Liberty of thought

“ 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. ”

“ By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think right and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we endeavor to arrive at truth. If we know the truth already, we need not think. ”

“ Now by Liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place. Among such matters are first principles of whatever kind; and of these the most sacred and momentous are especially to be reckoned the truths of Revelation. ”

“ Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have the same right to think, and all are equally interested in the great questions of origin and destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty thought and expression. ”

“ Leidy we find entire scientific and intellectual liberty of thought, with that love of justice and truth which keeps its possessor from arrogance and intolerance, leading him with humility to “prove all things and hold fast to truth.” ”

“ What does concern us is this, that thereby there should come into consciousness as content the sense that man has liberty in his spirit as the altogether absolute, that free-will is the Notion of man. Freedom is just thought itself; he who casts thought aside and speaks of freedom knows not what he is talking of. The unity of thought with itself is freedom, the free will. ”

“ The essential freedom of will is, and must always be, a thought: hence the way by which will can make itself objective mind is to rise to be a thinking will,—to give itself the content which it can only have as it thinks itself.
True liberty, in the shape of moral life, consists in the will finding its purpose in a universal content, not in subjective or selfish interests. ”

“ The possession of reason or rationality, together with mental liberty, is essential to man as man: without it he would be a stock or a statue, or but as one of the lower animals,—either inanimate or irrational. But rationality and liberty imply the power of thought and of choice—the power to turn to this side or that, to look upward or downward, to turn to God or from God. ”

“ 'Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; ”

“ Just this want of connection, this anarchy, in the phenomena, making them useless to the understanding, is what makes them valuable to reason. The more they are disorderly the more they represent the freedom of nature. In a sense, if you suppress all connection, you have independence. Thus, under the idea of liberty, reason brings back to unity of thought that which the understanding could not bring to unity of notion. It thus shows its superiority over the understanding, as a faculty subject to the conditions of a sensuous order. ”

“ Liberty, like intelligence, like all substance and all force, is necessarily determined,—that is, it has its forms and its attributes. Now, while in matter the form and the attribute are inherent in and contemporary with substance, in liberty the form is given by three external agents, as it were,—the human essence, the laws of thought, exercise or education. GRACE, in fine, like its opposite, TEMPTATION, indicates precisely the fact of the determination of liberty. ”

“ 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 believe there is room everywhere for thought, and the more liberty you give away the more you will have. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This doctrine endeavours to hold forth an act, as at once original and yet derived, as given and yet not compulsatory or necessitated, as free and yet caused. No wonder that human liberty, embodied in an act of this kind, should halt upon both feet, and harbour in the dingiest lurking-places of a perplexed and vacillating metaphysic, a thing not to be scrutinized too narrowly. ”

“ Liberty of soul, freedom from all partial and misrepresentative doctrine which does but relieve one element in our experience at the cost of another, freedom from all embarrassment alike of regret for the past and of calculation on the future: this would be but preliminary to the real business of education—insight, insight through culture, into all that the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly in its presence. ”

“ For how is it possible for any man to establish his views of the freedom of the will, if he is not at sufficient pains to explain his meaning of the terms, and forbears even to give his own definition of them?
But the truth is, the author of the “Inquiry” has placed it beyond all controversy, that he has been guilty of no such omission or evasion. He has left no room to doubt that the definition of liberty, which he says is in conformity “with the common notion of mankind,” is his own. He always uses this definition when he undertakes to repel objections against his scheme of necessity. ”

“ What application, then, has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and, in particular, what assistance does it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty, that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law, and justice, loosened from their mighty span would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? ”

“ Little by little an idea crept into men’s minds, an idea which was the negation of all the limits within which the world had lived until then; an idea which was bound to upset the conception of social and moral life; the idea of liberty, applied to religion, culture, and politics. ”

“ We refer liberty, therefore, to the noblest principle, to the action of the intelligence182; we regard as free only the decisions whose principle it is, and as voluntary, only the desires it inspires. ”

“ But lest it should be urged that man, although perhaps really free, is yet incompetent to form a true and adequate conception of Liberty, and that, therefore, his freedom must, in any event, be for him as though it were not ”

“ Granting these two principles, the inert and the self-directive, the necessary and the free, we obtain the materials for a universe, without disputing the fact of human liberty and bringing into suspicion even the possibility either of morality or immorality. ”

“ But on the other hand, every one of us has to admit that the experience of life has confirmed the belief in our freedom which for a moment had been shaken by doubt and perplexity; and that faith, instinctive and incoercible, outlives every time the onslaughts of negation.
By liberty we mean that power peculiar to man by which he moulds himself into his actual being and originates the series of facts in which every one of his actions becomes manifest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we have made that discovery, and are steadily acting upon it, we are free indeed, and with this new liberty there grows a clear sense and conviction of a wise, loving Power which, while leaving us our own free will, is always tenderly guiding us. ”

“ And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know. ”

“ 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? ”

“ For what purpose did God create rational and intellectual natures? for activity certainly. But rational and intellectual liberty is indispensible to rational and intellectual action.—For what purpose has God distributed among men talents so various, and manifold? ”

“ Hence have likewise arisen those mistakes about what is usually called "Liberty of Conscience"; which, properly speaking, is no more than a liberty of knowing our own thoughts; which liberty no one can take from us. ”

“ Thus, then, we have now shown in what way a correct conception of human liberty is to be framed; or, in other words, we have pointed out the grounds upon which man's freedom is possible. It is possible, because the particular act described as identical and convertible with it, namely, an act of determinate antagonism against the natural or unconscious man, can, at any rate, be conceived. But admitting that it may be conceived, we must now ask, Is it also practised? Is Human Liberty actual as well as possible? ”

“ The ordinary conception of liberty, as a capacity bestowed upon a given or created being, of choosing and following any one of two or more courses of action, is no conception at all, but is an inconceivability. ”

“ Terms change their meaning, ideas move through a development of their own; nothing stands still here more than elsewhere. Intelligent conscience and educated reason are the only things which can maintain liberty, for they will constantly be needed for new cases and new problems. ”

“ This will to liberty is no longer an impulse which demands its satisfaction, but the permanent character—the spiritual consciousness grown into a non-impulsive nature. But this freedom, which the content and aim of freedom has, is itself only a notion—a principle of the mind and heart, intended to develope into an objective phase, into legal, moral, religious, and not less into scientific actuality. ”

“ The first sophism consists in asking ourselves if there is such a thing as duty in the abstract, or if this word does not cover one of the numerous illusions of our forefathers. For duty, in truth, supposes liberty, and the question of liberty leads us into metaphysics. How can we talk of liberty so long as this grave problem of free-will is not solved? ”

“ The practical solution of the problem of Human Liberty, will be seen to be given, in the development of these two grand epochs of consciousness.
In the first place, then, let us contemplate man in his paradisiacal state. ”

“ At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. ”

“ At this point, like the other great eighteenth-century notions which are also true relatively when referred back to the mediæval notions which they were intended to combat, the notion of abstract liberty turns into an independent dogma claiming full philosophical truth and authority. ”

“ This is modern freedom, a hybrid of freedom and bondage, of sophistry and contradiction, of arrogance and barrenness of thought, which will exert its rule over the minds as long as they are guided by half-thinking. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But can it be maintained that the same truth holds good of our consciousness of freedom? Is it possible to hold that determinist arguments are of so convincing a character as to enable us to perceive at the moment of action the untrustworthy nature of our consciousness that we are free to choose between alternatives and to grasp beneath the appearance the underlying necessity which rules our wills? Our actual consciousness of freedom is not seriously disputed. ”

“ As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved from all danger of any arbitrary interference from the physical world, has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, the material world. ”

“ And so one after another life conquered new abilities. It's abilities, not rights, that constitute liberty. Think how many fake experiments life made before it turned out a man. The same process is going on to-day. ”