Democritus, Euhemerus, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, Aristotle, Libanius, Pliny, Lucretius, and the latter Pythagoreans, almost entirely ignored the doctrines of Polytheism, which, indeed, never assumed an aggressive form, the attempted suppression of the Christian dogmatists being an only apparent exception, dictated by motives of political apprehensions, rather than by religious zeal; for at the very time when the followers of the life-hating Galilean were persecuted as “enemies of mankind,” a large number of other oriental religions enjoyed privileges bordering on license. The Grecian colonists of Asia Minor never interfered with the religious customs of their new neighbors. They studied and discussed them as they would study the curiosities of other social phenomena; and a purely naturalistic system of education would undoubtedly lead to analogous results. Intelligent children often evince a remarkable tact in avoiding certain topics of conversation, such as allusions to personal or national defects, scandals, the arcana of sexual relations, private affairs, etc., and the experience of after years may confirm such habits of discretion; but no conceivable motive but [[128]]deference to an arbitrary precept could dictate a similar reticence in the discussion of purely metaphysical topics, or of dogmas which by their very pretense to a mission of extreme importance should justify an extreme frankness in debating the basis of their claims.
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Religious liberty guarantees every other kind of freedom, as every form of slavery walks in the train of priestly despotism. In America religious emancipation led the way to the Declaration of Independence, and still continues to make this continent the chosen home of thousands of Liberals whom the material prosperity of the New World would have failed to attract. It is possible that a policy of intolerance would have averted or postponed the fate of the Moorish empire, which was ultimately overthrown by the fanatics of a creed which the followers of a more rational faith had permitted to survive in their midst; yet it is not less certain that for nearly five hundred years religious tolerance made the realm of the Spanish caliphs the one bright Goshen in a world of intellectual darkness. In northern Europe the history of civilization begins only with the triumph of Rationalism. Protestantism, in that wider sense which made the revolt of the Germanic nations an insurrection against the powers of superstition, has laid the foundation of national prosperity in Great Britain, in the Netherlands, and in the rising empire of northern Germany. The real founder of that empire was at once the greatest statesman [[129]]and the boldest Freethinker of the last fourteen centuries. His capital became a city of refuge for the philosophers of Christian Europe. The eastern provinces of his kingdom were colonized by refugees from the tyranny of clerical autocrats. His absolute tolerance protected even the Jesuits, expelled by the Catholic rulers of France and Spain. During the reign of that crowned philosopher the religious and political dissenters of Prussia expressed their views with a freedom which in semi-republican England would have involved them in a maze of endless lawsuits. Among the fruits of that freedom were products of science and philosophy which have made that period the classic age of German literature. “Before the appearance of Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason,’ ” says Schopenhauer, “the works of duly installed government professors of philosophy were mostly medleys of sophisms, pretending to reconcile science and dogma, or reason and despotism. Here, at last, a state university could boast of a man who lived at once by and for the service of Truth—a phenomenon made possible only by the circumstance that, for the first time since the days of the great Aurelius and the greater Julian, a Freethinker had mounted the throne of an independent monarchy.”
The protection of Freethought is likewise the best safeguard against that virus of hypocrisy that has undermined the moral health of so many modern nations.
“What an incalculable advantage to a nation as well as to its ruler,” says a modern philosopher, “to know that the pillars of state are founded on [[130]]the eternal verities, on natural science, logic, and arithmetic, instead of casuistry and immaculate conceptions!”
The consciousness of that advantage has more than once upheld the birthland of Protestantism in its struggles against the allied powers of despotism, and should uphold our republic in the inevitable struggle against the allied despots of the twentieth century.
C.—PERVERSION.
The experience of the last sixteen centuries has made priestcraft almost a synonym of intolerance; and yet it would be a mistake to suppose that the interests of Freethought are incompatible with the survival of any system of supernatural religion. The myths of polytheism were for ages accepted as the basis of a creed enjoying all the prerogatives and emoluments of an established religion, but the priests of that religion had no need of protecting their prestige by the butchery of heretics. With all their absurdities, the rites of their creed were essentially a worship of Nature, naturally attractive to all lovers of earth and life, and by their harmlessness conciliating the favor of philosophers who might have studied the baneful tendencies of a different creed—a creed which could propagate its dogmas only by an unremitting war against the natural instincts of the human race, and by constant intrigues against the protests of human reason. “The Nature-worshiping Greeks repeated the harmless myths and practiced the merry rites of their creed for centuries without troubling themselves about the myths and rites of their neighbors. [[131]]Their superstition differed from that of the church as the inspired love of Nature differs from the ecstatic fury of her enemies, as the day-dream of a happy child differs from the fever-dream of a gloomy fanatic. ‘Procul Profani!’ was the cry of the Eleusinian priests. They had more followers than they wanted. Their joy-loving creed could dispense with autos-da-fé. The Hebrews, in stress of famine, conquered a little strip of territory between Arabia and the Syrian desert, and then tried their best to live in peace with heaven and earth, and their sects contented themselves with metaphorical rib-roastings. The Saracens spread their conquests from Spain to the Ganges, but their wars had a physical, rather than metaphysical, purpose. They needed land, and made a better use of it than the former occupants. They contented themselves with assessing dissenters, and did not deem it necessary to assassinate them. But the Galilean pessimists could not afford to tolerate an unconverted neighbor. To the enemies of Nature the happiness of an earth-loving, garden-planting, and science-promoting nation was an intolerable offense: reason had to be sacrificed to faith, health and happiness to the cross, and earth to heaven” (The Secret of the East, p. 62).