleration (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 againstintolerance was Voltaire (see next chapter), and his exposure of someglaring cases of unjust persecution did more than general arguments toachieve the object. The most infamous case was that of Jean Calas, aProtestant merchant of Toulouse, whose son committed suicide. A report [109] was set abroad that the young man had decided to join the CatholicChurch, and that his father, mother, and brother, filled with Protestantbigotry, killed him, with the help of a friend. They were all put inirons, tried, and condemned, though there were no arguments for theirguilt, except the conjecture of bigotry. Jean Calas was broken on thewheel, his son and daughter cast into convents, his wife left to starve. Through the activity of Voltaire, then living near Geneva, the widow wasinduced to go to Paris, where she was kindly received, and assisted byeminent lawyers; a judicial inquiry was made; the Toulouse sentence wasreversed and the King granted pensions to those who had suffered. Thisscandal could only have happened in the provinces, according toVoltaire: “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, andthe government of Toulouse was again responsible. He was accused ofhaving drowned his daughter in a well to hinder her from becoming aCatholic, and was, with his wife, sentenced to death. Fortunately he andhis family had escaped to Switzerland, where they persuaded Voltaire oftheir innocence. To get the sentence reversed was the work of nineyears, and this [110] time it was reversed at Toulouse. When Voltaire visited Paris in1778 he was acclaimed by crowds as the “defender of Calas and theSirvens. ” His disinterested practical activity against persecution wasof far more value than the treatise on Toleration which he wrote inconnexion with the Calas episode. It is a poor work compared with thoseof Locke and Bayle. The tolerance which he advocates is of a limitedkind; he would confine public offices and dignities to those who belongto the State religion. But if Voltaire’s system of toleration is limited, it is wide comparedwith the religious establishment advocated by his contemporary, Rousseau. Though of Swiss birth, Rousseau belongs to the literature andhistory of France; but it was not for nothing that he was brought up inthe 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. Butcertain dogmas, which he considered essential, were to be imposed on allcitizens on pain of banishment. Such were the existence of a deity, thefuture bliss of the good and punishment of the bad, the duty oftolerance towards all those who accepted the fundamental [111] articles of faith. It may be said that a State founded on thisbasis would be fairly inclusive—that all Christian sects and many deistscould find a place in it. But by imposing indispensable beliefs, itdenies the principle of toleration. The importance of Rousseau’s idealies in the fact that it inspired one of the experiments in religiouspolicy which were made during the French Revolution. The Revolution established religious liberty in France. Most of theleaders were unorthodox. Their rationalism was naturally of theeighteenth-century type, and in the preamble to the Declaration ofRights (1789) deism was asserted by the words “in the presence and underthe auspices of the Supreme Being” (against which only one voiceprotested). The Declaration laid down that no one was to be vexed onaccount of his religious opinions provided he did not thereby troublepublic order. Catholicism was retained as the “dominant” religion;Protestants (but not Jews) were admitted to public office. Mirabeau, thegreatest statesman of the day, protested strongly against the use ofwords like “tolerance” and “dominant. ” He said: “The most unlimitedliberty of religion is in my eyes a right so sacred that to express itby the word ‘toleration’ seems to me itself a sort of tyranny, [112] since the authority which tolerates might also not tolerate. ” Thesame protest was made in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man which appeared twoyears later: “Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is thecounterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes itself the rightof withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. ”Paine was an ardent deist, and he added: “Were a bill brought into anyparliament, entitled ‘An Act to tolerate or grant liberty to theAlmighty to receive the worship of a Jew or a Turk, ’ or ‘to prohibit theAlmighty from receiving it, ’ all men would startle and call itblasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption of toleration inreligious matters would then present itself unmasked. ” The Revolution began well, but the spirit of Mirabeau was not in theascendant throughout its course. The vicissitudes in religious policyfrom 1789 to 1801 have a particular interest, because they show that theprinciple of liberty of conscience was far from possessing the minds ofthe men who were proud of abolishing the intolerance of the governmentwhich they had overthrown. The State Church was reorganized by the CivilConstitution of the Clergy (1790), by which French citizens wereforbidden to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and [113] the appointment of Bishops was transferred to the Electors of theDepartments, so that the commanding influence passed from the Crown tothe nation. Doctrine and worship were not touched. Under the democraticRepublic which succeeded the fall of the monarchy (1792–5) thisConstitution was maintained, but a movement to dechristianize France wasinaugurated, and the Commune of Paris ordered the churches of allreligions to be closed. The worship of Reason, with rites modelled onthe Catholic, was organized in Paris and the provinces. The government, violently anti-Catholic, did not care to use force against the prevalentfaith; direct persecution would have weakened the national defence andscandalized Europe. They naïvely hoped that the superstition woulddisappear by degrees. Robespierre declared against the policy ofunchristianizing France, and when he had the power (April, 1795), heestablished as a State religion the worship of the Supreme Being. “TheFrench people recognizes the existence of the Supreme Being and theimmortality of the Soul”; the liberty of other cults was maintained. Thus, for a few months, Rousseau’s idea was more or less realized. Itmeant intolerance. Atheism was regarded as a vice, and “all wereatheists who did not think like Robespierre. ” [114] The democratic was succeeded by the middle-class Republic (1795–9), andthe policy of its government was to hinder the preponderance of any onereligious group; to hold the balance among all the creeds, but with acertain partiality against the strongest, the Catholic, whichthreatened, as was thought, to destroy the others or even the Republic. The plan was to favour the growth of new rationalistic cults, and toundermine revealed religion by a secular system of education. Accordingly the Church was separated from the State by the Constitutionof 1795, which affirmed the liberty of all worship and withdrew from theCatholic clergy the salaries which the State had hitherto paid. Theelementary schools were laicized. The Declaration of Rights, thearticles of the Constitution, and republican morality were taughtinstead of religion. An enthusiast declared that “the religion ofSocrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero would soon be the religion of theworld. ” A new rationalistic religion was introduced under the name ofTheophilanthropy. It was the “natural religion” of the philosophers andpoets of the century, of Voltaire and the English deists—not thepurified Christianity of Rousseau, but anterior and superior toChristianity. Its doctrines, briefly formulated, [115] were: God, immortality, fraternity, humanity; no attacks on otherreligions, but respect and honour towards all; gatherings in a family, or in a temple, to encourage one another to practise morality. Protectedby the government sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, it had a certainsuccess among the cultivated classes. The idea of the lay State was popularized under this rule, and by theend of the century there was virtually religious peace in France. Underthe Consulate (from 1799) the same system continued, but Napoleon ceasedto protect Theophilanthropy. In 1801, though there seems to have beenlittle discontent with the existing arrangement, Napoleon decided toupset it and bring the Pope upon the scene. The Catholic religion, asthat of the majority, was again taken under the special protection ofthe State, the salaries of the clergy again paid by the nation, and thePapal authority over the Church again recognized within well-definedlimits; while full toleration of other religions was maintained. Thiswas the effect of the Concordat between the French Republic and thePope. It is the judgment of a high authority that the nation, if it hadbeen consulted, would have pronounced against the change. It may bedoubted whether this is true. But Napoleon’s policy [116] seems to have been prompted by the calculation that, using thePope as an instrument, he could control the consciences of men, and moreeasily carry out his plans of empire. Apart from its ecclesiastical policies and its experiments in new creedsbased on the principles of rationalistic thinkers, the French Revolutionitself has an interest, in connexion with our subject, as an example ofthe coercion of reason by an intolerant faith. The leaders believed that, by applying certain principles, they couldregenerate France and show the world how the lasting happiness ofmankind can be secured. They acted in the name of reason, but theirprinciples were articles of faith, which were accepted just as blindlyand irrationally as the dogmas of any supernatural creed. One of thesedogmas was the false doctrine of Rousseau that man is a being who isnaturally good and loves justice and order. Another was the illusionthat all men are equal by nature. The puerile conviction prevailed thatlegislation could completely blot out the past and radically transformthe character of a society. “Liberty, equality, and fraternity” was asmuch a creed as the Creed of the Apostles; it hypnotized men’s mindslike a revelation from on high; and reason had as little part in itspropagation as in the spread [117] of Christianity or of Protestantism. It meant anything butequality, fraternity, or liberty, especially liberty, when it wastranslated into action by the fanatical apostles of “Reason, ” who wereblind to the facts of human nature and defied the facts of econnomics. Terror, the usual instrument in propagating religions, was never moremercilessly applied. Any one who questioned the doctrines was a hereticand deserved a heretic’s fate. And, as in most religious movements, themilder and less unreasonable spirits succumbed to the fanatics. Neverwas the name of reason more grievously abused than by those who believedthey were inaugurating her reign. Religious liberty, however, among other good things, did emerge from theRevolution, at first in the form of Separation, and then under theConcordat. The Concordat lasted for more than a century, undermonarchies and republics, till it was abolished in December, 1905, whenthe system of Separation was introduced again. In the German States the history of religious liberty differs in manyways, but it resembles the development in France in so far as tolerationin 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 CivilWar, religion and politics were mixed, was terminated by the Peace ofWestphalia (1648). By this act, three religions, the Catholic, theLutheran, and the Reformed [4] were legally recognized by the Holy RomanEmpire, and placed on an equality; all other religious were excluded. But it was left to each of the German States, of which the Empireconsisted, to tolerate or not any religion it pleased. That is, everyprince could impose on his subjects whichever of the three religions hechose, and refuse to tolerate the others in his territory. But he mightalso admit one or both of the others, and he might allow the followersof other creeds to reside in his dominion, and practise their religionwithin the precincts of their own houses. Thus toleration varied, fromState to State, according to the policy of each particular prince. As elsewhere, so in Germany, considerations of political expediencypromoted the growth of toleration, especially in Prussia; and aselsewhere, theoretical advocates exercised great influence on publicopinion. But the case for toleration was based by its German defenderschiefly on legal, not, as in [119] England and France, on moral and intellectual grounds. Theyregarded it as a question of law, and discussed it from the point ofview of the legal relations between State and Church. It had beenconsidered long ago from this standpoint by an original Italian thinker, Marsilius of Padua (thirteenth century), who had maintained that theChurch had no power to employ physical coercion, and that if the layauthority punished heretics, the punishment was inflicted for theviolation not of divine ordinances but of the law of the State, whichexcluded heretics from its territory. Christian Thomasius may be taken as a leading exponent of the theorythat religious liberty logically follows from a right conception of law. He laid down in a series of pamphlets (1693–1697) that the prince, whoalone has the power of coercion, has no right to interfere in spiritualmatters, while the clergy step beyond their province if they interferein secular matters or defend their faith by any other means thanteaching. But the secular power has no legal right to coerce hereticsunless heresy is a crime. And heresy is not a crime, but an error; forit is not a matter of will. Thomasius, moreover, urges the view that thepublic 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 tothe State. His toleration indeed is not complete. He was much influencedby the writings of his contemporary Locke, and he excepts from thebenefit of toleration the same classes which Locke excepted. Besides the influence of the jurists, we may note that the Pietisticmovement—a reaction of religious enthusiasm against the formal theologyof the Lutheran divines—was animated by a spirit favourable totoleration; and that the cause was promoted by the leading men ofletters, especially by Lessing, in the second half of the eighteenthcentury. But perhaps the most important fact of all in hastening the realizationof religious liberty in Germany was the accession of a rationalist tothe throne of Prussia, in the person of Frederick the Great. A fewmonths after his accession (1740) he wrote in the margin of a Statepaper, in which a question of religious policy occurred, that every oneshould be allowed to get to heaven in his own way. His view thatmorality was independent of religion and therefore compatible with allreligions, and that thus a man could be a good citizen—the only thingwhich 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 ofWestphalia was violated by the extension of full toleration to all theforbidden sects. Frederick even conceived the idea of introducingMohammedan settlers into some parts of his realm. Contrast England underGeorge III, France under Louis XV, Italy under the shadow of the Popes. It is an important fact in history, which has hardly been dulyemphasized, that full religious liberty was for the first time, in anycountry in modern Europe, realized under a free-thinking ruler, thefriend of the great “blasphemer” Voltaire. The policy and principles of Frederick were formulated in the PrussianTerritorial Code of 1794, by which unrestricted liberty of consciencewas guaranteed, and the three chief religions, the Lutheran, theReformed, and the Catholic, were placed on the same footing and enjoyedthe same privileges. The system is “jurisdictional”; only, threeChurches here occupy the position which the Anglican Church aloneoccupies in England. The rest of Germany did not begin to move in thedirection pointed out by Prussia until, by one of the last acts of theHoly Roman Empire (1803), the Westphalian settlement had been modified. Before the foundation of the new Empire (1870), freedom was establishedthroughout 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 thattime. Joseph was a sincere Catholic, but he was not impervious to theenlightened ideas of his age; he was an admirer of Frederick, and hisedict was prompted by a genuinely tolerant spirit, such as had notinspired the English Act of 1689. It extended only to the Lutheran andReformed sects and the communities of the Greek Church which had enteredinto union with Rome, and it was of a limited kind. Religious libertywas not established till 1867. The measure of Joseph applied to the Austrian States in Italy, andhelped to prepare that country for the idea of religious freedom. It isnotable that in Italy in the eighteenth century toleration found itsadvocate, not in a rationalist or a philosopher, but in a Catholicecclesiastic, Tamburinni, who (under the name of his friendTrautmansdorf) published a work On Ecclesiastical and Civil Toleration(1783). A sharp line is drawn between the provinces of the Church andthe State, persecution and the Inquisition are condemned, coercion ofconscience is declared inconsistent with the Christian spirit, and theprinciple is laid down that the sovran should only exercise coercionwhere [123] the interests of public safety are concerned. Like Locke, theauthor thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion. The new States which Napoleon set up in Italy exhibited toleration invarious degrees, but real liberty was first introduced in Piedmont byCavour (1848), a measure which prepared the way for the full libertywhich was one of the first-fruits of the foundation of the Italiankingdom in 1870. The union of Italy, with all that it meant, is the mostsignal and dramatic act in the triumph of the ideas of the modern Stateover the traditional principles of the Christian Church. Rome, whichpreserved those principles most faithfully, has offered a steadfast, wemay say a heroic, resistance to the liberal ideas which swept Europe inthe nineteenth century. The guides of her policy grasped thoroughly thedanger which liberal thought meant for an institution which, founded ina remote past, claimed to be unchangeable and never out of date. GregoryXVI issued a solemn protest maintaining authority against freedom, themediaeval against the modern ideal, in an Encyclical Letter (1832), which was intended as a rebuke to some young French Catholics (Lamennaisand his friends) who had conceived the promising idea of transformingthe Church by the Liberal spirit [124] of the day. The Pope denounces “the absurd and erroneous maxim, orrather insanity, that liberty of conscience should be procured andguaranteed to every one. The path to this pernicious error is preparedby that full and unlimited liberty of thought which is spread abroad tothe misfortune of Church and State and which certain persons, withexcessive impudence, venture to represent as an advantage for religion. Hence comes the corruption of youth, contempt for religion and for themost venerable laws, and a general mental change in the world—in shortthe most deadly scourge of society; since the experience of history hasshown that the States which have shone by their wealth and power andglory have perished just by this evil— immoderate freedom of opinion, licence of conversation, and love of novelties. With this is connectedthe liberty of publishing any writing of any kind. This is a deadly andexecrable liberty for which we cannot feel sufficient horror, thoughsome men dare to acclaim it noisily and enthusiastically. ” A generationlater Pius IX was to astonish the world by a similar manifesto—hisSyllabus of Modern Errors (1864). Yet, notwithstanding the fundamentalantagonism between the principles of the Church and the drift of moderncivilization, the Papacy survives, [125] powerful and respected, in a world where the ideas which itcondemned have become the commonplace conditions of life. The progress of Western nations from the system of unity which prevailedin the fifteenth, to the system of liberty which was the rule in thenineteenth century, was slow and painful, illogical and wavering, generally dictated by political necessities, seldom inspired bydeliberate conviction. We have seen how religious liberty has beenrealized, so far as the law is concerned, under two distinct systems, “Jurisdiction” and “Separation. ” But legal toleration may coexist withmuch practical intolerance, and liberty before the law is compatiblewith serious disabilities of which the law cannot take account. Forinstance, the expression of unorthodox opinions may exclude a man fromobtaining a secular post or hinder his advancement. The question hasbeen asked, which of the two systems is more favourable to the creationof a tolerant social atmosphere? Ruffini (of whose excellent work onReligious Liberty I have made much use in this chapter) decides infavour of Jurisdiction. He points out that while Socinus, a true friendof liberty of thought, contemplated this system, the Anabaptists, whosespirit was intolerant, sought Separation. More important [126] is the observation that in Germany, England, and Italy, where themost powerful Church or Churches are under the control of the State, there is more freedom, more tolerance of opinion, than in many of theAmerican States where Separation prevails. A hundred years ago theAmericans showed appalling ingratitude to Thomas Paine, who had donethem eminent service in the War of Independence, simply because hepublished a very unorthodox book. It is notorious that free thought isstill a serious hindrance and handicap to an American, even in most ofthe Universities. This proves that Separation is not an infalliblereceipt for producing tolerance. But I see no reason to suppose thatpublic opinion in America would be different, if either the FederalRepublic or the particular States had adopted Jurisdiction. Given legalliberty under either system, I should say that the tolerance of publicopinion depends on social conditions and especially on the degree ofculture among the educated classes. From this sketch it will be seen that toleration was the outcome of newpolitical circumstances and necessities, brought about by the disunionof the Church through the Reformation. But it meant that in those Stateswhich granted toleration the opinion of [127] a sufficiently influential group of the governing class was ripefor the change, and this new mental attitude was in a great measure dueto the scepticism and rationalism which were diffused by the Renaissancemovement, and which subtly and unconsciously had affected the minds ofmany who were sincerely devoted to rigidly orthodox beliefs; soeffective is the force of suggestion. In the next two chapters theadvance of reason at the expense of faith will be traced through theseventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. [1] Translated by Lecky. [2] Complete toleration was established by Penn in the Quaker Colony ofPennsylvania in 1682. [3] Especially Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants (1637), andJeremy 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 steadilydestroying Christian mythology and exposing the pretensions ofsupernatural revelation. The progress of rationalism falls naturallyinto two periods. (1) In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thosethinkers who rejected Christian theology and the book on which it relieswere mainly influenced by the inconsistencies, contradictions, andabsurdities which they discovered in the evidence, and by the moral [128] difficulties of the creed. Some scientific facts were known whichseemed to reflect on the accuracy of Revelation, but arguments based onscience were subsidiary. (2) In the nineteenth century the discoveriesof science in many fields bore with full force upon fabrics which hadbeen constructed in a naïve and ignorant age; and historical criticismundermined methodically the authority of the sacred documents which hadhitherto been exposed chiefly to the acute but unmethodical criticismsof common sense. A disinterested love of facts, without any regard to the bearing whichthose facts may have on one’s hopes or fears or destiny, is a rarequality in all ages, and it had been very rare indeed since the ancientdays of Greece and Rome. It means the scientific spirit. Now in theseventeenth century we may say (without disrespect to a few precursors)that the modern study of natural science began, and in the same periodwe have a series of famous thinkers who were guided by a disinterestedlove of truth. Of the most acute minds some reached the conclusion thatthe Christian scheme of the world is irrational, and according to theirtemperament some rejected it, whilst others, like the great FrenchmanPascal, fell back upon an unreasoning act of faith. Bacon, who professed [129] orthodoxy, was perhaps at heart a deist, but in any case the wholespirit of his writings was to exclude authority from the domain ofscientific investigation which he did so much to stimulate. Descartes, illustrious not only as the founder of modern metaphysics but also byhis original contributions to science, might seek to conciliate theecclesiastical authorities—his temper was timid— but his philosophicalmethod was a powerful incentive to rationalistic thought. The generaltendency of superior intellects was to exalt reason at the expense ofauthority; and in England this principle was established so firmly byLocke, that throughout the theological warfare of the eighteenth centuryboth parties relied on reason, and no theologian of repute assumed faithto be a higher faculty. A striking illustration of the gradual encroachments of reason is thechange which was silently wrought in public opinion on the subject ofwitchcraft. The famous efforts of James I to carry out the Biblicalcommand, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, ” were outdone by thezeal of the Puritans under the Commonwealth to suppress the wicked oldwomen who had commerce with Satan. After the Restoration, the belief inwitchcraft declined among educated people—though [130] some able writers maintained it—and there were few executions. Thelast trial of a witch was in 1712, when some clergymen in Hertfordshireprosecuted Jane Wenham. The jury found her guilty, but the judge, whohad summed up in her favour, was able to procure the remission of hersentence; and the laws against witchcraft were repealed in 1735. JohnWesley said with perfect truth that to disbelieve in witchcraft is todisbelieve in the Bible. In France and in Holland the decline of beliefand interest in this particular form of Satan’s activity wassimultaneous. In Scotland, where theology was very powerful, a woman wasburnt in 1722. It can be no mere coincidence that the general decline ofthis superstition belongs to the age which saw the rise of modernscience and modern philosophy. Hobbes, who was perhaps the most brilliant English thinker of theseventeenth century, was a freethinker and materialist. He had comeunder the influence of his friend the French philosopher Gassendi, whohad revived materialism in its Epicurean shape. Yet he was a championnot of freedom of conscience but of coercion in its most uncompromisingform. In the political theory which he expounded in Leviathan, thesovran has autocratic power in the domain of doctrine, [131] as in everything else, and it is the duty of subjects to conformto the religion which the sovran imposes. Religious persecution is thusdefended, but no independent power is left to the Church. But theprinciples on which Hobbes built up his theory were rationalistic. Heseparated morality from religion and identified “the true moralphilosophy” with the “true doctrine of the laws of nature. ” What hereally thought of religion could be inferred from his remark that thefanciful fear of things invisible (due to ignorance) is the natural seedof that feeling which, in himself, a man calls religion, but, in thosewho fear or worship the invisible power differently, superstition. Inthe reign of Charles II Hobbes was silenced and his books were burned. Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher of Holland, owed a great deal toDescartes and (in political speculation) to Hobbes, but his philosophymeant a far wider and more open breach with orthodox opinion than eitherof his masters had ventured on. He conceived ultimate reality, which hecalled God, as an absolutely perfect, impersonal Being, a substancewhose nature is constituted by two “attributes”— thought and spatialextension. When Spinoza speaks of love of God, in which he consideredhappiness 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 tolabel his philosophy, we may say that it is a form of pantheism. It hasoften been described as atheism. If atheism means, as I suppose inordinary use it is generally taken to mean, rejection of a personal God, Spinoza was an atheist. It should be observed that in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries atheist was used in the wildest way as a termof abuse for freethinkers, and when we read of atheists (except incareful writers) we may generally assume that the persons so stigmatizedwere really deists, that is, they believed in a personal God but not inRevelation. [1] Spinoza’s daring philosophy was not in harmony with the general trend ofspeculation at the time, and did not exert any profound influence onthought till a much later period. The thinker whose writings appealedmost to the men of his age and were most opportune and effective wasJohn Locke, who professed more or less orthodox Anglicanism. His greatcontribution to philosophy is equivalent to a very powerful defence [133] of reason against the usurpations of authority. The object of hisEssay on the Human Understanding (1690) is to show that all knowledge isderived from experience. He subordinated faith completely to reason. While he accepted the Christian revelation, he held that revelation ifit contradicted the higher tribunal of reason must be rejected, and thatrevelation cannot give us knowledge as certain as the knowledge whichreason gives. “He that takes away reason to make room for revelationputs out the light of both; and does much what the same as if he wouldpersuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remotelight of an invisible star by a telescope. ” He wrote a book to show thatthe Christian revelation is not contrary to reason, and its title, TheReasonableness of Christianity, sounds the note of all religiouscontroversy in England during the next hundred years. Both the orthodoxand their opponents warmly agreed that reasonableness was the only testof the claims of revealed religion. It was under the direct influence ofLocke that Toland, an Irishman who had been converted from RomanCatholicism, composed a sensational book, Christianity Not Mysterious(1696). He assumes that Christianity is true and argues that there canbe no mysteries in it, because mysteries, that [134] is, unintelligible dogmas, cannot be accepted by reason. And if areasonable Deity gave a revelation, its purpose must be to enlighten, not to puzzle. The assumption of the truth of Christianity was a merepretence, as an intelligent reader could not fail to see. The work wasimportant because it drew the logical inference from Locke’s philosophy, and it had a wide circulation. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met a TurkishEffendi at Belgrade who asked her for news of Mr. Toland. It is characteristic of this stage of the struggle between reason andauthority that (excepting the leading French thinkers in the eighteenthcentury) the rationalists, who attacked theology, generally feigned toacknowledge the truth of the ideas which they were assailing. Theypretended that their speculations did not affect religion; they couldseparate the domains of reason and of faith; they could show thatRevelation was superfluous without questioning it; they could do homageto orthodoxy and lay down views with which orthodoxy was irreconcilable. The errors which they exposed in the sphere of reason were ironicallyallowed to be truths in the sphere of theology. The mediaeval principleof 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 wehave to read between the lines. Bayle is an interesting instance. If Locke’s philosophy, by setting authority in its place and derivingall knowledge from experience, was a powerful aid to rationalism, hiscontemporary Bayle worked in the same direction by the investigation ofhistory. Driven from France (see above, p. 107), he lived at Amsterdam, where he published his Philosophical Dictionary. He was really afreethinker, but he never dropped the disguise of orthodoxy, and thislends a particular piquancy to his work. He takes a delight inmarshalling all the objections which heretics had made to essentialChristian dogmas. He exposed without mercy the crimes and brutalities ofDavid, and showed that this favourite of the Almighty was a person withwhom one would refuse to shake hands. There was a great outcry at thisunedifying candour. Bayle, in replying, adopted the attitude ofMontaigne and Pascal, and opposed faith to reason. The theological virtue of faith, he said, consists in believing revealedtruths simply and solely on God’s authority. If you believe in theimmortality of the soul for [136] philosophical reasons, you are orthodox, but you have no part infaith. The merit of faith becomes greater, in proportion as the revealedtruth surpasses all the powers of our mind; the more incomprehensiblethe truth and the more repugnant to reason, the greater is the sacrificewe make in accepting it, the deeper our submission to God. Therefore amerciless inventory of the objections which reason has to urge againstfundamental doctrines serves to exalt the merits of faith. The Dictionary was also criticized for the justice done to the moralexcellencies of persons who denied the existence of God. Bayle repliesthat if he had been able to find any atheistical thinkers who lived badlives, he would have been delighted to dwell on their vices, but he knewof none such. As for the criminals you meet in history, whose abominableactions make you tremble, their impieties and blasphemies prove theybelieved in a Divinity. This is a natural consequence of the theologicaldoctrine that the Devil, who is incapable of atheism, is the instigatorof all the sins of men. For man’s wickedness must clearly resemble thatof the Devil and must therefore be joined to a belief in God’sexistence, since the Devil is not an atheist. And is it not a proof ofthe infinite wisdom of God that the worst criminals [137] are not atheists, and that most of the atheists whose names arerecorded have been honest men? By this arrangement Providence setsbounds to the corruption of man; for if atheism and moral wickednesswere united in the same persons, the societies of earth would be exposedto a fatal inundation of sin. There was much more in the same vein; and the upshot was, under the thinveil of serving faith, to show that the Christian dogmas wereessentially unreasonable. Bayle’s work, marked by scholarship and extraordinary learning, had agreat influence in England as well as in France. It supplied weapons toassailants of Christianity in both countries. At first the assault wascarried on with most vigour and ability by the English deists, who, though their writings are little read now, did memorable work by theirpolemic against the authority of revealed religion. The controversy between the deists and their orthodox opponents turnedon the question whether the Deity of natural religion —the God whoseexistence, as was thought, could be proved by reason—can be identifiedwith the author of the Christian revelation. To the deists this seemedimpossible. The nature of the alleged revelation seemed inconsistentwith the character [138] of the God to whom reason pointed. The defenders of revelation, atleast all the most competent, agreed with the deists in making reasonsupreme, and through this reliance on reason some of them fell intoheresies. Clarke, for instance, one of the ablest, was very unsound onthe dogma of the Trinity. It is also to be noticed that with bothsections the interest of morality was the principal motive. The orthodoxheld that the revealed doctrine of future rewards and punishments isnecessary for morality; the deists, that morality depends on reasonalone, and that revelation contains a great deal that is repugnant tomoral ideals. Throughout the eighteenth century morality was the guidingconsideration with Anglican Churchmen, and religious emotion, finding nosatisfaction within the Church, was driven, as it were, outside, andsought an outlet in the Methodism of Wesley and Whitefield. Spinoza had laid down the principle that Scripture must be interpretedlike any other book (1670), [2] and with the deists this principle wasfundamental. In order to avoid persecution they generally veiled theirconclusions [139] under sufficiently thin disguises. Hitherto the Press LicensingAct (1662) had very effectually prevented the publication of heterodoxworks, and it is from orthodox works denouncing infidel opinions that weknow how rationalism was spreading. But in 1695, the Press Law wasallowed 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 attackedChristianity: (1) The Ecclesiastical Courts had and have the power ofimprisoning for a maximum term of six months, for atheism, blasphemy, heresy, and damnable opinions. (2) The common law as interpreted by LordChief Justice Hale in 1676, when a certain Taylor was charged withhaving said that religion was a cheat and blasphemed against Christ. Theaccused was condemned to a fine and the pillory by the Judge, who ruledthat the Court of King’s Bench has jurisdiction in such a case, inasmuchas blasphemous words of the kind are an offence against the laws and theState, and to speak against Christianity is to speak in subversion ofthe law, since Christianity is “parcel of the laws of England. ” (3) Thestatute of 1698 enacts that if any person educated in the Christianreligion “shall by [140] writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking deny any one ofthe persons in the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall assert or maintainthere are more gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to betrue, or shall deny the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament tobe of divine authority, ” is convicted, he shall for the first offence beadjudged incapable to hold any public offices or employments, and on thesecond shall lose his civil rights and be imprisoned for three years. This Statute expressly states as its motive the fact that “many personshave of late years openly avowed and published many blasphemous andimpious opinions contrary to the doctrine and principles of theChristian religion. ” As a matter of fact, most trials for blasphemy during the past twohundred years fall under the second head. But the new Statute of 1698was very intimidating, and we can easily understand how it droveheterodox writers to ambiguous disguises. One of these disguises wasallegorical interpretation of Scripture. They showed that literalinterpretation led to absurdities or to inconsistencies with the wisdomand justice of God, and pretended to infer that allegoricalinterpretation must be substituted. But they meant the reader to rejecttheir pretended [141] solution and draw a conclusion damaging to Revelation. Among the arguments used in favour of the truth of Revelation thefulfilment of prophecies and the miracles of the New Testament wereconspicuous. Anthony Collins, a country gentleman who was a disciple ofLocke, published in 1733 his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of theChristian Religion, in which he drastically exposed the weakness of theevidence for fulfilment of prophecy, depending as it does on forced andunnatural figurative interpretations. Twenty years before he had writtena Discourse of Free-thinking (in which Bayle’s influence is evident)pleading for free discussion and the reference of all religiousquestions to reason. He complained of the general intolerance whichprevailed; but the same facts which testify to intolerance testify alsoto the spread of unbelief. Collins escaped with comparative impunity, but Thomas Woolston, a Fellowof Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, who wrote six aggressive Discourseson the Miracles of our Saviour (1727—1730) paid the penalty for hisaudacity. Deprived of his Fellowship, he was prosecuted for libel, andsentenced to a fine of £100 and a year’s imprisonment. Unable to pay, hedied in prison. He does [142] not adopt the line of arguing that miracles are incredible orimpossible. He examines the chief miracles related in the Gospels, andshows with great ability and shrewd common sense that they are absurd orunworthy of the performer. He pointed out, as Huxley was to point out ina controversy with Gladstone, that the miraculous driving of devils intoa herd of swine was an unwarrantable injury to somebody’s property. Onthe story of the Divine blasting of the fig tree, he remarks: “What if ayeoman 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 adisappointment cut down his trees? What then would his neighbours makeof him? Nothing less than a laughing-stock; and if the story got intoour Publick News, he would be the jest and ridicule of mankind. ” Or take his comment on the miracle of the Pool of Bethesda, where anangel used to trouble the waters and the man who first entered the poolwas cured of his infirmity. “An odd and a merry way of conferring aDivine mercy. And one would think that the angels of God did this fortheir own diversion more than to do good to mankind. Just as some throwa 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 companyof boys for the sport of seeing them scramble for it, so was the pastimeof the angels here. ” In dealing with the healing of the woman whosuffered from a bloody flux, he asks: “What if we had been told of thePope’s curing an haemorrhage like this before us, what would Protestantshave said to it? Why, ‘that a foolish, credulous, and superstitiouswoman had fancied herself cured of some slight indisposition, and thecrafty Pope and his adherents, aspiring after popular applause, magnified the presumed cure into a miracle. ’ The application of such asupposed story of a miracle wrought by the Pope is easy; and ifInfidels, Jews, and Mahometans, who have no better opinion of Jesus thanwe have of the Pope, should make it, there’s no help for it. ” Woolston professed no doubts of the inspiration of Scripture. While heargued that it was out of the question to suppose the miracles literallytrue, he pretended to believe in the fantastic theory that they wereintended allegorically as figures of Christ’s mysterious operations inthe soul of man. Origen, a not very orthodox Christian Father, hademployed the allegorical method, and Woolston quotes him in his favour. His [144] vigorous criticisms vary in value, but many of them hit the nailon the head, and the fashion of some modern critics to pass overWoolston’s productions as unimportant because they are “ribald” orcoarse, is perfectly unjust. The pamphlets had an enormous sale, andWoolston’s notoriety is illustrated by the anecdote of the “jolly youngwoman” who met him walking abroad and accosted him with “You old rogue, are you not hanged yet?” Mr. Woolston answered, “Good woman, I know younot; pray what have I done to offend you?” “You have writ against mySaviour, ” she said; “what would become of my poor sinful soul if it wasnot for my dear Saviour?” About the same time, Matthew Tindal (a Fellow of All Souls) attackedRevelation from a more general point of view. In his Christianity as oldas the Creation (1730) he undertook to show that the Bible as arevelation is superfluous, for it adds nothing to natural religion, which God revealed to man from the very first by the sole light ofreason. He argues that those who defend Revealed religion by itsagreement with Natural religion, and thus set up a double government ofreason and authority, fall between the two. “It ’s an odd jumble, ” heobserves, “to prove the truth of a book by the truth [145] of the doctrines it contains, and at the same time conclude thosedoctrines to be true because contained in that book. ” He goes on tocriticize the Bible in detail. In order to maintain its infallibility, without doing violence to reason, you have, when you find irrationalstatements, to torture them and depart from the literal sense. Would youthink that a Mohammedan was governed by his Koran, who on all occasionsdeparted from the literal sense? “Nay, would you not tell him that hisinspired 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 theinfallibility of the Scriptures, a bishop had met the argument bysaying, reasonably enough, that in the Bible God speaks according to theconceptions of those to whom he speaks, and that it is not the businessof Revelation to rectify their opinions in such matters. Tindal madethis rejoinder:— “Is there no difference between God’s not rectifying men’s sentiments inthose matters and using himself such sentiments as needs be rectified;or between God’s not mending men’s logic and rhetoric where ’t isdefective and using such himself; or between God’s [146] not contradicting vulgar notions and confirming them by speakingaccording to them? Can infinite wisdom despair of gaining or keepingpeople’s affections without having recourse to such mean acts?” He exposes with considerable effect the monstrosity of the doctrine ofexclusive salvation. Must we not consider, he asks, whether one can besaid to be sent as a Saviour of mankind, if he comes to shut Heaven’sgate against those to whom, before he came, it was open provided theyfollowed the dictates of their reason? He criticizes the inconsistencyof the impartial and universal goodness of God, known to us by the lightof nature, with acts committed by Jehovah or his prophets. Take thecases in which the order of nature is violated to punish men for crimesof which they were not guilty, such as Elijah’s hindering rain fromfalling for three years and a half. If God could break in upon theordinary 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 willnot act in the same way in the life to come, “since if the eternal rulesof justice are once broken how can we imagine any stop?” But the idealsof holiness and justice in the Old Testament are strange indeed. Theholier men [147] are represented to be, the more cruel they seem and the moreaddicted to cursing. How surprising to find the holy prophet Elishacursing in the name of the Lord little children for calling him Bald-pate! And, what is still more surprising, two she-bears immediatelydevoured forty-two little children. I have remarked that theologians at this time generally took the line ofbasing Christianity on reason and not on faith. An interesting littlebook, Christianity not founded on Argument, couched in the form of aletter to a young gentleman at Oxford, by Henry Dodwell (Junior), appeared in 1741, and pointed out the dangers of such confidence inreason. It is an ironical development of the principle of Bayle, workingout the thesis that Christianity is essentially unreasonable, and thatif you want to believe, reasoning is fatal. The cultivation of faith andreasoning produce contrary effects; the philosopher is disqualified forDivine influences by his very progress in carnal wisdom; the Gospel mustbe received with all the obsequious submission of a babe who has noother disposition but to learn his lesson. Christ did not propose hisdoctrines to investigation; he did not lay the arguments for his missionbefore his disciples and give them time to consider [148] calmly of their force, and liberty to determine as their reasonshould direct them; the apostles had no qualifications for the task, being the most artless and illiterate persons living. Dodwell exposesthe absurdity of the Protestant position. To give all men liberty tojudge for themselves and to expect at the same time that they shall beof the Preacher’s mind is such a scheme for unanimity as one wouldscarcely imagine any one could be weak enough to devise in speculationand much less that any could ever be found hardy enough to avow andpropose it to practice. The men of Rome “shall rise up in the judgment(of all considering persons) against this generation and shall condemnit; for they invented but the one absurdity of infallibility, and beholda greater absurdity than infallibility is here. ” I have still to speak of the (Third) Earl of Shaftesbury, whose stylehas rescued his writings from entire neglect. His special interest wasethics. While the valuable work of most of the heterodox writers of thisperiod lay in their destructive criticism of supernatural religion, theyclung, as we have seen, to what was called natural religion— the beliefin a kind and wise personal God, who created the world, governs it bynatural laws, and desires our happiness. The idea [149] was derived from ancient philosophers and had been revived by LordHerbert of Cherbury in his Latin treatise On Truth (in the reign ofJames I). The deists contended that this was a sufficient basis formorality and that the Christian inducements to good behaviour wereunnecessary. Shaftesbury in his Inquiry concerning Virtue (1699) debatedthe question and argued that the scheme of heaven and hell, with theselfish hopes and fears which they inspire, corrupts morality and thatthe only worthy motive for conduct is the beauty of virtue in itself. Hedoes not even consider deism a necessary assumption for a moral code; headmits that the opinion of atheists does not undermine ethics. But hethinks that the belief in a good governor of the universe is a powerfulsupport to the practice of virtue. He is a thorough optimist, and isperfectly satisfied with the admirable adaptation of means to ends, whereby it is the function of one animal to be food for another. Hemakes no attempt to reconcile the red claws and teeth of nature with thebeneficence of its powerful artist. “In the main all things are kindlyand well disposed. ” The atheist might have said that he preferred to beat the mercy of blind chance than in the hands of an autocrat who, if hepleased Lord Shaftesbury’s sense [150] of order, had created flies to be devoured by spiders. But thiswas an aspect of the universe which did not much trouble thinkers in theeighteenth century. On the other hand, the character of the God of theOld Testament roused Shaftesbury’s aversion. He attacks Scripture notdirectly, but by allusion or with irony. He hints that if there is aGod, he would be less displeased with atheists than with those whoaccepted him in the guise of Jehovah. As Plutarch said, “I had rathermen should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a one asPlutarch, than they should say ‘There was a Plutarch, an unsteady, changeable, easily provokable and revengeful man. ’ ” Shaftesbury’ssignificance is that he built up a positive theory of morals, andalthough it had no philosophical depth, his influence on French andGerman thinkers of the eighteenth century was immense. In some ways perhaps the ablest of the deists, and certainly the mostscholarly, was Rev. Conyers Middleton, who remained within the Church. He supported Christianity on grounds of utility. Even if it is animposture, he said, it would be wrong to destroy it. For it isestablished by law and it has a long tradition behind it. Sometraditional religion is necessary and it would [151] be hopeless to supplant Christianity by reason. But his writingscontain effective arguments which go to undermine Revelation. The mostimportant was his Free Inquiry into Christian miracles (1748), which putin a new and dangerous light an old question: At what time did theChurch cease to have the power of performing miracles? We shall seepresently 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 ablestdefence of the faith, Bishop Butler’s Analogy (1736), is suspected ofhaving raised more doubts than it appeased. This was the experience ofWilliam Pitt the Younger, and the Analogy made James Mill (theutilitarian) an unbeliever. The deists, argued that the unjust and cruelGod of Revelation could not be the God of nature; Butler pointed tonature and said, There you behold cruelty and injustice. The argumentwas perfectly good against the optimism of Shaftesbury, but it plainlyadmitted of the conclusion—opposite to that which Butler wished toestablish—that a just and beneficent God does not exist. Butler isdriven to fall back on the sceptical argument that we are extremelyignorant; that all things [152] are possible, even eternal hell fire; and that therefore the safeand prudent course is to accept the Christian doctrine. It may beremarked that this reasoning, with a few modifications, could be used infavour 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 anyvery large number that Christianity is true, it is a man’s interest tobe a Christian; for, if it prove false, it will do him no harm to havebelieved it; if it prove true, he will be infinitely the gainer. Butlerseeks indeed to show that the chances in favour amount to a probability, but his argument is essentially of the same intellectual and moral valueas Pascal’s. It has been pointed out that it leads by an easy logicalstep 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 thesafe 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, agreat deal of the thought which, manipulated by brilliant writers on theother side of the Channel, captured the educated classes in France. Weare now in the age of Voltaire. He was a convinced deist. He consideredthat the nature of the universe proved that it was made by a consciousarchitect, he held that God was required in the interests of conduct, and he ardently combated atheism. His great achievements were hisefficacious labour in the cause of toleration, and his systematicwarfare against superstitions. He was profoundly influenced by Englishthinkers, especially Locke and Bolingbroke. This statesman had concealedhis infidelity during his lifetime except from his intimates; he hadlived long as an exile in France; and his rationalistic essays werepublished (1754) after his death. Voltaire, whose literary geniusconverted the work of the English thinkers into a world-force, did notbegin his campaign against Christianity till after the middle of thecentury, when superstitious practices and religious persecutions werebecoming a scandal in his country. He assailed the Catholic Church inevery field with ridicule and satire. In a little work called The Tombof Fanaticism (written 1736, [154] published 1767), he begins by observing that a man who accepts hisreligion (as most people do) without examining it is like an ox whichallows itself to be harnessed, and proceeds to review the difficultiesin the Bible, the rise of Christianity, and the course of Churchhistory; from which he concludes that every sensible man should hold theChristian sect in horror. “Men are blind to prefer an absurd andsanguinary creed, supported by executioners and surrounded by fieryfaggots, a creed which can only be approved by those to whom it givespower and riches, a particular creed only accepted in a small part ofthe world—to a simple and universal religion. ” In the Sermon of theFifty and the Questions of Zapata we can see what he owed to Bayle andEnglish critics, but his touch is lighter and his irony more telling. His comment on geographical mistakes in the Old Testament is: “God wasevidently not strong in geography. ” Having called attention to the“horrible crime” of Lot’s wife in looking backward, and her conversioninto a pillar of salt, he hopes that the stories of Scripture will makeus better, if they do not make us more enlightened. One of his favouritemethods is to approach Christian doctrines as a person who had justheard of the existence of Christians or Jews for the first time in hislife. [155] His drama, Saul (1763), which the police tried to suppress, presents thecareer 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 willgive an idea of the spirit of the piece. SAMUEL: God commands me to tellyou that he repents of having made you king. SAUL: God repents! Onlythey who commit errors repent. His eternal wisdom cannot be unwise. Godcannot commit errors. SAMUEL: He can repent of having set on the thronethose 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 virtuesconsidered a crime in Judea? SAMUEL (to Agag): Silence! do notblaspheme. (To Saul). Saul, formerly king of the Jews, did not Godcommand you by my mouth to destroy all the Amalekites, without sparingwomen, or maidens, or children at the breast? AGAG: Your god—gave such acommand! 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 ofthe Supreme Being, and that a compassionate heart could not displeasehim. SAMUEL: You are mistaken, unbeliever. God reproves you, yoursceptre will pass into other hands. Perhaps no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom thanVoltaire. 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 beensometimes decried on the ground that he only demolished and made noeffort 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, wecannot wait to remove it till we have a new system of drains, and it mayfairly be said that religion as practised in contemporary France was apoisonous sewer. But the true answer is that knowledge, and thereforecivilization, are advanced by criticism and negation, as well as byconstruction and positive discovery. When a man has the talent to attackwith effect falsehood, prejudice, and imposture, it is his duty, ifthere are any social duties, to use it. For constructive thinking we must go to the other great leader of Frenchthought, [157] Rousseau, who contributed to the growth of freedom in a differentway. He was a deist, but his deism, unlike that of Voltaire, wasreligious and emotional. He regarded Christianity with a sort ofreverent scepticism. But his thought was revolutionary and repugnant toorthodoxy; it made against authority in every sphere; and it had anenormous influence. The clergy perhaps dreaded his theories more thanthe scoffs and negations of Voltaire. For some years he was a fugitiveon the face of the earth. Émile, his brilliant contribution to thetheory of education, appeared in 1762. It contains some remarkable pageson religion, “the profession of faith of a Savoyard vicar, ” in which theauthor’s deistic faith is strongly affirmed and revelation and theologyrejected. The book was publicly burned in Paris and an order issued forRousseau’s arrest. Forced by his friends to flee, he was debarred fromreturning to Geneva, for the government of that canton followed theexample of Paris. He sought refuge in the canton of Bern and was orderedto quit. He then fled to the principality of Neufchâtel which belongedto Prussia. Frederick the Great, the one really tolerant ruler of theage, gave him protection, but he was persecuted and calumniated by thelocal 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 hereticalspeculations. It was by his daring social and political theories that heset the world on fire. His Social Contract in which these theories wereset forth was burned at Geneva. Though his principles will not standcriticism for a moment, and though his doctrine worked mischief by itsextraordinary power of turning men into fanatics, yet it contributed toprogress, by helping to discredit privilege and to establish the viewthat the object of a State is to secure the wellbeing of all itsmembers. Deism—whether in the semi-Christian form of Rousseau or the anti-Christian form of Voltaire—was a house built on the sand, and thinkersarose in France, England, and Germany to shatter its foundations. InFrance, it proved to be only a half-way inn to atheism. In 1770, Frenchreaders were startled by the appearance of Baron D’Holbach’s System ofNature, in which God’s existence and the immortality of the soul weredenied and the world declared to be matter spontaneously moving. Holbach was a friend of Diderot, who had also come to reject deism. Allthe leading [159] ideas in the revolt against the Church had a place in Diderot’sgreat work, the Encyclopedia, in which a number of leading thinkerscollaborated with him. It was not merely a scientific book of reference. It was representative of the whole movement of the enemies of faith. Itwas intended to lead men from Christianity with its original sin to anew conception of the world as a place which can be made agreeable andin which the actual evils are due not to radical faults of human naturebut to perverse institutions and perverse education. To divert interestfrom the dogmas of religion to the improvement of society, to persuadethe world that man’s felicity depends not on Revelation but on socialtransformation—this was what Diderot and Rousseau in their differentways did so much to effect. And their work influenced those who did notabandon orthodoxy; it affected the spirit of the Church itself. Contrastthe Catholic Church in France in the eighteenth and in the nineteenthcentury. Without the work of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and theirfellow-combatants, would it have been reformed? “The Christian Churches”(I quote Lord Morley) “are assimilating as rapidly as their formulaewill permit, the new light and the more generous moral ideas and thehigher spirituality of [160] teachers who have abandoned all churches and who aresystematically denounced as enemies of the souls of men. ” In England the prevalent deistic thought did not lead to the sameintellectual consequences as in France; yet Hume, the greatest Englishphilosopher of the century, showed that the arguments commonly adducedfor a personal God were untenable. I may first speak of his discussionon miracles in his Essay on Miracles and in his philosophical Inquiryconcerning Human Understanding (1748). Hitherto the credibility ofmiracles had not been submitted to a general examination independent oftheological assumptions. Hume, pointing out that there must be a uniformexperience against every miraculous event (otherwise it would not meritthe name of miracle), and that it will require stronger testimony toestablish a miracle than an event which is not contrary to experience, lays down the general maxim that “no testimony is sufficient toestablish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that itsfalsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours toestablish. ” But, as a matter of fact, no testimony exists of which thefalsehood would be a prodigy. We cannot find in history any miracleattested by a sufficient number of men of such unquestionable good [161] sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against alldelusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to place thembeyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit inthe eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of theirbeing detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting factsperformed in such a public manner as to render detection unavoidable—all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance inthe testimony of men. In the Dialogues on Natural Religion which were not published till afterhis death (1776), Hume made an attack on the “argument from design, ” onwhich deists and Christians alike relied to prove the existence of aDeity. The argument is that the world presents clear marks of design, endless adaptation of means to ends, which can only be explained as dueto the deliberate plan of a powerful intelligence. Hume disputes theinference on the ground that a mere intelligent being is not asufficient cause to explain the effect. For the argument must be thatthe system of the material world demands as a cause a correspondingsystem of interconnected ideas; but such a mental system would demand anexplanation of its existence just as much as the material world; andthus we find ourselves [162] committed to an endless series of causes. But in any case, even ifthe argument held, it would prove only the existence of a Deity whosepowers, though superior to man’s, might be very limited and whoseworkmanship might be very imperfect. For this world may be very faulty, compared to a superior standard. It may be the first rude experiment “ofsome infant Deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lameperformance”; or the work of some inferior Deity at which his superiorwould scoff; or the production of some old superannuated Deity whichsince his death has pursued an adventurous career from the first impulsewhich he gave it. An argument which leaves such deities in the runningis worse than useless for the purposes of Deism or of Christianity. The sceptical philosophy of Hume had less influence on the generalpublic than Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of thenumerous freethinking books that appeared in England in the eighteenthcentury, this is the only one which is still a widely read classic. Inwhat a lady friend of Dr. Johnson called “the two offensive chapters”(XV and XVI) the causes of the rise and success of Christianity are forthe first time critically investigated as a simple historicalphenomenon. Like most freethinkers of the [163] time Gibbon thought it well to protect himself and his workagainst the possibility of prosecution by paying ironical lip-homage tothe orthodox creed. But even if there had been no such danger, he couldnot have chosen a more incisive weapon for his merciless criticism oforthodox opinion than the irony which he wielded with superb ease. Having pointed out that the victory of Christianity is obviously andsatisfactorily explained by the convincing evidence of the doctrine andby the ruling providence of its great Author, he proceeds “with becomingsubmission” to inquire into the secondary causes. He traces the historyof the faith up to the time of Constantine in such a way as clearly tosuggest that the hypothesis of divine interposition is superfluous andthat we have to do with a purely human development. He marshals, withironical protests, the obvious objections to the alleged evidence forsupernatural control. He does not himself criticize Moses and theprophets, but he reproduces the objections which were made against theirauthority by “the vain science of the gnostics. ” He notes that thedoctrine of immortality is omitted in the law of Moses, but thisdoubtless was a mysterious dispensation of Providence. We cannotentirely remove “the imputation of ignorance and [164] obscurity which has been so arrogantly cast on the firstproselytes of Christianity, ” but we must “convert the occasion ofscandal into a subject of edification” and remember that “the lower wedepress the temporal condition of the first Christians, the more reasonwe 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 particularlydisconcerting. In the early age of Christianity “the laws of nature werefrequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages ofGreece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing theordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of anyalterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under thereign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province ofthe Roman Empire, was involved in a praeternatural darkness of threehours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited thewonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed withoutnotice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetimeof Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediateeffects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each ofthese [165] philosophers in a laborious work has recorded all the greatphenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, whichhis indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the otherhave omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eyehas been witness since the creation of the globe. ” How “shall we excusethe supine inattention of the pagan and philosophic world to thoseevidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to theirreason, but to their senses?” Again, if every believer is convinced of the reality of miracles, everyreasonable man is convinced of their cessation. Yet every age bearstestimony to miracles, and the testimony seems no less respectable thanthat of the preceding generation. When did they cease? How was it thatthe generation which saw the last genuine miracles performed could notdistinguish them from the impostures which followed? Had men so soonforgotten “the style of the divine artist”? The inference is thatgenuine and spurious miracles are indistinguishable. But the credulityor “softness of temper” among early believers was beneficial to thecause of truth and religion. “In modern times, a latent and eveninvoluntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their [166] admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consentthan a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observeand to respect the invariable order of nature, our reason, or at leastour imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visibleaction of the Deity. ” Gibbon had not the advantage of the minute critical labours which in thefollowing century were expended on his sources of information, but hismasterly exposure of the conventional history of the early Churchremains in many of its most important points perfectly valid to-day. Isuspect that his artillery has produced more effect on intelligent mindsin subsequent generations than the archery of Voltaire. For his bookbecame indispensable as the great history of the Middle Ages; the mostorthodox could not do without it; and the poison must have often worked. We have seen how theological controversy in the first half of theeighteenth century had turned on the question whether the revealedreligion was consistent and compatible with natural religion. Thedeistic attacks, on this line, were almost exhausted by the middle ofthe century, and the orthodox thought that they had been satisfactorilyanswered. But it was not enough to show that the revelation [167] is reasonable; it was necessary to prove that it is real and restson a solid historical basis. This was the question raised in an acuteform by the criticisms of Hume and Middleton (1748) on miracles. Theablest 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 howorthodox opinions are coloured, unconsciously, by the spirit of thetime. He proved (in his Natural Theology) the existence of God by theargument from design —without taking any account of the criticisms ofHume on that argument. Just as a watchmaker is inferred from a watch, soa divine workman is inferred from contrivances in nature. Paley takeshis instances of such contrivance largely from the organs andconstitution of the human body. His idea of God is that of an ingeniouscontriver dealing with rather obstinate material. Paley’s “God” (Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked) “has been civilized like man; he has becomescientific and ingenious; he is superior to Watt or Priestley indevising mechanical and chemical contrivances, and is therefore made inthe image of that generation of which Watt and Priestley wereconspicuous lights. ” When a God of this kind [168] is established there is no difficulty about miracles, and it is onmiracles that Paley bases the case for Christianity—all other argumentsare subsidiary. And his proof of the New Testament miracles is that theapostles who were eye-witnesses believed in them, for otherwise theywould not have acted and suffered in the cause of their new religion. Paley’s defence is the performance of an able legal adviser to theAlmighty. The list of the English deistic writers of the eighteenth century closeswith one whose name is more familiar than any of his predecessors, Thomas Paine. A Norfolk man, he migrated to America and played a leadingpart in the Revolution. Then he returned to England and in 1791published his Rights of Man in two parts. I have been considering, almost exclusively, freedom of thought in religion, because it may betaken as the thermometer for freedom of thought in general. At thisperiod it was as dangerous to publish revolutionary opinions in politicsas in theology. Paine was an enthusiastic admirer of the AmericanConstitution and a supporter of the French Revolution (in which also hewas to play a part). His Rights of Man is an indictment of themonarchical form of government, and a plea for representative democracy. It had an enormous [169] sale, a cheap edition was issued, and the government, finding thatit was accessible to the poorer classes, decided to prosecute. Paineescaped to France, and received a brilliant ovation at Calais, whichreturned him as deputy to the National Convention. His trial for hightreason came on at the end of 1792. Among the passages in his book, onwhich the charge was founded, were these: “All hereditary government isin its nature tyranny. ” “The time is not very distant when England willlaugh at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick formen” [meaning King William III and King George I] “at the expense of amillion a year who understood neither her laws, her language, nor herinterest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for theoffice of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to suchhands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fitfor 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 offreedom of speech. “Constraint, ” he said, “is the natural parent of resistance, and apregnant proof that reason is not on the side of those who use it. Youmust all remember, gentlemen, Lucian’s pleasant story: Jupiter and acountryman [170] were walking together, conversing with great freedom andfamiliarity upon the subject of heaven and earth. The countrymanlistened with attention and acquiescence while Jupiter strove only toconvince him; but happening to hint a doubt, Jupiter turned hastilyaround and threatened him with his thunder. ‘Ah, ha!’ says thecountryman, ‘now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are alwayswrong when you appeal to your thunder. ’ This is the case with me. I canreason with the people of England, but I cannot fight against thethunder of authority. ” Paine was found guilty and outlawed. He soon committed a new offence bythe publication of an anti-Christian work, The Age of Reason (1794 and1796), which he began to write in the Paris prison into which he hadbeen thrown by Robespierre. This book is remarkable as the firstimportant English publication in which the Christian scheme of salvationand the Bible are assailed in plain language without any disguise orreserve. In the second place it was written in such a way as to reachthe masses. And, thirdly, while the criticisms on the Bible are in thesame vein as those of the earlier deists, Paine is the first to presentwith force the incongruity of the Christian scheme with the conceptionof the universe attained by astronomical science. [171] “Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system that thisworld that we inhabit is the whole of the inhabitable globe, yet it isso worked up therewith—from what is called the Mosaic account of thecreation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of thatstory, 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 numerousas what we call stars) renders the Christian system of faith at oncelittle and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in theair. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and hewho thinks that he believes both has thought but little of either. ” As an ardent deist, who regarded nature as God’s revelation, Paine wasable to press this argument with particular force. Referring to some ofthe tales in the Old Testament, he says: “When we contemplate theimmensity of that Being who directs and governs the incomprehensibleWhole, 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 admirableeighteenth-century divines, who admitted the right of private judgmentand thought that argument [172] should be met by argument and not by force. His reply had therather significant title, An Apology for the Bible. George III remarkedthat he was not aware that any apology was needed for that book. It is aweak defence, but is remarkable for the concessions which it makes toseveral of Paine’s criticisms of Scripture—admissions which werecalculated to damage the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible. It was doubtless in consequence of the enormous circulation of the Ageof Reason that a Society for the Suppression of Vice decided toprosecute the publisher. Unbelief was common among the ruling class, butthe view was firmly held that religion was necessary for the populaceand that any attempt to disseminate unbelief among the lower classesmust be suppressed. Religion was regarded as a valuable instrument tokeep the poor in order. It is notable that of the earlier rationalists(apart from the case of Woolston) the only one who was punished wasPeter Annet, a schoolmaster, who tried to popularize freethought and wassentenced for diffusing “diabolical” opinions to the pillory and hardlabour (1763). Paine held that the people at large had the right ofaccess to all new ideas, and he wrote so as to reach the people. Hencehis book must be suppressed. [173] At the trial (1797) the judge placed every obstacle in the way ofthe defence. The publisher was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. This was not the end of Paine prosecutions. In 1811 a Third Part of theAge of Reason appeared, and Eaton the publisher was condemned toeighteen months’ imprisonment and to stand in the pillory once a month. The judge, Lord Ellenborough, said in his charge, that “to deny thetruths of the book which is the foundation of our faith has never beenpermitted. ” The poet Shelley addressed to Lord Ellenborough a scathingletter. “Do you think to convert Mr. Eaton to your religion byembittering his existence? You might force him by torture to professyour tenets, but he could not believe them except you should make themcredible, which perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please theGod you worship by this exhibition of your zeal? If so, the demon towhom some nations offer human hecatombs is less barbarous than the deityof civilized society!” In 1819 Richard Carlisle was prosecuted forpublishing the Age of Reason and sentenced to a large fine and threeyears’ imprisonment. Unable to pay the fine he was kept in prison forthree years. His wife and sister, who carried on the business [174] and continued to sell the book, were fined and imprisoned soonafterwards and a whole host of shop assistants. If his publishers suffered in England, the author himself suffered inAmerica where bigotry did all it could to make the last years of hislife bitter. The age of enlightenment began in Germany in the middle of theeighteenth century. In most of the German States, thought wasconsiderably less free than in England. Under Frederick the Great’sfather, the philosopher Wolff was banished from Prussia for according tothe moral teachings of the Chinese sage Confucius a praise which, it wasthought, ought to be reserved for Christianity. He returned after theaccession of Frederick, under whose tolerant rule Prussia was an asylumfor those writers who suffered for their opinions in neighbouringStates. Frederick, indeed, held the view which was held by so manyEnglish rationalists of the time, and is still held widely enough, thatfreethought is not desirable for the multitude, because they areincapable of understanding philosophy. Germany felt the influence of theEnglish Deists, of the French freethinkers, and of Spinoza; but in theGerman rationalistic propaganda of this period there is nothing veryoriginal or interesting. [175] The names of Edelmann and Bahrdt may be mentioned. The works ofEdelmann, who attacked the inspiration of the Bible, were burned invarious cities, and he was forced to seek Frederick’s protection atBerlin. Bahrdt was more aggressive than any other writer of the time. Originally a preacher, it was by slow degrees that he moved away fromthe orthodox faith. His translation of the New Testament cut short hisecclesiastical career. His last years were spent as an inn-keeper. Hiswritings, for instance his popular Letters on the Bible, must have had aconsiderable effect, if we may judge by the hatred which he excitedamong theologians. It was not, however, in direct rationalistic propaganda, but inliterature and philosophy, that the German enlightenment of this centuryexpressed itself. The most illustrious men of letters, Goethe (who wasprofoundly influenced by Spinoza) and Schiller, stood outside theChurches, and the effect of their writings and of the whole literarymovement of the time made for the freest treatment of human experience. One German thinker shook the world—the philosopher Kant. His Critic ofPure Reason demonstrated that when we attempt to prove by the fight ofthe intellect the existence of [176] God and the immortality of the Soul, we fall helplessly intocontradictions. His destructive criticism of the argument from designand all natural theology was more complete than that of Hume; and hisphilosophy, different though his system was, issued in the samepractical result as that of Locke, to confine knowledge to experience. It is true that afterwards, in the interest of ethics, he tried tosmuggle in by a back-door the Deity whom he had turned out by the frontgate, but the attempt was not a success. His philosophy—while it led tonew speculative systems in which the name of God was used to meansomething very different from the Deistic conception—was a significantstep 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 theinterpretation of Scripture, was translated into English in 1689. [3] See Benn, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, vol. I, p. 138seq. , 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 inthe seventeenth century, which saw the demonstration of the Copernicantheory, the discovery of gravitation, the discovery of the circulationof the blood, and the foundation [177] of modern chemistry and physics. The true nature of comets wasascertained, and they ceased to be regarded as signs of heavenly wrath. But several generations were to pass before science became, inProtestant countries, an involuntary arch-enemy of theology. Till thenineteenth century, it was only in minor points, such as the movement ofthe earth, that proved scientific facts seemed to conflict withScripture, and it was easy enough to explain away these inconsistenciesby a new interpretation of the sacred texts. Yet remarkable facts wereaccumulating which, though not explained by science, seemed to menacethe credibility of Biblical history. If the story of Noah’s Ark and theFlood is true, how was it that beasts unable to swim or fly inhabitAmerica and the islands of the Ocean? And what about the new specieswhich were constantly being found in the New World and did not exist inthe Old? Where did the kangaroos of Australia drop from? The onlyexplanation compatible with received theology seemed to be thehypothesis of innumerable new acts of creation, later than the Flood. Itwas in the field of natural history that scientific men of theeighteenth 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 putforward about the formation of the earth in his Natural History (1749), and to state that he believed implicitly in the Bible account ofCreation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Laplace worked out themechanics of the universe, on the nebular hypothesis. His resultsdispensed, as he said to Napoleon, with the hypothesis of God, and wereduly denounced. His theory involved a long physical process before theearth and solar system came to be formed; but this was not fatal, for alittle ingenuity might preserve the credit of the first chapter ofGenesis. Geology was to prove a more formidable enemy to the Biblicalstory of the Creation and the Deluge. The theory of a French naturalist(Cuvier) that the earth had repeatedly experienced catastrophes, each ofwhich necessitated a new creative act, helped for a time to save thebelief in divine intervention, and Lyell, in his Principles of Geology(1830), while he undermined the assumption of catastrophes, by showingthat the earth’s history could be explained by the ordinary processeswhich we still see in operation, yet held fast to successive acts ofcreation. It was not till 1863 that he presented fully, in his Antiquityof Man, the [179] evidence which showed that the human race had inhabited the earthfor a far longer period than could be reconciled with the record ofScripture. That record might be adapted to the results of science inregard not only to the earth itself but also to the plants and loweranimals, by explaining the word “day” in the Jewish story of creation tosignify some long period of time. But this way out was impossible in thecase of the creation of man, for the sacred chronology is quitedefinite. An English divine of the seventeenth century ingeniouslycalculated 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 couldput the event much further back. Other evidence reinforced theconclusions from geology, but geology alone was sufficient to damageirretrievably the historical truth of the Jewish legend of Creation. Theonly means of rescuing it was to suppose that God had created misleadingevidence for the express purpose of deceiving man. Geology shook the infallibility of the Bible, but left the creation ofsome prehistoric Adam and Eve a still admissible hypothesis. Herehowever zoology stepped in, and pronounced upon the origin of man. Itwas an old conjecture that the higher forms of life, including [180] man, had developed out of lower forms, and advanced thinkers hadbeen reaching the conclusion that the universe, as we find it, is theresult of a continuous process, unbroken by supernatural interference, and explicable by uniform natural laws. But while the reign of law inthe world of non-living matter seemed to be established, the world oflife could be considered a field in which the theory of divineintervention is perfectly valid, so long as science failed to assignsatisfactory causes for the origination of the various kinds of animalsand plants. The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 is, therefore, a landmark not only in science but in the war between scienceand theology. When this book appeared, Bishop Wilberforce truly saidthat “the principle of natural selection is incompatible with the wordof God, ” and theologians in Germany and France as well as in Englandcried aloud against the threatened dethronement of the Deity. Theappearance of the Descent of Man (1871), in which the evidence for thepedigree of the human race from lower animals was marshalled withmasterly force, renewed the outcry. The Bible said that God created manin his own image, Darwin said that man descended from an ape. Thefeelings of the orthodox world may be [181] expressed in the words of Mr. Gladstone: “Upon the grounds of whatis called evolution God is relieved of the labour of creation, and inthe name of unchangeable laws is discharged from governing the world. ”It was a discharge which, as Spencer observed, had begun with Newton’sdiscovery of gravitation. If Darwin did not, as is now recognized, supply a complete explanation of the origin of species, his researchesshattered the supernatural theory and confirmed the view to which manyable thinkers had been led that development is continuous in the livingas in the non-living world. Another nail was driven into the coffin ofCreation and the Fall of Adam, and the doctrine of redemption could onlybe rescued by making it independent of the Jewish fable on which it wasfounded. Darwinism, as it is called, has had the larger effect of discreditingthe theory of the adaptation of means to ends in nature by an externaland infinitely powerful intelligence. The inadequacy of the argumentfrom design, as a proof of God’s existence, had been shown by the logicof Hume and Kant; but the observation of the life-processes of natureshows that the very analogy between nature and art, on which theargument depends, breaks down. The impropriety of the analogy has been [182] pointed out, in a telling way, by a German writer (Lange). If aman wants to shoot a hare which is in a certain field, he does notprocure thousands of guns, surround the field, and cause them all to befired off; or if he wants a house to live in, he does not build a wholetown and abandon to weather and decay all the houses but one. If he dideither of these things we should say he was mad or amazinglyunintelligent; his actions certainly would not be held to indicate apowerful mind, expert in adapting means to ends. But these are the sortof things that nature does. Her wastefulness in the propagation of lifeis reckless. For the production of one life she sacrifices innumerablegerms. The “end” is achieved in one case out of thousands; the rule isdestruction and failure. If intelligence had anything to do with thisbungling process, it would be an intelligence infinitely low. And thefinished product, if regarded as a work of design, points toincompetence in the designer. Take the human eye. An illustrious man ofscience (Helmholtz) said, “If an optician sent it to me as aninstrument, I should send it back with reproaches for the carelessnessof his work and demand the return of my money. Darwin showed how thephenomena might be explained as events not brought about [183] intentionally, but due to exceptional concurrences ofcircumstances. The phenomena of nature are a system of things which co-exist and followeach other according to invariable laws. This deadly proposition wasasserted early in the nineteenth century to be an axiom of science. Itwas formulated by Mill (in his System of Logic, 1843) as the foundationon which scientific induction rests. It means that at any moment thestate of the whole universe is the effect of its state at the precedingmoment; the casual sequence between two successive states is not brokenby any arbitrary interference suppressing or altering the relationbetween cause and effect. Some ancient Greek philosophers were convincedof this principle; the work done by modern science in every field seemsto be a verification of it. But it need not be stated in such anabsolute form. Recently, scientific men have been inclined to expressthe axiom with more reserve and less dogmatically. They are prepared torecognize that it is simply a postulate without which the scientificcomprehension of the universe would be impossible, and they are inclinedto state it not as a law of causation—for the idea of causation leadsinto metaphysics—but rather as uniformity of experience. But they arenot [184] readier to admit exceptions to this uniformity than theirpredecessors were to admit exceptions to the law of causation. The idea of development has been applied not only to nature, but to themind of man and to the history of civilization, including thought andreligion. The first who attempted to apply this idea methodically to thewhole universe was not a student of natural science, but ametaphysician, Hegel. His extremely difficult philosophy had such a wideinfluence 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 beingto manifest itself in the process of the world, first externalizingitself in nature, and then becoming conscious of itself as spirit inindividual minds. His system is hence called Absolute Idealism. Theattraction which it exercised has probably been in great measure due tothe fact that it was in harmony with nineteenth-century thought, in sofar as it conceived the process of the world, both in nature and spirit, as a necessary development from lower to higher stages. In this respectindeed Hegel’s vision was limited. He treats the process as if it werepractically complete already, and does not take into account [185] the probability of further development in the future, to whichother thinkers of his own time were turning their attention. But whatconcerns us here is that, while Hegel’s system is “idealistic, ” findingthe explanation of the universe in thought and not in matter, it tendedas powerfully as any materialistic system to subvert orthodox beliefs. It is true that some have claimed it as supporting Christianity. Acertain colour is lent to this by Hegel’s view that the Christian creed, as the highest religion, contains doctrines which express imperfectlysome of the ideas of the highest philosophy—his own; along with the factthat he sometimes speaks of the Absolute Idea as if it were a person, though personality would be a limitation inconsistent with hisconception of it. But it is sufficient to observe that, whatever valuebe assigned to Christianity, he regarded it from the superior standpointof a purely intellectual philosophy, not as a special revelation oftruth, but as a certain approximation to the truth which philosophyalone can reach; and it may be said with some confidence that any onewho comes under Hegel’s spell feels that he is in possession of a theoryof the universe which relieves him from the need or desire of anyrevealed religion. His influence in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere hasentirely 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 andexplicitly rejected theology as an obsolete way of explaining theuniverse. He rejected metaphysics likewise, and all that Hegel stoodfor, as equally useless, on the ground that metaphysicians explainnothing, but merely describe phenomena in abstract terms, and thatquestions about the origin of the world and why it exists are quitebeyond the reach of reason. Both theology and metaphysics are supersededby science—the investigation of causes and effects and coexistences; andthe future progress of society will be guided by the scientific view ofthe world which confines itself to the positive data of experience. Comte was convinced that religion is a social necessity, and, to supplythe place of the theological religions which he pronounced to be doomed, he invented a new religion—the religion of Humanity. It differs from thegreat religions of the world in having no supernatural or non-rationalarticles of belief, and on that account he had few adherents. But the“Positive Philosophy” of Comte has exercised great influence, not leastin 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 mostindefatigable workers in the cause of reason against authority. Another comprehensive system was worked out by an Englishman, HerbertSpencer. Like Comte’s, it was based on science, and attempts to showhow, starting with a nebular universe, the whole knowable world, psychical and social as well as physical, can be deduced. His SyntheticPhilosophy perhaps did more than anything else to make the idea ofevolution familiar in England. I must mention one other modern explanation of the world, that ofHaeckel, the zoologist, professor at Jena, who may be called the prophetof evolution. His Creation of Man (1868) covered the same ground asDarwin’s Descent, had an enormous circulation, and was translated, Ibelieve, into fourteen languages. His World-riddles (1899) enjoys thesame popularity. He has taught, like Spencer, that the principle ofevolution applies not only to the history of nature, but also to humancivilization and human thought. He differs from Spencer and Comte in notassuming any unknowable reality behind natural phenomena. Hisadversaries commonly stigmatize his theory as materialism, but this is amistake. Like Spinoza he recognizes matter and mind, body and thought, as [188] two inseparable sides of ultimate reality, which he calls God; infact, he identifies his philosophy with that of Spinoza. And helogically proceeds to conceive material atoms as thinking. His idea ofthe physical world is based on the old mechanical conception of matter, which in recent years has been discredited. But Haeckel’s Monism, [1] ashe called his doctrine, has lately been reshaped and in its new formpromises to exercise wide influence on thoughtful people in Germany. Iwill return later to this Monistic movement. It had been a fundamental principle of Comte that human actions andhuman history are as strictly subject as nature is, to the law ofcausation. Two psychological works appeared in England in 1855 (Bain’sSenses and Intellect and Spencer’s Principles of Psychology), whichtaught that our volitions are completely determined, being theinevitable consequences of chains of causes and effects. But a fardeeper impression was produced two years later by the first volume ofBuckle’s History of Civilization in England (a work of much lesspermanent value), which attempted to apply this principle to history. Men act in consequence of motives; their motives are the results ofpreceding facts; so that “if we were acquainted with the whole of theantecedents [189] and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerringcertainty predict the whole of their immediate results. ” Thus history isan unbroken chain of causes and effects. Chance is excluded; it is amere name for the defects of our knowledge. Mysterious and providentialinterference is excluded. Buckle maintained God’s existence, buteliminated him from history; and his book dealt a resounding blow at thetheory that human actions are not submitted to the law of universalcausation. The science of anthropology has in recent years aroused wide interest. Inquiries into the condition of early man have shown (independently ofDarwinism) that there is nothing to be said for the view that he fellfrom a higher to a lower state; the evidence points to a slow rise frommere animality. The origin of religious beliefs has been investigated, with results disquieting for orthodoxy. The researches of students ofanthropology and comparative religion—such as Tylor, Robertson Smith, and Frazer—have gone to show that mysterious ideas and dogma and riteswhich were held to be peculiar to the Christian revelation are derivedfrom the crude ideas of primitive religions. That the mystery of theEucharist comes from the common savage rite of eating a dead god, [190] that the death and resurrection of a god in human form, which formthe central fact of Christianity, and the miraculous birth of a Saviourare features which it has in common with pagan religions—suchconclusions are supremely unedifying. It may be said that in themselvesthey are not fatal to the claims of the current theology. It may beheld, for instance, that, as part of Christian revelation, such ideasacquired a new significance and that God wisely availed himself offamiliar beliefs—which, though false and leading to cruel practices, hehimself had inspired and permitted—in order to construct a scheme ofredemption which should appeal to the prejudices of man. Some minds mayfind satisfaction in this sort of explanation, but it may be suspectedthat most of the few who study modern researches into the origin ofreligious beliefs will feel the lines which were supposed to mark offthe 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 Christianscheme, based on the notions of an unscientific age and on the arrogantassumption that the universe was made for man, has no suitable orreasonable place. If Paine felt this a hundred years ago, it is far [191] more apparent now. All minds however are not equally impressedwith this incongruity. There are many who will admit the proofsfurnished by science that the Biblical record as to the antiquity of manis false, but are not affected by the incongruity between the scientificand theological conceptions of the world. For such minds science has only succeeded in carrying someentrenchments, which may be abandoned without much harm. It has made theold orthodox view of the infallibility of the Bible untenable, and upsetthe doctrine of the Creation and Fall. But it would still be possiblefor Christianity to maintain the supernatural claim, by modifying itstheory of the authority of the Bible and revising its theory ofredemption, if the evidence of natural science were the only group offacts with which it collided. It might be argued that the law ofuniversal causation is a hypothesis inferred from experience, but thatexperience includes the testimonies of history and must therefore takeaccount of the clear evidence of miraculous occurrences in the NewTestament (evidence which is valid, even if that book was not inspired). Thus, a stand could be taken against the generalization of science onthe firm ground of historical fact. That solid ground, however, hasgiven [192] way, undermined by historical criticism, which has been moredeadly 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 ofthe nineteenth century. Something, indeed, had already been done. Spinoza, for instance (above, p. 138), and Simon, a Frenchman whosebooks were burnt, were pioneers; and the modern criticism of the OldTestament was begun by Astruc (professor of medicine at Paris), whodiscovered an important clue for distinguishing different documents usedby the compiler of the Book of Genesis (1753). His German contemporary, Reimarus, a student of the New Testament, anticipated the modernconclusion that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion, andsaw that the Gospel of St. John presents a different figure from theJesus of the other evangelists. But in the nineteenth century the methods of criticism, applied byGerman scholars to Homer and to the records of early Roman history, wereextended to the investigation of the Bible. The work has been doneprincipally in Germany. The old tradition that the Pentateuch waswritten by Moses has been completely discredited. It is now [193] agreed unanimously by all who have studied the facts that thePentateuch was put together from a number of different documents ofdifferent ages, the earliest dating from the ninth, the last from thefifth, century B. C. ; and there are later minor additions. An important, though undesigned, contribution was made to this exposure by anEnglishman, Colenso, Bishop of Natal. It had been held that the oldestof the documents which had been distinguished was a narrative whichbegins in Genesis, Chapter I, but there was the difficulty that thisnarrative seemed to be closely associated with the legislation ofLeviticus which could be proved to belong to the fifth century. In 1862Colenso published the first part of his Pentateuch and the Book ofJoshua Critically Examined. His doubts of the truth of Old Testamenthistory had been awakened by a converted Zulu who asked the intelligentquestion whether he could really believe in the story of the Flood, “that all the beasts and birds and creeping things upon the earth, largeand small, from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs and enteredinto the ark with Noah? And did Noah gather food for them all, for thebeasts and birds of prey as well as the rest?” The Bishop then proceededto test the accuracy of the inspired books by examining [194] the numerical statements which they contain. The results werefatal to them as historical records. Quite apart from miracles (thepossibility of which he did not question), he showed that the wholestory of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and the wilderness wasfull of absurdities and impossibilities. Colenso’s book raised a stormof indignation in England—he was known as “the wicked bishop”; but onthe Continent its reception was very different. The portions of thePentateuch and Joshua, which he proved to be unhistorical, belongedprecisely to the narrative which had caused perplexity; and critics wereled by his results to conclude that, like the Levitical laws with whichit was connected, it was as late as the fifth century. One of the most striking results of the researches on the Old Testamenthas been that the Jews themselves handled their traditions freely. Eachof the successive documents, which were afterwards woven together, waswritten by men who adopted a perfectly free attitude towards the oldertraditions, and having no suspicion that they were of divine origin didnot bow down before their authority. It was reserved for the Christiansto invest with infallible authority the whole indiscriminate lump ofthese Jewish documents, inconsistent not [195] only in their tendencies (since they reflect the spirit ofdifferent ages), but also in some respects in substance. The examinationof most of the other Old Testament books has led to conclusions likewiseadverse to the orthodox view of their origin and character. Newknowledge on many points has been derived from the Babylonian literaturewhich has been recovered during the last half century. One of theearliest (1872) and most sensational discoveries was that the Jews gottheir story of the Flood from Babylonian mythology. Modern criticism of the New Testament began with the stimulating worksof Baur and of Strauss, whose Life of Jesus (1835), in which thesupernatural was entirely rejected, had an immense success and causedfurious controversy. Both these rationalists were influenced by Hegel. At the same time a classical scholar, Lachmann, laid the foundations ofthe criticism of the Greek text of the New Testament, by issuing thefirst scientific edition. Since then seventy years of work have led tosome certain results which are generally accepted. In the first place, no intelligent person who has studied moderncriticism holds the old view that each of the four biographies of Jesusis an independent work and an independent [196] testimony to the facts which are related. It is acknowledged thatthose portions which are common to more than one and are written inidentical language have the same origin and represent only onetestimony. In the second place, it is allowed that the first Gospel isnot the oldest and that the apostle Matthew was not its author. There isalso a pretty general agreement that Mark’s book is the oldest. Theauthorship of the fourth Gospel, which like the first was supposed tohave been written by an eye-witness, is still contested, but even thosewho adhere to the tradition admit that it represents a theory aboutJesus which is widely different from the view of the three otherbiographers. The result is that it can no longer be said that for the life of Jesusthere is the evidence of eye-witnesses. The oldest account (Mark) wascomposed at the earliest some thirty years after the Crucifixion. Ifsuch evidence is considered good enough to establish the supernaturalevents described in that document, there are few alleged supernaturaloccurrences which we shall not be equally entitled to believe. As amatter of fact, an interval of thirty years makes little difference, forwe know that legends require little time to grow. In the East, you willhear 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 threeGospels is that, if you take the recorded words of Jesus to be genuinetradition, he had no idea of founding a new religion. And he was fullypersuaded that the end of the world was at hand. At present, the chiefproblem of advanced criticism seems to be whether his entire teachingwas not determined by this delusive conviction. It may be said that the advance of knowledge has thrown no light on oneof the most important beliefs that we are asked to accept on authority, the doctrine of immortality. Physiology and psychology have indeedemphasized the difficulties of conceiving a thinking mind without anervous system. Some are sanguine enough to think that, by scientificexamination of psychical phenomena, we may possibly come to know whetherthe “spirits” of dead people exist. If the existence of such a world ofspirits were ever established, it would possibly be the greatest blowever sustained by Christianity. For the great appeal of this and of someother religions [198] lies in the promise of a future life of which otherwise we shouldhave no knowledge. If existence after death were proved and became ascientific fact like the law of gravitation, a revealed religion mightlose its power. For the whole point of a revealed religion is that it isnot based on scientific facts. So far as I know, those who areconvinced, by spiritualistic experiments, that they have actual conversewith spirits of the dead, and for whom this converse, however delusivethe evidence may be, is a fact proved by experience, cease to feel anyinterest in religion. They possess knowledge and can dispense withfaith. The havoc which science and historical criticism have wrought amongorthodox beliefs during the last hundred years was not tamely submittedto, and controversy was not the only weapon employed. Strauss wasdeprived 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 fromTübingen (1855) for his book on Force and Matter, which, appealing tothe general public, set forth the futility of supernatural explanationsof the universe. An attempt was made to chase Haeckel from Jena. Inrecent years, [199] a French Catholic, the Abbé Loisy, has made notable contributionsto the study of the New Testament and he was rewarded by majorexcommunication in 1907. Loisy is the most prominent figure in a growing movement within theCatholic Church known as Modernism—a movement which some think is thegravest crisis in the history of the Church since the thirteenthcentury. The Modernists do not form an organized party; they have noprogramme. They are devoted to the Church, to its traditions andassociations, but they look on Christianity as a religion which hasdeveloped, and whose vitality depends upon its continuing to develop. They are bent on reinterpreting the dogmas in the light of modernscience and criticism. The idea of development had already been appliedby Cardinal Newman to Catholic theology. He taught that it was anatural, and therefore legitimate, development of the primitive creed. But he did not draw the conclusion which the Modernists draw that ifCatholicism is not to lose its power of growth and die, it mustassimilate some of the results of modern thought. This is what they areattempting 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 Biblicalcriticism which are defended in Loisy’s works. The two fundamentalpropositions that “the organic constitution of the Church is notimmutable, but that Christian society is subject, like every humansociety, to a perpetual evolution, ” and that “the dogmas which theChurch regards as revealed are not fallen from heaven but are aninterpretation of religious facts at which the human mind laboriouslyarrived”—both of which might be deduced from Newman’s writings—arecondemned. Three months later the Pope issued a long Encyclical letter, containing an elaborate study of Modernist opinions, and ordainingvarious measures for stamping out the evil. No Modernist would admitthat this document represents his views fairly. Yet some of the remarksseem very much to the point. Take one of their books: “one page might besigned by a Catholic; turn over and you think you are reading the workof a rationalist. In writing history, they make no mention of Christ’sdivinity; in the pulpit, they proclaim it loudly. ” A plain man may be puzzled by these attempts to retain the letter of olddogmas emptied of their old meaning, and may think it natural enoughthat the head of the Catholic [201] Church should take a clear and definite stand against the newlearning which, seems fatal to its fundamental doctrines. For many yearspast, liberal divines in the Protestant Churches have been doing whatthe Modernists are doing. The phrase “Divinity of Christ” is used, butis interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous birth. The Resurrectionis preached, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous bodilyresurrection. The Bible is said to be an inspired book, but inspirationis 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 asa merit. Between the extreme views which discard the miraculousaltogether, 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 theminimum 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 andillustrates the relations between Church and State. The pietistic movement known as Evangelicalism, which Wilberforce’sPractical 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 delightfultype of eighteenth-century divine, who, as Gibbon says, “subscribed witha sigh or a smile” the articles of faith. The rigorous taboo of theSabbath was revived, the theatre was denounced, the corruption of humannature 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 hadbeen mainly due to infidelity; the Revolution was taken for an objectlesson showing the value of religion for keeping the people in order. There was also a religious “reaction” in France itself. But in bothcases this means not that free thought was less prevalent, but that thebeliefs of the majority were more aggressive and had powerful spokesmen, while the eighteenth-century form of rationalism fell out of fashion. Anew form of rationalism, which sought to interpret orthodoxy in such aliberal way as to reconcile it with philosophy, was represented byColeridge, who was influenced by German philosophers. Coleridge was asupporter of the Church, and he contributed to the foundation of aschool of liberal theology which was to make itself felt after themiddle of the century. [203] Newman, the most eminent of the new High Church party, said thathe indulged in a liberty of speculation which no Christian couldtolerate. The High Church movement which marked the second quarter ofthe century was as hostile as Evangelicalism to the freedom of religiousthought. The change came after the middle of the century, when the effects of thephilosophies of Hegel and Comte, and of foreign Biblical criticism, began to make themselves felt within the English Church. Two remarkablefreethinking 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 in1850). Newman (brother of Cardinal Newman) entirely broke withChristianity, and in his book he describes the mental process by whichhe came to abandon the beliefs he had once held. Perhaps the mostinteresting point he makes is the deficiency of the New Testamentteaching as a system of morals. Greg was a Unitarian. He rejected dogmaand inspiration, but he regarded himself as a Christian. Sir J. F. Stephen wittily described his position as that of a disciple “who hadheard the Sermon on the Mount, whose attention had not been called tothe Miracles, and who died before the Resurrection. ” [204] There were a few English clergymen (chiefly Oxford men) who wereinterested in German criticism and leaned to broad views, which to theEvangelicals and High Churchmen seemed indistinguishable frominfidelity. We may call them the Broad Church—though the name did notcome in till later. In 1855 Jowett (afterwards Master of Balliol)published an edition of some of St. Paul’s Epistles, in which he showedthe cloven hoof. It contained an annihilating criticism of the doctrineof the Atonement, an explicit rejection of original sin, and arationalistic discussion of the question of God’s existence. But thisand some other unorthodox works of liberal theologians attracted littlepublic attention, though their authors had to endure petty persecution. Five years later, Jowett and some other members of the small liberalgroup decided to defy the “abominable system of terrorism which preventsthe statement of the plainest fact, ” and issued a volume of Essays andReviews (1860) by seven writers of whom six were clergymen. The viewsadvocated in these essays seem mild enough to-day, and many of themwould be accepted by most well-educated clergymen, but at the time theyproduced a very painful impression. The authors were called the “Sevenagainst 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 Scriptureprinciples which he would hesitate to apply to other books; to makeformal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not think ofreconciling in ordinary history; to divide simple words into doublemeanings; to adopt the fancies or conjectures of Fathers andCommentators as real knowledge. ” It is suggested that the Hebrewprophecies do not contain the element of prediction. Contradictoryaccounts, or accounts which can only be reconciled by conjecture, cannotpossibly have been dictated by God. The discrepancies between thegenealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, or between the accounts of theResurrection, can be attributed “neither to any defect in our capacitiesnor to any reasonable presumption of a hidden wise design, nor to anypartial spiritual endowments in the narrators. ” The orthodox argumentswhich lay stress on the assertion of witnesses as the supreme evidenceof fact, in support of miraculous occurrences, are set aside on theground that testimony is a blind guide and can avail nothing againstreason 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 orlegend” such stories as that of an ass speaking with a man’s voice, ofwaters standing in a solid heap, of witches and a variety ofapparitions, and to judge for ourselves of such questions as thepersonality of Satan or the primeval institution of the Sabbath. Thewhole spirit of this volume is perhaps expressed in the observation thatif any one perceives “to how great an extent the origin itself ofChristianity rests upon probable evidence, his principle will relievehim from many difficulties which might otherwise be very disturbing. Forrelations which may repose on doubtful grounds as matters of history, and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yetbe equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain”—thatis, they may have a spiritual significance although they arehistorically false. The most daring Essay was the Rev. Baden Powell’s Study of the Evidencesof Christianity. He was a believer in evolution, who accepted Darwinism, and considered miracles impossible. The volume was denounced by theBishops, and in 1862 two of the contributors, who were beneficedclergymen and thus open to a legal attack, were prosecuted and tried inthe Ecclesiastical Court. Condemned on [207] certain points, acquitted on others, they were sentenced to besuspended for a year, and they appealed to the Privy Council. LordWestbury (Lord Chancellor) pronounced the judgment of the JudicialCommittee of the Council, which reversed the decision of theEcclesiastical Court. The Committee held, among other things, that it isnot essential for a clergyman to believe in eternal punishment. Thisprompted the following epitaph on Lord Westbury: “Towards the close ofhis earthly career he dismissed Hell with costs and took away fromOrthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlastingdamnation. ” This was a great triumph for the Broad Church party, and it is aninteresting event in the history of the English State-Church. Laymendecided (overruling the opinion of the Archbishops of Canterbury andYork) what theological doctrines are and are not binding on a clergyman, and granted within the Church a liberty of opinion which the majority ofthe Church’s representatives regarded as pernicious. This liberty wasformally established in 1865 by an Act of Parliament, which altered theform in which clergymen were required to subscribe the Thirty-nineArticles. The episode of Essays and Reviews is a landmark in the historyof religious thought in England. [208] The liberal views of the Broad Churchmen and their attitude to the Biblegradually 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 composedwithout the direct inspiration of the Deity. During the next few years orthodox public opinion was shocked ordisturbed by the appearance of several remarkable books whichcriticized, ignored, or defied authority—Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, Seeley’s Ecce Homo (which the pious Lord Shaftesbury said was “vomitedfrom the jaws of hell”), Lecky’s History of Rationalism. And a new poetof liberty arose who did not fear to sound the loudest notes of defianceagainst all that authority held sacred. All the great poets of thenineteenth century were more or less unorthodox; Wordsworth in the yearsof his highest inspiration was a pantheist; and the greatest of all, Shelley, was a declared atheist. In fearless utterance, in unfalteringzeal against the tyranny of Gods and Governments, Swinburne was likeShelley. His drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865), even though a poet isstrictly not answerable for what the persons in his drama say, yet withits denunciation of “the supreme evil, God, ” heralded the coming [209] of a new champion who would defy the fortresses of authority. Andin the following year his Poems and Ballads expressed the spirit of apagan who flouted all the prejudices and sanctities of the Christianworld. But the most intense and exciting period of literary warfare againstorthodoxy in England began about 1869, and lasted for about a dozenyears, during which enemies of dogma, of all complexions, were lessreticent and more aggressive than at any other time in the century. LordMorley has observed that “the force of speculative literature alwayshangs on practical opportuneness, ” and this remark is illustrated by therationalistic literature of the seventies. It was a time of hope andfear, of progress and danger. Secularists and rationalists wereencouraged by the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland (1869), bythe Act which allowed atheists to give evidence in a court of justice(1869), by the abolition of religious tests at all the universities (ameasure frequently attempted in vain) in 1871. On the other hand, theEducation Act of 1870, progressive though it was, disappointed theadvocates of secular education, and was an unwelcome sign of thestrength of ecclesiastical influence. Then there was the general alarmfelt in Europe by all outside the Roman Church, [210] and by some within it, at the decree of the infallibility of thePope (by the Vatican Council 1869–70), and an Englishman (CardinalManning) was one of the most active spirits in bringing about thisdecree. It would perhaps have caused less alarm if the Pope’sdenunciation of modern errors had not been fresh in men’s memories. Atthe end of 1864 he startled the world by issuing a Syllabus “embracingthe principal errors of our age. ” Among these were the propositions, that every man is free to adopt and profess the religion he considerstrue, according to the light of reason; that the Church has no right toemploy force; that metaphysics can and ought to be pursued withoutreference to divine and ecclesiastical authority; that Catholic statesare right to allow foreign immigrants to exercise their own religion inpublic; that the Pope ought to make terms with progress, liberalism, andmodern civilization. The document was taken as a declaration of waragainst enlightenment, and the Vatican Council as the first strategicmove of the hosts of darkness. It seemed that the powers of obscurantismwere lifting up their heads with a new menace, and there was aninstinctive feeling that all the forces of reason should be brought intothe field. The history of the last forty years shows that the theory of [211] Infallibility, since it has become a dogma, is not more harmfulthan it was before. But the efforts of the Catholic Church in the yearsfollowing the Council to overthrow the French Republic and to rupturethe new German Empire were sufficiently disquieting. Against this was tobe set the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes and thecomplete freedom of Italy. This event was the sunrise of Swinburne’sSongs before Sunrise (which appeared in 1871), a seedplot of atheism andrevolution, sown with implacable hatred of creeds and tyrants. The mostwonderful poem in the volume, the Hymn of Man, was written while theVatican Council was sitting. It is a song of triumph over the God of thepriests, stricken by the doom of the Pope’s temporal power. Theconcluding verses will show the spirit. “By thy name that in hellfire was written, and burned at the point ofthy sword, Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death isupon thee, O Lord. And the lovesong of earth as thou diest resoundsthrough the wind of her wings— Glory to Man in the highest! for Man isthe master of things. ” [212] The fact that such a volume could appear with impunity vividlyillustrates the English policy of enforcing the laws for blasphemy onlyin the case of publications addressed to the masses. Political circumstances thus invited and stimulated rationalists to comeforward boldly, but we must not leave out of account the influence ofthe Broad Church movement and of Darwinism. The Descent of Man appearedprecisely in 1871. A new, undogmatic Christianity was being preached inpulpits. Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked (1873) that “it may be said, withlittle exaggeration, that there is not only no article in the creedswhich may not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is nonewhich may not be contradicted in a sermon calculated to win thereputation of orthodoxy and be regarded as a judicious bid for abishopric. The popular state of mind seems to be typified in the well-known anecdote of the cautious churchwarden, who, whilst commending thegeneral tendency of his incumbent’s sermon, felt bound to hazard aprotest 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 ofjudgment, 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) wasalso a sign of the times. For the attitude of these critics, artists, and poets was essentially pagan. The saving truths of theology were forthem as if they did not exist. The ideal of happiness was found in aregion in which heaven was ignored. The time then seemed opportune for speaking out. Of the unorthodox booksand essays, [2] which influenced the young and alarmed believers, inthese exciting years, most were the works of men who may be most fairlydescribed by the comprehensive term agnostics—a name which had beenrecently invented by Professor Huxley. The agnostic holds that there are limits to human reason, and thattheology lies outside those limits. Within those limits lies the worldwith which science (including psychology) deals. Science deals entirelywith phenomena, and has nothing to say to the nature of the ultimatereality which may lie behind phenomena. There are four possible [214] attitudes to this ultimate reality. There is the attitude of themetaphysician and theologian, who are convinced not only that it existsbut that it can be at least partly known. There is the attitude of theman who denies that it exists; but he must be also a metaphysician, forits existence can only be disproved by metaphysical arguments. Thenthere are those who assert that it exists but deny that we can knowanything about it. And finally there are those who say that we cannotknow whether it exists or not. These last are “agnostics” in the strictsense of the term, men who profess not to know. The third class gobeyond phenomena in so far as they assert that there is an ultimatethough unknowable reality beneath phenomena. But agnostic is commonlyused in a wide sense so as to include the third as well as the fourthclass—those who assume an unknowable, as well as those who do not knowwhether there is an unknowable or not. Comte and Spencer, for instance, who believed in an unknowable, are counted as agnostics. The differencebetween an agnostic and an atheist is that the atheist positively deniesthe 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 totheological opinions with the most merciless logic, was Mr. LeslieStephen. His best-known essay, “An Agnostic’s Apology” (FortnightlyReview, 1876), raises the question, have the dogmas of orthodoxtheologians any meaning? Do they offer, for this is what we want, anintelligible reconciliation of the discords in the universe? It is shownin detail that the various theological explanations of the dealings ofGod with man, when logically pressed, issue in a confession ofignorance. And what is this but agnosticism? You may call your doubt amystery, but mystery is only the theological phrase for agnosticism. “Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimateproblem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim inpulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish andignorant? We are a company of ignorant beings, dimly discerning lightenough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attemptto describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when oneof us ventures to declare that we don’t know the map of the Universe aswell as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, [216] and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for hisfaithlessness. ” The characteristic of Leslie Stephen’s essays is thatthey are less directed to showing that orthodox theology is untrue asthat there is no reality about it, and that its solutions ofdifficulties are sham solutions. If it solved any part of the mystery, it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. Itis “a mere edifice of moonshine. ” The writer makes no attempt to proveby logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason. He bases this conclusion on the fact that all philosophers hopelesslycontradict one another; if the subject-matter of philosophy were, likephysical science, within the reach of the intelligence, some agreementmust have been reached. The Broad Church movement, the attempts to liberalize Christianity, topour its old wine into new bottles, to make it unsectarian andundogmatic, to find compromises between theology and science, found nofavour in Leslie Stephen’s eyes, and he criticized all this with acertain contempt. There was a controversy about the efficacy of prayer. Is it reasonable, for instance, to pray for rain? Here science andtheology were at issue on a practical [217] point which comes within the domain of science. Some theologiansadopted 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 iseasier for the imagination to suppose the interference of a divine agentto be hidden away somewhere amidst the infinitely complex play offorces, which elude our calculations in meteorological phenomena, thanto believe in it where the forces are simple enough to admit ofprediction. The distinction is of course invalid in a scientific sense. Almighty power can interfere as easily with the events which are, aswith those which are not, in the Nautical Almanac. One cannot supposethat God retreats as science advances, and that he spoke in thunder andlightning till Franklin unravelled the laws of their phenomena. ” Again, when a controversy about hell engaged public attention, and someotherwise orthodox theologians bethought themselves that eternalpunishment was a horrible doctrine and then found that the evidence forit was not quite conclusive and were bold enough to say so, LeslieStephen stepped in to point out that, if so, historical [218] Christianity deserves all that its most virulent enemies have saidabout it in this respect. When the Christian creed really ruled men’sconsciences, nobody could utter a word against the truth of the dogma ofhell. If that dogma had not an intimate organic connection with thecreed, if it had been a mere unimportant accident, it could not havebeen so vigorous and persistent wherever Christianity was strongest. Theattempt to eliminate it or soften it down is a sign of decline. “Now, atlast, your creed is decaying. People have discovered that you knownothing about it; that heaven and hell belong to dreamland; that theimpertinent young curate who tells me that I shall be burnteverlastingly for not sharing his superstition is just as ignorant as Iam myself, and that I know as much as my dog. And then you calmly sayagain, ‘It is all a mistake. Only believe in a something —and we willmake it as easy for you as possible. Hell shall have no more than a fineequable temperature, really good for the constitution; there shall benobody in it except Judas Iscariot and one or two others; and even thepoor Devil shall have a chance if he will resolve to mend his ways. ’ ” Mr. Matthew Arnold may, I suppose, be numbered among the agnostics, buthe was [219] of a very different type. He introduced a new kind of criticism ofthe Bible—literary criticism. Deeply concerned for morality andreligion, a supporter of the Established Church, he took the Bible underhis special protection, and in three works, St. Paul and Protestantism, 1870, Literature and Dogma, 1873, and God and the Bible, 1875, heendeavoured to rescue that book from its orthodox exponents, whom heregarded as the corrupters of Christianity. It would be just, he says, “but hardly perhaps Christian, ” to fling back the word infidel at theorthodox theologians for their bad literary and scientific criticisms ofthe Bible and to speak of “the torrent of infidelity which pours everySunday from our pulpits!” The corruption of Christianity has been due totheology “with its insane licence of affirmation about God, its insanelicence of affirmation about immortality”; to the hypothesis of “amagnified and non-natural man at the head of mankind’s and the world’saffairs”; and the fancy account of God “made up by putting scatteredexpressions of the Bible together and taking them literally. ” Hechastises with urbane persiflage the knowledge which the orthodox thinkthey possess about the proceedings and plans of God. “To think they knowwhat passed in the Council of the [220] Trinity is not hard to them; they could easily think they evenknew what were the hangings of the Trinity’s council-chamber. ” Yet “thevery expression, the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and character ofBible-religion; but, lest the Socinian should be unduly elated athearing this, let us hasten to add that so too, and just as much, doesthe expression, a great Personal First Cause. ” He uses God as the leastinadequate name for that universal order which the intellect feels afteras a law, and the heart feels after as a benefit; and defines it as “thestream of tendency by which all things strive to fulfil the law of theirbeing. ” He defined it further as a Power that makes for righteousness, and thus went considerably beyond the agnostic position. He wasimpatient of the minute criticism which analyzes the Biblical documentsand discovers inconsistencies and absurdities, and he did not appreciatethe importance of the comparative study of religions. But when we readof a dignitary in a recent Church congress laying down that thenarratives in the books of Jonah and Daniel must be accepted becauseJesus quoted them, we may wish that Arnold were here to reproach theorthodox for “want of intellectual seriousness. ” These years also saw the appearance of [221] Mr. John Morley’s sympathetic studies of the French freethinkersof the eighteenth century, Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), and Diderot(1878). He edited the Fortnightly Review, and for some years thisjournal was distinguished by brilliant criticisms on the popularreligion, contributed by able men writing from many points of view. Apart of the book which he afterwards published under the titleCompromise appeared in the Fortnightly in 1874. In Compromise, “thewhole system of objective propositions which make up the popular beliefof the day” is condemned as mischievous, and it is urged that those whodisbelieve should speak out plainly. Speaking out is an intellectualduty. Englishmen have a strong sense of political responsibility, and acorrespondingly weak sense of intellectual responsibility. Even mindsthat are not commonplace are affected for the worse by the politicalspirit which “is the great force in throwing love of truth and accuratereasoning into a secondary place. ” And the principles which haveprevailed in politics have been adopted by theology for her own use. Inthe one case, convenience first, truth second; in the other, emotionalcomfort first, truth second. If the immorality is less gross in the caseof religion, [222] there is “the stain of intellectual improbity. ” And this is acrime against society, for “they who tamper with veracity from whatevermotive are tampering with the vital force of human progress. ” Theintellectual insincerity which is here blamed is just as prevalent to-day. The English have not changed their nature, the “political” spiritis still rampant, and we are ruled by the view that because compromiseis necessary in politics it is also a good thing in the intellectualdomain. The Fortnightly under Mr. Morley’s guidance was an effective organ ofenlightenment. I have no space to touch on the works of other men ofletters and of men of science in these combative years, but it is to benoted that, while denunciations of modern thought poured from thepulpits, a popular diffusion of freethought was carried on, especiallyby Mr. Bradlaugh in public lectures and in his paper, the NationalReformer, not without collisions with the civil authorities. If we take the cases in which the civil authorities in England haveintervened to repress the publication of unorthodox opinions during thelast two centuries, we find that the object has always been to preventthe spread of freethought among the masses. [223] The victims have been either poor, uneducated people, or men whopropagated freethought in a popular form. I touched upon this before inspeaking of Paine, and it is borne out by the prosecutions of thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. The unconfessed motive has been fearof the people. Theology has been regarded as a good instrument forkeeping the poor in order, and unbelief as a cause or accompaniment ofdangerous political opinions. The idea has not altogether disappearedthat free thought is peculiarly indecent in the poor, that it is highlydesirable to keep them superstitious in order to keep them contented, that they should be duly thankful for all the theological as well associal arrangements which have been made for them by their betters. Imay quote from an essay of Mr. Frederic Harrison an anecdote whichadmirably expresses the becoming attitude of the poor towardsecclesiastical institutions. “The master of a workhouse in Essex wasonce called in to act as chaplain to a dying pauper. The poor soulfaintly murmured some hopes of heaven. But this the master abruptly cutshort and warned him to turn his last thoughts towards hell. ‘Andthankful 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 wereHolyoake, [3] the apostle of “secularism, ” and Bradlaugh. The greatachievement for which Bradlaugh will be best remembered was the securingof the right of unbelievers to sit in Parliament without taking an oath(1888). The chief work to which Holyoake (who in his early years wasimprisoned for blasphemy) contributed was the abolition of taxes on thePress, 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 ofthe nineteenth century. [5] In the progressive countries of Europe there has been a marked growth oftolerance (I do not mean legal toleration, but the tolerance [225] of public opinion) during the last thirty years. A generation agoLord Morley wrote: “The preliminary stage has scarcely been reached—thestage in which public opinion grants to every one the unrestricted rightof shaping his own beliefs, independently of those of the people whosurround him. ” I think this preliminary stage has now been passed. TakeEngland. We are now far from the days when Dr. Arnold would have sentthe elder Mill to Botany Bay for irreligious opinions. But we are alsofar from the days when Darwin’s Descent created an uproar. Darwin hasbeen buried in Westminster Abbey. To-day books can appear denying thehistorical existence of Jesus without causing any commotion. It may bedoubted whether what Lord Acton wrote in 1877 would be true now: “Thereare in our day many educated men who think it right to persecute. ” In1895, Lecky was a candidate for the representation of Dublin University. His rationalistic opinions were indeed brought up against him, but hewas successful, though the majority of the constituents were orthodox. In the seventies his candidature would have been hopeless. The oldcommonplace 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 whichmay not legitimately be treated without any of the assumptions which inold days authority used to impose. In this brief review of the triumphs of reason in the nineteenthcentury, we have been considering the discoveries of science andcriticism which made the old orthodoxy logically untenable. But theadvance in freedom of thought, the marked difference in the generalattitude of men in all lands towards theological authority to-day fromthe attitude of a hundred years ago, cannot altogether be explained bythe power of logic. It is not so much criticism of old ideas as theappearance of new ideas and interests that changes the views of men atlarge. It is not logical demonstrations but new social conceptions thatbring about a general transformation of attitude towards ultimateproblems. Now the idea of the progress of the human race must, I think, be held largely answerable for this change of attitude. It must, Ithink, be held to have operated powerfully as a solvent of theologicalbeliefs. I have spoken of the teaching of Diderot and his friends thatman’s energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant. A [227] new ideal was substituted for the old ideal based on theologicalpropositions. It inspired the English Utilitarian philosophers (Bentham, James Mill, J. S. Mill, Grote) who preached the greatest happiness ofthe greatest number as the supreme object of action and the basis ofmorality. This ideal was powerfully reinforced by the doctrine ofhistorical progress, which was started in France (1750) by Turgot, whomade progress the organic principle of history. It was developed byCondorcet (1793), and put forward by Priestley in England. The idea wasseized upon by the French socialistic philosophers, Saint-Simon andFourier. The optimism of Fourier went so far as to anticipate the timewhen the sea would be turned by man’s ingenuity into lemonade, whenthere would be 37 million poets as great as Homer, 37 million writers asgreat as Molière, 37 million men of science equal to Newton. But it wasComte who gave the doctrine weight and power. His social philosophy andhis religion of Humanity are based upon it. The triumphs of scienceendorsed it; it has been associated with, though it is not necessarilyimplied in, the scientific theory of evolution; and it is perhaps fairto say that it has been the guiding spiritual force of the nineteenthcentury. It has introduced [228] the new ethical principle of duty to posterity. We shall hardly befar wrong if we say that the new interest in the future and the progressof the race has done a great deal to undermine unconsciously the oldinterest in a life beyond the grave; and it has dissolved the blightingdoctrine of the radical corruption of man. Nowhere has the theory of progress been more emphatically recognizedthan in the Monistic movement which has been exciting great interest inGermany (1910–12). This movement is based on the ideas of Haeckel, whois looked up to as the master; but those ideas have been considerablychanged under the influence of Ostwald, the new leader. While Haeckel isa biologist, Ostwald’s brilliant work was done in chemistry and physics. The new Monism differs from the old, in the first place, in being muchless dogmatic. It declares that all that is in our experience can be theobject of a corresponding science. It is much more a method than asystem, for its sole ultimate object is to comprehend all humanexperience in unified knowledge. Secondly, while it maintains, withHaeckel, evolution as the guiding principle in the history of livingthings, it rejects his pantheism and his theory of thinking atoms. Theold mechanical theory of the [229] physical world has been gradually supplanted by the theory ofenergy, 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, sofar as we know now, simply a complex of energies, and he has sought toextend the “energetic” principle from physical or chemical tobiological, psychical, and social phenomena. But it is to be observedthat no finality is claimed for the conception of energy; it is simplyan hypothesis which corresponds to our present stage of knowledge, andmay, as knowledge advances, be superseded. Monism resembles the positive philosophy and religion of Comte in so faras it means an outlook on life based entirely on science and excludingtheology, mysticism, and metaphysics. It may be called a religion, if weadopt Mr. MacTaggart’s definition of religion as “an emotion resting ona conviction of the harmony between ourselves and the universe atlarge. ” But it is much better not to use the word religion in connexionwith it, and the Monists have no thought of finding a Monistic, as Comtefounded a Positivist, church. They insist upon the sharp oppositionbetween the outlook of science and the outlook of religion, and find themark of spiritual progress in the fact that religion is [230] gradually becoming less indispensable. The further we go back inthe past, the more valuable is religion as an element in civilization;as we advance, it retreats more and more into the background, to bereplaced by science. Religions have been, in principle, pessimistic, sofar as the present world is concerned; Monism is, in principle, optimistic, for it recognizes that the process of his evolution hasovercome, in increasing measure, the bad element in man, and will go onovercoming it still more. Monism proclaims that development and progressare the practical principles of human conduct, while the Churches, especially the Catholic Church, have been steadily conservative, andthough they have been unable to put a stop to progress have endeavouredto suppress its symptoms—to bottle up the steam. [6] The Monisticcongress at Hamburg in 1911 had a success which surprised its promoters. The movement bids fair to be a powerful influence in diffusingrationalistic 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 ofecclesiastical power go together. In Spain, where the Church hasenormous power and wealth and can still dictate to the Court and thepoliticians, the idea of progress, which is vital in France and Italy, has not yet made its influence seriously felt. Liberal thought indeed iswidely spread in the small educated class, but the great majority of thewhole population are illiterate, and it is the interest of the Church tokeep them so. The education of the people, as all enlightened Spaniardsconfess, is the pressing need of the country. How formidable are theobstacles which will have to be overcome before modern education isallowed to spread was shown four years ago by the tragedy of FranciscoFerrer, which reminded everybody that in one corner of Western Europethe mediaeval spirit is still vigorous. Ferrer had devoted himself tothe founding of modern schools in the province of Catalonia (since1901). He was a rationalist, and his schools, which had a markedsuccess, were entirely secular. The ecclesiastical authorities execratedhim, and in the summer of 1909 chance gave them the means of destroyinghim. A strike of workmen at [232] Barcelona developed into a violent revolution, Ferrer happened tobe in Barcelona for some days at the beginning of the movement, withwhich he had no connection whatever, and his enemies seized theopportunity to make him responsible for it. False evidence (includingforged documents) was manufactured. Evidence which would have helped hiscase was suppressed. The Catholic papers agitated against him, and theleading ecclesiastics of Barcelona urged the Government not to spare theman who founded the modern schools, the root of all the trouble. Ferrerwas condemned by a military tribunal and shot (Oct. 13). He suffered inthe cause of reason and freedom of thought, though, as there is nolonger an Inquisition, his enemies had to kill him under the falsecharge of anarchy and treason. It is possible that the indignation whichwas felt in Europe and was most loudly expressed in France may preventthe repetition of such extreme measures, but almost anything may happenin a country where the Church is so powerful and so bigoted, and thepoliticians so corrupt. [1] From Greek monos, alone. [2] Besides the works referred to in the text, may be mentioned: WinwoodReade, Martyrdom of Man, 1871; Mill, Three Essays on Religion; W. R. Cassels, Supernatural Religion; Tyndall, Address to British Associationat 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 tofound the Rationalist Press Association, of which Mr. Edward Clodd hasbeen for many years Chairman. This is the chief society in England forpropagating rationalism, and its main object is to diffuse in a cheapform the works of freethinkers of mark (cp. Bibliography). I understandthat 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 printedmatter provisionally. In Russia the Press was declared free in 1905 byan Imperial decree, which, however, has become a dead letter. Thenewspapers are completely under the control of the police. [6] I have taken these points, illustrating the Monistic attitude to theChurches, 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 noreference to recent philosophical speculations (in America, England, andFrance) 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 modernState sympathize with liberty in its long struggle with authority andmay find it difficult to see that anything can be said for thetyrannical, and as they think extraordinarily perverse, policy by whichcommunities and governments persistently sought to stifle new ideas andsuppress free speculation. The conflict sketched in these pages appearsas a war between light and darkness. We exclaim that altar and throneformed a sinister conspiracy against the progress of humanity. We lookback with horror at the things which so many champions of reason enduredat the hands of blind, if not malignant, bearers of authority. But a more or less plausible case can be made out for coercion. Let ustake the most limited view of the lawful powers of society over itsindividual members. Let us lay down, with Mill, that “the sole end forwhich mankind are warranted, individually and collectively, ininterfering 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 claimthe State can make, and it will be admitted that it is not only theright but the duty of the State to prevent harm to its members. That iswhat it is for. Now no abstract or independent principle isdiscoverable, why liberty of speech should be a privileged form ofliberty of action, or why society should lay down its arms of defenceand fold its hands, when it is persuaded that harm is threatened to itthrough the speech of any of its members. The Government has to judge ofthe danger, and its judgment may be wrong; but if it is convinced thatharm is being done, is it not its plain duty to interfere? This argument supplies an apology for the suppression of free opinion byGovernments in ancient and modern times. It can be urged for theInquisition, for Censorship of the Press, for Blasphemy laws, for allcoercive measures of the kind, that, if excessive or ill-judged, theywere intended to protect society against what their authors sincerelybelieved to be grave injury, and were simple acts of duty. (Thisapology, of course, does not extend to acts done for the sake of thealleged good of the victims themselves, namely, to secure their futuresalvation. ) Nowadays we condemn all such measures [235] and disallow the right of the State to interfere with the freeexpression of opinion. So deeply is the doctrine of liberty seated inour minds that we find it difficult to make allowances for the coercivepractices of our misguided ancestors. How is this doctrine justified? Itrests on no abstract basis, on no principle independent of societyitself, 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 theadvance of knowledge. But in the period during which the cause oftoleration was fought for and practically won, the argument moregenerally used was the injustice of punishing a man for opinions whichhe honestly held and could not help holding, since conviction is not amatter of will; in other words, the argument that error is not a crimeand that it is therefore unjust to punish it. This argument, however, does not prove the case for freedom of discussion. The advocate ofcoercion may reply: We admit that it is unjust to punish a man forprivate erroneous beliefs; but it is not unjust to forbid thepropagation of such beliefs if we are convinced that they are harmful;it is not unjust to punish him, not for holding them, but for publishingthem. The truth [236] is that, in examining principles, the word just is misleading. Allthe virtues are based on experience, physiological or social, andjustice is no exception. Just designates a class of rules or principlesof which the social utility has been found by experience to be paramountand which are recognized to be so important as to override allconsiderations of immediate expediency. And social utility is the onlytest. It is futile, therefore, to say to a Government that it actsunjustly in coercing opinion, unless it is shown that freedom of opinionis a principle of such overmastering social utility as to render otherconsiderations negligible. Socrates had a true instinct in taking theline 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 booktreats of liberty in general, and attempts to fix the frontier of theregion in which individual freedom should be considered absolute andunassailable. The second chapter considers liberty of thought anddiscussion, and if many may think that Mill unduly minimized thefunctions of society, underrating its claims as against the individual, few will deny the justice of the chief arguments or question the generalsoundness of his conclusions. [237] Pointing out that no fixed standard was recognized for testing thepropriety of the interference on the part of the community with itsindividual members, he finds the test in self-protection, that is, theprevention of harm to others. He bases the proposition not on abstractrights, but on “utility, in the largest sense, grounded on the permanentinterests of man as a progressive being. ” He then uses the followingargument to show that to silence opinion and discussion is alwayscontrary to those permanent interests. Those who would suppress anopinion (it is assumed that they are honest) deny its truth, but theyare not infallible. They may be wrong, or right, or partly wrong andpartly right. (1) If they are wrong and the opinion they would crush istrue, 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 tothe best of our ability, and are we to be told that because our judgmentis fallible we are not to use it? We forbade the propagation of anopinion which we were sure was false and pernicious; this implies nogreater claim to infallibility than any act done by public authority. Ifwe are to act at all, we must assume our own opinion to be true. To thisMill acutely replies: “There is the greatest difference [238] between assuming an opinion to be true, because with everyopportunity for contesting it it has not been refuted, and assuming itstruth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete libertyof contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition whichjustifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action, and on noother terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assuranceof being right. ” (2) If the received opinion which it is sought to protect against theintrusion of error is true, the suppression of discussion is stillcontrary to general utility. A received opinion may happen to be true(it is very seldom entirely true); but a rational certainty that it isso can only be secured by the fact that it has been fully canvassed buthas not been shaken. Commoner and more important is (3) the case where the conflictingdoctrines share the truth between them. Here Mill has little difficultyin proving the utility of supplementing one-sided popular truths byother truths which popular opinion omits to consider. And he observesthat if either of the opinions which share the truth has a claim notmerely to be tolerated but to be encouraged, it is the one which happensto be held by the minority, since this is the one “which [239] for the time being represents the neglected interests. ” He takesthe doctrines of Rousseau, which might conceivably have been suppressedas pernicious. To the self-complacent eighteenth century those doctrinescame as “a salutary shock, dislocating the compact mass of one-sidedopinion. ” The current opinions were indeed nearer to the truth thanRousseau’s, they contained much less of error; “nevertheless there layin Rousseau’s doctrine, and has floated down the stream of opinion alongwith it, a considerable amount of exactly those truths which the popularopinion wanted; and these are the deposit which we left behind when theflood subsided. ” Such is the drift of Mill’s main argument. The present writer wouldprefer to state the justification of freedom of opinion in a somewhatdifferent form, though in accordance with Mill’s reasoning. The progressof civilization, if it is partly conditioned by circumstances beyondman’s control, depends more, and in an increasing measure, on thingswhich are within his own power. Prominent among these are theadvancement of knowledge and the deliberate adaptation of his habits andinstitutions to new conditions. To advance knowledge and to correcterrors, unrestricted freedom of discussion is required. [240] History shows that knowledge grew when speculation was perfectlyfree in Greece, and that in modern times, since restrictions on inquiryhave been entirely removed, it has advanced with a velocity which wouldseem diabolical to the slaves of the mediaeval Church. Then, it isobvious that in order to readjust social customs, institutions, andmethods to new needs and circumstances, there must be unlimited freedomof canvassing and criticizing them, of expressing the most unpopularopinions, no matter how offensive to prevailing sentiment they may be. If the history of civilization has any lesson to teach it is this: thereis one supreme condition of mental and moral progress which it iscompletely within the power of man himself to secure, and that isperfect liberty of thought and discussion. The establishment of thisliberty may be considered the most valuable achievement of moderncivilization, and as a condition of social progress it should be deemedfundamental. The considerations of permanent utility on which it restsmust outweigh any calculations of present advantage which from time totime might be thought to demand its violation. It is evident that this whole argument depends on the assumption thatthe progress of the race, its intellectual and moral development, [241] is a reality and is valuable. The argument will not appeal to anyone who holds with Cardinal Newman that “our race’s progress andperfectibility is a dream, because revelation contradicts it”; and hemay consistently subscribe to the same writer’s conviction that “itwould be a gain to this country were it vastly more superstitious, morebigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present itshows 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 thecirculation of the doctrine that it is lawful to put tyrants to death, on the ground that the doctrine is immoral. Fortunately the prosecutionswere not persisted in. Mill refers to the matter, and maintains thatsuch a doctrine as tyrannicide (and, let us add, anarchy) does not formany exception to the rule that “there ought to exist the fullest libertyof professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, anydoctrine, 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. Forinstance, if there is a direct instigation [242] to particular acts of violence, there may be a legitimate case forinterference. But the incitement must be deliberate and direct. If Iwrite a book condemning existing societies and defending a theory ofanarchy, and a man who reads it presently commits an outrage, it mayclearly be established that my book made the man an anarchist andinduced him to commit the crime, but it would be illegitimate to punishme or suppress the book unless it contained a direct incitement to thespecific crime which he committed. It is conceivable that difficult cases might arise where a governmentmight be strongly tempted, and might be urged by public clamour, toviolate the principle of liberty. Let us suppose a case, veryimprobable, but which will make the issue clear and definite. Imaginethat a man of highly magnetic personality, endowed with a wonderfulpower of infecting others with his own ideas however irrational, inshort a typical religious leader, is convinced that the world will cometo an end in the course of a few months. He goes about the countrypreaching and distributing pamphlets; his words have an electricaleffect; and the masses of the uneducated and half-educated are persuadedthat they have indeed only a few weeks to prepare for the day ofJudgment. Multitudes leave their [243] occupations, abandon their work, in order to spend the short timethat remains in prayer and listening to the exhortations of the prophet. The country is paralyzed by the gigantic strike; traffic and industriescome to a standstill. The people have a perfect legal right to give uptheir work, and the prophet has a perfect legal right to propagate hisopinion that the end of the world is at hand —an opinion which JesusChrist and his followers in their day held quite as erroneously. Itwould be said that desperate ills have desperate remedies, and therewould be a strong temptation to suppress the fanatic. But to arrest aman who is not breaking the law or exhorting any one to break it, orcausing a breach of the peace, would be an act of glaring tyranny. Manywill 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 thepropagation of a delusion. It would be absurd to deny that liberty ofspeech may sometimes cause particular harm. Every good thing sometimesdoes harm. Government, for instance, which makes fatal mistakes; law, which so often bears hardly and inequitably in individual cases. And canthe Christians urge any other plea for their religion when they areunpleasantly 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 supremecondition of social progress, it passes from the sphere of ordinaryexpediency into the sphere of higher expediency which we call justice. In other words it becomes a right on which every man should be able tocount. The fact that this right is ultimately based on utility does notjustify a government in curtailing it, on the ground of utility, inparticular cases. The recent rather alarming inflictions of penalties for blasphemy inEngland illustrate this point. It was commonly supposed that theBlasphemy laws (see above, p. 139), though unrepealed, were a deadletter. But since December, 1911, half a dozen persons have beenimprisoned for this offence. In these cases Christian doctrines wereattacked by poor and more or less uneducated persons in language whichmay be described as coarse and offensive. Some of the judges seem tohave taken the line that it is not blasphemy to attack the fundamentaldoctrines provided “the decencies of controversy” are preserved, butthat “indecent” attacks constitute blasphemy. This implies a newdefinition of legal blasphemy, and is entirely contrary to the intentionof the laws. Sir [245] J. F. Stephen pointed out that the decisions of judges from thetime of Lord Hale (XVIIth century) to the trial of Foote (1883) laiddown the same doctrine and based it on the same principle: the doctrinebeing that it is a crime either to deny the truth of the fundamentaldoctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up to contempt orridicule; and the principle being that Christianity is a part of the lawof the land. The apology offered for such prosecutions is that their object is toprotect religious sentiment from insult and ridicule. Sir J. F. Stephenobserved: “If the law were really impartial and punished blasphemy only, because it offends the feelings of believers, it ought also to punishsuch preaching as offends the feelings of unbelievers. All the moreearnest and enthusiastic forms of religion are extremely offensive tothose who do not believe them. ” If the law does not in any senserecognize the truth of Christian doctrine, it would have to apply thesame rule to the Salvation Army. In fact the law “can be explained andjustified only on what I regard as its true principle—the principle ofpersecution. ” The opponents of Christianity may justly say: IfChristianity 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 specialprotection. But the law imposes no restraint on the Christian, howeveroffensive 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 oflanguage which causes offence; therefore it is based on the hypothesisthat Christianity is true; and therefore its principle is persecution. Of course, the present administration of the common law in regard toblasphemy does not endanger the liberty of those unbelievers who havethe capacity for contributing to progress. But it violates the supremeprinciple of liberty of opinion and discussion. It hinders uneducatedpeople 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, farmore effectively and far more insidiously. Some of the men who have beenimprisoned during the last two years, only uttered in language ofdeplorable taste views that are expressed more or less politely in bookswhich are in the library of a bishop unless he is a very ignorantperson, and against which the law, if it has any validity, ought to havebeen enforced. Thus the law, as now administered, simply penalizes badtaste and places disabilities [247] upon uneducated freethinkers. If their words offend their audienceso far as to cause a disturbance, they should be prosecuted for a breachof public order, [1] not because their words are blasphemous. A man whorobs or injures a church, or even an episcopal palace, is not prosecutedfor sacrilege, but for larceny or malicious damage or something of thekind. The abolition of penalties for blasphemy was proposed in the House ofCommons (by Bradlaugh) in 1889 and rejected. The reform is urgentlyneeded. It would “prevent the recurrence at irregular intervals ofscandalous prosecutions which have never in any one instance benefitedany one, least of all the cause which they were intended to serve, andwhich sometimes afford a channel for the gratification of private maliceunder the cloak of religion. ” [2] The struggle of reason against authority has ended in what appears nowto be a decisive and permanent victory for liberty. In the mostcivilized and progressive countries, freedom of discussion is recognizedas a [248] fundamental principle. In fact, we may say it is accepted as atest of enlightenment, and the man in the street is forward inacknowledging that countries like Russia and Spain, where opinion ismore or less fettered, must on that account be considered less civilizedthan their neighbours. All intellectual people who count take it forgranted that there is no subject in heaven or earth which ought not tobe investigated without any deference or reference to theologicalassumptions. No man of science has any fear of publishing hisresearches, whatever consequences they may involve for current beliefs. Criticism of religious doctrines and of political and socialinstitutions is free. Hopeful people may feel confident that the victoryis permanent; that intellectual freedom is now assured to mankind as apossession for ever; that the future will see the collapse of thoseforces which still work against it and its gradual diffusion in the morebackward parts of the earth. Yet history may suggest that this prospectis 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, fullyrealized in the Greek and Roman world, and then an unforeseen force, inthe shape of Christianity, came in and laid chains upon the human mindand [249] suppressed freedom and imposed upon man a weary struggle torecover the freedom which he had lost. Is it not conceivable thatsomething of the same kind may occur again? that some new force, emerging from the unknown, may surprise the world and cause a similarset-back? The possibility cannot be denied, but there are some considerationswhich render it improbable (apart from a catastrophe sweeping awayEuropean culture). There are certain radical differences between theintellectual situation now and in antiquity. The facts known to theGreeks about the nature of the physical universe were few. Much that wastaught was not proved. Compare what they knew and what we know aboutastronomy and geography—to take the two branches in which (besidesmathematics) they made most progress. When there were so fewdemonstrated facts to work upon, there was the widest room forspeculation. Now to suppress a number of rival theories in favour of oneis a very different thing from suppressing whole systems of establishedfacts. If one school of astronomers holds that the earth goes round thesun, another that the sun goes round the earth, but neither is able todemonstrate its proposition, it is easy for an authority, which hascoercive power, [250] to suppress one of them successfully. But once it is agreed by allastronomers that the earth goes round the sun, it is a hopeless task forany authority to compel men to accept a false view. In short, becauseshe is in possession of a vast mass of ascertained facts about thenature of the universe, reason holds a much stronger position now thanat the time when Christian theology led her captive. All these facts areher fortifications. Again, it is difficult to see what can arrest thecontinuous progress of knowledge in the future. In ancient times thisprogress depended on a few; nowadays, many nations take part in thework. A general conviction of the importance of science prevails to-day, which did not prevail in Greece. And the circumstance that the advanceof material civilization depends on science is perhaps a practicalguarantee that scientific research will not come to an abrupt halt. Infact science is now a social institution, as much as religion. But if science seems pretty safe, it is always possible that incountries 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 inferiorto none, and Russia has its notorious censorship. It [251] is by no means inconceivable that in lands where opinion is nowfree coercion might be introduced. If a revolutionary social movementprevailed, led by men inspired by faith in formulas (like the men of theFrench Revolution) and resolved to impose their creed, experience showsthat coercion would almost inevitably be resorted to. Nevertheless, while it would be silly to suppose that attempts may not be made in thefuture to put back the clock, liberty is in a far more favourableposition now than under the Roman Empire. For at that time the socialimportance of freedom of opinion was not appreciated, whereas now, inconsequence of the long conflict which was necessary in order to re-establish it, men consciously realize its value. Perhaps this convictionwill be strong enough to resist all conspiracies against liberty. Meanwhile, nothing should be left undone to impress upon the young thatfreedom 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. Forour methods of early education are founded on authority. It is true thatchildren are sometimes exhorted to think for themselves. But the parentor instructor who gives this excellent advice is confident that theresults of the child’s thinking for [252] himself will agree with the opinions which his elders considerdesirable. It is assumed that he will reason from principles which havealready been instilled into him by authority. But if his thinking forhimself takes the form of questioning these principles, whether moral orreligious, his parents and teachers, unless they are very exceptionalpersons, will be extremely displeased, and will certainly discouragehim. It is, of course, only singularly promising children whose freedomof thought will go so far. In this sense it might be said that “distrustthy father and mother” is the first commandment with promise. It shouldbe a part of education to explain to children, as soon as they are oldenough to understand, when it is reasonable, and when it is not, toaccept what they are told, on authority. [1] Blasphemy is an offence in Germany; but it must be proved thatoffence has actually been given, and the penalty does not exceedimprisonment for three days. [2] The quotations are from Sir J. F. Stephen’s article, “Blasphemy andBlasphemous Libel, ” in the Fortnightly Review, March, 1884, pp. 289–318. [253] BIBLIOGRAPHY GeneralLecky, 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 ThoughtGomperz, Th. , Greek Thinkers (English translation), 4 vols. (1901-12). English DeistsStephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, 1881. French Freethinkers of Eighteenth CenturyMorley, 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 InquisitionLea, 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. TolerationRuffini, F. , Religious Liberty (English translation), 1912. The essays of L. Luzzatti. Liberty of Conscience and Science (Italian), are suggestive. [254] INDEX Aesthetic movement, 213Agnosticism, meaning of, 213 sq. Albigeois, persecution of, 58Anabaptists, 78, 95, 125Anatomy, 65Anaxagoras, 27Annet, Peter, 172Anthropology, 189Anthropomorphism. 23Aristotle, 35, 68, 69Arnold, Matthew, 218 sqq. Asoka, 92Astronomy, 87—90Atheism, 103, 113, 123, 132, 158Athens, 27 sqq. Augustine, St. , 55Austria-Hungary, 122, 224Authority, meaning of, 14 sqq. Averroism, 88 Bacon, Roger, 85Bahrdt, 175Rain, A. , 188Bayle, 107 sq. , 135 sqq. Benn, A. W, 152Bible, O. T. , 192 sqq. ; N. T. , 195 sqqBible-worship, 82, 201Blasphemy laws, 23, 88, 139 sq. , 244 sqq. Bolingbroke, 153Bradlaugh, 228, 247Bruno, Giordano, 84Büchner, 188Buckle, 188Butler, Bishop, Analogy, 151 sq. Calvin, 78Cassels, WCastellion, 94Causation, Law of, 183 sq. Charron. 75Cicero, 39Clifford, W. K. , 213Clodd, Edward, 224Colenso, Bishop, 193Collins, Anthony, 141Comte, Auguste. 188 sq. , 229Concordat of 1801, French, 115 Condorcet, 227Congregationalists (Independents), 95, 99, 100Constantine I, Emperor, 47, 51Copernicus, 87 Darwin; Darwinism, 180, 182, 225Defoe, Daniel, 104 sq. Deism, 137 sqq. Democritus, 25Descartes, 129, 131Design, argument from, 181, 178D’Holbach, 158Diderot, 158 sq. Diocletian, Emperor, 45Disestablishment, 104, 108Dodwell, Henry, 147Domitian, Emperor, 42Double Truth, 68 sq. , 134 Edelmann, 175Epicureanism, 36 sqq. , 84Essays and Review, 204 sqq. Euripides, 29Exclusive salvation, 52 sq. , 63, 78 Ferrer, Francisco, 231 sq. Fortnightly Review, 221Fourier, 227France, 74, 100 sqq. , 152 sqq. Frederick the Great, 120 sq. Frederick II, Emperor, 58, 70Free thought, meaning of, 18 Galileo de’ Galilei, 87 sqq. Gassendi, 130Geology, 178 sq. Germany, 78 sqq. , 117 sqq. , 174 sqq. Gibbon, 82, 162 sqq. Goethe, 175Greg, W. R. , 203Gregory IX, Pope, 57Gregory XVI, Encyclical of, 123 sq. Haeckel, 187, 228Hale, Lord Chief Justice, 139Harrison, Frederic, 188, 223Hegel, 184 sqq. Hell, controversy on, 217 [255]Helmholtz, 182Heraclitus, 25Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 149Hippocrates, 64Hobbes, 130 sq. Holland, 95, 107, 130, 131Holyoake, 224Homer, 24Hume, 160 sqq. Huxley, 213 Independents, 95, 98 sq. Infallibility, Papal, 210 sq. Innocent III, Pope, 56Innocent IV, Pope, 57Innocent VIII, Pope, 67Inquisition, 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, 194Joseph II, Emperor, 122Jowett, Benjamin, 204 sq. Julian, Emperor, 54Justice, arguments from, 235 Kant, 175 sq. Kett, Francis, 85Kyd, 85 Laplace, 178Lecky. W. H. , 208, 225Legate, Bartholomew, 86Lessing, 71, 120Linnaeus, 177Locke, 101 sqq. , 120, 132 sq. Loisy, Abbé, 200 sq. Lucian, 40Lucretius, 37 sq. Luther, 77 sq. , 81Lyell, 178, 208 Manning, Cardinal, 210Marlowe, Christopher, 85Marsilius, 119Maryland, 97 sq. Mazarin, Cardinal, 85, 107Middleton, Conyers, 150, 164Mill, James, 151, 227Mill, J. S. , 182, 213, 227, 233, 235 sqq. Milton, 99 sq. Mirabeau, 112Miracles, 141 sqq. , 151, 180, 164 sq. , 206Modernism, 199 sqq. Mohammedan free thought, 68Monism, 188, 228 sqq. Montaigne, 74Morley, Lord (Mr. John), 159, 209, 221 sq. , 225 Nantes, Edict of, 107Napoleon I, 115Newman, Cardinal, 199, 241Newman, F. W. , 203 Ostwald, Professor, 228 sqq. Paine, Thomas, 112, 168 sqq. Paley, 167 sqq. Pascal, 123, 152 sq. Pater, 213Pentateuch, 192 sq. Pericles, 27Persecution, theory of, 47 sqq. , 232 sqq. Pitt, William, 151Pius IX, Syllabus, 210 sq. Pius X, Pope, 199 sq. Plato, 36 sq. Plutarch, 150Prayer, controversy on, 216Press, censorship, 91 sq. , 224 sq. Priestley, 227Priscillian, 55Progress, idea of, 226 sqq. Protagoras, 25 Raleigh, Sir W. , 85Rationalism, meaning of, 18Reade, Winwood, 213Reinach, S. , 197Renan, 198Revolution, French, 111 sqq. Rhode Island, 98Richelieu, Cardinal, 85, 107Rousseau. 111, 156 sqq. , 239Ruffini, Professor, 125Russia, 224 Sacred books, 24, 53 sq. , 191Science, physical, 64 sq. , 176 sqq. Secularism, 224Seeley, J. R. , 208Servetus, 79Shaftesbury. 148 sqq. , 151Shelley, 173, 208Socinianism, 83, 93 sqq. Socrates, 30 sqq. , 39, 235, 236Sophists, Greek, 26Spain, 59 sqq. , 231 sq. Spencer, Herbert. 187Spinoza, 131 sq. , 138, 191Stephen. Leslie, 167, 215 sqq. Stephen, J. F. . 203, 245 sq. , 247Stoicism, 36, 38 sq. [256]Strauss, David, 195, 198Swinburne. 208, 211 sq. Tamburini. 122Tatian, 44Themistius, 55Theodosius I, Emperor, 54Theophilanthropy, 114 sq. Thomas Aquinas, 69Thomasius, Chr. , 119Three Rings, story of, 70Tiherius, Emperor, 40Tindal, Matthew, 144 sqq. Toland, 133 sq. Toleration, 46 sqq. , 92 sqq. Trajan, Emperor, 42Turgot, 227Tyndall, 213 Unitarians, 93, 105United States, 96 sqq. , 128Universities, tests at, 108Utilitarianism, 227 Vanini, Lucilio, 85Vatican Council (1869—70), 210Voltaire, 108 sqq. , 114, 121, 153 sqq. Wesley, 130Westbury, Lord, 207Wilberforce, 201Williams, Roger, 96 sq. Witchcraft, 66 sq. , 80, 129 sq. Woolston, 141 sqq. Xenophanes, 23 sq.