Intellectual independence

“ Intellectual independence is the natural privilege of science, which would be lost if converted [300] into an instrument of political opposition. For the effective display of different liberties, it is necessary that each should be confined within its own domain; their strength and security depend on this prudent restraint. ”

“ It should now be clear, from what has been said, what is meant by freedom of science. It means independence from every external authority and restraint in research and teaching, the unhindered development and assertion of one's own intellectual personality. Man must let himself be directed only by his own judgment and his instinct for the truth, or his personal need, without heeding dogmas, Church laws, tradition, or any other external norm whatsoever. ”

“ By this is meant the liberty to attempt action on every side, and to throw oneself at pleasure in action for particular and for general intellectual interests, the removal of all checks on the individual particularity, as well as the inward liberty in which the subject has principles, has an insight and conviction of his own, and thus gains moral independence. But this liberty itself on one hand implies that supreme differentiation in which men are unequal and make themselves more unequal by education ”

“ Freedom means essentially the part played by thinking—which is personal—in learning:—it means intellectual initiative, independence in observation, judicious invention, foresight of consequences, and ingenuity of adaptation to them. ”

“ There is no escape from slavery, or the mere pretence of freedom, but in radical individual power; and all solid intellectual culture is simply the right development of individuality into its true intellectual form. ”

“ Our intellectual emancipation, with its panoply of rationalism and its bulwarks of freedom, can be preserved, however, without having to go to the extremes of pragmatism or to become absolutely material. ”

“ "You see, Monsieur, it's worth everything, isn't it, to keep one's intellectual liberty, not to enslave one's powers of appreciation, one's critical independence? It was because of that that I abandoned journalism, and took to so much duller work: tutoring and private secretaryship. There is a good deal of drudgery, of course; but one preserves one's moral freedom, what we call in French one's quant a soi. And when one hears good talk one can join in it without compromising any opinions but one's own; or one can listen, and answer it inwardly. ”

“ Every civilization, culture, and education implies restriction of freedom, and the more the rejection of dependence and laws increases the nearer we approach the state of uncultured and barbarous nations. The same applies to intellectual culture. The higher it is, the more learning and mental culture a man has, the greater the number of truths, principles, and intellectual standards he carries within him. ”

“ This singular revolution in the history of the human mind, and by its reaction this singular revolution in human affairs, was effected by a glorious succession of AUTHORS, who have enabled our nation to arbitrate among the nations of Europe, and to possess ourselves of their involuntary esteem by discoveries in science, by principles in philosophy, by truths in history, and even by the graces of fiction; and there is not a man of genius among foreigners who stands unconnected with our intellectual sovereignty. ”

“ Rising from this lower order of civilization, the industries of every kind, to what is far nobler, that of science, we observe the same aspirations, perhaps more universally diffused and more passionate in degree toward liberty and union. Freedom of thought, freedom of education, freedom of speech and of the press, seem to be the idols of the day; for, strange to say, freedom of the intellectual life is deemed by very many not as the dowry of science, but the fundamental principle of all human instruction. There exists, also, with this desire for intellectual freedom, a craving after union. ”

“ Do they encourage the universal growth of mind? Do they hold out a common inducement to eloquent and lofty effort? or insure to superior genius an enduring fame? Impossible! when all intellectual influence is confined to the palace. Impossible! when learning in its effect on society is no more than the light of the moon, shining by the side of the noonday sun.
But free circulation of thought and feeling composes the chief influence of free institutions on the mind. The beauty, union, and elevation of society depend upon the action and re-action of mind. ”

“ Understanding, for its own sake, possesses the highest value for this Age:—this Understanding has therefore supreme Authority, and becomes the first and primitive Authority, limited by no other. Hence arises the all-ruling idea of Intellectual Freedom,—freedom of Scientific judgment and of public opinion. Let it be made manifest to a true son of this Age that what he has produced is absurd, ridiculous, immoral, and corrupt:—‘That is nothing,’ he replies ”

“ There you have the picture of this glorious independence of yours, of that academical freedom, reflected in the highest minds—those which are truly in need of culture, compared with whom that other crowd of indifferent natures does not count at all, natures that delight in their freedom in a purely barbaric sense. ”

“ We need a philosophy like this to purify and enlighten our politics, to consecrate our industry, to cheer and elevate society. We need it for our own use in the hours of mental misgiving and gloom; when the mystery of the universe presses heavily upon our souls; when the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the
"Intellectual power
Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way," ”

“ A nature constitutionally proud and pitiless, intuitively seeks, in all the culture it derives from intellectual labour, to find reasons to continue proud and pitiless—to extract from the lessons of knowledge arguments by which to justify its impulse, and rules by which the impulse can be drilled into method and refined into policy. ”

“ The tendency of such governmental policy is to mould people into a common intellectual pattern. Quite a different governmental policy rests on the belief that government should leave the mind and spirit of man absolutely free. Such a governmental policy encourages varied intellectual outlooks in the belief that the best views will prevail. ”

“ And yet, if regulated by a broader comprehension social requirements, if expanded by scientific understanding of the freedom essential to intellectual evolution, the very same moral policy is that through which the highest and happiest results may be obtained. ”

“ In this age, the intellectual forces shall still retain all their dominion and supremacy over the physical world, but the moral shall preside over the intellectual, and move them as God moves the stars, bringing them out of chaos, and wheeling them in circuits of unimaginable grandeur, and for purposes of beneficence yet inconceivable. ”

“ Above all, and over all, a Liberal paper should teach the absolute freedom of the mind, the utter independence of the individual, the perfect liberty of speech. We should remember that the world is as it must be; that the present is the necessary offspring of the past; that the future must be what the present makes it, and that the real work of the reformer, of the philanthropist, is to change the conditions of the present, to the end that the future may be better. ”

“ Irrespective of the professionalizing of philosophy, the ideas philosophers discuss are still those in which Western civilization has been bred. They are in the backs of the heads of educated people. But what serious-minded men not engaged in the professional business of philosophy most want to know is what modifications and abandonments of intellectual inheritance are required by the newer industrial, political, and scientific movements. ”

“ I am heart and soul with the Progressive as to the ultimate remedial powers of education. Moral advancement depends absolutely on the humanising influences of intellectual advancement. The foreseeing of consequences is a question of intelligence. ”

“ An indispensable condition of intellectual growth is liberty. That liberty the present system denies. More and more it is straitened by imposed tasks. And this I conceive to be the reason why, with increased requirements, the College turns out a decreasing proportion of first-class men. ”

“ They are catch-words that tend to hold at fever-pitch the intellectual life of modern civilization—agents as they are of such mighty and far-reaching influences. On the one hand, Science, whence the moving and leading ideas of the time take shape and form to go forth in turn and subject to their sway the intellect of man; on the other, Freedom—that Freedom of sovereign emancipation, [pg iv] that Christian Freedom of well-ordered self-development, which determine the actions, the strivings of the human spirit, even as they control imperceptibly the march of Science. ”

“ In no single instance, as far as can be ascertained, has nobility of character, or the possession of genius, or soundness of judgment, or even beauty of diction in literature, been attributable to the grind in grammatical rules, the fact-cramming, and the mental gymnastics which go to make up what is called 'a liberal education.'
In science, where the highest intellectual qualities are brought into play, most of the great discoverers have owed their entire scientific knowledge to self-taught methods of investigation. ”

“ In this country to-day the student moves in the vanguard of progress; he is heir to all that is best in the past, and his heritage makes for him opportunities full of promise.
All the soul growth of our ancestors modifies the mechanism of our intellectual processes, and gives us minds that fall into rhythm with the march of ideas. We profit by all the past has done; the active factors in this age of freedom—intellectual, spiritual, and political—are multiplied by millions, and each profits by the efforts of all. Intellectual acquirement is a duty ”

“ Intellectual freedom can only come by individual or group work, while class teaching is only for such occasions as a literature or a singing lesson, or the presentation of an occasional new idea in number. ”

“ And, in fact, it has happened, and it happens, that some men, and especially professional scientists, lay or clerical, have found, and find, the means of intellectual livelihood in the closed circle of the reflex and secondary products of civilization, and that they have been able and are able consequently to submit all the rest to the subjective view which they have elaborated under these conditions; that is, the origin and explanation of all the ideologies. Our doctrine has definitely outgrown the visual angle of ideology. ”

“ Such contemplations as these Materialism, and the popular philosophy of mind and matter, alike forbid: they are only consistent with the Intellectual System.... The view of Life presented by the most refined deductions of the Intellectual Philosophy is that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. ”

“ The spirit of liberty must preside where improvement is expected. When we have acquired the power and habit of original thinking, the most important part of education, the mind is emancipated, and its independence commences: we cease to be espaliers, and [Pg 38] become standards. ”

“ I have arrived at the last division of my work, the period in national life answering to maturity in individual. The objects to be considered differ altogether from those which have hitherto occupied our attention. We have now to find human authority promoting intellectual advancement, and accepting as its maxim that the lot of man will be ameliorated, and his power and dignity increased, in proportion as he is able to comprehend the mechanism of the world, the action of natural laws, and to apply physical forces to his use. ”

“ They have forgotten what they are. They demand independence and freest realization of their own individuality, in which they see the sole source of greatness and progress. In every dependence they perceive a hampering of their natural development.
We have in previous chapters become acquainted with this liberal freedom, particularly in reasoning and in scientific research, the child of the philosophy of humanitarianism and subjectivism, the philosophy that emancipates man from God's rule, from the immutable religious truths, and which sees in this emancipation perfect freedom. ”

“ The genius, that bold and glorious genius inspired by liberty, was gone; and the trial to restore learning, without restoring liberty, only served to shew that they who would do good to a community, which is ill constituted or corrupted, must either begin with the government, and alter or reform that, or despair of success. ”

“ Having won complete intellectual emancipation for himself, he desired that others should share the same benefit; and wherever the cause of intellectual liberty seemed to be in danger, there he was ready to come forward in its defense. ”

“ The tendency of the modern intellect to independence in its own peculiar sphere of thinking and knowing, cannot fail to work itself out energetically. In this sphere it leads naturally to that view of human reasoning called subjectivism: the thinking or reasoning subject is its own law, the autonomous creator and guide of its thought. Herein lies the essential presumption, the very core, of the liberal freedom of science. ”

“ Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of forming a separate class of mankind on the basis of high intellectual power. At best it is but a higher development of innate gifts common to all. ”