A Grammar of Freethought

by Chapman Cohen

[6] Principles of Sociology, Vol. I.

[7] Origins of English History, p. 261.

[8] Speaking of the Inquisition, Mr. H. C. Lea, in his classic History of the Inquisition, says, "There is no doubt that the people were as eager as their pastors to send the heretic to the stake. There is no doubt that men of the kindliest tempers, the profoundest aspirations, the purest zeal for righteousness, professing a religion founded on love and charity, were ruthless where heresy was concerned, and were ready to trample it out at any cost. Dominic and Francis, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, Innocent III. and St. Louis, were types, in their several ways, of which humanity, in any age, might feel proud, and yet they were as unsparing of the heretic as Ezzelin di Romano was of his enemies. With such men it was not hope of gain or lust of blood or pride of opinion or wanton exercise of power, but sense of duty, and they but represented what was universal public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century." Vol. I., p. 234.

[9] This seems to me to give the real significance of Nationality. It has been argued by some that nationality is a pure myth, as unreal as the divinity of a king. The principal ground for this denial of nationality appears to be that so-called national characteristics are seen to undergo drastic transformation when their possessors are subject to a new set of influences. This may be quite true, but if nationality, in the sense of being a product of biological heredity, is ruled out, it does not follow that nationality is thereby destroyed. The fact may remain but it demands a different interpretation. And if what has been said above be true, it follows that nationality is not a personal fact, but an extra or super-personal one. It belongs to the group rather than to the individual, and is created by the possession of a common speech, a common literature, and a common group life. And quite naturally, when the individual is lifted out of this special social influence its power may well be weakened, and in the case of his children may be non-existent, or replaced by the special characteristics of the new group into which he is born. The discussion of nationality ought not, therefore, to move along the lines of acceptance or rejection of the conception of nationality, but of how far specific national characteristics admit of modification under the pressure of new conditions.

[10] It would take too long to elaborate, but it may be here noted that in the human group the impelling force is not so much needs as desires, and that fact raises the whole issue from the level of biology to that of psychology. So long as life is at a certain level man shares with the animal the mere need for food. But at another level there arises not merely the need for food, but a desire for certain kind of food, cooked in a particular manner, and served in a special style. And provided that we do not by hunger reduce man to the level of the beast again, the desire will be paramount and will determine whether food shall be eaten or not. So, again, with the fact of sex and marriage. At the animal level we have the crude fact of sex, and this is, indeed, inescapable at any stage. But the growth of civilization brings about the fact that the need for the gratification of the sexual appetite is regulated by the secondary qualities of grace of form, or of disposition, which are the immediate determinants of whether a particular man shall marry a particular woman or not. Again, it is the desire for power and distinction, not the need for money that impels men to spend their lives in building up huge fortunes. And, finally, we have the fact that a great many of our present needs are transformed desires. The working man of to-day counts as needs, as do we all more or less, a number of things that began as pure desires. We say we need books, pictures, music, etc. But none of these things can be really brought under the category of things necessary to life. They are the creation of man's mental cravings. Without them we say life would not be worth living, and it is well that we should all feel so. Professor Marshall rightly dwells upon this point by saying: "Although it is man's wants in the early stages of development that give rise to his activities, yet afterwards each new step is to be regarded as the development of new activities giving rise to new wants, rather than of new wants giving rise to new activities."—(Principles of Economics, Vol. I., p. 164.)

[11] It is a curious thing, as Philip Gilbert Hamerton points out in one of his essays, that in England religious freedom appears to exist in inverse proportion to rank. The king has no freedom whatever in a choice of religion. His religion is part of the position. An English nobleman, speaking generally, has two religions from which to choose. He may be either a member of the established Church or of the Roman Catholic. In the middle classes there is the choice of all sorts of religious sects, so long as they are Christian. Religious dissent is permitted so long as it does not travel beyond the limits of the chapel. And when we come to the better class working man, he has the greatest freedom of all. His social position does not depend upon his belonging to this or that Church, and he may, to borrow a phrase from Heine, go to hell in his own fashion.

[12] See specially Vol. I., chapters 6, 7, and 8. One is sorely tempted to engage in what would be a rather lengthy aside on the mental freedom enjoyed by the people of ancient Greece, but considerations of cogency advise a shorter comment in this form. In the first place we have to note that neither the Greeks nor the Romans possessed anything in the shape of "sacred" books. That, as the history of Mohammedanism and Christianity shows, is one of the most disastrous things that can happen to any people. But apart from this there were several circumstances connected with the development of the Greek peoples that made for freedom of opinion. There was no uniform theology to commence with, and the configuration of the country, while enough to maintain local independence, was not enough to prevent a certain amount of intercourse. And it would certainly seem that no people were ever so devoid of intolerance as were the ancient Greeks. It is true that the history of Greece was not without its examples of intolerance, but these were comparatively few, and, as Professor Bury says, persecution was never organized. The gods were criticized in both speeches and plays. Theories of Materialism and Atheism were openly taught and were made the topic of public discussion. There was, indeed, a passion for the discussion of all sorts of subjects, and to discussion nothing is sacred. The best thought of Rome owed its impetus to Greece, and at a later date it was the recovered thought of Greece which gave the impetus to Mohammedan Spain in its cultivation of science and philosophy, and so led to the partial recovery of Europe from the disastrous control of the Christian Church. Nor need it be assumed that the work of Greece was due to the possession of a superior brain power. Of that there is not the slightest vestige of proof. It is simply that the ancient Greek lived in a freer mental atmosphere. The mind had less to hamper it in its operations; it had no organized and powerful Church that from the cradle to the grave pursued its work of preventing free criticism and the play of enlightened opinion. For several centuries the world has been seeking to recover some of its lost liberties with only a very moderate success. But if one thinks of what the Greeks were, and if one adds to what they had achieved a possible two thousand years of development, he will then have some notion of what the triumph of the Christian Church meant to the world.

[13] See on this point Heeren's Historical Treatises, 1836, pp. 61-70.

[14] Religion and the Child, Pioneer Press.

[15] Of the evil of an incautious use of current words we have an example in the case of Darwin. Neither his expressions of regret at having "truckled to public opinion" at having used the term "creator," nor his explicit declaration that the word was to him only a synonym of ignorance, prevented religious apologists from citing him as a believer in deity on the strength of his having used the word.