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
"He who cannot reason is defenceless; he who fears to reason
has a coward mind; he who will not reason is willing to be
deceived and will deceive all who listen to him."
—Maxim of Free Thought.
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.