ENGLISH SECULARISM

A CONFESSION OF BELIEF

By George Jacob Holyoake

1896

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

THE OPEN COURT, in which the series of articles constituting this work originally appeared, has given account of many forms of faith, supplementary or confirmatory of its own, and sometimes of forms of opinions dissimilar where there appeared to be instruction in them. It will be an advantage to the reader should its editor state objections, or make comments, as he may deem necessary and useful. English Secularism is as little known in America as American and Canadian Secularisation is understood in Great Britain. The new form of free thought known as English Secularism does not include either Theism or Atheism. Whether Monism, which I can conceive as a nobler and scientific form of Theism, might be a logical addition to the theory of Secularism, as set forth in the following pages, the editor of The Open Court may be able to show. If this be so, every open-minded reader will better see the truth by comparison. Contrast is the incandescent light of argument.

George Jacob Holyoake.
Eastern Lodge,
Brighton, England, February, 1896.

CONTENTS

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

CHAPTER I.   OPEN THOUGHT THE FIRST STEP TO INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER II.   THE QUESTION STATED

CHAPTER III.   THE FIRST STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT: ITS NATURE AND LIMITATION

CHAPTER IV.   THE SECOND STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT: ENTERPRISE

CHAPTER V.   CONQUESTS OF INVESTIGATION

CHAPTER VI.   STATIONARINESS OF CRITICISM

CHAPTER VII.   THIRD STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT—SECULARISM

CHAPTER VIII.   THREE PRINCIPLES VINDICATED

CHAPTER IX.   HOW SECULARISM AROSE

CHAPTER X.   HOW SECULARISM WAS DIFFUSED

CHAPTER XI.   SECULAR INSTRUCTION DISTINCT FROM SECULARISM

CHAPTER XII.   THE DISTINCTIVENESS MADE FURTHER EVIDENT

CHAPTER XIII.   SELF-DEFENSIVE FOR THE PEOPLE

CHAPTER XIV.   REJECTED TENETS REPLACED BY BETTER

CHAPTER XV.   MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY

CHAPTER XVI.   ETHICAL CERTITUDE

CHAPTER XVII.   THE ETHICAL METHOD OF CONTROVERSY

CHAPTER XVIII.    ITS DISCRIMINATION

CHAPTER XIX.   APART FROM CHRISTIANISM

CHAPTER XX.   SECULARISM CREATES A NEW RESPONSIBILITY

CHAPTER XXI.   THROUGH OPPOSITION TO RECOGNITION

CHAPTER XXII.   SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES

SECULARIST CEREMONIES.

ON MARRIAGE.

NAMING CHILDREN.

OVER THE DEAD.

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

AMONG the representative freethinkers of the world Mr. George J. Holyoake takes a most prominent position. He is a leader of leaders, he is the brain of the Secularist party in England, he is a hero and a martyr of their cause.

Judged as a man, Mr. Holyoake is of sterling character; he was not afraid of prison, nor of unpopularity and ostracism, nor of persecution of any kind. If he ever feared anything, it was being not true to himself and committing himself to something that was not right. He was an agitator all his life, and as an agitator he was—whether or not we agree with his views—an ideal man. He is the originator of the Secularist movement that was started in England; he invented the name Secularism, and he was the backbone of the Secularist propaganda ever since it began. Mr. Holyoake left his mark in the history of thought, and the influence which he exercised will for good or evil remain an indelible heirloom of the future.

Secularism is not the cause which The Open Court Publishing Co. upholds, but it is a movement which on account of its importance ought not to be overlooked. Whatever our religious views may be, we must reckon with the conditions that exist, and Secularism is powerful enough to deserve general attention.

What is Secularism?

Secularism espouses the cause of the world versus theology; of the secular and temporal versus the sacred and ecclesiastical. Secularism claims that religion ought never to be anything but a private affair; it denies the right of any kind of church to be associated with the public life of a nation, and proposes to supersede the official influence which religious institutions still exercise in both hemispheres.

Rather than abolish religion or paralyse its influence, The Open Court Publishing Co. would advocate on the one hand to let the religious spirit pervade the whole body politic, together with all public institutions, and also the private life of every single individual; and on the other hand to carry all secular interests into the church, which would make the church subservient to the real needs of mankind.

Thus we publish Mr. Holyoake's Confession of Faith, which is y an exposition of Secularism, not because we are Secularists, which we are not, but because we believe that Mr. Holyoake is entitled to a hearing. Mr. Holyoake is a man of unusually great common sense, of keen reasoning faculty, and of indubitable sincerity. What he says he means, and what he believes he lives up to, what he recognises to be right he will do, even though the whole world would stand up against him. In a word, he is a man who according to our conception of religion proves by his love of truth that, however he himself may disclaim it, he is actually a deeply religious man. His religious earnestness is rare, and our churches would be a good deal better off if all the pulpits were filled with men of his stamp.

We publish Mr. Holyoake's Confession of Faith not for Secularists only, but also and especially for the benefit of religious people, of his adversaries, of his antagonists; for they ought to know him and understand him; they ought to appreciate his motives for dissenting from church views; and ought to learn why so many earnest and honest people are leaving the church and will have nothing to do with church institutions.

Why is it that Christianity is losing its bold on mankind? Is it because the Christian doctrines have become antiquated, and does the church no longer adapt herself to the requirements of the present age? Is it that the representative Christian thinkers are lacking in intellectuality and moral strength? Or is it that the world at large has outgrown religion and refuses to be guided by the spiritual counsel of popes and pastors?

Whatever the reason may be, the fact itself cannot be doubted, and the question is only, What will become of religion in the future? Will the future of mankind be irreligious (as for instance Mr. Lecky and M. Guyau prophesy); or will religion regain its former importance and become again the leading power in life, dominating both public and private affairs?

The first condition of a reconciliation between religion and the masses of mankind would be for religious men patiently to listen to the complaints that are made by the adversaries of Christianity, and to understand the position which honest and sensible freethinkers, such as Mr. Holyoake, take. Religious leaders are too little acquainted with the world at large; they avoid their antagonists like outcasts, and rarely, if ever, try to comprehend their arguments. In the same way, freethinkers as a rule despise clergymen as hypocrites who for the sake of a living sell their souls and preach doctrines which they cannot honestly believe. In order to arrive at a mutual understanding, it would be necessary first of all that both parties should discontinue ostracising one another and become mutually acquainted. They should lay aside for a while the weapons with which they are wont to combat one another in the public press and in tract literature; they should cease scolding and ridiculing one another and simply present their own case in terse terms.

This Mr. Holyoake has done. His Confession of Faith is as concise as any book of the kind can be; and he, being the originator of Secularism and its standard-bearer, is the man who speaks with authority.

For the sake of religion, therefore, and for promoting the mutual understanding of men of a different turn of mind, we present his book to the public and recommend its careful perusal especially to the clergy, who will learn from this book some of the most important reasons why Christianity has become unacceptable to a large class of truth-loving men, who alone for the sake of truth find it best to stay out of the church.

The preface of a book is as a rule not deemed the right place to criticise an author, but such is the frankness and impartiality of Mr. Holyoake that he has kindly permitted the manager of The Open Court Publishing Co. to criticise his book freely and to state the disagreements that might obtain between publishers and author in the very preface of the book. There is no need of making an extensive use of this permission, as a few remarks will be sufficient to render clear the difference between Secularism and the views of The Open Court Publishing Co., which we briefly characterise as "the Religion of Science."

Secularism divides life into what is secular and what is religious, and would consign all matters of religion to the sphere of private interests. The Religion of Science would not divide life into a secular and a religious part, but would have both the secular and the religious united. It would carry religion into all secular affairs so as to sanctify and transfigure them; and for this purpose it would make religion practical, so as to be suited to the various needs of life; it would make religion scientifically sound, so as to be in agreement with the best and most scientific thought of the age; it would reform church doctrines and raise them from their dogmatic arbitrariness upon the higher plain of objective truth.

In emphasising our differences we should, however, not fail to recognise the one main point of agreement, which is our belief in science. Mr. Holyoake would settle all questions of doubt by the usual method of scientific investigation. But there is a difference even here, which is a different conception of science. While science to Mr. Holyoake is secular, we insist on the holiness and religious significance of science. If there is any revelation of God, it is truth; and what is science but truth ascertained? Therefore we would advise all preachers and all those to whose charge souls of men are committed, to take off their shoes when science speaks to them, for science is the voice of God.

The statement is sometimes made by those who belittle science in the vain hope of exalting religion, that the science of yesterday has been upset by the science of to-day, and that the science of today may again be upset by the science of to-morrow. Nothing can be more untrue.

Of course, science must not be identified with the opinion of scientists. Science is the systematic statement of facts, and not the theories which are tentatively proposed to fill out the gaps of our knowledge. What has once been proved to be a fact has never been overthrown, and the actual stock of science has grown slowly but surely. The discovery of new facts or the proposition of a new and reliable hypothesis has often shown the old facts of science in a new light, but it has never upset or disproved them. There are fashions in the opinions of scientists, but science itself is above fashion, above change, above human opinion. Science partakes of that stern immutability, it is endowed with that eternality and that omnipresent universality which have since olden times been regarded as the main attribute of Godhood.

There appears in all religions, at a certain stage of the religious development, a party of dogmatists. They are people who, in their zeal, insist on the exclusiveness of their own religion, as if truth were a commodity which, if possessed by one, cannot be possessed by anybody else. They know little of the spirit that quickens, but believe blindly in the letter of the dogma. It is not faith in their opinion that saves, but the blindness of faith. They interpret Christ's words and declare that he who has another interpretation must be condemned.

The dogmatic phase in the development of religion is as natural as boyhood in a human life and as immaturity in the growth of fruit; it is natural and necessary, but it is a phase only which will pass as inevitably by as boyhood changes into manhood, and as the prescientific stage in the evolution of civilisation gives way to a better and deeper knowledge of nature.

The dogmatist is in the habit of identifying his dogmatism with religion; and that is the reason why his definitions of religion and morality will unfailingly come in conflict with the common sense of the people. The dogmatist makes religion exclusive. In the attempt of exalting religion he relegates it to supernatural spheres, thus excluding it from the world and creating a contrast between the sacred and the profane, between the divine and the secular, between religion and life. Thus it happens that religion becomes something beyond, something extraneous, something foreign to man's sphere of being. And yet religion has developed for the sake of sanctifying the daily walks of man, of making the secular sacred, of filling life with meaning and consecrating even the most trivial duties of existence.

Secularism is the reaction against dogmatism, but secularism still accepts the views of the dogmatist on religion; for it is upon the dogmatist's valuations and definitions that the secularist rejects religion as worthless.

* * *

The religious movement, of which The Open Court Publishing Co. is an exponent, represents one further step in the evolution of religious aspirations. As alchemy develops into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy, as blind faith changes into seeing face to face, as belief changes into knowledge, so the religion of miracles, the religion of a salvation by magic, the religion of the dogmatist, ripens into the religion of pure and ascertainable truth. The old dogmas, which in their literal acceptance appear as nonsensical errors, are now recognised as allegories which symbolise deeper truths, and the old ideals are preserved not with less, but with more, significance than before.

God is not smaller but greater since we know more about Him, as to what He is and what He is not, just as the universe is not smaller but larger since Copernicus and Kepler opened our eyes and showed us what the relation of our earth in the solar system is and what it is not.

Secularism is one of the signs of the times. It represents the unbelief in a religious alchemy; but its antagonism to the religion of dogmatism does not bode destruction but advance. It represents the transition to a purer conception of religion. It has not the power to abolish the church, but only indicates the need of its reformation.

It is this reformation of religion and of religious institutions which is the sole aim of all the publications of The Open Court Publishing Co., and we see in Secularism one of those agencies that are at work preparing the way for a higher and nobler comprehension of the truth.

Mr. Holyoake's aspirations, in our opinion, go beyond the aims which he himself points out, and thus his Confession of Faith, although nominally purely secular, will finally, even by churchmen, be recognised in its religious importance. It will help to purify the confession of faith of the dogmatist.

In offering Mr. Holyoake's best and maturest thoughts to the public, we hope that both the secularists and the believers in religion will by and by learn to understand that Secularism as much as dogmatism is a phase—both are natural and necessary phases—in the religious evolution of mankind. There is no use in scolding either the dogmatist or the secularist, or in denouncing the one on account of his credulity and superstition, and the other on account of his dissent; but there is a use in—nay, there is need of—understanding the aspirations of both.

There is a need of mutual exchange of thought on the basis of mutual esteem and good-will. Above all, there is a need of opening the church doors to the secularist.

The church, if it has any right of existence at all, is for the world, and not for believers alone. Church members can learn from the secularist many things which many believers seem to have forgotten, and, on the other hand, they can teach the unbeliever what he has overlooked in his sincere attempts at finding the truth, May Mr. Holyoake's confession of faith be received in the spirit in which the author wrote it, which is a candid love of truth, and also in the spirit in which the publishers undertook its publication, with the irenic endeavor of letting every honest aspiration be rightly understood and rightly valued.

Paul Carus, Manager of The Open Court Publishing Co.

CHAPTER I. OPEN THOUGHT THE FIRST STEP TO INTELLIGENCE

ONE purpose of these chapters is to explain how unfounded are the objections of many excellent Christians to Secular instruction in State, public, or board schools. The Secular is distinct from theology, which it neither ignores, assails, nor denies. Things Secular are as separate from the Church as land from the ocean. And what nobody seems to discern is that things Secular are in themselves quite distinct from Secularism. The Secular is a mode of instruction; Secularism is a code of conduct. Secularism does conflict with theology; Secularist teaching would, but Secular instruction does not.

Persuaded as I am that lack of consideration for the convictions of the reader creates an impediment in the way of his agreement with the writer, and even disinclines him to examine what is put before him; yet some of these pages may be open to this objection. If so, it is owing to want of thought or want of art in statement, and is no part of the intention of the author.

He would have diffidence in expressing, as he does in these pages, his dissent from the opinions of many Christian advocates—for whose character and convictions he has great respect, and for some even affection—did he not perceive that few have any diffidence or reservation (save in one or two exalted instances)* in maintaining their views and dissenting from his.

Open thought, which in this chapter is brought under the reader's notice is sometimes called "self-thought," or "free thought," or "original thought"—the opposite of conventional second-hand thought—which is all that the custom-ridden mass of mankind is addicted to.

Open thought has three stages:

The first stage is that in which the right to think independently is insisted on; and the free action of opinion—so formed—is maintained. Conscious power thus acquired satisfies the pride of some; others limit its exercise from prudence. Interests, which would be jeopardised by applying independent thought to received opinion, keep more persons silent, and thus many never pass from this stage.

The second stage is that in which the right of self-thought is applied to the criticism of theology, with a view to clear the way for life according to reason. This is not the work of a day or year, but is so prolonged that clearing the way becomes as it were a profession, and is at length pursued as an end instead of a means. Disputation becomes a passion and the higher state of life, of which criticism is the necessary precursor, is lost sight of, and many remain at this stage when it is reached and go no further.

The third stage is that where ethical motives of conduct apart from Christianity are vindicated for the guidance of those who are indifferent about theology, or who reject it altogether. Supplying to such persons Secular reasons for duty is Secularism, the range of which is illimitable. It begins where free thought usually ends, and constitutes a new form of constructive thought, the principles and policy of which are quite different from those acted upon in the preceding stages. Controversy concerns itself with what is; Secularism with what ought to be.

It is pertinent here to say that Christianity does not permit eclecticism—that is, it does not tolerate others selecting portions of Christian Scriptures possessing the mark of intrinsic truth, to which many could cheerfully conform in their lives. This rule compels all who cannot accept the entire Scriptures to deal with its teachings as they find them expressed, and for which Christianity makes itself responsible.

All the while it is quite evident that Christians do permit eclecticism among themselves. The great Congress of the Free Churches, recently held in Nottingham, representing the personal and vital form of Christianity, had a humanness and tolerance un manifested by Christianity before, showing that humanity is stronger than historical integrity. If any one, therefore, should draw up, as might be done, a theory of Christianity solely from such doctrines as are represented in the elliptical preaching, practice, and social life of Christians of to-day, a very different estimate of the Christian system would have to be given from that with which the author deals in the subsequent chapters. In them Christianity is represented as Free-thought has found it, and as it exists in the Scriptures, in the law, in the pulpit, and in the school, which constitute its total force in the respects in which it represses and discourages independent thought. Science, truth, and criticism have engrafted themselves on historic Christianity. It has now new articles of belief. When it avows them it will win larger concurrence and respect than it can now command.

CHAPTER II. THE QUESTION STATED

Where a monarchy is master, inquiry is apt to be a disturbing element; and though exercised in the interest of the commonwealth it is none the less resented. Where the priest is master inquiry is sharply prohibited. The priest represents a spiritual monarchy in which the tenets of belief are fixed, assumed to be infallible, and to be prescribed by deity. Thus the priest regards inquiry as proceeding from an impertinent distrust, to which he is not reconciled on being assured that it is undertaken in the interest of truth. Thus the king denounces inquiry as sedition, and the priest as sin. In the end the inquirer finds himself an alien in State and Church, and laws are made against his life, his liberty, property, and veracity.**

Thus from the time when monarch and priest first set up their pretensions in the world, the inquiring mind has had small encouragement. When Protestantism came it merely conceded inquiry under direction, and only so far as it tended to confirm its own anti-papal tenets. But when inquiry claimed to be independent, unfettered, uncontrolled,—in fact to be free inquiry,—then Papist, Lutheran, and Dissenter, alike regarded it as dangerous, and stigmatised it by every term calculated to deter or dissuade people from it.

But though this combined defamation of inquiry set many against it, it did not intimidate men entirely. There arose independent thinkers who held that unfettered investigation was the discoverer of truth and dangerous to error only, and that the freer it was the more effective it must be.

Still timorous-minded persons remained suspicious of free thought. At its best they found it involved conflict with false opinion, and conflict, to those without aspiration or conscience, is disquieting; and where impartial investigation interfered with personal interests it was opposed. No one could enter on the search for truth without finding his path obstructed by theological errors and interdictions. Having taken the side of truth, all who were loyal to it, were bound like Bunyan's

Pilgrim to withstand the Apollyons who opposed it, and a combat began which lasted for centuries, and is not yet ended. But though theology was always in power, men of courage at length established the right of free inquiry, and established also a free press for the publication of the results arrived at. These rights were so indispensable for progress and were so long resisted, that generations fought for them as ends in themselves. Thus there grew up, as in military affairs, a class whose profession was destruction, and free thinkers came to be regarded as negationists. When I came into the field the combat was raging. Richard Carlile had not long been liberated from successive imprisonments of more than nine years duration in all. Charles Southwell was in Bristol gaol. Before his sentence had half expired I was in Gloucester gaol. George Adams was there; Mrs. Harriet Adams was committed for trial from Cheltenham. Matilda Roalfe, Thomas Finlay, Thomas Paterson, and others were incarcerated in Scotland. Robert Buchanan and Lloyd Jones, two social missionaries—colleagues of my own—only escaped imprisonment by swearing they believed what they did not believe,—an act I refused to imitate, and no mean inconvenience has resulted to me from it. I took part in the vindication of the free publicity of opinion until it was practically conceded. At the time when I was arrested in 1842, the Cheltenham magistrates who were angered at defiant remarks I made, had the power (and used it) of committing me to the Quarter Sessions as a "felon," where the same justices could resent, by penalties, what I had said to them. On representations I made to Parliament—through my friend John Arthur Roebuck and others—Sir James Graham caused a Bill to be passed which removed trials for opinion to the Assizes. I was the first person tried under this act. Thus for the first time heresy was ensured a dispassionate trial and was no longer subject to the jurisdiction of local prejudice and personal magisterial resentment.

When overt acts of outrage were no longer possible against the adherents of free thought, Christians, some from fairness, and others from necessity, began to reason with them and asked: "Now you have established your claim to be heard. What have you to say?" The reply I proposed was: "Secularism—a form of opinion relating to the duty of this life which substituted the piety of useful men for the usefulness of piety."

CHAPTER III. THE FIRST STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT: ITS NATURE AND LIMITATION

FREE THOUGHT is founded upon reason. It is the exercise of reason, without which free thought is free foolishness. Free thought being the precursor of Secularism, it is necessary first to describe its principles and their limitation. Free thought means independent self-thinking. Some say all thought is free since a man can think what he pleases and no one can prevent him, which is not true. Unfortunately thinking can be prevented by subtle spiritual intimidation, in earlier and even in later life.

When a police agent found young Mazzini in the fields of Genoa, apparently meditating, his father's attention was called to the youth. His father was told that the Austrian Government did not permit thinking. The Inquisition intimidated nations from thinking. The priests by preventing instruction and prohibiting books, limited thinking. Archbishop Whately shows that no one can reason without words, and since speech can be, and is, disallowed and made penal, the highway of thought can be closed. No one can think to any purpose without inquiry concerning his subject, and inquiry can be made impossible. It is of little use that any one thinks who cannot verify his ideas by comparison with those of his compeers. To prevent this is to discourage thought. In fact thousands are prevented thinking by denying them the means and the facilities of thinking.

Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society—whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.

Fearlessness is the essential condition of effective thought. If Satan sits at the top of the Bible with perdition open underneath it, into which its readers will be pushed who may doubt what they find in its pages, the right of private judgment is a snare. A man is a fool who inquires at this risk. He had better accept at once the superstition of the first priest he meets. It is not conceivable how a Christian can be a free thinker.

He who is afraid to know both sides of a question cannot think upon it. Christians do not, as a rule, want to know what can be said against their views, and they keep out of libraries all books which would inform others. Thus such Christians cannot think freely, and are against others doing it. Doubt comes of thinking; the Christian commonly regards doubt as sin. How can he be a free thinker who thinks thinking is a sin?

Free thought implies three things as conditions of truth:

1. Free inquiry, which is the pathway to truth.

2. Free publicity to the ideas acquired, in order to learn whether they are useful—which is the encouragement of truth.

3. The free discussion of convictions without which it is not possible to know whether they are true or false, which is the verification of truth.

A man is not a man unless he is a thinker; he is a fool having no ideas of his own. If he happens to live among men who do think, he browses like an animal on their ideas. He is a sort of kept man being supported by the thoughts of others. He is what in England is called a pauper, who subsists upon "outdoor relief," allowed him by men of intellect.

Without the right of publicity, individual thought, however praiseworthy and however perfect, would be barren to the community. Algernon Sidney said: "The best legacy I can leave my children is free speech and the example of using it."

The clergy of every denomination are unfriendly to its use. The soldiers of the cross do not fight adversaries in the open. Mr. Gladstone alone among eminent men of piety has insisted upon the duty of the Church to prove its claims in discussion. In his Introduction to his address at the Liverpool College (1872 or 1873) he said: "I wish to place on record my conviction that belief cannot now be defended by reticence any more than by railing, or by any privileges or assumption." Since the day of Milton there has been no greater authority on the religious wisdom of debate.

Thought, even theological, is often useless, ill-informed, foolish, mischievous, or even wicked; and he alone who submits it to free criticism gives guarantees that he means well, and is self-convinced. By criticism alone comes exposure, correction, or confirmation. The right of criticism is the sole protection of the community against error of custom, ignorance, prejudice, or incompetence. It is not until a proposition has been generally accepted after open and fair examination, that it can be considered as established and can safely be made a ground of action or belief.*

These are the implementary rights of thought. They are what grammar is to the writer, which teaches him how to express himself, but not what to say. These rights are as the rules of navigation to the mariner. They teach him how to steer a ship but do not instruct him where to steer to.

The full exercise of these rights of mental freedom is what training in the principles of jurisprudence is to the pleader, but it does not provide him with a brief. It is conceivable that a man may come to be a master of independent thinking and never put his powers to use; just as a man may know every rule of grammar and yet never write a book. In the same way a man may pass an examination in the art of navigation and never take command of a vessel; or he may qualify for a Barrister, be called to the Bar and never plead in any court. We know from experience that many persons join in the combat for the right of intellectual freedom for its own sake, without intending or caring to use the right when won. Some are generous enough to claim and contend for these rights from the belief that they may be useful to others. This is the first stage of free thought, and, as has been said, many never pass beyond it.

Independent thinking is concerned primarily with removing obstacles to its own action, and in contests for liberty of speech by tongue and pen. The free mind fights mainly for its own freedom. It may begin in curiosity and may end in intellectual pride—unless conscience takes care of it. Its nature is iconoclastic and it may exist without ideas of reconstruction.

Though a man goes no further, he is a better man than he who never went as far. He has acquired a new power, and is sure of his own mind. Just as one who has learned to fence, or to shoot, has a confidence in encountering an adversary, which is seldom felt by one who never had a sword in hand, or practised at a target. The sea is an element of recreation to one who has learned to swim; it is an element of death to one ignorant of the art. Besides, the thinker has attained a courage and confidence unknown to the man of orthodox mind. Since God (we are assured) is the God of truth, the honest searcher after truth has God on his side, and has no dread of the King of Perdition—the terror of all Christian people—since the business of Satan is with those who are content with false ideas; not with those who seek the true. If it be a duty to seek the truth and to live the truth, honest discussion, which discerns it, identifies it, clears it, and establishes it, is a form of worship of real honor to God and of true service to man. If the clergyman's speech on behalf of God is rendered exact by criticism, the criticism is a tribute, and no mean tribute to heaven. Thus the free exercise of the rights of thought involve no risk hereafter.

Moreover, so far as a man thinks he gains. Thought implies enterprise and exertion of mind, and the result is wealth of understanding, to be acquired in no other way. This intellectual property like other property, has its rights and duties. The thinker's right is to be left in undisturbed possession of what he has earned; and his duty is to share his discoveries of truth with mankind, to whom he owes his opportunities of acquiring it.

Free expression involves consideration for others, on principle. Democracy without personal deference becomes a nuisance; so free speech without courtesy is repulsive, as free publicity would be, if not mainly limited to reasoned truth. Otherwise every blatant impulse would have the same right of utterance as verified ideas. Even truth can only claim priority of utterance, when its utility is manifest. As the number and length of hairs on a man's head is less important to know, than the number and quality of the ideas in his brain.

True free thought requires special qualities to insure itself acceptance. It must be owned that the thinker is a disturber. He is a truth-hunter, and there is no telling what he will find. Truth is an exile which has been kept out of her kingdom, and Error is a usurper in possession of it; and the moment Truth comes into her right, Error has to give up its occupancy of her territory; and as everybody consciously, or unconsciously harbors some of the emissaries of the usurper, they do not like owning the fact, and they dispute the warrant of truth to search their premises, though to be relieved of such deceitful and costly inmates would be an advantage to them.

An inalienable attribute of free thought, which no theology possesses, is absolute toleration of all ideas put forward in the interests of public truth, and submitted to public discussion. The true free thinker is in favor of the free action of all opinion which injures no one else, and of putting the best construction he can on the acts of others, not only because he has thereby less to tolerate, but from perceiving that he who lacks tolerance towards the ideas of others has no claim for the tolerance of his own. The defender of toleration must himself be tolerant. Condemning the coercion of ideas, he is pledged to combat error only by reason. Vindictiveness towards the erring is not only inconsistency, it is persecution. Thus free thought is not only self-defence against error but, by the toleration it imposes, is itself security for respectfulness in controversy.