The Freedom of Science

by Josef Donat

This perilous moral teaching is allowed also in public lectures. On November 14, 1908, the “Allgemeine Rundschau” wrote: “Imagine a spacious concert-hall, brightly illuminated, every one of the many seats occupied, the boxes filled to the last place, the aisles crowded, by a most variegated audience: men and women, young maidens, youths with downy beard; gentlemen of high rank with their ladies, faces upon which are written a life of vast experience side by side with childish faces whose innocence is betrayed by their looks, and on the platform a university professor and physician, holding forth about the most intimate relations of sexual life: the unfitness of celibacy, the Catholic morals of matrimony, prostitution and prostitutes, the causes of adultery, ‘sterile marriage,’ onanism, and many kinds of perversities. The man is, moreover, speaking in a fashion that makes one forget the admonishments of conscience.”

The city council of Lausanne, in its meeting of February 10, 1907, prohibited Forel's lecture as an attack upon decency and public morals, making reference in its resolution to Forel's ideas as laid down in his book. In protest, Forel made a public statement, saying among other things: “If the council desires to be logical it would have to prohibit also the sale of my book.” We have no objection to make to his conclusion.

We stated that religion is man's first duty. This applies not only to the individual, but also—and this is forgotten too often—to the state. Man, by his nature, and hence in all [pg 348] forms of his life, including his citizenship, is obliged to have religion. He remains in all conditions the creature which is dependent upon God. And does not the state, too, owe special duties of gratitude to God? It owes its origin to God: the impulse to found states has been put into the human nature by its Creator; the state owes to God the foundation of its authority: in a thousand difficulties the state is thrown upon His help. Therefore a public divine service is found with all peoples. Does the state comply with this duty by silently supporting a public atheism when it might do otherwise? by even becoming its patron, when, posing as science, it ascends to the lecturing desk to teach adolescing youth?

Of course, free-thought is of a different opinion, especially the one of to-day. Its principle is: the state need not trouble itself about God and Religion, that is the private matter of each individual. In the eyes of free-thought the state is an imaginary being, hovering over the heads of its citizens; though they may be religious, the state itself should have no Religion. What absurdity! It is nothing short of nonsense to demand of the members of a state, the overwhelming majority of whom hold Religion to be true and necessary, that as a political community they are to act as if their Religion were false and worthless, as if to deny and to destroy it were quite proper. What else is the state but an organized aggregation of its citizens? To make of religious citizens, a state without Religion is just as absurd as a Catholic state composed wholly and entirely of Protestant citizens. This leads us to a further consideration. The state must protect its own foundations. Just as it must defend its existence against enemies from without, it must protect itself against those enemies from within, who, whether realizing the consequences or not, are by their actions actually shaking its foundations. These foundations consist of proper views on social and political principles, on morals and Religion. If the state does not intend to abolish itself, it must not permit doctrines to be disseminated which imperil these foundations and, consequently, the peaceful continuance of the state. In fact, no state power in its senses would permit a teacher, who directly attacks the validity of the state order, to continue; it [pg 349] would retire every professor of law who would dare to teach that regicide is permissible, or who would with the oratory of a Tolstoy preach the unnaturalness of a state possessing coercive power.

As a rule, open advocates of Socialism are kept out of college-chairs. And rightly so. So long as the adherents of Socialism see in the state but the product of the egotism of the ruling classes, and an institute for subjugating the masses, and in the obtainment of political power the means of doing away with this state of affairs, so long will it be impossible for the state to trust the education of the future citizen to a Socialist, nor can the latter, as an honest man, accept a position of trust from the state, much less bind himself by the oath of office to co-operate in the work of the state. Prof. C. Bornhakmakes the following comment: “The decisive point is not freedom in teaching, but the circumstance that the Socialist professor takes advantage of the respect connected with a state office, or of his position at a state institution, to undermine the state. A state that would stand for this would deserve nothing better than its abolition.”

And Paulsen similarly writes: “A state that would allow in the lecture rooms of its colleges Socialistic views to be taught as the results of science ... such a state will be looked for in vain.”

Hence it is certain the state cannot grant a freedom in teaching that would jeopardize the foundation of its existence. It must consequently recognize no freedom which, in lectures and publications, will seriously injure public morality and religion. Morality and religion are, first of all, the indispensable conditions for the continuance of the state.

Aristotle says the first duty of the state is to care for religion. Plato proposes heavy penalty for those who deny the existence of the gods; a well-ordered state, he claims, must care first of all for the fostering of religion. Plutarch calls religion the bond of every society and the foundation of the law. Cicero declares that there can be neither loyalty nor justice without regard for God. Valerius Maximuscould say of Rome: “It has ever been the principle of our city to give preference to religion before any other matter, even before the highest and most glorious benefits.” Washington, in his speech to Congress in 1789, declared religion and morality to be the most indispensable support of the commonweal. He stated that it would be in vain for one, who tries to wreck these two fundamental pillars of the social structure, to boast of his patriotism.

Without religion there can be no firm resistance by conscience against man's lower nature, no social virtues and sacrifices, there can only be egotism, the foe of all social order. No [pg 350] secure state-life can be built upon the principles that formed the basis of the French Revolution. So we see, generally and instinctively, the endeavour to prevent as much as possible anti-religious doctrines from being expounded directly to the broad masses of the people. This of itself is tantamount to the acknowledgment of their danger to the state. Yet, millions have tasted the fruit of an atheistic science, and the poison shows its effect; they have shaken off the yoke of religion; in its place dissatisfaction and bitterness are filling their breast, and fists are clenched against the existing order.

Bebel said in a speech in the German Reichstag, on September 16, 1878: “Gentlemen, you attack our views in respect to religion, because they are atheistic and materialistic. I acknowledge them to be so.... I firmly believe Socialism will ultimately lead to atheism. But these atheistic doctrines, that now are causing so much pain and trouble for you, by whom were they scientifically and philosophically demonstrated? Was it by Socialists? Men like Edgar and Bruno, Bauer, Feuerbach, David Strauss, Ernst Renan, were they Socialists? They were men of science.... What is allowed to the one—why should it be forbidden to the other?”