Freethinking

“ But to this it may be objected, that the bulk of mankind is as well qualified for flying as thinking, and if every man thought it his duty to think freely, and trouble his neighbour with his thoughts (which is an essential part of freethinking,) it would make wild work in the world. ”

“ In our own age the state of things is the direct contrary to that which we have been supposing. While from the universal prevalence of freethinking in politics—a natural consequence of the reign of religious skepticism—the whole of life, and especially public life, has ceased to be regarded and understood in its symbolical character and dignity ”

“ In the 2nd, That it is our duty to think freely on those points of which men are denied the right to think freely: such as of the nature and attributes of God, the truth and authority of Scriptures, and of the meaning of Scriptures, in seven arguments and eleven instances. The third section is the consideration of six objections to Freethinking—from the whole of which he concludes (1) That Freethinkers must have more understanding, and that they must necessarily be the most virtuous people. (2) That they have, in fact, been the most understanding and virtuous people in all ages. ”

“ Such being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition; let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their opinions—to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. ”

“ No law shall protect the one and disfranchise the other. If any man disapproves what I say, he need not hear me a second time. What more does he require? Let him listen to what he likes, and leave others to do the same. Let us have justice and fair play all round.
Freethought is not only useful but laudable. It involves labor and trouble. Ours is not a gospel for those who love the soft pillow of faith. The Freethinker does not let his ship rot away in harbor ”

“ Freethought demands education for all. It claims a mental inheritance for every child born into the world. Superstition demands ignorance, stupidity, and degradation. Wherever the schoolmaster is busy, Freethought prospers; where he is not found, superstition reigns supreme and levels the people in the dust.
Free speech and Freethought go together. If one is hampered the other languishes. What is the use of thinking if I may not express my thought? We claim equal liberty for all. The priest shall say what he believes and so shall the sceptic. ”

“ He sees instincts are better and stronger than so-called ‘principles.’ He sees in the hour of need what are called ‘rights’ laughed at, ‘freedom,’ the liberty to do what one pleases, trampled on, the claims of the individual trodden under foot, and theories burst like cobwebs. ”

“ The advocates of all such attacks on personal liberty—be they priests or social dreamers—are not less opposed to free thought than to free action. The defense of their opinions, not the discovery of truth, is to them the purpose of research. The logical ultimatum of the one is the stake, of the other the dynamite bomb. Both would restrict the untrammeled and unbiased pursuit of knowledge.
Knowledge, however, is the twin brother of liberty and the provider for the treasury of happiness. Much more than a fine phrase is the poet’s line, that “He is a freeman, whom the truth makes free.” ”

“ Let the people show they are worthy to be free by practising the virtues of freemen—by a reliance on the power of reason, on the march of intelligence, on the force of public opinion, on the justice of their cause, and the certain triumph of truth and right, naked and unarmed, except in the panoply of virtue and the majestic spirit of humanity. ”

“ The intellectual free-thinker and free-observer is driven out of his own sphere in spite of himself—human sympathy, a sense of justice, added to a revulsion against the narrow prejudice, the intense dullness of a social bourgeois class. ”

“ If there be anything I hate more than another it is the proposal to place any persons, especially those who allow freedom to me, under any abridgment of their liberty to think, to infer, and to publish. ”

“ The Freethinker is thus a politician and a social reformer. What a Christian may be he must be. Freethinkers are naturally Radicals. They are almost to a man on the side of justice, freedom and progress. The Tories know this, and hence they seek to suppress us by the violence of unjust law. They see that we are a growing danger to every kind of privilege, a menace to all the idle classes who live in luxury on the sweat and labor of others—the devouring drones who live on the working bees.
The gospel of Freethought teaches us to distinguish between the knowable and the unknowable. ”

“ I deny the right of any one—individually or collectively—to set up an inquisition of thought. Thought is, or should be, free. My social views and political opinions are my personal concern. I owe no one responsibility for them. ”

“ It is in connection with them that free thinking is most difficult and most apt to be misunderstood, for they easily become confused with the traditional reverences and sanctities of political fidelity, patriotism, morality, and even religion. ”

“ The question is not, whether our science, or, to speak more generally, our intellectual life, must be free—of that there can be no doubt. No life can spring up and thrive without due freedom. The question is: What sort of freedom? how can it be more precisely defined? We all, indeed, demand freedom for the citizen; but what kind of freedom? He should be free from the fetters of tyranny and despotism. ”

“ But there is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the bottom of the movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free thought and traditional authority. One or other will have to succumb after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have as side issues vast political and social troubles. I have no more doubt that free thought will win in the long run than I have that I sit here writing to you, or that this free thought will organise itself into a coherent system, embracing human life and the world as one harmonious whole. ”

“ Lastly, we may ask: To what purpose is our free-will given us, if all souls, good and bad alike, users and abusers of the liberty they had on earth, enter into their long home all of one uniform and spotless hue? ”

“ This freethinker has so free a spirit that every philosophy he does not accept appears to him, not only ridiculous and grotesque, but criminal. He flatters himself that he alone is in possession of the absolute truth. ”

“ FREE-THINKER A RELATIVE TERM.—We call that man a free-thinker who thinks otherwise than is expected of him in consideration of his origin, surroundings, position, and office, or by reason of the prevailing contemporary views. He is the exception, fettered minds are the rule ; these latter reproach him, saying that his free principles either have their origin in a desire to be remarkable or else cause free actions to be inferred,—that is to say, actions which are not compatible with fettered morality. ”

“ What a boon it is to think freely, to let the intellect dart out in quest of truth at every point of the compass, to feel the delight of the chase and the gladness of capture! What a noble privilege to pour treasures of knowledge into the alembic of the brain, and separate the gold from the dross!
The Freethinker takes nothing on trust, if he can help it ”

“ That which tends to the misery of man.
What you call liberty, choice, morality, responsibility, have nothing whatever to do with this. There is no difference between necessity and liberty. He who is free, acts from choice. What is the foundation of his choice? What we really mean by liberty is freedom from personal dictation—we do not wish to be controlled by the will of others. To us the nature of things does not seem to be a master—Nature has no will. ”

“ Considered instead, from the particular point of view, ceasing to be an abstraction, and becoming a way, a means, liberty is understood. It is thus that we call for the freedom of thought, which is to say the power, without external hindrance, to express thoughts in speech or in writing, in the manner in which they present themselves in the mind. It is thus the integral expression of the thought which is the goal pursued, and not liberty. ”

“ On the contrary, the Freethinker, who has no morality but what he draws from the nature and character of man, and the constant events which transpire in society, has a certain morality that is not founded either on the caprice of circumstances or the prejudices of mankind; a morality that tells him when he does evil, and blames him for the evil so done, and that is superior to the morality of the intolerant fanatic and persecutor. ”

“ We lay no claim to originality in the mode of treatment—we will endeavor to cull the choicest flowers from the garden, and if others can make a brighter or better bouquet, we shall be glad to have their assistance. We have only one object in view, and that is, the presenting of free and manly thoughts to our readers, hoping to induce like thinking in them, and trust-ing that noble work may follow noble thoughts. The Freethinkers we intend treating of have also been Free Workers, endeavoring to raise men's minds from superstition and bigotry, and place before them a knowledge of the real. ”

“ Their Pretension to be Free-thinkers, is no other than Rakes have to be Free-livers, and Savages to be Free-men, that is, they can think whatever they have a Mind to, and give themselves up to whatever Conceit the Extravagancy of their Inclination, or their Fancy, shall suggest; they can think as wildly as they talk and act, and will not endure that their Wit should be controuled by such formal Things as Decency and common Sense: Deduction, Coherence, Consistency, and all the Rules of Reason they accordingly disdain, as too precise and mechanical for Men of a liberal Education. ”

“ In a thousand ways my freedom, or what I call my freedom, is interfered with: it is the price which I pay for being one item of a social organism and for being in turn protected against others, who, in virtue of that protection, are in their turn deprived of what they might call their liberty. ”

“ For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free men. ”

“ We have not yet seen how a free people exercises its freedom. We have not seen in real life the practical application of the principles which we preach. Here all is spread before our gaze in a vast tableau. ”

“ Why then, if liberty does not in its common sense signify an effect without a cause, but the free exercise of a power, did it not signify the same thing or something similar as applied to the mind? Has the mind no powers, or are they necessarily impeded and hindered from operating? ”

“ Even such free-will as the human mind possesses is a power of his own deliberate bestowal; and the whole extent of its disastrous mistakes, its deluded estimates, its degrading preferences, its faithless abuse of liberty, must be considered as ordained and introduced by him for some ultimate and transcendent good. ”

“ That much at least of possible 'truth' the terms will then have in them.
Let me take up another well-worn controversy, THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM. Most persons who believe in what is called their free-will do so after the rationalistic fashion. It is a principle, a positive faculty or virtue added to man, by which his dignity is enigmatically augmented. He ought to believe it for this reason. Determinists, who deny it, who say that individual men originate nothing, but merely transmit to the future the whole push of the past cosmos of which they are so small an expression, diminish man. ”

“ In the free action of individual thought and expression grew eccentricities of belief and of practice, and a crop of so-called "isms," more or less temporary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public opinion attained an astonishing degree of freedom,—I never heard of any community that was altogether free of its tyranny. At least extraordinary latitude was permitted in the development of extreme ideas, new, fantastic, radical, or conservative. ”

“ For, supposing man not to be originally free, let us ask how is the end of human liberty to be attained? Is it to be attained by passively imbibing the various impressions forced upon us from without? Is it to be attained by yielding ourselves up in pliant obedience to the manifold modifications which stamp their moulds upon us from within? ”

“ With this negative rather than positive account of the theory of liberty, which, after all, only amounts to a statement of the reason why no conclusive solution can be given to the problem raised by the fact of moral agency, we leave the adjustment of the other questions connected with it to those who are ready to bestow additional thought on the ideas of causation and responsibility which are those that are most peculiarly involved in the subject. ”

“ Prudence of the Free Spirits.—Free-thinkers, those who live by knowledge alone, will soon attain the supreme aim of their life and their ultimate position towards society and State, and will gladly content themselves, for instance, with a small post or an income that is just sufficient to enable them to live; for they will arrange to live in such a manner that a great change of outward prosperity, even an overthrow of the political order, would not cause an overthrow of their life. ”