CHAPTER IV. THE SECOND STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT: ENTERPRISE
"Better wild ideas than no ideas at all."
—Professor Nichol at Horsham.
THE emancipation of the understanding from intimidation and penal restraint soon incited thinkers of enterprise to put their new powers to use. Theology being especially a forbidden subject and the greatest repressive force, inquiry into its pretensions first attracted critical attention.
In every century forlorn hopes of truth had set out to storm one or other of the ramparts of theology. Forces had been marshalled by great leaders and battle often given in the open field; and unforeseen victories are recorded, in the annals of the wars of infantine rationalism, against the full-grown powers of superstition and darkness. In every age valiant thinkers, scholars, philosophers, and critics, even priests in defiance of power, ecclesiastical and civil, have, at their own peril, explored the regions of forbidden truth.
In Great Britain it was the courage of insurgent thinkers among the working class—whom no imprisonment could intimidate—who caused the right of free speech and free publicity to be finally conceded. Thus rulers came round to the conclusion of Caballero, that "tolerance is as necessary in ideas as in social relations."
As soon as opinion was known to be emancipated, men began to think who never thought before. The thinker no longer had to obtain a "Ticket of Leave" from the Churches before he could inquire; he was free to investigate where he would and what he would. Power is, as a rule, never imparted nor acquired in vain, and honest men felt they owed it to those who had won freedom for them, that they should extend it. Thus it came to pass that independence was an inspiration to action in men of intrepid minds. Professor Tyndall in the last words he wrote for publication said, "I choose the nobler part of Emerson when, after various disenchantments, he exclaims, 'I covet truth!'" On printing these words the Westminster Gazette added: "The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this." The energies of intellectual intrepidity had doubtless been devoted to science and social progress; but as philosophers have found, down to Huxley's day, all exploration was impossible in that direction. Murchison, Brewster, Buckland, and other pioneers of science were intimidated. Lyell held back his book, on the Antiquity of Man, twenty years. Tyndall, Huxley, and Spencer were waiting to be heard. As Huxley has justly said: "there was no Thoroughfare into the Kingdom of Nature—By Order—Moses." Hence, to examine theology, to discover whether its authority was absolute, became a necessity. It was soon seen that there was ground for scepticism. The priests resented criticism by representing the sceptic of their pretensions, as being sceptical of everything, whereas they were only sceptics of clerical infallibility. They indeed did aver that branches of human knowledge, received as well established, were really open to question, in order to show that if men could not be confident of things of which they had experience, how could the Churches be confident of things of which no man had experience—and which contradicted experience? So far from disbelieving everything, scepticism went everywhere in search of truth and certainty. Since the Church could not be absolutely certain of the truth of its tenets, its duty was to be tolerant. But being intolerant it became as Julian Hibbert put it—"well-understood self-defence" to assail it. The Church fought for power, the thinker fought for truth. Free thought among the people may be likened to a good ship manned by adventurous mariners, who, cruising about in the ocean of theology came upon sirens, as other mariners had done before—dangerous to be followed by navigators bound to ports of progress. Many were thereby decoyed to their own destruction. The sirens of the Churches sang alluring songs whose refrains were:
1. The Bible the guide of God.
2. The origin of the universe disclosed.
3. The care of Providence assured.
4. Deliverance from peril by prayer dependable.