The so-called History of Rationalism of the American Bishop J. F. Hurst, first published in 1865, and “revised” in 1901, is in the main a work of odium theologicum, dealing chiefly with the evolution of theology and criticism in Germany since the Reformation. Even to that purpose it is very inadequate. Its preface alleges that “happily the vital body of evangelical truth has received only comparatively weak and timorous attacks from the more modern representatives of the rank and rabid rationalism which reached its climax near the close of the eighteenth, and has had a continuous decline through the nineteenth, century.” It urges, however, as a reason for defensive activity, the consideration that “the work of Satan is never planless”; and further pronounces that the work of rationalism “must determine its character. This work has been most injurious to the faith and life of the Church, and its deeds must therefore be its condemnation” (Introd. p. 3). Thus the latest approximation to a history of theological rationalism by a clerical writer is the most negligible.
In English, apart from studies of given periods and of the progress of science and culture, the only other approaches to a history of freethought are those of Bishop Van Mildert, the Rev. J. E. Riddle, and the Rev. Adam Storey Farrar. Van Mildert’s Historical View of the Rise and Progress of Infidelity[47] constituted the Boyle Lectures for 1802–05; Mr. Riddle’s Natural History of Infidelity and Superstition in Contrast with Christian Faith formed part of his Bampton Lectures for 1852; and Mr. Farrar produced his Critical History of Freethought in reference to the Christian Religion as the Bampton Lectures for 1862. All three were men of considerable reading, and their works give useful bibliographical clues; but the virulence of Van Mildert deprives his treatise of rational weight; Mr. Riddle, who in any case professes to give merely a “Natural History” or abstract argument, and not a history proper, is only somewhat more constrainedly hostile to “infidelity”; and even Mr. Farrar, the most judicial as well as the most comprehensive of the three, proceeds on the old assumption that “unbelief” (from which he charitably distinguishes “doubt”) generally arises from “antagonism of feeling, which wishes revelation untrue”—a thesis maintained with vehemence by the others.[48]
Writers so placed, indeed, could not well be expected to contemplate freethought scientifically as an aspect of mental evolution common to all civilizations, any more than to look with sympathy on the freethought which is specifically anti-Christian. The annotations to all three works, certainly, show some consciousness of the need for another temper and method than that of their text,[49] which is too obviously, perhaps inevitably, composed for the satisfaction of the ordinary orthodox animus of their respective periods; but even the best remains not so much a history as an indictment. In the present sketch, framed though it be from the rationalistic standpoint, it is proposed to draw up not a counter indictment, but a more or less dispassionate account of the main historical phases of freethought, viewed on the one hand as expressions of the rational or critical spirit, playing on the subject-matter of religion, and on the other hand as sociological phenomena conditioned by social forces, in particular the economic and political. The lack of any previous general survey of a scientific character will, it is hoped, be taken into account in passing judgment on its schematic defects as well as its inevitable flaws of detail.
§ 3. The Psychology of Freethinking
Though it is no part of our business here to elaborate the psychology of doubt and belief, it may be well to anticipate a possible criticism on the lines of recent psychological speculation, and to indicate at the outset the practical conception on which the present survey broadly proceeds. To begin with, the conception of freethinking implies that of hindrance, resistance, coercion, difficulty; and as regards objective obstacles the type of all hindrance is restraint upon freedom of speech or publication. In other words, all such restraint is a check upon thinking. On reflection it soon becomes clear that where men dare not say or write what they think, the very power of thinking is at length impaired in the ablest, while the natural stimulus to new thought is withdrawn from the rest. No man can properly develop his mind without contact with other minds, suggestion and criticism being alike factors in every fruitful mental evolution; and though for some the atmosphere of personal intercourse is but slightly necessary to the process of mental construction, even for these the prospect of promulgation is probably essential to the undertaking of the task; and the study of other writers is a condition of useful ratiocination. In any case, it is certain that the exercise of argument is a condition of intellectual growth. Not one man in a million will or can argue closely with himself on issues on which he knows he can say nothing and can never overtly act; and for the average man all reasoning on great problems is a matter of prompting from without. The simple fact that the conversation of uneducated people runs so largely to citation of what “he says” makes clear this dependence. Each brings something to the common store, and progress is set up by “pooling” the mass of small intellectual variations or originalities. Thus in the long run freedom of speech is the measure of a generation’s intellectual capacity;[50] and the promoters of such freedom are typically the truest servants of progress.
On the other hand, there is still a common disposition to ascribe to a species of intellectual malice the disturbance that criticism causes to the holders of established beliefs. Recent writers have pressed far the theorem that “will” enters as an element into every mental act, thus giving a momentary appearance of support to the old formula that unbelief is the result of an arbitrary or sinister perversity of individual choice. Needless to say, however, the new theorem—which inverts without refuting Spinoza’s denial of the entity of volition—applies equally to acts of belief; and it is a matter of the simplest concrete observation that, in so far as will or wilfulness in the ordinary sense operates in the sphere of religion, it is at least as obvious and as active on the side of belief[51] as on the other. A moment’s reflection on the historic phenomena of orthodox resistance to criticism will satisfy any student that, whatever may have been the stimulus on the side of heresy, the antagonism it arouses is largely the index of primary passion—the spontaneous resentment of the believer whose habits are disturbed. His will normally decides his action, without any process of judicial deliberation.
It is another way of stating the same fact to point out the fallacy of the familiar assumption that freethinking represents a bias to “negation.” In the nature of the case, the believer has to do at least as much negation as his opponents; and if again we scan history in this connection, we shall see cause to conclude that the temperamental tendency to negation—which is a form of variation like another—is abundantly common on the side of religious conservatism. Nowhere is there more habitual opposition to new ideas as such. At best the believer, so-called, rejects a given proposition or suggestion because it clashes with something he already believes. The new proposition, however, has often been reached by way not of preliminary negation of the belief in question, but of constructive explanation, undertaken to bring observed facts into theoretic harmony. Thus the innovator has only contingently put aside the old belief because it clashes with something he believes in a more vital way; and he has done this with circumspection, whereas his opponent too often repels him without a second thought. The phenomena of the rise of the Copernican astronomy, modern geology, and modern biology, all bear out this generalization.
Nor is the charge of negativeness any more generally valid against such freethinking as directly assails current doctrines. There may be, of course, negative-minded people on that side as on the other; and such may fortuitously do something to promote freethought, or may damage it in their neighbourhood by their atmosphere. But everything goes to show that freethinking normally proceeds by way of intellectual construction—that is, by way of effort to harmonize one position with another; to modify a special dogma to the general run of one’s thinking. Rationalism stands not for “skepticism” in the strict philosophic sense, but for a critical effort to reach certainties. The attitude of pure skepticism on a wide scale is really very rare—much rarer even than the philosophic effort. So far from freethinkers being given to “destroying without building up,” they are, as a rule, unable to destroy a dogma either for themselves or for others without setting a constructive belief in its place—a form of explanation, that is; such being much more truly a process of construction than would be the imposition of a new scheme of dogma. In point of fact, they are often accused, and by the same critics, of an undue tendency to speculative construction; and the early atheists of Greece and of the modern period did so err. But that is only a proof the more that their freethinking was not a matter of arbitrary volition or an undue negativeness.
The only explanation which ostensibly countervails this is the old one above glanced at—that the unbeliever finds the given doctrine troublesome as a restraint, and so determines to reject it. It is to be feared that this view has survived Mr. A. S. Farrar. Yet it is very clear that no man need throw aside any faith, and least of all Christianity, on the ground of its hampering his conduct. To say nothing of the fact that in every age, under every religion, at every stage of culture from that of the savage to that of the supersubtle decadent or mystic, men have practised every kind of misconduct without abandoning their supernatural credences—there is the special fact that the whole Christian system rests on the doctrine of forgiveness of sins to the believer. The theory of “wilful” disbelief on the part of the reprobate is thus entirely unplausible. Such disbelief in the terms of the case would be uneasy, as involving an element of incertitude; and his fear of retribution could never be laid. On the other hand, he has but inwardly to avow himself a sinner and a believer, and he has the assurance that repentance at the last moment will outweigh all his sins.