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A SHORT HISTORY

FREETHOUGHT

ANCIENT AND MODERN

JOHN M. /ROBERTSON

LONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. I.'

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
1899

LONDON
PRINTED BY A. BONNER, I & 2 TOOK's COUNT
CHANCKRY LANE, EX.

« i
. . .

i . .

2?50
"R545

I 893

SYDNEY ANSELL GIMSON

384S97

ERRATA.
i
Page 49. — For § 5 read \ 6, and so on to end of chapter.

l'age 232, note 2. — For Gricciardini read Guicciardini.

1'nge 280, line 1. — For equi vogue read equivoque.

CONTENTS.

Contents .......

Preface . . . . • .

Chap. I. — Introductory.

§ i. Origin and Meaning of the Word

§ 2. Previous histories

§ 3. The Psychology of Freethought

Chap. II. — Primitive Freethinking

Chap. III-

§ 1.
§2.

*3-

§4-

$5-
§6.

§7-
§8.
§9.

Chap. IV.-

§ '

§2.

§3-
V.-

Chap

§ *■

§2-

§3-
§4.

$5-
§6.

§7-
5 8.

- Progress under Ancient Religions.
Early Association and Competition of Cults
The Process in India
Mesopotamia
Ancient Persia
Egypt
Phoenicia .
Ancient China
Mexico and Peru
The Common Forces of Degeneration

—Relative Freethought in Israel.
The early Hebrews
The interpolated prophetic literature
The post-exilic literature .

-Freethought in Greece
Beginnings of Ionic Culture
Homer, Pindar, and .lEschylus
The Culture-Conditions .
From Thales to the Eleatic School
Pythagoras and Magna Graecia
From Anaxagoras to Diagoras .
Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle .
Post-Alexandrian Greece .

Chap. VI. — Freethought in Ancient Rome.
$ 1. Culture Beginnings, to Ennius .
$ 2.. Lucretius, Cicero, Caesar .
$ j. Decline under the Empire
§ 4. The higher Pagan ethics .

PAGE

vii
xiii

1
6
9

36
39
44
49
53
59
63

75
8r

90
92

94
96
99
103
107
in
12.'

128

13-
137
142

VI] 1

CONTENTS.

Chap.

VII
M

§3
§4
$5
§6

— Ancient Christianity and its Opponents
Freethought in the Gospels
The Epistles .....
Anti-pagan rationalism
Rationalistic heresy ....
Anti-christian thought : its decline
The intellectual and moral decadence

Chap. VIII. —Freethought under Islam.

. § i.. Mohammed and his Contemporaries

§ 2. The Influence of the Koran

§ 3. Saracen Freethought in the East

§ 4. El-Marri and Omar Khayyam .

. § 5. Arab Philosophy and Moorish Freethought

§ 6. Rationalism in later Islam

Chap. IX. — Christendom in the Middle Ages.

§2-

§3-
U-
§5-
§6.

§7-
§8.

Chap. X-

M-

§3-
§4-

§5-

Chap. XI,
J 1.

§2.

Vigilantius.

Jovinian. Aerius.

Iconoclasm. Leo. Photius. Michael.

The early Paulicians .......

Claudius. Agobard. John Scotus. Berengar. Roscelin
The Paulicians (Cathari) in Western Europe .
The crusade against Albigensian heresy .
Anti-clerical literature and new heresy ....

Freethought in the Schools: Abailard : Jews: Averroists:
the restrictions ........

-Freethought in the Renaissance.

Italy. Saracen Sources. Dante on unbelief in a future
state. Boccaccio. Petrarch. Anti-clericalism. Pulci.
Executions for blasphemy. Machiavelli. Pomponazzi

England. Roger Bacon. Piers Ploughman. Lollardry.
Wiclif and anti-Scripturists. Reginald Pecock .

Fiance. Political Conditions. New Universities. Popular
ferment. Chivalry and the Knights Templars. Free-
masons ..........

Occam. Marsiglio. Aureol.
of Sebonde. Nicolaus of

France. Higher Thought.

Durand. Raymund

Autricuria
Germany. Popular poetry.

Master Eckhart The Nether-

lands and Spain. Averroism in Italy ....

-The Reformation.

General causes and antecedents. Italy. Savonarola.
Lollardism. English developments. Geographical
distribution of the movement .....

Protestant intolerance. Luther. Calvin and Servetus.
Swiss developments. Ochino. Valentinus Gentilis .

145
149
150

155
160

165

171
i75
i77
185

1 Si)

192

195-
196
197
199
202
210
21G

219

224

234

240-

245

247

250-

254

CONTENTS. IX

VAC.E

§ 3. Negative effects of Reformation. Huss and Jerome.
Lutheranism. Dutch developments. Grotius. Rise
of freethinking heresy 258

Chap. XII. — The Rise of Modern Freethought.

§ 1. Fresh developments in Italy. Unitarianism. Italian

influence in England 262

§ 2. France. Rabelais. Dolet. Bonaventure des Periers.
Marguerite of Navarre. Ronsard. Bodin. Orthodox
resistance. Montaigne. Charron. La Mothe le Vayer . 264

§ 3. England. Heresy. Reginald Scot. Elizabeth. Hamond.
Kett. Marlowe. Raleigh. Harriott. Shakspere.
The drama. Davies. Orthodox reaction . . . 274

§ 4. Germany. Deadlock of forces. Retrogression. The
Thirty Years' War. Knutzen. Spain. The Inquisition.
Expulsion of Jews and Moriscoes. Literature . . 280

§ 5. Movement of science and philosophy. Copernicus.
Bruno. Vanini. Sanchez. Galileo. Resistance to
Aristotelianism. Ramus. Bacon. Descartes . . 286

Chap. XIII. — The English Deistic Movement.

§ 1. Herbert. Hobbes 296

§ 2. Heresies during the Rebellion and the Commonwealth.
The Restoration and Deism. Blount. Orthodox
resistance 299

§3. Browne. Glanvill. Influence of Descartes. Unitarianism.

Burnet. Craig. Connor ...... 305

§4. Toland. Strife of theistic schools. Orthodox attacks on

Freethinkers ......... 307

§ 5. Collins. Mardeville. Woolston. Tindal. Pitt. Chubb.

Morgan. Dodwell. Status of the Deistic movement 311

§ 6. Defences by Butler and Law. Hume. Conditions in
Scotland. Execution of Aikenhead. New commer-
cialism in England. Fresh heresy. Hive. Annet.
Bishop Clayton. Indifferentism. Wesleyanism. The
universities. Shaftesbury. Raised status of Deism.
Smith. Middleton. Bolingbroke. Voltaire. Gibbon.
Pitt the Younger. Erasmus Darwin. Paine . . 316

Chap. XIV. — European Freethought from Descartes to the

French Revolution.
§ I. France and Holland.

1. The situation before Descartes . . .326

2. Descartes' influence. Malherbe. Moliere 327

3. Pascal. Bossuet. Huet ... 328

4. Gassendi and his group ....

5. St. Evremond. Regnard. Fontenelle . . . 330
6„ R. Simon. Peyrere 331

CONTENTS.

§3

8.
9-

10.

ii.

12.

13
14.

15-

16.

17-

Chap

Spinoza. Resistance and Progress in Holland

Fresh heresy. ......

Bayle. Passerani. Berkenhout

Spinozism in France. Catholic decadence. Fene

Ion's mysticism ......

Voltaire

Miscellaneous propaganda. The resistance. Pre

valence of Deism. Rousseau
The intellectual development. Montesquieu and

Voltaire .....

The new materialism

Diderot

D'Alembert and d'Holbach
Volney. Dupuis. Condorcet
Freethought in the Revolution

(ii) Predominance of Deism and orthodoxy
Gregoire. The clerical resistance

(b) The Convention and the Cult of Reason

Theistic nature of the movement

$ 2. Germany.

1. Spinozism and anti-Sj inozism

Leibnitz ......

His Influence .....

Wolff and his influence .

Effect of English and French thought

Frederick the Great ....

Nicolai. Schade. Edelmann. Bahrdt. Basedow

Eberhardt, etc. . .
Lessing and Reimarus
Rise of theological rationalism
Goethe ......

Schiller

Kant ......

The remaining European States.
1. Scandinavia

Poland and Russia .

Italian revival .

Beccaria ...

Italian deists. Checks to the Papacy

Spain and Switzerland .

XV.— Early Freethought in the United States.
The Revolutionary Leaders
Franklin ......

|. -fin-son. Adams. Washington

Paine's development

His treatment ....

2.
3-
4-
5-
6.

9-
10.
11.
12.

3-
4-

5-
6.

1.
2.
3
4-

5-.

332

334

335
336

339

344
346
34«
349
35o
35i

352

354
355

355
35^
357
358
359
360

362
3^3
3<H
365

367
3<38

370
37'
372
373
374
375

376
376
377
379
380

CONTENTS.

PAGE
382

6. Reticence of later American heretics

7. Lincoln and his contemporaries .....

Chap. XVI. — Freethought in the Nineteenth Century.
Its complexity. Sketch of the Forces at Work

i. Forces of Criticism, etc • . .

ii. Modern Science and its phases .....

Forces of retardation .......

Part I. — The Culture Forces.
} 1. Popular Propaganda.

1. England. Democracy and Freethought. Annet.

Paine. Carlile. Taylor. Southwell. Hone .

2. Robert Owen. G. J. Holyoake. Bradlaugh. G. \V.

Foote. Mrs. Besant. Effects on laws

3. America. Ingersoll. France. Fourier. St. Simon.

A. Comte. Journalism in Europe, England, and
America ........

4. Catholic Countries. Belgium. Spain. Portugal.

France. Italy. Germany. United States.
Peru. Freemasonry and organisation

5. " Free Religious " movements. South Place

Institute. Protestant churches on the Continent
<J 2. Scholarly and other Biblical Criticism.

1. German "rationalism." English, American and

French work .....

2. Old Testament Criticism. Geddes. Colenso

.Kuenen. Wellhausen. Progress within the
Churches. New Testament Criticism

3. Effects of Assyriology .....
$ 3. The Natural Sciences.

1. Astronomy and cosmology ....

2. Geology ........

3. Zoology and Biology. Darwin

4. The Evolution theory. Chambers. Darwin

Wallace. Haeckel

§ 4. Abstract Philosophy and Ethics.

1. Kant. Hegel. Schopenhauer. Hartmann. Nietzsche

2. Feuerbach. Buchner ....

3. Comte. Taine .....

4. Bentham. J. Mill. Grote. Economics

5. Himilton. Mansel. Spencer. Green .

6. Coleridge Maurice. Parr .

7. Ethical movement in Protestant Churches
§ 5. The Sociological Sciences.

1. Early systems. Goguet. Herder. Kant. The
Scotch School. Guizot. Salverte. C. Comte.
A. Comte. Draper. Buckle. Spencer. Recent
developments ....... 4°5

383

383
384

385

385
387

389

390
39i

39^

393
394

395
396
397

398

399
400
401
402

403
404

4°5

Xll

CONTENTS.

2. Anthropology and mythology .

3. Psychology. Early phrenology

§ 6. Poetry and Fine Letters.

1. Chateaubriand and the reaction

2. Michelet. The French novelists

3. The French poets .....

4. The English Poets : Shelley to Swinburne

5. English Fiction .....

6. Fine Letters in the United States .

7. Leopardi. Kleist. Heine. German fiction

8. Fine Letters in Russia and Scandinavia .

Part II. — The State of Thought in the Nations
$ 1. Britain and the United States

§2
§3

The Catholic Countries .
Germany ....
Russia and Scandinavia .
The Oriental Civilisations

Conclusion
Index

PAGE

406
407

40S
409
4IO
4II
412
413
4Li
■414

415
416

425
426
429
430

434
433

PREFACE.

Short histories are perhaps not among the best of
disciplines; and the History of Freethought is at least
as hard to write justly or master intelligently in short
compass as any other. At the same time, the concise
history, which is a different thing from the epitomes
denounced by Bacon, has its advantages ; and I have
striven in this case to guard somewhat against the
disadvantages by habitual citation of authorities, and
by the frequent brief discussion, in paragraphs in smaller
type, of disputed and theoretical matters. These dis-
cussions can be skipped by the unleisured reader, and
weighed by the student, at pleasure, the general narrative
in larger type going on continuously.

Such a book could not be written without much use
of the works of specialists in the history of religion and
philosophy, or without debt to many other culture-
historians. These debts, I think, are pretty fully indicated
in the notes ; from which it will also appear, I hope, that
I have striven to check my authorities throughout, and to
make the reader aware of most occasions for doubt on
matters of historic fact. The generalisation of the subject
matter is for the most part my own affair. I must
acknowledge, however, one debt which would not other-
wise appear on the face of the book — that, namely, which
I owe to my dead friend, J. M. Wheeler, for the many
modern clues yielded by his Biographical Dictionary of
Freethinkers, a work which stands for an amount of
nomadic research that only those who have worked over
the ground can well appreciate.

XIV PREFACE.

Among the many difficulties which press on the writer
of such a work as the present, is that of setting up a
standard of inclusion and exclusion. Looking back, I am
conscious of some anomalies. It would on some counts
have been not inappropriate, for instance, to name as a
practical freethinker Leonardo da Vinci, who struck
out new paths on so many lines of science. On the other
hand, one might be accused of straining the evidence in
claiming as a freethinker a man not known to have avowed
any objection to the teaching of the Church. Difficulties
arise, again, in the case of such a writer as Cardan, who
figured for orthodox apologists as a freethinker, but who
seems to make more for credulity than for rational
doubt ; and in the case of such a writer as the pro-
ecclesiastical Campanella, who, while writing against
atheism, and figuring only in politics as a disturber, reasons
on various issues in a rationalistic sense. I can but press
the difficulty of drawing the line, and admit ground for
criticism. It has been remarked by Reuss that Paulus, a
professed rationalist, fought for the Pauline authorship
of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the very year in which
Tholuck, a reconverted evangelical, gave up the Pauline
authorship as hopeless ; that when Schleiermacher, a
believer in inspiration, denied the authenticity of the
Epistle to Timothy, the rationalist Wegscheider opposed
him ; and that the rationalist (of a sort) Eichhorn main-
tained the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch long
after the supernaturalist Yater had disproved it.1
Analogous anomalies will be found noted in our text ;
but it cannot be pretended that all even of the prominent
cases of incidental freethinking on the part of the
nominally orthodox are recorded ; and I cannot pretend

1 Kouss, History of the Canon, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 387.

PREFACE. XV

to be able to detect all the cases of undue conservatism
among the professed freethinkers. It must suffice to try
to note the general movement.

Another anomaly to be apologised for is the incon-
sistency in the spellings of some Greek and other proper
names. My first intention was to spell all courageously
after the originals; but, like so many others, I found
myself constrained to compromise. Mr. John Owen, I
find, had the courage for Pyrrhon and Zenon, but not
for Platon. It is easy to write Sokrates ; but if we speak
of Loukianos we are apt to miss, with many readers,
the first purpose of history. It had perhaps been better,
in such a work as the present, to abide by all the old
conventions, grievous as they often are.

The relative brevity with which the manifold free-
thought of the nineteenth century is treated in the
concluding chapter has been a disquietude to me, and
may be to some readers a grievance. It was however
quite impossible for me to exceed a summary account
without entirely over-balancing the volume ; and on
all accounts the history of rationalism in the modern
scientific period seems to need a volume to itself.
Despite much labor spent on scrutiny, there doubtless
remain in the following chapters only too many errors
and oversights. Any specifications of these will be
gratefully received.

John M. Robertson.
April, 1S99.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHL

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

§ I. Origin and Meaning of the Word.

The words Freethinking and Freethinker first appear in
English literature about the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, and seem to have originated there and then, as we
do not find them earlier in French or in Italian,1 the only
other modern literatures wherein the phenomena for
which the words stand had previously arisen.

Apart from Diiste, which had begun to come into use about
the middle of the sixteenth century,2 and Naturalistc, of which
Lechler traces back the Latin form as far as a manuscript of
Bodin, dated 1588, the earlier French terms were esprit fort
and libcrtin, the latter being used in the sense of a religious
doubter by Corneille, Moliere, and Bayle. It seems to have
first come into use as one of the hostile names for the
" Brethren of the Free Spirit ", a pantheistic and generally
heretical sect which became prominent in the thirteenth
century, and flourished widely, despite destructive persecution,
till the fifteenth. Their doctrine being antinomian, and their
practice often extravagant, they were accused by Churchmen
of licentiousness, so that in their case the name Libertini had
its full latitude of application. In the sixteenth century the
name of Libertines is found borne, voluntarily or otherwise,
by a similar sect, probably springing from some remnant of
the first, but calling themselves Spirituales, who came into

1 Cp. Lechler, Geschichtc des engUschen Deistnus, iS.jr, S. 45S; Farrar,
Critical History of Freethought, iSC^, p. 5S8 ; Larousse's Dictionnaire,
libre pensie.

• Layle, Dictionnaire, art. Viret, Note D.

2 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

notice in Flanders, were favored in France by Marguerite
of Navarre, sister of Francis I, and became to some extent
associated with sections of the Reformed Church. They were
attacked by Calvin in the Instructio adversus fanaticam ct
furiosam Scctam Libertinorum qui se Spirituales vocant, in his
Tractatus Theologici.1 The same name of Libertini was either
fastened on or adopted by the main body of Calvin's opponents
in Geneva. They were accused by him of general depravity, a
judgment not at all to be acquiesced in, in view of the
controversial habits of the age ; but they probably included
antinomian Christians and orderly non-Christians as well as
orthodox lovers of freedom and libertines in the modern sense.
As the first Brethren of the Free Spirit, so-called, seem to have
appeared in Italy (where they are supposed to have derived,
like the Waldenses, from the immigrant Paulicians of the
Eastern Church), the name Libertini presumably originated
there. But in Renaissance Italy an unbeliever seems usually
to have been called simply citeo, or infedele, or pagano. " The
standing phrase was non aver fede."2 In England, as late as
Elizabeth's reign, " infidel " seems to have commonly signified
only a Jew or heathen or Mohammedan, being used only in
that sense by Shakspere, as by Milton in his verse. Milton,
however, had used it in the modern sense in his prose ; and it
was at times so used even by early Elizabethans."

In England, as in the rest of Europe, however, the
phenomenon of Freethought had existed, in specific form,
long before it found any generic name save those of
Atheism and Infidelity; and the process of naming was as
fortuitous as it generally is in matters of intellectual
evolution. In 1667 we find Sprat, the historian of the
Royal Society, describing the activity of that body as
having arisen or taken its special direction through the
conviction that in science as in warfare better results had
been obtained by a "free way" than by methods not so
describable.4 As Sprat is careful to insist, the members

^losheim, Eccles. Hist., Cent. XIII, Part ii, ch. v, §$ 9- '2, and notes ;
Cent. XIV, Part ii, ch. v. §§3-5 ; Cent. XVI, Sect }, Part ii, ch. ii, } J 38-42.

2Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892, p. 542, note.

8 If Mr. Froude's transcript of a manuscript can here be relied on
History, ed. 1872, xi, 199.

* History of the Royal Society, 1G67, p. 73. Describing the beginnings o
the Society, Sprat remarks that Oxford had at that time many members
" who had begun a free way of reasoning " (p. 53).

INTRODUCTOKY. 3

of the Royal Society, though looked at askance by most
•of the clergy1 and other pietists, were not as such to be
classed as unbelievers, the leading members being strictly
orthodox ; but a certain number seem to have shown
scant concern for religion ;'" and while it was one of the
Society's first rules not to debate any theological question
whatever,3 the intellectual atmosphere of the time was
such that some among those who followed the "free way"
in matters of natural science would be more than likely
to apply it to more familiar problems.4 It was probably,
then, a result of this express assertion of the need and
value of freedom in the mental life that the name Free-
thinker came into use in the last quarter of the century.
When the orthodox Boyle pushed criticism in physical
science under such a title as The Sceptical Chemist, the
principle could not well be withheld from application to
religion ; and it lay in the nature of the case that the
name "Freethinker", like that of "Sceptic", should come
to attach itself specially to those who doubted where
doubt was most resented and most resisted. At length
the former term became specific.

Before " Deism " came into English vogue, the names for
unbelief, even deistic, were simply " infidelity " and " atheism " ;
e.g., Bishop Fotherby's Atheomastix (1622); Baxter's Unreason-
ableness of Infidelity (1655), and Reasons of the Christian Religion
(1667) passim. Stillingfleet's Letter to a Deist (1677) appears to be
the first published attack on Deism by name. Cudworth, in his
True Intellectual System of the Universe (written 1671, published
1678), does not speak of Deism, attacking only Atheism, and
was himself suspected of Socinianism. W. Sherlock, in his
Practical Discourse of Religious Assemblies (2nd ed., 1682), attacks
" Atheists and Infidels ", but says nothing of " Deists ". The
term Atheist was often applied at random at this period ; but
Atheism did exist.

1 Buckle, Introd. to Hist, of Civ. in Eng., 3-vol. ed.. i, 371.

2 Sprat, p. 375 (printed as 367).

'AId., p. 83. The French Academy had the same rule.

4 Some of Sprat's uses of the term have a very general sense, as when
he writes (p. 87) that " Amsterdam is a place of Trade without the mixture
of men of freer thoughts". The latter is an old application, as in "the
free sciences" or " the liberal arts ".

B J

4 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

The first certain instance thus far noted of the use of the
term " Freethinker" is in a letter of Molyneux to Locke, dated
April 6, 1697 (Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several
of his Friends, 170S, p. 190), where Toland is spoken of as a
" candid free thinker ". In an earlier letter, dated Dec. 24,
1695, Molyneux speaks of a certain book on religion as some-
what lacking in " freedom of thought " (Id. p. 133). In the
New Dictionary, a citation is given from the title-page of
S. Smith's brochure, The Religious Impostor .... dedicated to
Doctor S-l-m-n and the rest of the new Religious Fraternity of
Freethinkers, near Leather-Sellers Hall. Printed .... in the first
year of Grace and Freethinking, conjecturally dated 1692. It is
thought to refer to the sect of " Freeseekers " mentioned in
Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation (iii, 56) under date 1693. In
that case it is not unbelievers that are in question. In Swift's
Sentiments of a Church of England Man (170S) the word is found
definitely and abusively connoting religious unbelief: "The
atheists, libertines, despisers of religion, that is to say, all those
who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers " ; Steele
and Addison so use it in the Tatler in 1709 (Nos. 12, in, 135) ;
and Leslie so uses the term in his Truth of Christianity Demon-
strated (1711).

It was not till 17 13, however, that Anthony Collins'
Discourse of Free-Thinking, occasion' d by the Rise and
Growth of a Sect called Free-Thinkers, gave the word a
universal notoriety, and brought it into established
currency in controversy, with the normal significance of
*' Deist ", Collins having entirely repudiated Atheism.
Even after this date, and indeed in full conformity with
the definition in Collins' opening sentence, Ambrose
Philips took The Freethinker as the title of a weekly
journal (begun in 171S) on the lines of the Spectator, with
no heterodox leaning,1 the contributors including Boulter,
afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the son of lushop
Burnet. But despite this attempt to keep the word Free-
thinking as ;i name for simple freedom from prejudice in
secular affairs, the tendency to specialise it as aforesaid
was irresistible. As names go, it was on the whole a good
one; and the bitterness with which it was generally

1 Cp. Johnson on A Philips in Lives of the Poets. Swift, too, issued his
Free Thoughts upon the Present State vf Affairs in 1714.

INTRODUCTORY. 5

handled on the orthodox side showed that its implicit
claim was felt to be disturbing, though some antagonists
of course claimed from the first that they were as "free",
under the law of right reason, as any sceptic.1 At this
time of day, the word may be allowed prescriptive stand-
ing, as having no more drawbacks than most other names
for schools of thought or attitudes of mind, and as having
been admitted into most European languages. The ques-
tion-begging element is not greater in this than in many
other terms of similar intention, such as Rationalism ;
and it incurs no such charge of absurdity as lies against
the invidious religious term, " Infidelity ".

For practical purposes, then, Freethought may be de-
fined as a conscious reaction against some phase or phases
of conventional or traditional doctrine in religion — on the
one hand, a claim to think freely, in the sense not of
disregard for logic but of special loyalty to it, on problems
to which the past course of things has given a great
intellectual and practical importance ; on the other hand,
the actual practice of such thinking. This sense, which
is substantially agreed on, will on one or other side suffi-
ciently cover those phenomena of early or rudimentary
Freethinking which wear the guise of simple concrete
•opposition to given doctrines or systems, whether by way
of special demur or of the obtrusion of a new cult or
•doctrine. In either case, the claim to think in a measure
freely is implicit in the criticism or the new affirmation :
and such primary movements of the mind cannot well be
separated, in psychology or in history, from the fully
•conscious practice of criticism in the spirit of pure truth-
seeking, or from the claim that such free examination is
profoundly important to moral and intellectual health.
Modern Freethought, specially so-called, is only one of
the developments of the slight primary capacity of man to
doubt, to reason, to improve on past thinking, to assert

1 Thus Bentley, writing as Philcleutherus Lipsiensis against Collins,
claims to have been " train'd up and exercis'd in Free Thought from my
youth ".

O HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

his personality as against even sacrosanct and menacing
authority. Concretely considered, it has proceeded by
the support and stimulus of successive accretions of actual
knowledge ; and the modern consciousness of its own
abstract importance emerged by way of an impression or
inference from certain social phenomena, as well as in
terms of self-asserting instinct. There is no break in its
evolution from primitive mental states any more than
in the evolution of the natural sciences from primitive
observation. What particularly accrues to the state of
conscious and systematic discrimination, in the one case
as in the other, is just the immense gain in security of
possession.

§ 2. Previous Histories.

It is somewhat remarkable that this phenomenon has
thus far had no general historic treatment save at the
hands of ecclesiastical writers who regarded it solely as a
form of more cr less perverse hostility to their own creed.
The modern scientific study of religions, which has yielded
so many instructive surveys, almost of necessity excludes
from view the specific phenomenon of Freethought, which
in the religion-making periods is to be traced rather by its
religious results than by any record of its expression. All
histories of philosophy, indeed, in some degree necessarily
recognise it ; and such a work as Lange's History of
Materialism may be regarded as part — whether or not
sound in its historical treatment — of a complete history
of Freethought, dealing specially with general philosophic
problems. But of Freethought as a revision or rejection
of current religious doctrines by more or less practical
people, we have no regular history by a professed Free-
thinker, though there are many monographs.

The useful compilation of Mr. Charles Watts, entitled
Freethought: Its Rise, Progress, and Triumph (n.d.), deals with
Freethought in relation only to Christianity. Apart from
treatises which hroadly sketch the development of know-
ledge and of opinion, the nearest approaches to a general

INTRODUCTORY. 7

historic treatment are the Dictionnaire dcs Athees of Sylvain
Marechal (1800: 3e edit., par J. B. L. Germond, 1853) and the
Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers by the late Joseph
Mazzini Wheeler. The quaint work of Marechal, expanded by
his friend Lalande, exhibits much learning, but is made partly
fantastic by its sardonic plan of including a number of religion-
ists (including Job, John, and Jesus Christ !) some of whose
utterances are held to lead logically to Atheism. Mr. Wheeler's
book is in every respect the more trustworthy.

In defence of Marechal's method, it may be noted that the
prevailing practice of Christian apologists had been to impute
Atheism to heterodox theistic thinkers of all ages at every oppor-
tunity. The Historia universalis A theismi et A theorum falso et merito
suspcctorum of J. F. Reimmann (Hildesiae, 1725) exhibits this
habit both in its criticism and in its practice, as do the Theses
dc Atheismo et Superstitione of Buddeus (Trajecti ad Rhenum,
1716). These were the standard treatises of their kind for last
century, and seem to be the earliest systematic treatises in the
nature of a History of Freethought, excepting a Historia Natura-
lismi by A. Tribbechov (Jenae, 1700) and a Historia Atheismi
breviter delineata by Jenkinus Thomasius (Basileas, 1709). In the
same year with Reimmann's Historia appeared J. A. Fabricius'
Delectus A rgumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum qui veritatem religionis
Christiana; advcrsus Atheos, Epicureos, Deistas, sen Naluralistas
.... asseruerunt (Hamburgi), in which it is contended (cap. viii)
that many philosophers have been falsely described as Atheists;
but in the Frcydenker Lexikon of J. A. Trinius (Leipzig, 1759),
planned as a supplement to the work of Fabricius, are included
such writers as Sir Thomas Browne and Dryden.

The works of the late Rev. John Owen, Evenings with the
Skeptics, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, and. Skeptics of the French
Renaissance, which, though not constituting a literary whole,
collectively cover a great deal of historical ground, must be ex-
pressly excepted from the above characterisation of clerical his-
tories of Freethought, in respect of their liberality of view.

In English, apart from studies of given periods and of
the progress of science and culture, the only so-called
Histories of Freethought are those of Bishop Van Mildert,
the Rev. J. E. Riddle, and Mr. Adam Storey Farrar. Van
Mildert's Historical View of the Rise and Progress of Infi-
delity1 constituted the Boyle Lectures for 1802-5 '■> Mr-

1 Second ed. with enlarged Appendix 'of authorities and references)
1808, 2 vols.

8 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

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 biblio-
graphical clues; but the virulence of Van Mildert deprives
his treatise of rational weight ; Mr. Riddle, who in any
case professes to give only 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 compre-
hensive 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.1

Writers so placed, indeed, could not well be expected
to contemplate Freethought scientifically as an aspect of
mental evolution common to all civilisations, 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, ■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 pro-
posed 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

1 Farrar, prcf, p, x ; Riddle, p. 99 ; Van Mildert, i, 105, etc.

2 Van Mildert even recast his first manuscript. See the Memoir of
Joshua Watson, 1863, p. 35.

INTRODUCTORY. 9

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 Fvccthinking.

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. 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 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 belief1 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 resent-
ment 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

1 Its legitimacy on that side is expressly contended for by Professor
William James in his volume The Will to Believe (1897), tne positions of
which have been criticised by the present writer in the University Magazine,
April and June, 1898.

10 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

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 sugges-
tion because it clashes with something he already believes.
The 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
generalisation.

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 atmo-
sphere. But everything goes to show that Freethinking
normally proceeds by way of intellectual construction,
that is, by way of effort to harmonise one position with
another — to modify a special dogma to the general run of
one's thinking. The attitude of pure scepticism on a
wide scale is really very rare — much rarer than the philo-
sophic 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 —
;i form of explanation, that is ; such being much more
truly a process of construction than would be the imposi-
tion of a new scheme of dogma. In point of fact, they
are often accused, and by the same critics, of an undue

INTRODUCTORY. II

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 negro
or 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.

It is not, of course, suggested that such is the normal
or frequent course of believing Christians ; but it has
been so often enough to make the "libertine" theory of
unbelief untenable. In all ages there have been anti-
nomian Christians, whether of the sort that simply rest
on the "seventy times seven" of the Gospel, or of the
more articulately logical kind who dwell on the doctrine
of faith versus works. For the rest, as the considerate
theologian will readily see, insistence on the possibility ol
a sinister motive for the unbeliever brings up the equal
possibility of a sinister motive on the part of the convert

12 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

to Christianity, ancient or modern. At every turn, then,
the charge of perversity of the will recoils on the advocate
of belief; so that it would be the course of common
prudence to abandon it, even were it not in itself, as a
rule, so plainly an expression of irritated bias.

On the other hand, it need not be disputed that
unbelief has been often enough found associated with
some species of libertinism to give a passing color for the
pretence of causal connection. The fact, however, leads
us to a less superficial explanation, worth keeping in view
here. Freethinking being taken to be normally a " varia-
tion " of intellectual type in the direction of a critical
demand for consistency and credibility in beliefs, its
social assertion will be a matter on the one side of
force of character, and on the other hand of force
of circumstances. The intellectual potentiality will be
variously developed in different men and in different
surroundings. If we ask ourselves how, in general, the
critical tendency is to arise or to come into play, we are
almost compelled to suppose a special stimulus as well as
a special faculty. Critical doubt is made possible, broadly
-peaking, by the accumulation of ideas or habits of certain
kinds which insensibly undo a previous state of homo-
geneity of thought: e.g., a community subsiding into
peace and order from a state of warfare and plunder will
at length find the ethic of its daily life at variance with
the conserved ethic of its early religion of human sacrifice
and special family or tribal sanctions; or a community
which has accumulated a certain amount of accural'1
knowledge of astronomy will gradually find such know-
ledge irreconcilable with its primitive cosmology. A

•cially gifted individual will anticipate the general
movement of thought; but even for him some standing
ground must be supposed; and for the majority the
advance in moral practice or scientific knowledge is the
condition of any effective Freethinking.

Between top and bottom, however, there arc all grades
of vivacity, earnestness, and courage; and on the side of

INTRODUCTORY. 13

the normal resistance there are all varieties of political
and economic circumstance. It follows, then, that the
avowed Freethinker may be so in virtue either of special
courage or of antecedent circumstances which make the
attitude on his part less courageous. And it may even be
granted to the quietist that the courage is at times that
of ill-balanced judgment or heady temperament; just as
it may be conceded to the conservative that it is at times
that which goes with or follows on disregard of wise ways
of life. It is well that the full force of this position be
realised at the outset. When we find, as we shall, some
historic Freethinkers displaying either extreme im-
prudence or personal indiscipline, we shall be prepared,
in terms of this preliminary questioning, to realise anew
that humanity has owed a great deal to some of its
" unbalanced " types ; and that, though discipline is
nearly the last word of wisdom, indiscipline may at times
be the morbid accompaniment or excess of a certain
openness of view and spontaneity of action which are
much more favorable to moral and intellectual advance
than a cold prudence or a safe insusceptibility. As for
the case of the man who, already at odds with his fellows
in the matter of his conduct, may in some phases of
society feel it the easier to brave them in the matter of
his avowed creed, we have already seen that even this
does not convict him of intellectual dishonesty. And
were such cases relatively as numerous as they are
scarce — were the debauched Deists even commoner than
the vinous Steeles and Fieldings — the use of the fact as
an argument would still be an oblique course on the side
of a religion which claims to have found its first and
readiest hearing among publicans and sinners.

It may, finally, help a religious reader to a judicial view
of the phenomenon of Freethought if he is reminded that
every step forward in the alleged historic evolution of
his own creed would depend, in the case put, on the
existence of persons capable of rejecting a current and
prevailing code in favor of one either denounced

14 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

impious or marked off by circumstances as dangerous.
The Israelites in Egypt, the prophets and their sup-
porters, the Gospel Jesus and his adherents, all stand in
some degree for positions of " negation ", of hardy
innovation, of disregard of things and persons popularly
venerated ; wherefore Collins, in the Discourse above
mentioned, smilingly claimed at least the prophets as great
Freethinkers. On that head it may suffice to say that
some of the temperamental qualifications would probably
be very much the same for those who of old brought
about religious innovation in terms of supernatural beliefs,
and those who in later times innovate by way of
minimising or repudiating such beliefs, though the intel-
lectual qualifications might be different. Bruno and
Dolet and Yanini and Voltaire, faulty men all four, could
at least be more readily conceived as prophets in ancient
Jewry, or reformers under Herod, than as Pharisees or
even Sadducees under either regimen.

Be that as it may, however, the issues between
Freethought and Creed are ultimately to be settled only
in virtue of their argumentative bases, as appreciable by
men in society at any given time. It is with the notion
of making the process of judicial appreciation a little
easier, by historically exhibiting the varying conditions
under which it has been undertaken in the past, that
these pages are written.

CHAPTER II.

PRIMITIVE FREETHINKING.

§ I.

To consider the normal aspects of primitive life, as we
see them in savage communities and trace them in early
literature, is to realise the enormous hindrance offered to
critical thinking in the primary stages of culture by the
mere force of habit. " The savage," says our leading
anthropologist, " by no means goes through life with the
intention of gathering more knowledge and framing
better laws than his fathers. On the contrary, his
tendency is to consider his ancestors as having handed
down to him the perfection of wisdom, which it would be
impiety to make the least alteration in. Hence among
the lower races there is obstinate resistance to the most
desirable reforms, and progress can only force its way
with a slowness and difficulty which we of this century
can hardly imagine."1 It is hardly possible to estimate
with any confidence the relative rates of progress ; but
though all are extremely slow, it would seem that reason
could sooner play correctively on errors of secular
practice2 than on any species of proposition in religion —
taking that word to connote at once mythology, early
cosmology, and ritual ethic. In the long stage of lower
savagery, then, the only approach to freethinking that
would seriously affect general belief would presumably be
that very credulity which gave foothold to religious beliefs
to begin with. That is to say, without anything in the
nature of general criticism of any story or doctrine, one

1 Tylor, Anthropology, p. 439. Cp. Lang, Custom and Myth, ed. iSoj, p. 72.
- Cp. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 3rd ed., i, 71, as to savage conservatism in
handicraft.

l6 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

such might to some extent supersede another, in virtue of
the relative gift of persuasion or personal weight of the
propounders. Up to a certain point, persons with a turn
for myth or ritual-making would compete, and might
even call in question each other's honesty, as well as each
other's inspiration. Since the rise of scientific hierology,
there has been a disposition among students to take for
granted the good faith of all early religion-makers, and to
dismiss entirely that assumption of fraud which used to
be made by Christian writers concerning the greater part
of every non-Christian system. When all systems are
seen to be alike natural in origin, such charges are felt to
recoil on the system which makes them. But a closer
scrutiny suggests that wilful fraud must to some extent
have entered into all religious systems alike, even in the
period of primeval credulity, were it only because the
credulity was so great. The leading hierologist of the
day pronounces decisively as to an element of intentional
deceit in the Koran-making of Mohammed1 — a judgment
which, if upheld, can hardly fail to be extended to some
portions of all other Sacred Books. However that may
be, we have positive evidence that wilful fraud enters at
times into the doctrine of contemporary savages ;2 and if
we can point to deliberate imposture alike in the charm-
mongering of contemporary negroes and in the sacred-
book-making of the higher historical systems, it. seems
reasonable to surmise that conscious deceit, as dis-
tinguished from childlike fabrication, would chronically
enter into the tale-making of primitive men, as into their
simpler relations with each other. It is indeed difficult
to conceive how a copious mythology could ever arise
without the play of a kind of imaginativeness that is
hardly compatible with strict veracity. Certain wild
tribes here and there, living in a state of great simplicity,

1 Tide, Outlines of the History of Religions, Eng. tr , p. <jG. Cp. Robertson
Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 2nd ed., p. 141, note.

• See the article by E. J. Glave, of Mr. Stanley's force, on Fetishism in
Congoland, in the Century Magazine, April, 1891, p. 836.

PRIMITIVE FREETHINKING. 1J

are in our own day described as remarkably truthful ;l
but they arc not remarkable for range of supernatural
belief; and their truthfulness is to be regarded as a
product of their special stability and simplicity of life.

Given, however, the tendency to deceit among primi-
tive folk, distrust and detection in a certain number of
cases would presumably follow, constituting a measure
of simple scepticism. In virtue partly of this and partly of
sheer instability of thought, early belief would be apt to
subsist for ages like that of contemporary African tribes,2
in a state of flux.3 Comparative fixity would presumably
arise with the approach to stability of life, of industry, and
of political institutions, whether with or without a special
priesthood. The usages of early family worship would
seem to have been no less rigid than those of the tribal
and public cults. For primitive man as for the moderns,
definite organisation and ritual custom must have been a
great establishing force as regards every phase of religious
belief ; 4 and it may well have been that there was thus
less intellectual liberty of a kind in the long ages of what
we regard as primitive civilisation than in those of
savagery and barbarism which preceded them. On that
view, systems which are supposed to represent in the
fullest degree the primeval spontaneity of religion may
have been in part priestly reactions against habits of
freedom accompanied by a certain amount of scepticism.
A modern enquirer5 has in some such sense advanced
the theory that in ancient India in even the early period
of collection of the Rig Veda, which itself undermined
the monarchic character of the pre-Vedic religion, tru i
was a decay of belief, which the final redaction served to
accelerate. Such a theory can hardly pass beyond the

1 Tylor, Anthropology, p 406; Primitive Culture, i, 38

- Glave, article cited, pp. S35-6.

'■'• Cp. Max Miiller, Natural Religion, 1889, p. 133; Anthropological Relig
[892, p. 150; Lan^, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, ii, 358.

1 Compare Bishop Butler's Charge to the Clergy oj Durham and Bishop
Wordsworth On Religious Restoration in England, 1S54, p. 75, etc.

' I' von Bradke, Dydus Antra, Ahura Mazda, and die A suras, Halle, i>S5,
S 11=;.

l8 HISTORY OF FREETHOL'GHT.

stage of hypothesis in view of the entire absence of
history proper in early Indian literature ; but we seem at
least to have the evidence of the Veda itself that while
it was being collected there were deniers of the existence
of its Gods.1

The latter testimony alone ma)' serve as ground for
raising afresh an old question which recent anthropology
has somewhat inexactly decided — that, namely, as to
whether there are any savages without religious beliefs.

For old discussions on the subject, see Fabricius, Delectus
argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum, Hamburgi, 1725, c. viii ;
cp. Swift, Discourse concerning the mechanical operation of the Spirit,
sec. 2. Sir John Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, 5th ed., pp. 574 —
580; Origin of Civilisation, 5th ed., pp. 213—217) and Mr.
Spencer (Principles of Sociology, hi, § 583) have collected modern
travellers' testimonies as to the absence of religious ideas in
certain tribes. As Sir John Lubbock points out, the word
" religion " is by some loosely or narrowly used to signify only
a higher theology as distinct from lower supernaturalist beliefs.
Dr. Tylor (Primitive Culture, as cited, i, 417 — 425) and Dr. Max
Muller (Introd. to the Science of Religion, ed. 1882, p. 42 ff. ;
Natural Religion, 1SS9, pp. 81 — 89; Anthropological Religion, 1892,
pp. 428 — 435) have pressed the point as to the proved falsity of
many of the negative testimonies. The dispute, as it now
stands, mainly turns on the definition of religion. (Cp. Chantepie
de la Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. tr. 189 1,
pp. 16 — 18, where Lubbock's position is partly misunderstood.)
Dr. Tylor, while deciding that no tribes known to us are reli-
gionless, leaves open the question of their existence in the past.

The problem has been unduly narrowed to the issue
as to whether there are any whole tribes so developed.
It is obviously pertinent to ask whether there may not be
diversity of opinion within a given tribe. Such testi-
monies as those collected by Sir John Lubbock and
others, as to the 1 \istence of religionless savages, are held

1 Rig-Veda, x, 121 (as translated by Muir, Muller, Dutt.and von Bradke) ;
and x, 82 (Dutt's rendering It is to be noted that the refrain " Who is the
God whom we should worship?" is entirely different in Ludwig's render-
ing of x, 121. Cp. Max Muller, Natural Religion, pp. 227-220, citing R. V .,
viii, 10, for an apparently undisputed case of scepticism. See again
Langlois's version of vi, 7, iii, 3 (p. 459). He cannot diverge more from
the German and English translators than they do from each other.

PRIMITIVE FREETHINKING. ig

to be disposed of by further proof that tribes of savages
set down, on the evidence of some of themselves, as
religionless, had in reality a number of religious beliefs.
Undoubtedly the first view had in a number of cases been
hastily taken ; but there remains the question, on all
hands surprisingly ignored, whether some of the savages
who disavowed all belief in things supernatural may not
have been telling the simple truth about themselves, or
even about their families and their comrades. A savage
asked by a traveller, " Do you believe" so-and-so, might
very well give a true negative answer for himself; and the
traveller's resulting misconception would be due to his
own arbitrary assumption that all members of any tribe
must think alike. Despite the social potency of primitive
custom, variation may be surmised to occur in the mental
as in the physical life at all stages ; and what normally
happens in savagery and low civilisation appears to be a
frustration of the sceptical variation by the total circum-
stances— the strength of the general lead to supernatural-
ism, the plausibility of such beliefs to the average intel-
ligence, and the impossibility of setting up sceptical
institutions to oppose the others. In civilised ai:
sceptical movements are repeatedly seen to dwindle for
simple lack of institutions, which however are spon-
taneously set up by and serve as sustainers of religious
systems. On the simpler level of savagery, sceptical
personalities would fail to affirm themselves as against
the institutions of ordinary savage religion — the seasonal
feasts, the ceremonies attending birth and death, the use
of rituals, images, charms, sorcery, all tending to stimulate
and conserve supernatural beliefs in general. Only the
abnormally courageous would dare outspokenly to doubt
or deny at all; and their daring would put them in special
jeopard)'. The ancient maxim, primus in orbe decs fecit
timor, is verified by all modern study of primitive life. It
is a recent traveller who gives the definition : " Fetishism
is the result of the efforts of the savage intelligence seek-
ing after a theory which will account fur the apparent

c J

20 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

hostility of nature to man."1 And this incalculable force
i if fear is constantly exploited by the religious bias from
the earliest stages of sorcery.

The check to intellectual evolution would here be on
all fours with some of the checks inferribly at work in
early moral evolution, where the types with the higher
ideals would seem often to be positively endangered by
their peculiarity, and would thus be the less likely to
multiply. And what happened as between man and man
would further tend to happen at times as between com-
munities. Given the possible case of a tribe so well
placed as to be unusually little affected by fear of enemies
and the natural forces, the influence of rationalistic chiefs
i >r of respected tribesmen might set up for a time a con-
siderable anti-religious variation, involving at least a
minimising of religious doctrine and practices. But when
such a tribe did chance to come into contact with others
more religious, it would be peculiarly obnoxious to them ;
and being in the terms of the case unwarlike, its chance
of survival on the old lines would be small.

Such a possibility is suggested with some vividness by the
familiar contrast between the modern communities of Fiji and
Samoa, the former cruel, cannibalistic, and religious, the latter
much less austerely religious and much more humane. The
ferocious Fijians " looked upon the Samoans with horror,
because they had no religion, no belief in any such deities [as
the Fijians'1 , nor any of the sanguinary rites which prevailed in
other islands" (Spencer, Study of Sociology, pp. 293-294). The
"no religion" is of course only relatively true. Mr. Lang has
noticed the error of the phrase "the godless Samoans"; but
while loosely suggesting that the facts are the other way, he
admits that in their creed " the religious sentiment has already
become self-conscious, and lias begun to reason on its own
practices " [Myth. Ritual, and Religion, ii, 34).

Taking the phenomena all along the line of evolution,
we are led to the generalisation that the rationalistic
tendency, ixly or late, like the religious tendency, is a

1 E J.Glave, art. cited, p.825 Cp. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 582, 594.

PRIMITIVE FREETHINKING. 21

variation which prospers at different times in different
degrees relatively to the favorableness of the environment.
This view will be set forth in some detail in the course of
our history.

It is not, finally, a mere surmise that individual
savages and semi-savages in our own time vary towards
disbelief in the supernaturalism of their fellows. To say
nothing of the rational scepticism exhibited by the Zulu
converts of Bishop Colenso, which was the means of
opening his eyes to the incredibility of the Pentateuch,1 or
of the rationalism of the African chief who debated with
Sir Samuel Baker the possibility of a future state,2 — or
of the stories of spasmodic rationalism on the part of
savages who lose patience with their fetishes3 — we have
the express missionary record that the forcible suppression
of idolatry and tabu and the priesthood by King Rihoriho
in the island of Hawaii, in 1819, was accomplished not
only "before the arrival of any missionary", but on purely
common-sense grounds, and with no thought of further-
ing Christianity, though he had heard of the substitution
of Christianity for the native religion by Pomare in
Tahiti. Rihoriho simply desired to save his wives and
other women from the cruel pressure of the tabu system,
and to divert the priests' revenues to secular purposes ;
and he actually had some strong priestly support.4 Had
not the missionary system soon followed, however, the old
worship, which had been desperately defended in battle at
the instigation of the conservative priests, would in all
probability have grown up afresh, though perhaps with
modifications. The savage and semi-savage social con-
ditions, taken as a whole, are fatally unpropitious to
rationalism.

It is significant that in this and other cases of unbelief
at higher levels of civilisation, it is only the high rank ol

1 The Pentateuch, vol. i, pref. p. vii ; intro. p. 9.

2 Spencer, Principles of Sociology, iii, v^ 583.

;i Compare the quaint case of King Rum Bahadur of Nepaul, \
cannonaded his Gods. Spencer, Study of Sociol* yj , pp. 301-302.
' Kllis, Polynesian Researches, [831, iv, 30-31, 126-128,

22 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the doubter that secures publication for the fact of the
doubt. In Hawaii, only a King's unbelief could make
itself historically heard. So in the familiar story of the
doubting Inca of Peru, who in public religious assembly
is said to have avowed his conclusion that the deified
Sun was not really a living thing, it is the status of the
speaker that gives his words a record. The doubt had in
all likelihood been long current among the wise men of
Peru ; it is indeed ascribed to two or three different
Incas;1 but save for the Incas' promulgation of it, history
would bear no trace of Peruvian scepticism. In bare jus-
tice, we are bound to surmise that similar developments of
rationalism have been fairly frequent in unwritten history.
There are to be noted, finally, the facts lately collected
as to marked sceptical variation among children ;2 and the
express evidence that " it has not been found in a single
instance that an uneducated deaf-mute has had any con-
ception of the existence of a Supreme Being as the
Creator and Ruler of the universe".3 These latter phe-
nomena do not, of course, entitle us to accept Professor
Gruppe's sweeping theorem that it is the religious varia-
tion that is abnormal, and that religion can have spread
only by way of the hereditary imposition of the original
insanity of one or two on the imagination of the many.4
Deaf-mutes are not normal organisms. But all the facts
together entitle us to decide that religion, broadly speak-
ing, is but the variation that has chiefly flourished, by
reason of its adaptation to the prevailing environment thus
far ; and to reject as worse than unscientific the formulas
which, even in the face of the rapidly spreading rationalism
of the more civilised nations, still affirm supernaturalist
beliefs to be a universal necessity of the human mind.

1 Garcilasso, 1. viii, c. 8 . 1. i.\, c. io; Herrera, Dec. v, 1. iv, c. 4. See
the passages in Reville's Hibbert Lectures, pp. 162-1G5.

- See Mr. James Sully's Studies of Childhood, 1895.

:1 Rev. S. Smith, Church Work Among the Deaf and Dumb, 1S75, cited by
Spencer, Principles of Sociology, iii, i 58J. Cp. the testimony cited there
from Dr Kitto, Lost Senses, p. 200.

1 Die griechischen Cultt und My then, 1887, S. 263, 276, 277, etc.

CHAPTER III.

PROGRESS UNDER ANCIENT RELIGIONS.

§ i. Early Association and Competition of Cults.

When religion has entered on the stage of quasi-civilised
organisation, with fixed legends or documents, temples,
and the rudiments of hierarchies, the increased forces of
terrorism and conservatism are in nearly all cases seen to
be in part countervailed by the simple interaction of the
systems of different communities. There is no more
ubiquitous force in the whole history of the subject,
operating as it does in ancient Assyria, in the life of
Vedic India and Confucian China, and in the diverse
histories of progressive Greece and relatively stationary
Egypt, down through the Christian Middle Ages to our
own period of comparative studies.

In ages when any dispassionate comparative study
was impossible, religious systems appear to have been
considerably modified by the influence of those of con-
quered peoples on those of their conquerors, and vice versa.
Peoples who while at arm's length would insult and affect
to despise each other's Gods, and would deride each
other's myths,1 appear frequently to have altered their
attitude when one had conquered the other ; and this not
because of any special growth of sympathy, but in virtue
of the old motive of fear. In the stage of natural poly-
theism, no nation really doubted the existence of the
Gods of another; at most, like the Hebrews of the early

1 Cp. Mr. Lang (Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 91) as to the contemptuous
disbelief of savages in Christian myths. Mr Lang observes that this shows
savages and civilised men to have "different standards of credulity'
That, however, does not seem to be the true inference. Each order of
believer accepts the myths of his own creed and derides others

( 13 )

24 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

historic period, it would set its own God above the others,
calling him ''Lord of Lords". But, ever)- community
having its own God, he remained a local power when his
own worshippers were conquered, and his cult and lore
were respected accordingly. This procedure, which has
been sometimes attributed to the Romans in particular as
a stroke of political sagacity, was the normal and natural
course of polytheism. Thus in the Hebrew books1 the
Assyrian conquerer is represented as admitting that it is
necessary to leave a priest who knows "the manner of
the God of the land " among the new inhabitants he has
planted there. Similar cases have been noted in primitive
cults still surviving ;2 and to the general tendency may be
conjecturally ascribed such phenomena as that of the
Saturnalia, in which masters and slaves changed places,
and the institution of the Levites among the Hebrews,
otherwise only mythically explained. But if conquerors
and conquered thus tended to amalgamate or associate
their cults, equally would allied tribes tend to do so :
and when particular Gods of different groups were seen
to correspond in respect of special attributes, a further

1 2 Kings, xvii, 26. Cp. Ruth, i, 16, and Judges, xvii, 13. See also Tylor,
Primitive Culture, i, 113-115, and the able work of Mr. 1 . B. Jevons, Intro-
duction to the History of Religion, 1896, pp. 36-40, where the fear felt by
conquering races for the occult powers of the conquered is limited to the
sphere of "magic". But when Mr. Jevons so defines magic as to admit of
his proposition (p. 38) that " the hostility from the beginning between religion
and magic is universally admitted", he throws into confusion the whole
phenomena of the early official-religious practice of magic, of which sacri-
fice and prayer are the type-forms that have best survived. And in the
end he upsets his definition by noting (p. 40) how magic, "even where its
relation to religion is one of avowed hostility", will imitate religion
Obviously magic is a function or aspect or element of primitive religion
(cp. Sayce, pp. 315, 319, 327, and passim, and Tiele, Egyptian Rcl., pp. 22,
32) ; and any " hostilitv ", far from being universal, is either a social or a
philosophical differentiation. In the opinion of Weber (Iinl. Lit., p. 264)
the magic arts " found a more and more fruitful soil as the religions
development of the Hindus progressed "; " so that they now, in fact, rei^n
almost supreme". Set; again Mr. Jevons' own later admission, p. ;
where the exception of Christianity is somewhat arbitrary. On this
compare Kant, Religion iiuterhalb det Grenr.en der blossen Yernunft, B. iv,
Apotome ii, Sect 5

2 Cp. E. Higgins, Hebrew Idolatry and Superstition, 1893, pp. 20, 24;
Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 1889, p. 77; Wellhausen, Heiden-
thum. Si. bj Smith, p. 70, ; Lang, Making of Religion, p 65.

EARLY ASSOCIATION AND COMPETITION OF CULTS. _>5

analysis would be encouraged. Hence with every exten-
tion of every State, every advance in intercourse made in
peace or through war, there would be a further com-
parison of credences, a further challenge to the reasoning
powers of thoughtful men.

This tendency did not exclude, but would in certain cases
conflict with, the strong primitive tendency to associate every
God permanently with his supposed original locality. Tiele
writes (History of the Egyptian Religion, Eng. tr. introd. p. xxvii)
that in no case was a place given to the Gods of one nation in
another's pantheon " if they did not wholly alter their form,
character, appearance, and not seldom their very name". This
seems an over-statement. What is clear is that local cults
resisted the removal of their God's images ; and the attempt to
deport such images to Babylon, thus affecting the monopoly
of the God of Babylon himself, was a main cause of the fall of
Nabonidos, who was driven out by Cyrus. But the Assyrians
invoked Bel Merodach of Babylon, after they had conquered
Babylon, in terms of his own ritual ; even as Israelites often
invoked the Gods of Canaan (Cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, On
the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 123). A God could
migrate with his worshippers from city to city (Id., p. 124); and
the Assyrian scribe class maintained the worship of their
special God Nebo wherever they went, though he was a local
God to start with (Id., pp. 117, 119, 121). And as to the recog-
nition of the Gods of different Egyptian cities by politic kings,
see Tiele's own statement, p. 36. Cp. his Outlines, pp. 73, 84, 207.

A concrete knowledge of the multiplicity of cults,
then, was obtruded on the leisured and travelled men of
the early empires and of such a civilisation as that of
Hellas ; and when to such knowledge there was added a
scientific astronomy (the earliest to be constituted of the
concrete sciences) a revision of beliefs by such men was
inevitable. It might take the form either of a guarded
scepticism or of a monarchic theology, answering to the
organisation of the actual earthly empire; and the latter
view, in the nature of the case, would much the moiv
easily gain ground. The Freethought of early civilisation,
then, would be practically limited for a long time to
movements in the direction of coordinating polytheism, t->

26 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the end of setting up a supreme though not a sole deity ;
the Chief God in any given case being apt to be the God
specially affected by the reigning monarch. Allocation of
spheres of influence to the principal deities would be the
working minimum of plausible adjustment, since only in
some such way could the established principle of the
regularity of the heavens be formally accommodated to
the current worship ; and wherever there was monarch}-,
even if the monarch were polytheistic, there was a lead
to gradation among the Gods.1 A pantheistic conception
would be the highest stretch of rationalism that could
have any vogue even among the educated class. All the
while, every advance was liable to the ill-fortune of over-
throw or arrest at the hands of an invading barbarism,
which even in adopting the system of an established
priesthood would be more likely to stiffen than to develop
it. Early rationalism, in short, would share in the fluc-
tuations of earl}- civilisation; and achievements of thought
would repeatedly be swept away, even as were the
achievements of the constructive arts.

§ 2. The Process in India.

The process thus deducible from the main conditions
is found actually happening in more than one of the
ancient cultures, as their history is now sketched. In
the Rig Veda, which if not the oldest is the least altered
of the Eastern Sacred Books, the main line of change
is obvious enough. It remains so far matter of conjecture
to what extent the early Vedic cults contain matter
adopted from non-Aryan Asiatic peoples ; but no other
hypothesis seems to account for the special development
of the cult of Agni in India as compared with the content
and development of the other early Aryan systems, in
which, though there are developments of fire worship,

1 Cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 96, 121-122 ; Robertson Smith,
Ki ligion of the Semites, p. 74 ; Tiele, Egyptian Religion, p. 36 ; and Outlines, p. 52.

AXCIKXT IXDIA. 27

the God Agni does not appear.1 The specially priestly
character of the Agni worship, and the precedence it
takes in the Vedas over the solar cult of Mitra, who
among the kindred Aryans of Eran receives in turn a
special development, suggest some such grafting, though
the relations between Aryans and the Hindu aborigines,
as indicated in the Veda, seem to exclude the possibility
of their adopting the fire-cult from the conquered inhabi-
tants.2 In any case the carrying on of the two main cults
of Agni and Indra side by side points to an original and
marked heterogeneity of racial elements ; while the vary-
ing combination with them of the worship of other deities,
the old Aryan Varuna, the three forms of the Sun-God
Aditya, the Goddess Aditi and the eight Adityas, the
solar Mitra, Vishnu, Rudra and the Maruts, imply the
adaptation of further varieties of hereditary creed. The
outcome is a sufficiently chaotic medley, in which the
attributes and status of the various Gods are reducible to
no code.5 Here, then, were the conditions provocative of
doubt among the critical ; and while it is only in the later
books of the Rig Veda that such doubt finds priestly
expression, it must be inferred that it was current in some
degree among laymen before the hymn-makers avowed
that they shared it. It now seems to take the shape of
a half-sceptical half-mystical questioning as to which, if
any, God is real.

From the Catholic standpoint, Dr. E. L. Fischer has argued
that ,( Varuna is in the ontological, physical, and ethical relation
the highest, indeed the unique God of ancient India " ; and
that the Nature-Gods of the Veda can belong only to a later
period in the religious consciousness (Heidenthum und Offen-

1 Cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 109-110, and Fischer, Heidenthum und Offen-
barung, S. 59. Professor Max Midler's insistence that the lines of Vedic
Religion could not have been "crossed by trains of thought which started
from China, from Babylon, or from Egypt" {Physical Religion, p. 251) does
not affect the hypothesis put above. The Professor admits (p. 250) the
exact likeness of the Babylonian fire-cult to that of Agni.

- But cp. Muller, Anthropological Religi >n, p. [64.

3 Cp. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Vedas, 1894, S. 94, 98-9; Ghosha, His-
tory of Hindu Civilisation as illustrated in the Vedas, Calcutta. 1889, pp. tgo-i;
Max Muller, Physical Religion, 1891, pp. 197-8.

28 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

barung, 1878, S. 36-37). Such a development, had it really
occurred, might be said to represent a movement of primitive
Freethought from an unsatisfying monotheism to a polytheism
that seemed better to explain natural facts. A more plausible
view of the process, however, is that of Von Bradke, to the effect
that " the old Indo-Germanic polytheism, with its pronounced
monarchic apex, which . . . constituted the religion of the pre-
Vedic [Aryan] Hindus, lost its monarchic apex shortly before
and during the Rig- Veda period, and set up for itself the so-called
Henotheism [worship of deities severally as if they were the
only ones] which thus represented in India a time of religious
decline ; a decline which, at the end of the period to which
the Rig- Veda hymns belong, led to an almost complete disso-
lution of the old beliefs. The earlier collection of the hymns
must have promoted the decline ; and the final redaction must
have completed it. The collected hymns show only too plainly
how the very deity before whom in one song all the remaining
Gods bow themselves, in the next sinks almost in the dust
before another. Then there sounds from the Rig- Veda (x, 121)
the wistful question : Who is the God whom we should
worship?" (Dydits A sura, Ahuramazda, und die Asuras, Halle,
1885, S. 115). On this view the growth of monotheism went
on alongside of a growth of critical unbelief, but instead of
expressing that, provoked it by way of reaction.

To meet such a doubt, a pantheistic view of things
would naturally arise ;' and for ancient as for more civi-
lised peoples such a doctrine had the attraction of nomi-
nally reconciling the popular cult with the scepticism it
had aroused. Rising thus as Freethought, the pantheistic
doctrine in itself became in India a dogmatic system, the
monopoly of a priestly caste, whose training in mystical
dialectic made them able to repel or baffle amateur
scepticism. Such fortifying of a sophisticated creed by
institutions — of which the Brahmanic caste system is
perhaps the strongest type — is one of the main conditions
of relative permanence for any set of opinions; yet even

1 Cp. Rig-Veda, i, 164, 46, \, 90 (cited by Ghosha, pp 101, 198); viii, to
(cited by Midler, Natural Religion, pp. 227-9) ; and \, 82, 121, 129 (cited l>y
Romesh Chunder Dutt, History of Civilisation in Ancient India, ed. 18
'. 95-97) ; Tide, Outlines, p. 125 ; Weber, / f Indian Literature, Eng

trans , p. 5 ; Max Midler, Physical Religion, p, 187; Barth, Religions of India
I 5 lor, Primitive Culture, ii,

AN'CIENT INDIA. 2Q

within the Brahmanic system, in virtue presumably of the
principle that the higher truth was for the adept, and
need not interfere with the popular cult, there were again
successive critical revisions of the pantheistic idea.

Of the nature of a Freethinking departure, among the early
Brahmanists as in other societies, was the substitution of non-
human for human sacrifices, a development of peaceful life-
conditions which, though not primitive, must have ante-dated
Buddhism. See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 126-7 and refs. ; and Midler,
Physical Religion, p. 101. Prof. Robertson Smith (Religion of the
Semites, p. 346) appears to argue that animal sacrifice was never
a substitute for human ; but his ingenious argument, on
analysis, is found to prove only that in certain cases the idea
of such a substitution having taken place may have been un-
historical. If it be granted that human sacrifices ever occurred,
substitution would be an obvious way of abolishing them.
Brahman thinkers went the further length of arguing against
all blood sacrifices, but without practical success (Tiele, p. 126),
until Buddhism triumphed (Mitchell, Hinduism, iS,s5, p. 106).

In the earliest Upanishads, the World-Being seems to
have been figured as the totality of matter.1 This view
being open to all manner of anti-religious criticism, which
it may have incurred even within the Brahmanic pale,
there was evolved an ideal formula in which the source of
all things is " the invisible, intangible, unrelated, color-
less one, who has neither eyes nor ears, neither hands nor
feet, eternal, all-pervading, subtile, and undecaying".

The phenomenon of the schism represented by the two divisions
of the Yazur Veda, the "White" and the "Black", is plausibly
accounted for as the outcome of the tendencies of a new and
an old school, who selected from their Brahmanas, or treatises
of ritual and theology, the portions which respectively suited
them. The implied critical movement would tend to affect
official thought in general. This schism is held by Weber to

1 Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays, ed. 1873, i, 375-6. Weber [History,
p. 27) has advanced the view that the adherents of this doctrine, who
gradually became stigmatised as heretics, were the founders of Buddhism
But the view of the universe as a self-existent totality appears to exist in
the Brahmans' Sankhya teaching, which is midway between the popular
Nyaya system and the esoteric Vedanta (Ballantyne, Christianity conti
with Hindu Philosophy, 1859, pp. xviii, 59, 61).

- Mnjor Jacob's Manual of Hindu Pantheism, 18S1, p. 3.

30 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

have arisen only in the period of ferment set up by Buddhism :
but other disputes seem to have taken place in abundance in
the Brahmanical schools before that time. (Cp. Tiele, Outlines,
p. 123; Weber, History of Indian Literature, pp. 10, 27, 232;
Max Miiller, Anthropological Religion, 1892, pp. 36-37 ; and Rhys
Davids, Buddhism, p. 34.) Again, the ascetic and penance-
bearing hermits, who were encouraged by the veneration paid
them to exalt themselves above all save the highest Gods,
would by their utterances of necessity affect the course of
doctrine. Compare the same tendency as seen in Buddhism
and Jainism (Tiele, pp. 135, 140).

In the later form of the Vedanta, " the end of the Veda,'"
this monistic and pantheistic teaching holds its ground in
our own day, after all the ups and downs of Brahmanism,
alongside of the aboriginal cults which Brahman ism
adopted in its battle with Buddhism; alongside, too, of the
worship of the Veda itself as an eternal and miraculous
document. " The leading tenets [of the Vedanta] are
known to some extent in every village."1 But the
Vedantists, again, treat the Upanishads in turn as a
miraculous and inspired system,2 and repeat in their
case the process of the Vedas : so sure is the law of
fixation in religious thought, while the habit of worship
subsists.

The highest activity of rationalistic speculation within
the Brahmanic fold is seen to have followed intelligibly
on the most powerful reaction against the Brahman s"
authority. This took place when their sphere had been
extended from the region of the Punjaub, of which alone
the Rig-Veda shows knowledge, to the great kingdoms oi
Southern India, pointed to in the Sutras,3 or short digests
of ritual and law designed for general official use. The
primary basis for rejection of a given system — belief in
another — made ultimately possible there the rise of an
atheistic system capable, wherever embraced, of annulling
the burdensome and exclusive system of the Brahman s,

1 Major Jacob, as cited, preface

2 Max Muller, Psychological Religion, 1893, pp. 120, 295.

Chunder Dutt, History o/Civili ation in Ancient India, as cited, i, 112-3

ANCIENT INDIA. 31

which had been developed in its worst form1 in the new
environment. Buddhism, though it can hardly have
arisen on one man's initiative in the manner claimed in
the legends, even as stripped of their supernaturalist
element, was in its origin essentially a movement of Free-
thought, such as could have arisen only in the atmosphere
of a much mixed society," where the extreme Brahmanical
claims were on various grounds discredited, perhaps even
within their own newly adjusted body. The tradition
which makes the Buddha a prince suggests an upper-
class origin for the reaction ; and there are traces of a
chronic resistance to the Brahmans' rule among their
fellow- Aryans before the Buddhist period.

"The royal families, the warriors, who, it may be supposed,
strenuously supported the priesthood so long as it was a
question of robbing the people of their rights, now that this
was effected turned against their former allies, and sought to
throw off the yoke that was likewise laid upon them. These
efforts were, however, unavailing : the colossus was too firmly
established. Obscure legends and isolated allusions are the
only records left to us in the later writings of the sacrilegious
hands which ventured to attack the sacred and divinely conse-
crated majesty of the Brahmans; and these are careful to note
at the same time the terrible punishments which befel those
impious offenders " (Weber, History, p. 19).

The circumstances, however, that the Buddhist writings
were from the first in vernacular dialects, not in Sanskrit,"
and that the mythical matter which accumulated round the
story of the Buddha is in the main aboriginal, and largely
common to the myth of Krishna,4 go to prove that
Buddhism spread specially in the non-Aryan sphere.5 Its

1 Prof. Weber (Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 4) says the peoples of the Punjaub
never at all submitted to the Brahmanical rule and caste system. Hut the
subject natives there must at the outset have been treated as an inferior
order. Cp. T\e\e, Outlines, p. i20,andrefs. ; and Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. j_i

2 Brahmanism had itself been by this time influenced by aboriginal
elements, even to the extent of affecting its language. Weber, as cited,
p. 177. Cp. Max Midler, Anthropological Religion, p [64.

Weber, History, pp. 179, 290 ; Muller, Natural Religion, p. 299.

4 See Senart, Esstii sur la legendt dt Buddha, 2e edit., p. 297 ft'.

5 Cp Weber, p. 303.

32 HISTORY OF FREETHOL'GHT.

practical (not theoretic)1 Atheism seems to have rested
fundamentally on the conception of the transmigration of
the soul, or rather of the personality, through many
stages up to Nirvana : and of this conception there is no
trace in the Vedas,2 though it became a leading tenet of
Brahmanism.

To the dissolvent influence of Greek culture may possibly
be due some part of the success of Buddhism before our era,
and even later. Hindu astronomy in the Vedic period was but
slightly developed (Weber, Ind. Lit., pp. 246, 249, 250) ; and
" it was Greek influence that first infused a real life into Indian
astronomy " (Id., p. 251 ; Cp. Lib. Us. Kn. History of Astronomy.
c. ii). This implies other interactions. It is presumably to
Greek stimulus that we must trace the knowledge by Aryabhata
(Colebrooke's Essays, ed. 1873, ii, 404; cp. Weber, p, 257) of the
doctrine of the earth's diurnal revolution on its axis ; and the
fact that in India as in the Mediterranean world the truth was
later lost from men's hands, may be taken as one of the proofs
that the two civilisations alike retrograded owing to evil poli-
tical conditions. In the progressive period (from about 320 B.C.
onwards for perhaps some centuries) Greek ideas might well
help to discredit traditionalism ; and their acceptance at royal
courts would be favorable to toleration of the new teaching. At
the same time, Buddhism must have been favored by the
native mental climate'in which it arose.

The main differentiation of Buddhism from Brahmanism,
again, is its ethical spirit, which sets aside formalism and
seeks salvation in an inward reverie and discipline ; and
this element in turn can hardly be conceived as arising
save in an old society, far removed from the warlike stag
represented by the Vedas. Whatever may have 1 een its
early association with Brahmanism, then, it must b<
regarded as essentially a reaction against Brahmanical
doctrine and ideals; a circumstance which would account
for its early acceptance in the Punjaub, where Brahman-
ism had never attained absolute power and was jealously

1 See Weber, p 301 and note, and p. 307.
I iele, Outlines, p 117.
I p Weber, J: t Indian Litetpt&re, pp. 27, 284-7 ; Ma» M filler.

Natiuii! I , p. 555; Jacobi.as therecited; and Tiele, Outlines, pp. 135-6.

ANCIENT INDIA.

resisted by the free population.1 And the fact that Jain-
ism, so closely akin to Buddhism, has its sacred books in
a dialect belonging to the region in which Buddhism
arose, further supports the view that the reaction grew
out of the thought of a type of society differing widely
from that in which Brahmanism arose. The original
Atheism or Agnosticism of the Buddhist movement thus
appears as a product of a relatively high, because com-
plex, moral and intellectual evolution.

" The fact cannot be disputed away that the religion of
Buddha was from the beginning purely atheistic. The idea
of the Godhead .... was for a time at least expelled from the
sanctuary of the human mind ; and the highest morality that
was ever taught before the rise of Christianity was taught by
men with whom the Gods had become mere phantoms, without
any altars, not even an altar to the Unknown God " (Max
Midler, Intvod. to the Science of Religion, ed. 1882, p. 81).

'.' He [Buddha] ignores God in so complete a way that he
does not even seek to deny him ; he does not suppress him, but
he does not speak of him either to explain the origin and
anterior existence of man or to explain the present life, or to
conjecture his future life and definitive deliverance. The
Buddha knows God in no fashion whatever" (Barthelemy
Saint- Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion; 1S66, p. v).

" Buddhism and Christianity are indeed the two opposite
poles with regard to the most essential points of religion :
Buddhism ignoring all feeling of dependence on a higher
power, and therefore denying the very existence of a supreme
Deity" (Miiller, as last cited, p. 171).

" Lastly, the Buddha declared that he had arrived at [his]
conclusions, not by study of the Vedas, nor from the teachings
of others, but by the light of reason and intuition alone" (Rhys
Davids, Buddhism, p. 48). "The most ancient Buddhism
despises dreams and visions" (Id., p. 177). "Agnostic Atheism
.... is the characteristic of his [Buddha's] system of philo-
sophy " (Id., p. 207).

On the other hand, the gradual coloring of Buddhism
with popular mythology, the reversion to adoration and
worship of the Buddha himself, and the final collapse of

1 Weber, History of Indian Literature, pp. 4, 39.

34 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the system in India before the pressure of Brahmanised
Hinduism, all prove the potency of the sociological con-
ditions of success and failure for creeds and criticisms.
Buddhism took the monastic form for its institutions,
thus incurring ultimate petrifaction alike morally and
intellectually; and in any case the normal Indian social
conditions of abundant population, cheap food, and
general ignorance, involved an overwhelming vitality for
the popular cults. These the Brahmans naturally took
under their protection as a means of maintaining their
hold over the multitude ; and though their own highest
philosophy has been poetically grafted on that basis, as in
the epic of the Mahabharata and in the Bhagavat Gita,
the ordinary worship of the deities of these poems is
perforce utterly unphilosophical, varying between a primi-
tive sensualism and an emotionalism closely akin to that
of popular forms of Christianity. Buddhism itself, where
it still prevails, exhibits similar tendencies.

It is disputed whether the Brahman influence drove Bud-
dhism out of India by physical force, or whether it decayed in
virtue of maladaptation to its environment. Its vogue for some
seven hundred years, from about 300 b.c. to about 400 a. a,
seems to have been largely due to its protection and final
acceptance as a State religion by the dynasty of Chandragupta
(the Sandracottos of the Greek historians), whose grandson
Asoka showed it special favor. His rock-inscribed edicts
(for which see Max Muller, Introd. to Science of Rel., pp. 5-6, 23;
Anthropological Religion, pp. 40-43; Rhys Davids, Buddhism,
pp. 220-228 ; Wheeler's History of India, vol. iii, app. i ; Asiatic
Society's Journals, vols, viii and xii ; Indian Antiquary, 1877,
vol. vi) show a general concern for natural ethics, and espe-
cially for tolerance, but his mention of " The Terrors of the
Future" among the religious works he specially honors, shows
(if genuine) that already normal superstition had affected the
system. Under Asoka, however, it was powerful enough to
react somewhat on the West, then in contact with India as a
result of the Alexandrian conquest (Cp. Mahaffy, Greek World
under Roman Sway, ch. ii ; Weber's lecture on Ancient India,
Eng. trans., pp. 25-6, Indische Skizzen, p. 28 [cited in the present
writer's Christ and Krishna, p. 34] and Weber's History, p. 255
and p. 309, note) ; and the fact that alter his time it entered on

ANCIENT INDIA. 35

a long conflict with Brahmanism proves that it remained
practically dangerous to that system. In the fifth and sixth
centuries of our era, Buddhism in India ''rapidly declined '" — a
circumstance hardly intelligible save as a result of violence.
Tiele, after expressly asserting the " rapid decline " (Outlines,
p. 139), in the next breath asserts that there are no satisfactory
proofs of such violence, and that "on the contrary, Buddhism
appears to have pined away slowly " (p. 140 : contrast his
Egyptian Religion, p. xxi). But compare Rhys Davids, Buddhism
p. 246 ; Max Midler, A nthrop. Rel., p. 43. Internal decay appears
to have made the work of suppression easier. Already in
Gautama's own life there were doctrinal disputes within his
party, according to the legends (Miiller, A. R., p. 38) ; and soon
heresies and censures abounded (Introd. to Sc. of Rel., p. 23),
till schisms arose and no fewer than eighteen sects took shape
(Davids, pp. 213-218). Of the nature of the influence of
Buddhism in Burmah, where it has prospered, a vivid and
thoughtful account is given in the recent work of H. Fielding,
The Soul of a People, 1898. At its best, the cult there deifies the
Buddha; elsewhere it is interwoven with aboriginal polytheism
and superstition (Davids, pp. 207-211 ; Miiller, A. R., p. 132).

Within Brahmanism, again, there have been at different
limes attempts to set up partly naturalistic reforms in religious
thought ; e.g., that of Chaitanya in the 16th century ; but these
have never been pronouncedly freethinking, and Chaitanya
preached a " surrender of all to Krishna ", very much in the
manner of evangelical Christianity. Finally he has been deified
by his followers. (Miiller Nat. Rel., p. 100 ; Phys. Rel., p. 356.)

More definitely freethinking was the monotheistic cult set
up among the Sikhs in the fifteenth century, as the history
runs, by Nanak, who had been influenced both by Parsees and
by Mohammedans, and whose ethical system repudiated caste.
But though Nanak objected to any adoration of himself, he
and all his descendants have been virtually deified by his
devotees, despite their profession of a theoretically pantheistic
creed. (Cp. De la Saussaye, Manual, pp. 659-662; Miiller, Phys.
Rel., p. 355.) Trumpp (Die Religion der Sikhs, 1881, S. 123) tells of
other Sikh sects, including one of a markedly Atheistic character
belonging to the present century ; but all alike seem to sink
towards Hinduism.

Similarly among the Jainas, who compare with the Bud-
dhists in their nominal atheism as in their tenderness to
animals and in some other respects, there has been decline and
compromise ; and their numbers appear steadily to dwindle,
though in India they survived while Buddhism disappeared

D 2

36 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

(Cp. De la Saussaye, Manual, pp. 557-563 ; Rev. J. Robson,
Hinduism, 1874, pp. 80-86 ; Tiele, Outlines, p. 141). Finally the
Brahmo-Somaj movement of the present century appears to
have come to little in the way of rationalism (Mitchell, Hindu-
ism, pp. 224-246; De la Saussaye, pp. 669-671 ; Tiele, p. 160).

§ 3. Mesopotamia.

The nature of the remains we possess of the ancient
Babylonian and Assyrian religions is not such as to yield
a direct record of their development ; but they suffice to
show that there, as elsewhere, a measure of rationalistic
evolution occurred. Were there no other ground for the
inference, it might not unreasonably be drawn from the
post-exilic monotheism of the Hebrews, who, drawing so
much of their cosmology and temple ritual from Babylon,
may be presumed to have been influenced by the higher
Semitic civilisations in other ways also. But there is
concrete evidence. What appears to have happened in
Babylonia and Assyria; whose religious systems were grafted
on that of the more ancient Akkadian civilisation, is a
gradual subordination of the numerous local gods (at least
in the thought of the more philosophic, including some of
the priests), to the conception of one all-pervading power.
This process would be assisted by that of imperialism.
while on the other hand it would be resisted by the strength
of the traditions of the Babylonian cities, all of which had
ancient cults before the later empires were built up.1 The
result was a set of compromises in which the provincial
and foreign deities were treated either genealogically or
grouped in family or other relations with the chief God or
Gods of the time being.2 Certain cults, again, were either
kept always at a higher ethical level than the popular one,
or were treated by the more refined and more critical
worshippers in an elevated spirit; and this tendency seems
again to have led to conceptions of purified deities who
underlay or transcended the popular types, the names 01

1 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 121, 213, 215; E. Meyer, Geschichte des
Alterthums, 1884, i, 1O1 ($ 133).

- Sayce, pp. 219, 344; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. ed., p. 127.

MESOPOTAMIA. T,J

the latter being held to point to one who was misconceived
under their grosser aspects.1 Astronomical knowledge,
again, gave rise to cosmological theories which pointed to
a ruling and creating God,'* who as such would ha\
specially ethical character. In some such way was reached
a conception of a Creator-God as the unity represented by
the fifty names of the Great Gods, who lost their personality
when their names were liturgically given to him3 — a con-
ception which in some statements even had a pantheistic
aspect4 among a "group of priestly thinkers", and in
others took the form of an ideal theocracv.5 There is
record that the Babylonian schools were divided into
different sects,6 and their science was likely to make
.some of these rationalistic.7

It may be almost taken for granted, further, that disbelief
would be set up by such a primitive fraud as the pretence of
the priests of Bel Merodach that the God cohabited nightly
with the concubine set apart for him (Herodotos, i, 181-2), as
was similarly pretended by the priests of Amun at Thebes.
Herodotos could not believe the storv ; and there must have
been some such sceptics within the sphere of the cults in
question, to say nothing of the priests who carried on the fraud.

As regards Freethinking in general, much would depend on
the development of the Chaldsean astronomy. That science,
growing out of primitive astrology (cp. Whewell, History of the
Inductive Sciences, 3rd. ed. i, 108), would tend to discredit, among
its experts, much of the prevailing religious thought ; and they
seem to have carried it so far as to frame a scientific theory of
comets (Seneca, citing Apollonius Myndius, Quaest. Nat., vii, 3 ;
cp. Lib. Use. Kn. History of Astronomy, c. 3 ; E. Meyer, Gescli. ties
Alterthums, i, 186; and Weber, Ind. Lit., p. 24S). Such know-
ledge would greatly favor scepticism, as well as monotheism
and pantheism. It was sought to be astrologically applied ;
but as the horoscopes varied, this was again a source of un-

1 Sayce, pp. 129, 267-8 ; Cp. Kuenen, Religion of Israel, Eng. tr., i, 91 ;
Menzies, History of Religion, 1895, p. 171.

2 Sayce, p. 331, ff., 367, ff . ; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, p. 112.

3 Sayce, p. 305. Cp. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 452.

4 Sayce, pp. 191-2, 367; Lenormant, pp. 112, 113, no. 133.

5 Tiele, Outlines, p. 78 ; Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, pp. 152-153.
Cp. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, 2nd. ed., iii, 13.

c Strabo, xvi, c. i, § 6.

7 Cp. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, i, no ; iii, 12-13.

384697

38 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

belief (Meyer, S. 179). Medicine, again, made little progress-
(Herodot. i. 197).

It can hardly be doubted, finally, that in Babylonia and
Assyria there were idealists who, like the Hebrew prophets,,
repudiated alike image-worship and the religion of sacrifices.
The latter repudiation occurs frequently in later Greece and
Rome. There, as in Jerusalem, it could make itself heard in
virtue of the restrictedness of the power of the priests, who
in Babylonia and Assyria, on the other hand, might be trusted
to suppress or override any such propaganda, as we have seen
was done in Brahinanical India.

Concerning image-worship, apart from the proved fact of
pantheistic doctrine, and the parallels in Egypt and India, it
is to be noted that Isaiah actually puts in the mouth of the
Assyrian king a tirade against the " kingdoms of the idols "
or "false Gods", including in these Jerusalem and Samaria
(Isa. x, ic, 11). The passage is dramatic, but it points to the
possibility that in Assyria just as in Israel a disbelief in idols-
could arise from reflection on the spectacle of their multitude.

The chequered political history of Babylon and Assyria,
however, made impossible any long-continued development
of critical and philosophical thought. Their amalgamations
of creeds and races had in a measure favored such develop-
ment ;* but the inevitably subject state of the mass of the
people, and the chronic military upset of the government,
were conditions fatally favorable to ordinary superstition.
Culture remained wholly in the hands of the priestly and
official class.'* Accordingly we find the early religion of
sorcery maintaining itself in the literature of the advanced
empires.3 The attitude of the Semitic priests and scribes
towards the old Akkadic as a sacred language was in itself,
like the use of Sacred Books in general, long a check upon
new thought ;4 and though the Assyrian culture seems to
have set this check aside, in virtue of the lack of a culture
class in Assyria, the later Babylonian kingdom which rose
on the fall of Assyria was too short-lived to profit much
by the gain, being in turn overthrown in the second genera-

1 Sayce, pp. 192, 345.

2 E Meyer, Geschichte des Altathums, i, 187, and note.

3 Sayce, pp. 316, 320, 322, 327 ; Meyer, S. 183 ; Lenormant, p no.

4 Sayce, pp. 326, 341.

ANCIENT PERSIA. 39

tion by Cyrus. It is significant that the conqueror was
welcomed by the Babylonian priests as against their last
king, the innovating Nabonidos1 (Nabounahid), who had
aimed at a monarchic polytheism or quasi-monotheism.
It is thus clear that Cyrus, who restored the old state of
things, was no strict monotheist of the later Persian type,
but a schemer who relied everywhere on popular religious
interests, and conciliated the polytheists of Babylon as he
did the Yahweh-worshipping Jews. The Persian quasi-
monotheism and anti-idolatry, however, already existed,
and it is conceivable that they may have been intensified
by the peculiar juxtaposition of cults set up by the Persian
conquest.

Mr. Sayce's dictum (Hibbert Lectures, p. 314) that the
later ethical element in the Akkado-Babylonian system is
"necessarily" due to Semitic race elements, is seen to be
fallacious in the light of his own subsequent admission (p. 353)
as to the lateness of the development among the Semites.
The difference between early Akkadian and later Babylonian
was simply one of culture-stage. See Mr. Sayce's own remarks
on p. 300; and compare E. Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, i,
178, 182, 183) who entirely rejects the claim made for Semitic
ethics. See again Tiele, Outlines, p. 78, and Mr. Sayce's own
account (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 202) of the Phoenician
religion as "impure and cruel'". The explanation of such
arbitrary judgments seems to be that the Semites are assumed
to have had a primordial religious gift as compared with
" Turanians " ; and that the Hebrews in turn are assumed to
have been so gifted above other Semites. We shall best guard
against a priori injustice to the Semites themselves, in the
conjunctures in which they really advanced civilisation, by
entirely discarding the unscientific method of explaining the
history of races in terms of hereditary character.

§ 4. Ancient Persia.

The Mazdean system, or worship of Ahura Mazda
(Ormazd), of which we find in Herodotos positive historical
record as an anti-idolatrous and nominally monotheistic

1 Id . pp. 85-91 : Ancient Empires 0/ the East, p. .245.

40 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

creed1 in the fifth century B.C., is the first to which these
aspects can be ascribed with certainty. As the Jews are
found represented in the Book of Jeremiah2 (assumed to
have been written in the sixth century B.C.), worshipping
numerous Gods with images; and as polytheistic and
idolatrous practices are still described in the Book of
Ezekiel3 (assumed to have been written during or after the
Babylonian Captivity), it is inadmissible to accept the
unauthenticated writings of ostensibly earlier prophets as
proving even a propaganda of monotheism on their part,
the so-called Mosaic law with that character being known
to be of late invention. In any case the mass of the people
were clearly image-worshippers. The Persians on the
other hand can be taken with certainty to have had an
imageless worship (though images existed for other pur-
poses), with a Supreme God set above all others, in the
sixth century. The Magian or Mazdean creed, as we have
seen, was not very devoutly held by Cyrus, but Dareios a
generation later is found holding it with zeal ; and it cannot
have grown in a generation to the form it then bore. It
must therefore be regarded as a development of the
religion of some section of the " Iranian" race, centring
as it does round some deities common to the Vedic
Aryans.

The Mazdean system, as we first trace it in history, was
the religion of the Medes, a people joined with the Persians
proper under Cyrus ; and the Magi or priests figure as one
of the seven tribes of the Medes.4 It may thus be con-
jectured that they were a people who previously conquered
or were conquered by the Medes, who had then adopted
their religion, as did the Persians after their conquest by
or union with the Medes. Cyrus, a semi-Persian, may well
have regarded the Medes with some racial distrust, and,
while using them as the national priests, would naturally
not be devout in his adherence at a time when the two
peoples were still mutually jealous. When, later, after the

1 Herod, i, 131. '-' Jcr. xi, 13, etc. a Ezek. cc. vi, viii.

4 Herodotos i, 101.

ANCIENT PERSIA. 41

assassination of his son Smerdis (Bardes, or Bardija), by
the elder son, King Cambyses, and the death of the latter,
the Median and Magian interest set up the " false
Smerdis ", Persian conspirators overthrew the latter and
crowned the Persian Dareios Hystaspis, marking their sense
of hostility to the Median and Magian element by a general
massacre of Magi.1 Those Magi who survived would
naturally cultivate the more their priestly influence, the
political being thus for the time destroyed ; though they
seem to have stirred up a Median insurrection in the next
century against Dareios II.2 However that may be,
Dareios I became a zealous devotee of their creed,3 doubtless
finding that a useful means of conciliating the Medes in
general, who at the outset of his reign seem to have given
him much trouble.4 The richest part of his dominions5
was East-Iran, which appears to have been the original
home of the worship of Ahura-Mazda.6

Such is the view of the case derivable from Herodotos, who
remains the main authority; but recent critics have raised
some difficulties. That the Magians were originally a non-
Median tribe seems clear; Dr. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 163, 165)
even decides that they were certainly non-Aryan. Compare
Ed. Meyer (Geschichte des AUerthums i, 530, note, 531, §§ 439, 440),
who holds that the Mazdean system was in its nature not
national but abstract, and could therefore take in any race.
Several modern writers, however (Canon Rawlinson, ed. of
Herodotos. i, 426-431 ; Five Great Monarchies, u, 345-355, hi.
402-4; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng.tr., pp. 197, 218-239;
Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, p. 248), represent the Magians
as not only anti- Aryan (= anti- Persian) but opposed to the
very worship of Ormazd which is specially associated with
their name. It seems difficult to reconcile this view with the
facts : at least it involves the assumption of two opposed sets
of Magi. The main basis for the theory seems to be the
allusion in the Behistun inscription of Dareios to some acts of

1 Id. iii, 79.

2 Cp. Grote, History of Greece, Part ii, ch. 33 (ed. 1888, iii, 442), >.

3 E. Meyer,GeschichtedesAltathums,i, 505 (§ 417), 542 (§ 451), 617 (§515):
Tiele, Outlines, p, 164.

4 Herod, i, 130.

5 Cp. Herod, iii, 94, 98 ; Grote, vol. iii, p. 448.

6 E. Meyer, as cited, i, 505, 530 (§ 439) ; Tiele, Outlines, pp. 163, 165.

42 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

temple-destruction by the usurping Magian Gomates, brother
and controller of the pretended Smerdis. (See the inscription
translated in Records of the Past,i, 111-115.) This Meyer sets aside
as an unsettled problem, without inferring that the Magians
were anti-Mazdean(cp. §449 and §511, note). As to the massacre,
however, Meyer decides (i, 613) that Herodotus blundered,
magnifying the killing of " the Magus " into a slaughter of
"the Magi". But this is one of the few points at which
Herodotos is corroborated by Ktesias (cp. Grote, hi, 440, note).
A clue to a solution may perhaps be found in the facts that
while the priestly system remained opposed to all image-
worship, Dareios made emblematic images of the Supreme
God (Meyer, i, 213, 617) and of Mithra; and that Artaxerxes
Mnemon later put an image of Mithra in the royal temple of
Susa, besides erecting many images to Anaitis. (Rawlinson,
Five Great Monarchies, 2nd ed., iii, 320-1, 360-1). There may
have been opposing tendencies; the conquest of Babylon being
likely to have introduced new influences. The Persian art now
arising shows the most marked Assyrian influences.

The religion thus imposed on the Persians seems to
have been imageless by reason of the simple defect of art
among its cultivators ; ' and to have been monotheistic
only in the sense that its chief Deity was supreme over all
others, including even the great Evil Power, Ahriman
(Angra Mainyu). Its God-group included Mithra, once the
equal of Ahura-Mazda," and later more prominent than he,3
as well as a Goddess, Anahita, apparently of Akkadian
origin. Before the period of Cyrus, the eastern part of
Persia seems to have been but little civilised ;4 and it was
probably there that its original lack of images became an
essential element in the doctrine of its priests. As we find
it in history, and still more in its sacred book, the Zenda-
vesta, which as we have it represents a late liturgical
compilation,8 Mazdeism is thus a priest-made religion,
rather than the work of Zarathustra or any one reformer;

1 Meyer, i, 528 ($ 438)-

2 Darmesteter, The Zcndavesta (in " Sacred Books of the East " series),
vol. i, in trod., p. !x (1st ed.).

'■'■ Rawlinson, Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105; Meyer, § 417, 450-1.
: Meyer, as cited, i, 507 ($ 418).

* Cp. Meyer, i, 506-8; Renan, as cited by him, S. 508 ; Darmesteter, as
cited, cc iv-ix, 2nd ed. ; Tiele, Outlines, p. 165.

ANCIENT PERSIA. 43

and its rejection of images, however originated, is to be
counted to the credit of its priests, like the pantheism or
nominal monotheism of the Mesopotamian, Brahmanic,
and Egyptian religions. The original popular faith had
clearly been a normal polytheism.1 For the rest, the
Mazdean ethic has the usual priestly character as regards
the virtue it assigns to sacrifice ; 2 but otherwise compares
favorably with Brahmanism.

As to this cult being priest-made, see Meyer, i, 523, 540, 541,
Tiele (Outlines, pp. 167, 178) assumes a special reformation
such as is traditionally associated with Zarathustra, holding
that either a remarkable man or a sect must have established
the monotheistic idea. Meyer (i, 537) holds with M. Darmes-
teter that Zarathustra is a purely mythical personage, made
out of a Storm-God. Dr. Menzies (History of Religion, p. 384),
holds strongly by his historic actuality. The problem is
analogous to those of Moses and Buddha ; but the historic
case of Mohammed bars a confident decision in the negative.

'&■

There is no reason to believe, however, that among the
Persian peoples the higher view of things fared any better
than elsewhere.3 The priesthood, however enlightened it
may have been in its inner culture, never slackened the
practice of sacrifice and ceremonial ; and the worship of
subordinate spirits and the propitiation of demons figured
as largely in their beliefs as in any other. In time the cult
of the Saviour-God Mithra came to the front verv much as
did that of Jesus later ; and in the one case as in the
other, despite ethical elements, superstition was furthered.
When, still later, the recognition of Ahriman was found to
endanger the monotheistic principle, an attempt seems to
have been made under the Sassanian dynasty, in our own
era, to save it by positing a deity who was father of both
Ahura-Mazda and Angra-mainyu ;' but this last slight

1 Meyer, i, 520 ($ 428).

* Id. i, 524 ($433); Tiele, Outlines, p. 178; Darmesteter, OrniazJ et
Ahriman, 1877, pp. 7-18.
Meyer, § 450 (i, 541).

4 Tiele, Outlines, p. 167. Cp. Lenormant (Chaldean Magic, p. 229), who
attributes the heresy to immoral Median Magi ; and Spiegel (Avesta, 1
i, 271), who considers it a derivation from Babylon.

44 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

effort of freethinking speculation come to nothing. Social
and political obstacles determined the fate of Magian as of
other ancient rationalism.

According to Rawlinson, Zoroastrianism under the Parthian
(Arsacide) empire was gradually converted into a complex
system of idolatry, involving a worship of ancestors and dead
kings (Sixth Oriental Monarchy, p. 399; Seventh Monarchy, pp.
8-9, 56). Gutschmid, however, following Justin (xli, 3, 5-6),
pronounces the Parthians zealous followers of Zoroastrianism,
dutifully obeying it in the treatment of their dead (Geschichte
Irans von Alexander bis zum Untergang der Arsakiden, 1888,
S- 57-58) — a law not fully obeyed even by Dareios and his
dynasty (Heeren, Asiatic Nations, Eng. tr. i, 127). Rawlinson
on the contrary says the Parthians burned their dead— an
abomination to Zoroastrians. Certainly the name of the
Parthian King Mithradates implies acceptance of Mazdeism.
At the same time, Rawlinson admits that in Persia itself, under
the Parthian dynasty, Zoroastrianism remained pure (Seventh
Monarchy, pp. 9-10), and that even when ultimately it became
mixed up with normal polytheism, the Dualistic faith and the
supremacy of Ormazd were maintained (Five Monarchies, 2nd
ed. iii, 362-3 ; Cp. Darmesteter, Zendavesta, i, lxvi, 2nd. ed.).

§ 5- Egypt.

The relatively rich store of memorials left by the
Egyptian religions yields us hardly any more direct light
on the growth of religious rationalism than do those of
Mesopotamia, though it supplies much fuller proof that
such a growth took place. All that is clear is that the
comparison and competition of henotheistic cults there as
elsewhere led to a measure of relative scepticism, which
took doctrinal shape in a loose monism or pantheism.
The alternate ascendancy of different dynasties, with
different Gods, forced on the process, which included, as
in Babylon, a priest ly grouping of deities in families and
triads.1 It involved also an esoteric explanation of the
God-myths as symbolical of natural processes, or else of
mystical ideas.2 At the beginning of the New Kingdom

1 E. Meyer, Geschich c des A Iter t hums, i, 83.

2 Id., S. 81 ({ 66); Tiele, History of the Eg)ptian Religion, Eng. tr., pp.
119, 154-

EGYPT. 45

(b.c. 1500) it had been fully established for all the priest-
hoods that the Sun-God was the one real God, and that it
was he who was worshipped in all the others.1 He in turn
was conceived as a pervading spiritual force, of anthro-
pomorphic character and strong moral bias. This seems
to have been by way of a purification of one pre-eminent
compound deity, Amun-Ra, to begin with, whose model
was followed in other cults.2 " Theocrasies of this kind
could not have been formed unconsciously. Men knew
perfectly well that they were taking a great step in advance
of their fathers."3 There had occurred, in short, among
the educated and priestly class a considerable development,
going on through many centuries, alike in philosophical
and in ethical thought, the ethics of the Egyptian " Book
of the Dead" being quite as altruistic as those of any
portion of the much later Christian gospels.4 Such a
development could only arise in long periods of peace and
law-abiding life. And yet all this was done " without ever
sacrificing the least particle of the beliefs of the past".5
The popular polytheism, resting on absolute ignorance,
was indestructible ; and the most philosophic priests seem
never to have dreamt of unsettling it.

It is contended, as against the notion of an esoteric and
an exoteric doctrine, that the scribes " did not, as is
generally supposed, keep their new ideas carefully con-
cealed, so as to leave to the multitude nothing but coarse
superstitions. The contrary is evident from a number of
inscriptions which can be read by anybody, and from books
which anyone can buy."6 But the assumption that "any
one " could read or buy books in ancient Egypt is a serious
misconception. Even in our own civilisation, where

1 Meyer, Gcschichte des alten Egyptens, in Oncken's series, 1877, B. iii,
Kap. 3, S. 249 ; Gcschichte des Alterthums, i, 109; Tiele, Egyptian Religion,
pp. 149, 151, 157.

- Tiele, pp. 153, 155, 15G.

3 Id., p, 157.

4 Tiele, pp. 226-230 ; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie do- alten Aegypter,
1884, 16; 1 Halite, S. 90-1 ; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, Eng. tr. i, 395

* Id., pp. 114, 118,154. Cp. Meyer, Gcschichte des Alterthums, i, 101-2 ($85).
6 Tiele, Egyptian Religion, p. 157 Cp. p. 217.

46 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

«(

anyone " can presumably buy Freethought journals or
works on anthropology and the history of religions, the
mass of the people are so placed that only by chance does
such knowledge reach them ; and multitudes are so little
cultured that they would pass it by with uncomprehending
indifference were it put before them. In ancient Egypt,
however, the great mass of the people could not even read ;
and no man thought of teaching them.

•&'

This fact alone goes far to harmonise the ancient Greek
testimonies as to the existence of an esoteric teaching in Egypt
with Tiele's contention to the contrary. See the pros and
cons set forth and confusedly pronounced upon by Professor
Chantepie de la Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion,
Eng tr. pp. 400- c. We know from Diodoros (i, 81), what we
could deduce from our other knowledge of Egyptian conditions,
that apart from the priests and the official class, no one
received any literary culture save in some degree the higher
grades of artificers, who needed some little knowledge of letters
for their work in connection with monuments, sepulchres,
mummy-cases, and so forth. Even the images of the higher
Gods were shown to the people only on festival-days (Meyer,
Gescli. des Alterthums, i, 82).

The Egyptian civilisation was thus, through all its
stages, definitely conditioned by its material basis, which
in turn ultimately determined its polity, there being no
higher contemporary civilisation to lead it otherwise. An
abundant, cheap, and regular food supply maintained in
perpetuity a dense and easily exploited population, whose
lot through thousands of years was toil, ignorance, political
subjection, and a primitive mental life. For such a popu-
lation general ideas had no light and no comfort : for them
was the simple human worship of the local natural Gods
or the presiding Gods of the kingdom, alike confusedly
conceived as great powers, figured often as some animal,
which for the primeval mind signified indefinite capacity
and unknown possibility of power and knowledge.1 Myths
and not theories, magic and not ethics, were their spiritual
food, albeit their peaceful animal lives conformed suf-

1 Meyer, i, 72.

EGYPT. 47

ficiently to their code. And the life-conditions of the mass
determined the policy of priest and king. The priestly
revenue came from the people, and the king's power rested
on both orders.

This was fully seen when King Chuenaten, = Amun-
hotep (or Amenophis) IV, moved by monotheistic fanati-
cism, departed so far from the customary royal policy as to
put under the ban all deities save that he had chosen for
himself, repudiating the God-name Amun in his own name,
and taking that of his chosen God, Aten, for whom he
built a new capital city. Though the king enforced his
will while he lived, his movement "bore no fruit what-
ever", his policy being speedily reversed, and his own
monuments and capital city razed to the ground by orthodox
successors.1 In the same way the earlier attempt of the
alien Hyksos to suppress the native polytheism and image-
worship had come to nothing.2

As the centuries lapsed, the course of popular religion
was rather downward than upward, if it can be measured
by the multiplication of superstitions. The priests, who
held the allegorical key to mythology, seem to have been
the main multipliers of magic and fable, mummery, cere-
monial, and symbol ; and they jealously guarded their
specialty against lay competition.3 Esoteric and exoteric
doctrine flourished in their degrees side by side/ the
instructed apparently often accepting or acting upon both;
primitive rites all the while flourishing on the level of the
lowest civilisations,5 though the higher ethical teaching
even improves, as in India.

Conflicts, conquests, and changes of dynasties seem to
have made little difference in the life of the common
people. Religion was the thread by which any ruler could

; Meyer, Geschickte des alten Aegyptens, B.iii, Kap. 4, 5 ; Gesch. des Alter-
thiims, i, 271-4 ; Tiele, pp. 161-5. The history of Chuenaten is a discovery
■of the later Egyptology. Sharpe has no mention of it.

- Tiele, p. 144. Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 135.

* Tiele, pp. 180-182 ; Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 140-143.

' Tiele, pp. 184-5, l9&, 217.

5 Herodotos, ii, 48, 60-64, etc.

48 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

lead them ; and after the brief destructive outbreak of
Cambyses,1 himself at first tolerant, the Persian conquerors
allowed the old faiths to subsist, caring only, like their
predecessors, to prevent strife between the cults which
would not tolerate each other.2 The Ptolemies are found
adopting and using the native cults as the native kings had
done ages before them ;3 and in the learned Greek-speaking
society created by their dynasty at Alexandria there can
have been at least as little concrete belief as prevailed in
the priesthood of the older civilisation. It developed a
pantheistic philosophy which ultimately, in the hands of
Plotinus, compares very well with that of the Upanishads
and of later European systems. But this was a hot-house
flower ; and in the open world outside, where Roman rule
had broken the power of the ancient priesthood and Greek
immigration had overlaid the native element, Christianity
found an easy entrance, and in a declining society flourished
at its lowest level.4 The ancient ferment, indeed, produced
many stirrings of relative Freethought in the form of
Christian heresies to be noted hereafter ; the sanest of all
being that of Arius, who like his antagonist Athanasius
was an Alexandrian. But the cast of mind which elaborated
the dogma of the Trinity is as directly an outcome of
Egyptian culture-history as that which sought to rationalise
the dogma by making the popular deity a created person ;
and the long and manifold internecine struggles of the
sects were the due duplication of the older strifes between
the worshippers of the various sacred animals in the several
cities.5 In the end, the entire population was but so much
clay to take the impress of the Arab conquerors, with their
new fanatic monotheism, standing for the minimum of
rational thought.

1 The familiar narrative of Herodotos is put in doubt by the monu-
ments. Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 24G. But cp. Meyer, i, 6n (§ 508).

- Tiele, p. 158.

s See figures 209, 212, 221, 235, 242, 249, 250, in vol. i of Sharpe's
History of Egypt, 7th ed.

1 Cp. Sharpe, ii, 287-295.

* These fights had not ceased even in the time of Julian (Sharpe ii, 280).
Cp. Juvenal, Sat. xv, 33 ft.

PHOENICIA. 49

For the rest, the higher forms of the ancient religion
had been able to hold their own till they were absolutely
suppressed, with the philosophic schools, by the Byzantine
government, which at the same time marked the end of
the ancient civilisation by destroying or scattering the vast
collection of books in the Serapeion, annihilating at once
the last pagan cult and the stored treasure of pagan culture.
With that culture too, however, there had been associated
to the last the boundless credulity which had so long kept
it company. In the second century of our era, under the
Antonines, we have Apuleius telling of Isis worshipped as
" Nature, parent of things, mistress of all elements, the
primordial birth of the ages, highest of divinities, queen of
departed spirits, first, of the heavenly ones, the single mani-
festation of all Gods and Goddesses," who ruled all things
in earth and heaven, and who stands for the sole deity
worshipped throughout the world under many names ; l the
while her worshipper cherishes all manner of the wildest
superstitions, which even the subtle philosophy of the
Alexandrian Neo-Platonic school did not discard. All
alike, with the machinery of exorcism, were passed on to
the worship of the Christian Queen of Heaven, leaving out
only the pantheism ; and when that worship in turn was
overthrown, the One God of Islam enrolled in his train
the same host of ancient hallucinations.2 The fatality of
circumstance was supreme.

§ 5. Phoenicia.

Of the inner workings of thought in the Phoenician
religion we know even less, directly, than can be gathered
as to any other ancient system of similar notoriety, so
completely did the Roman conquest of Carthage, and the
Macedonian conquest of Tyre and Sidon, blot out the
literary remains of their peoples. Yet there are some
indirect clues of a remarkable sort.

1 Metamorphoses, B. xi.

'- Cp. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, passim

50 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

It is hardly to be doubted, in the first place, that Punic
speculation took the same main lines as the early thought
of Egypt and Mesopotamia : we can indeed trace the
normal movement of syncretism in the cults, and the
normal tendency to improve their ethics. The theory of
an original pure monotheism1 is no more tenable here than
anywhere else ; we can see that the general designation of
the chief God of any city, usually recognisable as a Sun-
God, by a title rather than a name, though it pointed to a
general worship of a preeminent power, in no sense ex-
cluded a belief in minor powers, ranking even as deities. It
did not do so in the admittedly polytheistic period ; and it
cannot therefore be supposed to have done so previously.

The chief Phoenician Gods, it is admitted, were everywhere
called by one or several of the titles Baal (Lord), Ram or
Rimmon (High), Melech or Molech (King), Eliun (Supreme),
Adonai (Lord), Bel-Samin (Lord of Heaven) etc. (Cp. Raw-
linson, History of Phoenicia, p. 321 ; Tiele, Histoire comparee des
anciennes religions de I'Egypte, etc., French trans., 1S82, ch. iii,
pp. 281-287 ; Outlines, p. 82; Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 200.)
The just inference is that the Sun-God was generally
worshipped, the sun being for the Semitic peoples the pre-
eminent Nature-power. (All Gods were not Baals : the
division between them and lesser powers corresponded some-
what, as Tiele notes, to that between Theoi and Daimones
with the Greeks, and Ases and Vanes with the old Scandi-
navians. So in Babylonia and India the Bels and Asuras were
marked off from lesser deities.) The fact that the Western
Semites thus carried with them the worship of their chief
deities in all their colonies, would seem to make an end of the
assumption (Gomme, Ethnology of Folklore, p. 68 ; Menzies,
History of Religion, pp. 248, 250) that there is something
specially " Aryan " in the " conception of Gods who could and
did accompany the tribes wheresoever they travelled ".

The worship of the Baal, however, being that of a special
Nature-power, cannot in early any more than in later times
have been monotheistic. What happened was a prepon-
derance of the double cult of the God and Goddess, Baal
and Ashtoreth, as in the unquestionably polytheistic period
(Rawlinson, p. 323 ; Tiele, Hist. Comp., as cited, p. 319).

1 Put by Canon Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia, 1889, p. 321.

PHOENICIA. 51

Apart from this normal tendency to identify Gods
•called by the same title (a state of things which, however,
in ancient as in modern Catholic countries, tended at the
same time to set up special adoration of a given image)
there is seen in the later religion of Phoenicia a spirit of
syncretism which operated in a manner the reverse of
that seen in later Jewry. In the latter case the national
God was ultimately conceived, however fanatically, as
universal, all others being negated : in commercial Phoe-
nicia, many foreign Gods were adopted,1 the tendency
being finally to conceive them as all manifestations of one
Power.2 And there is reason to suppose that in the
cosmopolitan world of the Phoenician cities the higher
intelligence reached a yet more subversive, though still
fallacious, theory of religion. The pretended ancient
Phoenician cosmogony of Sanchoniathon, preserved by
Eusebius,3 while worthless as a record of the most ancient
beliefs, may be taken as representing views current not
only in the time and society of Philo of Byblos (a.c. 100),
who had pretended to translate it, but in a period con-
siderably earlier. This cosmogony is, as Eusebius com-
plains, deliberately atheistic ; and it further systematically
explains away all God stories as being originally true of
remarkable men.

Where this primitive form of atheistic rationalism
originated, we cannot now tell. But it was in some form
current before the time of the Greek Evemeros, who
systematically developed it about 300 B.C. ; for in a
monotheistic application it more or less clearly underlies
the redaction of much of the Hebrew Bible, where both
patriarchal and regal names of the early period are found
to be old God names ; and where the Sun-God Samson is
made a "judge".4 In the Byblian writer, however, the

1 Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, 251, § 209; Tiele, Outlines, p. 84,
* Rawlinson, Hist, of Phoenicia, p. 340 ; Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 204 ;
Menzies, Hist, of Religion, p. 168.

3 Pr<2paratio Evangelica, B. i, c. 9-10.

4 Cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 159, as to Persian methods of the
same kind.

E 2

52 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

purpose is not monotheistic but atheistic ; and the problem
is whether this or that was the earlier development of the
method. The natural presumption seems to be that the
Hebrew adaptors of the old mythology used an already
applied method, as the Christian Fathers later used the
work of Evemeros ; and the citation from Thallos bv
Lactantius1 suggests that the method had been applied in
Chaldea. It is in any case credible enough that among
the much-travelling Phoenicians, with their open pantheon,
an atheistic Evemerism was thought out by the sceptical
types before Evemeros ; and that the latter really drew
his principles from Phoenicia.2 At any rate, they were
there received, doubtless by a select few, as a means of
answering the customary demand for " something in place
of" the rejected Gods.

The Byblian cosmogony may be conceived as an atheistic
refinement on those of Babylon, adopted by the Jews. It
connects with the curious theogony of Hesiod (which has
Asiatic aspects), in that both begin with Chaos, and the Gods
of Hesiod are born later. But whereas in Hesiod Chaos
brings forth Erebos and Night (Eros being causal force), and
Night bears /Ether and Day to Erebos, while Earth virginally
brings forth Heaven (Uranos) and the Sea, and then bears the
first Gods in union with Heaven, the Phoenician fragment
proceeds from black chaos and wind, after long ages, through
Eros or Desire, to a kind of primeval slime, from which arise
first animals without intelligence, who in turn produce some
with intelligence. The effort to expel Deity must have been
considerable, for sun and moon and stars seem to arise un-
created, and the sun's action spontaneously produces further
developments. The first man and his wife are created by
male and female principles of wind, and their offspring proceed
to worship the Sun, calling him Beel Samin. The other Gods
are explained as eminent mortals deified after their death. See
the details in Cory's Ancient Fragments, Hodges' ed., pp. 1-22.

At the same time there are signs even in Phoenician
worship of an effort after an ethical as well as an intel-
lectual purification of the common religion. To call

1 Div. Inst, i, 23. 2 So Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 204.

ANCIENT CHINA. 53

" the " Phoenician religion "impure and cruel"1 is to
obscure the fact that in all civilisations certain types and
cults vary from the norm. In Phoenicia as in Israel there
were humane anti-sensualists who either avoided or
impugned the sensual and the cruel cults around them ;
as well as ascetics who stood by human sacrifice while
resisting sexual license. That the better types remained
the minority is to be understood in terms of the balance
of the social and cultural forces of their civilisation, not of
any racial bias or defect, intellectual or moral.

The remark of Meyer (Gesch. des Alt. i, 211, §175) that an
ethical or mystical conception of the God was " entirely alien "
to "the Semite ", reproduces the old fallacy of definite race-
characters ; and Mr. Sayce, in remarking that "the immorality
performed in the name of religion was the invention of the
Semitic race itself" (Anc. Emp. p. 203 ; contrast Tiele, Outlines,
p. 83), after crediting the Semitic race with an ethical faculty
alien to the Akkadian (above, p. 39), suggests another phase of
the same error. There is nothing special to the Semites in the
case save degree of development, similar phenomena being
found in many savage religions, in Mexico, and in India. On
the other hand there was a chaste as well as an unchaste
worship of the Phoenician Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth Karnaim, or
Tanit, the Virgin, as opposed to Atergates and Annit, the
Mother-Goddesses, had the characteristics of Artemis. Cp.
Tiele, Religion comparee, as cited, pp. 318-9; Menzies, History of
Religion, pp. 159, 168-171 ; Tiele, Religion of Israel, i, 91. Smith,
Religion of the Semites, pp. 292, 45S. For the rest, the cruelty
of the Phoenician cults, in the matter of human sacrifice, was
fully paralleled among the early Teutons. See Tiele, Outlines,
p. 199.

§ 6. Ancient China.

Of all the ancient Asiatic systems, that of China yields
us the first clear biographical trace of a practical rationalist,
albeit a rationalist stamped somewhat by Chinese con-
servatism. Confucius (Kung-fu-tse = the Master Kung)
is a tangible person, despite some mythic accretions,

1 Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 302.

54 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

whereas Zarathustra and Buddha are but doubtful possi-
bilities, and even Lao-Tsze is elusive.

Before Confucius, it is evident, there had been a
slackening in religious belief among the governing classes.
It is claimed for the Chinese, as for so many other races,
that they had anciently a " pure " monotheism j1 but the
ascription as usual is misleading. They saw in the
expanse of Heaven the " Supreme " Power, not as a result
of reflection on the claims of other deities among other
races, but simply as expressing their primordial tribal
recognition of that special God, before contact with the
God-ideas of other peoples. Monotheistic in the modern
sense they could not be. Concerning them as concerning
the Semites we may say that the claim of a primary
monotheism for them "is also true of all primitive tote-
mistic or clannish communities. A man is born into a
community with such a divine head, and the worship of
that God is the only one possible to him."2 Beside the
belief in the Heaven-God there stood beliefs in heavenly
and earthly spirits, and in ancestors, who were worshipped
with altars.3

The remark of Professor Legge (Religions of China, p. n)
that the relation of the names Shang-Ti = Supreme Ruler,
and T'ien = the sky, " has kept the monotheistic element
prominent in the religion proper of China down to the present
time,'" may serve to avert disputation. It may be agreed that
the Chinese were anciently " monotheists " in the way in which
they are at present, when they worship spirits innumerable.
When, however, Professor Legge further says (p. 16) that the
ancient monotheism five thousand years ago was "in danger of
being corrupted " by nature worship and divination, he puts in
doubt the meaning of the other expression above cited. He
states several times (pp. 46, 51, 52) that the old monotheism
remains; but speaks (p. 84) of the mass of the people as "cut
off from the worship of God for themselves ". And see p. 91 as
to ancestor-worship by the Emperor. Tiele (Outlines, p. 27) in

1 Lefrge, Religions of China, 1880, pp, 11, 16; Douglas, Confucianism and
Taouism, 1H79, pp. 12, 82.

2 Menzies, History of Religion, p. 158.

3 Legge, pp. 12, 19, 23, 25, 26; Tiele, Outlines, p. 27 ; Douglas, p. 79.

ANCIENT CHINA. 55

comparison somewhat overstresses the polytheistic aspect of
the Chinese religion in his opening definition ; but he adds the
essential facts. Dr. Legge's remark that "the idea of revelation
did not shock" the ancient Chinese (p. 13) is obscure. He is
dealing with the ordinary Akkado-Babylonian astrology.

As regards ancestral worship, we have record of a
display of disregard for it by the lords of Lu in Confucius'
time ; ' and the general attitude of Confucius himself,
religious only in his adherence to old ceremonies, is
incompatible with a devout environment. It has been
disputed whether he makes a " sceptic denial of any
relation between man and a living God";2 but an
authority who disputes this, complains that his " avoiding
the personal name of Ti, or God, and only using the more
indefinite term Heaven," suggests "a coldness of tem-
perament and intellect in the matter of religion".3 He
was indeed above all things a moralist ; and concerning
the spirits in general he taught that "To give one's self to
the duties due to men, and while respecting spiritual
beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom ".*
He would never express an opinion concerning the fate of
souls,5 or encourage prayer ;6 and in his redaction of the
old records he seems deliberately to have eliminated
mythological expressions.7

The view that there was a very early " arrest of growth " in
the Chinese religion (Menzies, History of Religion, p. 108),
" before the ordinary developments of mythology and doctrine,
priesthood," etc., had "time to take place", seems untenable
as to the mythology. The same writer had just before spoken
(p. 107) of the Chinese system before Confucius as having
" already parted with all savage and irrational elements ". That
Confucius would seek to eliminate these seems likely enough,
though the documentary fact is disputed.

1 Legge, p. 142.

8 See the citations made by Legge, p. 5.

8 Id., p. 139. Cp. Menzies, p. 109.

4 Legge, p. 140; cp. p. 117 ; Douglas, p. 8]

5 Legge, p. 117 ; Douglas, p. 68 ; Tiele, Outlines, p. 29.

6 Tiele, p. 31 ; Legge, p. 143.

7 Tiele, pp. 31-2 ; Douglas, pp. 68, 84. But cp. Legge, pp. 123, 137.

56 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

In the elder contemporary of Confucius, Lao-Tsze
(" Old Boy "), the founder of Taouism, may be recognised
another and more remarkable early Freethinker of a
different stamp, in some essential respects much less con-
servative, and in intellectual cast markedly more original.
Where Confucius was an admirer and student of antiquity,
Lao-Tsze expressly put such concern aside,1 seeking a law
of life within himself, in a manner suggestive of much
Indian and other oriental thought. His personal relation
to Confucius was that of a self-poised sage, impatient of
the other's formalism and regard to prescription and
precedent. Where they compare is in their avoidance of
supernaturalism, and in the singular rationality of their
views of social science ; in which latter respect, however,
they were the recipients and transmitters of an already
classic tradition. It is not going too far to say that no
ancient people appears to have produced sane thinkers
and scientific moralists earlier than the Chinese. The
Golden Rule, repeatedly formulated by Confucius, seems
to be but a condensation on his part of doctrine he found
in the older classics;2 and as against Lao-Tsze he is
found maintaining the practical form of the principle of
reciprocity. The older man, like some later teachers,
preached the rule of returning kindness for evil, without
leaving any biographical trace of such practice on his own
part. Confucius, dealing with human nature as it
actually is, argued that evil should be met by justice,
and kindness with kindness, else the evil were as much
fostered as the good.3

It is to be regretted that Christian writers should keep up
the form of condemning Confucius (so Legge, p. 144 ;
Douglas, p. 144) for a teaching the practice of which is
normally possible, and is never transcended in their own
church, where the profession of returning good for evil merely
constitutes one of the great hypocrisies of civilisation. How
little effect the self-ahnegating teaching of Lao-Tsze, in turn,

1 Douglas, pp. 179, 184. * Legge, p. 137.

I ' •■_'<■, p 1. 1 3 ; I knigliis, p. i.).|.

ANCIENT CHINA. 57

has had on his followers may be gathered from their very
legends concerning him (Douglas, p. 182). There is a fallacy,
further, in the Christian claim that Confucius put the Golden
Rule in a lower form than that of the Gospels, in that he gave
it the negative form, " Do not that which ye would not have
done unto you ". This is really the rational and valid form of
the Rule. The positive form, unless construed in the restrictive
sense, would merely prescribe a non-moral doing of favors in
the hope of receiving favors in return.

Lao-Tsze, on his part, had reduced religion to a
minimum. " There is not a word in the Tao Teh King
[by Lao-Tsze] of the sixth century B.C. that savors
either of superstition or religion."1 But the quietist and
mystical philosophy of Lao-Tsze and the practicality of
Confucius alike failed to check the growth of superstition
among the ever-increasing ignorant Chinese population.
" In the works of Lieh-tsze and Chwang-tsze, followers of
Lao-Tsze, two or three centuries later, we find abundance
of grotesque superstition, though we are never sure how
far those writers really believed the things they relate " —
the old fatality, seen in Brahmanism, in Buddhism, in
Egypt, in Islam, and in Christianity. Confucius himself
was soon worshipped.2 A reaction against him set in
after a century or two, doctrines of pessimism on the one
hand and of universal love on the other finding a hear-
ing ;J but the influence of the great Confucian teacher
Mencius (Meng-tse) carried his school through the
struggle. " In his teaching, the religious element retires
still further into the background"4 than in that of Con-
fucius ; and he is memorable for his insistence on the
remarkable principle of Confucius, that " the people are
born good"; that they are the main part of the State;

1 Legge, p. 164. We do find, however, an occasional allusion to deity,
as in the phrase "the Great Architect" (Chalmers' trans., 1868, c. lxxiv,
p. 57), and "Heaven" is spoken of in a somewhat personalised sense.
Still, Dr. Chalmers complains (p. xv) that Lao-Tsze did not recognise a
personal God, but put "an indefinite, impersonal and unconscious Tau "
above all things (c. iv).

2 Legge, p. 147; Tiele, Outlines, p. 33.

3 Legge, Life and Works of Mencius, 1875, pp. 29, 50, 77, etc.
1 Tiele, p. 33.

58 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

and that it is the ruler's fault if they go astray.1 But
Mencius put his ringer on the central force in Chinese
history when he taught that " it is only men of education
who, without a certain livelihood, are able to maintain a
fixed heart. As to the people, if they have not a certain
livelihood, it follows that they will not have a fixed
heart."2 So clearly was the truth seen in China over
two thousand years ago. But whether under feudalism
or imperialism, under anarchy or under peace — and the
teachings of Lao-Tsze and Mencius combined to discredit
militarism8 — the Chinese mass always pullulated on cheap
food, at a low standard of comfort, and in a state, of utter
ignorance. Hence the cult of Confucius was maintained
among them only by recognising their normal super-
stition ; but on that basis it has remained secure, despite
competition and even a term of early persecution. One
iconoclastic emperor, the founder of the Ch'in or Ts'in
dynasty (B.C. 221 or 212), sought to extirpate Confucian-
ism as a means to a complete reconstruction of the
government ; but the effort came to nothing.

In the same way Lao-Tsze came to be worshipped as
a God4 under the religion called Taouism, a title some-
times mistranslated as Rationalism, "a name admirably
calculated to lead the mind astray as to what the religion
is".5 The Taoists or Tao-sse " do their utmost to be as
unreasonable as possible".6 They soon reverted from the
philosophic mysticism of Lao-Tsze, after a stage of indif-
ferentism,7 to a popular supernaturalism,8 which " the
cultivated Chinese now regard with unmixed contempt";9
the crystallised common-sense of Confucius on the other
hand, allied as it is with the official spirit of ceremonial-

1 Legge, Life and Works of Mencius, pp. 44, 47, 56, 57, etc.

2 Id., p, 4Q ; cp. p. 48.

3 Cp. Legge's Mencius, pp. 47, 131 ; Chalmers' Lao-Tsze, pp. 23, 28, 53,
58 (cc. xxx, xxxi, xxxvi, lxvii, lxxiv) ; Douglas, Taouism, cc. ii, iii.

1 Legge, Religions of China, p. 159. •"' Id., p. 60.

R Tiele, p. 37. 7 Douglas, p. 222. R Id., p. 239.

9 Tiele, p. 35 ; Douglas, p. 287. Taouism, however, has a rather note-
worthy ethical code. See Douglas, ch. vi.

MEXICO AND PERU. 59

ism, retaining its hold as an esoteric code for the
learned.

Nowhere perhaps is our sociological lesson more
clearly to be read than in China. Centuries before our
era it had a rationalistic literature, an ethic no less
earnest and far more sane than that of the Hebrews, and
a line of teachers as remarkable in their way as those of
ancient Greece, who flourished about the same period.
But where even Greece, wrought upon by all the other
cultures of antiquity, retrograded till, under Christianity,
it stayed at a Chinese level of unprogressiveness for a
thousand years, isolated China, helped by no neighbouring
culture adequate to the need, has stagnated as regards
the main mass of its life, despite some political and other
fluctuations, till our own day. Its social problem, like
that of India, is now more or less dependent on the
solutions that may be reached in Europe, where the
problem is only relatively more mature, not fundamentally
different.

§ 7. Mexico and Peru.

In the religions of pre-Christian Mexico and Peru we
have peculiarly interesting examples of " early" religious
systems, flourishing at some such culture-level as the
ancient Akkadian, in full play at the time of the European
Renaissance. In Mexico a " high " ethical code, as the
phrase goes, was held concurrently with the most frightful
indulgence in human sacrifice, sustained by the continu-
ous practice of indecisive war and the interest of a vast
priesthood. In this system had been developed all the
leading features of those of the Old World — the identi-
fication of all the Gods with the Sun ; the worship of fire,
and the annual renewal of it by special means ; the con-
ception of God-sacrifice and of communion with the God
by the act of eating his slain representative; the belief in
a Virgin-Mother-Goddess; the connection of humanitarian
ethic with the divine command; the opinion that celibacy,
as a state of superior virtue, is incumbent on most priests

HISTORY OF FKEETHOUGHT.

and on all would-be saints ; the substitution of a sacra-
mental bread for the " body and blood" of the God-Man ;
the idea of an interceding Mother-God ; the hope of a
Coming Saviour ; the regular practice of prayer ; exor-
cism, special indulgences, confession, absolution, fasting,
and so on.1 In Peru, also, many of those conceptions
were in force ; but the limitation of the power and
numbers of the priesthood by the imperial system of the
Incas, and the state of peace normal in their dominions,
prevented the Mexican development of human sacrifice.

It seems probable that the Toltecs, conquered and for
the most part driven out by the Aztecs a few centuries
before Cortes, were a less warlike and more humane
people, with an unbloody worship. Their God Quetzal-
coatl, retained through fear by the Aztecs," was a benign
deity opposed to human sacrifice, apparently rather a late
purification or partial rationalisation of an earlier God-
type than a primitively harmless conception.3 In that
case their overthrow would stand for the military in-
feriority of the higher and more rational civilisation4 to
the lower and more religious, which in turn, however,
was latterly being much weakened by its enormously
burdensome military and priestly system, and may even be
held to have been ruined by its own superstitious fears.5

Among the recognisable signs of normal progress in
the ordinary Aztec religion were (i) the general recog-
nition of the Sun as the God really worshipped in all the
temples of the deities with special names;6 (2) the substi-

' Details are given in the author's lecture on The Religions of Ancient
America in Religious Systems of the World, 2nd ed.

- Reville, Hibbert Lectures On the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru,
1884, pp 62-67.

;' H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii, 279. (Passage
cited in author's lecture, p. 365 ; where is also noted Dr. Tylor's view that
Quetzalcoatl was a real personage.)

4 Cp. Prescott, Conquest 0/ M, xico. Kirk's ed, 1890, p. 41.

•'■ RSville, p. 66.

c Id., p. 46. Dr. Neville speaks of the worship of the unifying deity as
pretty much "effaced" by that of the lower Gods. It seems rather to have
been a priestly effort to syncretise these. As to the alleged monotheism
of Nezahuatl, sec- Fang, Making of Religion, p. 270, note, and p. 282.

MEXICO AND PERU. 6 1

tution in some cults of baked bread-images for a crucified
human victim. With such beginnings made, the Aztecs
might conceivably have risen above their system of
human sacrifices, as the Aryan Hindus had done in an
earlier age. Their material civilisation was unquestion-
ably much superior to that which the Spaniards put in its
place ; and their priesthood, being a leisured and wealthy
class with a marked ethical bias, might have developed
intellectually as did the Brahmans.1 In the Hindu case
the reform of sacrifices seems to have resulted from the
reaction of a southern and vegetarian population on a
flesh-eating one ; but as regards human sacrifice there
needed in Mexico only a development of the physiological
recoil, which would have been greatly furthered by a state
of peace, could that have been attained.

In Peru, again, we find civilisation advancing in
respect of the innovation of substituting statuettes for
wives and slaves in the tombs of the rich ; and we have
already noted2 the remarkable records of the avowed
unbelief of several Incas in the divinity of the nationally
worshipped Sun. For the rest, there was the dubious
quasi-monotheistic cult of the Creator-God, Pachacamac,
concerning whom every fresh discussion raises fresh
doubt.3

Mr. Lang, as usual, leans to the view that Pachacamac
stands for a primordial and " elevated " monotheism (Making
of Religion, pp. 263-270) while admitting the slightness of the
evidence. Garcilasso, the most eminent authority, who, how-
ever, is contradicted by others, represents that the conception
of Pachacamac as Creator, needing no temple or sacrifice, was
" philosophically " reached by the Incas and their wise men
(Lang, p. 262). The historical fact seems to be that a race
subdued by the Incas, the Yuncas, had one temple to this
deity ; and that the Incas adopted the cult. Garcilasso says
the Yuncas had human sacrifices and idols, which the Incas

' As to the capabilities of the Aztec language, see Bancroft, Native Races,
ii, 727-8 (quoted in lecture cited, p. 373, note).

2 Above, p. 22. Cp. Lang, as last cited, pp. 263, 282.

;i Cp. Kirk's ed. of Prescott's Conquest of Peru, 1889, p. 44; Reville,
pp. 189-190; Lang, as cited below.

62 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

abolished, setting up their monotheistic cult in that one temple.
This is sufficiently unlikely ; and it may very well have been
the fact that the Yuncas had offered no sacrifices. But if they
did not, it was because their material conditions, like those of
the Australians and Fuegians, had not facilitated the practice ;
and in that case their " monotheism " likewise would merely
represent the ignorant simplicity of a clan cult. (Compare
Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 335, ff. ; Brinton, Myths of the
New World, p. 52.) On the other hand, if the Incas had set up
a cult without sacrifices to a so-called One God, their idea
would be philosophical, as taking into account the multitude
of clan-cults as well as their own national worships, and
transcending these.

But the outstanding sociological fact in Incarial Peru
was the absolute subjection of the mass of the people ;
and though its material development and political organi-
sation were comparable to those of ancient Persia under
the Akhamenidae, so that the Spanish Conquest stood for
mere destruction, there is no reason to think that at the
best its intellectual life could have risen higher than that
of pre-Alexandrian Egypt, to which it offers so many
resemblances. The Incas' schools were for the nobility
only.1 Rationalistic Incas and high priests might have
ruled over a docile unlettered multitude, gradually softening
their moral code, in connection with their rather highly-
developed doctrine (resembling the Egyptian) of a future
state. But these seem the natural limits, in the absence
of contact with another civilisation not too disparate for
a fruitful union.

In Mexico, on the other hand, an interaction of native
cultures had already occurred to some purpose ; and the
strange humanitarianism of the man-slaying priests, who
made free public hospitals of part of their blood-stained
temples,2 suggests a possibility of esoteric mental culture
among them. They had certainly gone relatively far in
their moral code, as apart from their atrocious creed of

1 Rcville, p. 152, citing Garcilasso. See same page for a story of resis-
tance to the invention of an alphabet.

- Reville, p. 50, citing Torquemada, 1. viii, c. 20, end.

THE COMMON FORCES OF DEGENERATION. 63

sacrifice, even if we discount the testimony of the
benevolent priest Sahagun ; l and they had the beginnings
of a system of education for the middle classes.2 Their
murdered civilisation is thus the "great perhaps" of
sociology : the priesthood itself being at once the most
promising and the most sinister factor in the problem.

§ 8. The Common Forces of Degeneration.

It is implied more or less in all of the foregoing sum-
maries that there is an inherent tendency in all systematised
and instituted religion to degenerate intellectually and
morally, save for the constant corrective activity of free-
thought. It may be well, however, to note specifically
the forms or phases of the tendency.

1. Dogmatic and ritual religion being, to begin with,
a more or less general veto on fresh thinking, it lies in its
nature that the religious person is as such less intelligently
alive to all problems of thought and conduct than he
otherwise might be — a fact which at least outweighs, in a
whole society, the gain from imposing a terrorised con-
formity on the less well-biassed types. Wherever conduct
is a matter of sheer obedience to a superhuman code, it is
ipso facto uncritical and unprogressive. Thus the history
of most religions is a record of declines and reformations,
each new affirmation of freethought ad hoc being in turn
erected into a set of sheer commands. To set up the
necessary ferment of corrective thought even for a time
there seems to be needed (a) a provocation to the intel-
ligence, as in the spectacle of conflict of cults ; and (b) a
provocation to the moral sense and to self-interest through
a burdensome pressure of rites or priestly exactions. An
exceptional personality of course counts for much in the
making of a movement.

2. The fortunes of such reactions are determined by

1 History of the Affairs of Nck< Spain, French trans., 1SS0, 1. vi, c. 7,
pp. 342-3. Cp. Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Kirk's ed., pp. 31, 33.
3 Prescott, p. 34.

64 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

socio-economic or political conditions. They are seen to
be at a minimum, as to energy and social effect, in the
conditions of greatest social invariability, as in ancient
Egypt, where progress in thought, slow at best, was
confined to the priestly and official class, and never
affected popular culture.

3. In the absence of social conditions fitted to raise
popular levels of life and thought, every religious s}'stem
tends to worsen intellectually in the sense of adding to its
range of superstition — that is, of irrational belief. Credulity
has its own momentum. Even the possession of limitary
Sacred Books cannot check this tendency — e.g., Hinduism,
Judaism, Mohammedanism, Mazdeism, Christianity up
till the age of doubt and science, and the systems of
ancient Egypt, Babylon, and post-Confucian China.
This worsening can take place alongside of a theoretic
purification of belief within the sphere of the educated
theological class.

Christian writers have undertaken to show that such
deterioration went on continuously in India from the beginning
of the Vedic period, popular religion sinking from Varuna to
Indra, from Indra to the deities of the Atharva Veda, and from
these to the Puranas (Cp. Dr. J. Murray Mitchell, Hinduism
Past and Present, 1885, pp. 22, 25, 26, 54). The argument,
being hostile in bias from the beginning, ignores or denies the
element of intellectual advance in the Upanishads and other
later literature ; but it holds good of the general phenomena.
It holds good equally, however, of the history of Christianity in
the period of the supremacy of ignorant faith and absence of
doubt and science ; and is relatively applicable to the religion
of the uneducated mass at any time and place.

On the other hand, it is not at all true that religious history
is from the beginning, in any case, a process of mere degenera-
tion from a pure ideal. Simple statements as to primitive
ideas are found to be misleading because of their simplicity.
They can connote only the ethic of the life conditions of the
worshipper. Now, we have seen (pp. 16-17) that primitive
peoples living at peace and in communism, or in some respects
well placed, may be on that account in some moral respects
superior to the average or mass of more civilised and more
intelligent peoples. [As to the kindliness and unselfishness of

THE COMMON FORCES OF DEGENERATION. 65

som .avages, living an almost communal life, and as to the
scrup Lous honesty of others, there is plenty of evidence — e.g.
as to Andaman islanders, Max Midler, A nthrop. Relig., citing
Colonel Cadell, p. 177; as to Malays and Papuans, Dr. Russel
Wallace, Malay Archipelago, p. 595 (but compare pp. 585, 5S7,
589) ; Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 15, 37, 115 (but cp. pp. 41-2).
In these and other cases unselfishness within the tribe is the
cone ' litant of the communal life, and represents no conscious
ethical volition, being concurrent with phases of the grossest
tribi goism. In the case of the preaching of unselfishness to
the ang by the old among the Australians, where Lubbock
and his authorities see " the selfishness of the old" (Origin of
Civih ation, 5th ed., pp. 451-2) Mr. Lang sees a pure primeval
ethic. Obviously the other is the true explanation.] The
transition from that state to one of war and individualism is in
a sense degeneration ; but, broadly speaking, it is by that path
that ogress in civilisation has been made, the large military
stat< s ultimately securing within themselves some of the con-
ditions for special development of thought, arts, and knowledge.
The r< sidual truth is that the simple religion of the harmless
tribe pro tanto superior to the instituted religion of the more
civil 1 nation with greater heights and lower depths of life,
the ] Hilar religion in the latter case standing for the worse
conditions. But the simple religion did not spring from anv
high< :' stage of knowledge. The recent theorem of Mr. A.
Lan I'he Making of Religion, 189S) as to religion having
originally been a pure and highly ethical monotheism, from
which it degenerated into animism and non-moral polytheism,
is at best a misreading of the facts just stated. Mr. Lang
never asks what " Supreme Being" and "monotheism" mean
for savages who know nothing of other men's religions: he
virtually takes all the connotations for granted. For the rest,
his theory is demonstrably wrong in its ethical interpretation
of m my anthropological facts, and as it stands is quite irre-
coiu i ile with the law of evolution, since it assumes an abstract
rnon ,ieism as primordial. In general it approximates scienti-
ficalJ to the last century doctrine of the superiority of savagery
to civilisation.

4. E 11 primary conditions of material well-being;, if
not reacted upon by social science or a movement of
freethought, may in a comparatively advanced civilisation
promot< ■ •ligious degeneration. Thus abundance of food
is favoj ible to multiplication of sacrifice, and so to>

66 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

priestly predominance.1 The possession of domesticated
animals, so important to civilisation, lends itself to sacrifice
in a specially demoralising degree. But abundant cereal
food-supply, making abundant population, may in a
country habitually at war, greatly promote human sacrifice
— e.g., Mexico.

The error of Mr. Lang's method is seen in the use he makes
(Work cited, pp. 2S6-289, 292) of the fact that certain "low"
races — as the Australians, Andamanese, Bushmen, and Fue-
gians — offer no animal sacrifice. He misses the obvious sig-
nificance of the facts that these unwarlike races have as a rule
no domesticated animals and no agriculture, and that their
food supply is thus in general precarious. The Andamanese,
sometimes described (Malthus, Essay on Population, ch. iii, and
refs.) as very ill-fed, appear to be well supplied with fish and
game (Peschel, Races of Mankind, p. 147; M. M tiller, Anthrop.
Rel., citing Cadell, p. 177) ; but in any case they have no agri-
culture. The Australians and Fuegians, again, have often great
difficulty in feeding themselves (Peschel, pp. 14S, 159, 334;
Darwin, Voyage, c. 10). In the case, however, of the primitive
Vedic Aryans, well supplied with animals, sacrifices were
abundant, and tended to become more so (Midler, Nat. Relig.,
pp. 136, 185 ; Physical Relig., p. 105 ; but cp. pp. 98, 101 ;
Mitchell, Hinduism, p. 43 Lefmann, Geschichte des alien Indicns,
in Oncken's series, 1890, S. 49, 430-1). Of these sacrifices, that
of the horse seems to have been in Aryan use in a most remote
period (Cp. M. Muller, Nat. Rel., pp. 524-5; H. Bottger, Son-
nencult dcr lndogevmancn, Breslau, 1S91, S. 41-44 ; Prellcr,
Rbmischc Mythologie, ed. Kohler, S. 102, 299, 323 ; Griechisclie
Mythologie, 2te Aufg. i, 462; Frazer, Golden Bough, ii, 65-66).
Dr. Midler's remark (Physical Religion, p. 106) that "the idea of
sacrifice did not exist at a very early period " because there is
no common Aryan term for it, counts for nothing, as he admits
(p. 107) that the Sanskrit word cannot be traced back to any
more general root; and he admits the antiquity of the practice.
On this cp. Mitchell, Hinduism, pp. 37-38. The reform in Hindu
sacrifice, consummated by Buddhism, has been noted above.

5. Even scientific knowledge, while enabling the
thoughtful to correct their religious conceptions, in some

1 " The priest says, 'the spirit is hungry', the fact being that he him-
selt is hungry. He advises the killing of an animal" (Muller, Anthrof'o-
iogicul Religion, p. 307).

THE COMMON FORCES OF DEGENERATION. (ij

forms lends itself easily to the promotion of popular
superstition. Thus the astronomy of the Babylonians,
while developing some scepticism, served in general to
encourage divination and fortune-telling ; and seems to
have had the same effect when communicated to the
Chinese, the Hindus, and the Hebrews, all of whom,
however, practised divination previously on other bases.

6. Finally, the development of the arts of sculpture
and painting, unaccompanied by due intellectual culture,
tends to keep religion at a low anthropomorphic level,
and worsens its psychology by inviting image-worship.1
It is not that the earlier and non-artistic religions are not
anthropomorphic, but that they give more play for intel-
lectual imagination than does a cult of images. But
where the arts have been developed, idolatry has always
arisen save when resisted by a special activity or revival
of freethought to that end ; and even in Protestant
Christendom, where image-worship is tabooed, religious
pictures now promote popular credulity as they did in the
Italian Renaissance. So manifold are the forces of
intellectual degeneration — degeneration, that is, from an
attained ideal or stage of development, not from any
primordial knowledge.

1 On the general tendency cp. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Manual of the
Science of Religion, pp. 77-84.

F 2

CHAPTER IV.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL.

The modern critical analysis of the Hebrew Sacred Books
has made it sufficiently clear that in Jewish as in all
other ancient history progress in religion was by way of
evolving an ethical and unique deity out of normal
primeval polytheism. What was special to the Hebrews
was the set of social conditions under which the evolution
took place. Through these conditions it was that the
relative Freethought which rejected normal polytheism
was so far favored as to lead to a pronounced mono-
theistic cultus, though not to a philosophic monotheism.

§1.

As seen in their earliest historical documents (especially
portions of the Book of Judges) the Hebrews are a group
of agricultural and pastoral but warlike tribes of Semitic
speech, with household Gods and local deities,1 living
among communities at the same or a higher culture stage.
Their ancestral legends show similar religious practice.
Of the Hebrew tribes, some may have sojourned for a
time in Egypt; but this is uncertain, the written record
being a late and in large part deliberately fictitious con-
struction. At one time, twelve such tribes appear to
have confederate'! 1, in conformity with a common ancient
superstition, seen in Arab and Greek history as well as in
the Jewish, as to the number twelve. As they advanced
in civilisation, on a basis of city life existing among a
population settled in Canaan before them, parts of which

1 Jud. xvii, .viii. 2 Gen. xxxi, 19, 34, 35.

( 68 )

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 69

they conquered, one of their public cults, that of Ya.hu or
Yahweh, finally fixed at Jerusalem, became politically
important. The special worshippers of this God (sup-
posed to have been at first a Thunder-God or Sun-God)
were in that sense monotheists ; but not otherwise than
kindred neighbouring communities such as the Ammo-
nites and Moabites and Edomites, each of which had its
special God, like the cities of Babylonia and Egypt. But
that the earlier conceptions of the people had assumed a
multiplicity of Gods is clear from the fact that even in the
later literary efforts to impose the sole cult of Yahweh on
the people, the plural name Elohiin, " Powers " or
"Gods" (in general, things to be feared),1 is retained,
either alone or with that of Yahweh prefixed, though
cosmology had previously been written in Yahweh's name.
The Yahwists did not scruple to combine an Elohistic
narrative, varying from theirs in cosmology and other-
wise, with their own.2

As to the original similarity of Hebraic and other Canaanite
religions cp. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, §§309-311
(i> 372-376) ; Kuenen, i, 223 ; Wellhausen, Israel, p. 440 ;
Reville, Prolegomenes de VHistoire des Religions, 1S81, p. 85.
" Before being monotheistic, Israel was simply monolatrous, and
•even that only in its religions elite " (Reville). ''Their [the
Canaanites'J worship was the same in principle as that of
Israel, but it had a higher organisation " (Menzies, History of
Religion, p. 179 : Cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. S5-S9). On the side
of the traditional view, Mr. Lang, while sharply challenging
most of the propositions of the higher critics, affirms that "we
know that Israel had, in an early age, the conception of the

1 The word is applied to the apparition of Samuel in the story of the
Witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii, 13).

- The unlearned reader may here be reminded that in Gen. i the
Hebrew word translated "God" is "Elohim", and that the phrase in
Gen. ii rendered " the Lord God " in our versions is in the original " Vah-
weh-Elohim ". The first chapter, with its plural deity, is, however, pro-
bably the later as well as the more dignified narrative, and represents the
influence of Babylonian quasi-science. See, for a good general account of
the case, The Witness of Assyria, by C. Edwards, 1893, c. ii. Cp. Well-
hausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, Eng. tt\, pp. 296-30S ; E. J.
l-'ripp, The Composition of the Book of Genesis, 1892, passim ; Driver, IntroJ. to
the Lit. of the Old Testament, 1891, pp. 18 19.

70 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

moral Eternal ; we know that, at an early age, the conception
was contaminated and anthropomorphised ; and we know that
it was rescued, in a great degree, from this corruption, while
always retaining its original ethical aspect and sanction "
(Making of Religion, p. 295). If " we know " this, the discussion
is at an end. But Mr. Lang's sole documentary basis for the
assertion is just the fabricated record, reluctantly abandoned
by theological scholars as such. When this is challenged,
Mr. Lang falls back on the position that such low races as the
Australians and Fuegians have a "moral Supreme Being",
and that therefore Israel " must " have had one (p. 309). It
will be found however that the ethic of these races is perfectly
primitive, on Mr. Lang's own showing, and that his estimate is
a misinterpretation. As to their Supreme Beings it will suffice
to compare Mr. Lang's Making of Religion, cc. ix, xii, with his
earlier Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 16S, 335, ii, 6, etc. He has
now merely added the ambiguous and misleading epithet
" Supreme ", stressing it indefinitely, to the ordinary God-idea
of the lower races. (Cp. Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Races, ed.
1882, p. 155 ; and K. O. Midler, lntrod. to Scientific Mythology,
Eng. tr., p. 184.)

There being thus no highly imagined " moral Eternal" in
the religion of primitive man, the Hebrews were originally in
the ordinary position. Their early practice of human sacrifice
is implied in the legend of Abraham and Isaac, and in the
story of Jephthah. (Cp. Micah, vi, 7, and Kuenen on the
passage, i, 237.) In their reputed earliest prophetic books we
find them addicted to divination (Hosea, iv, 12; Micah v, 12.
Cp. the prohibition in Lev. xx. 6; also 2 Kings xxiii, 24, and
Isa. iii, 2 : as to the use of the ephod, teraphim, and uriin and
thummim, see Kuenen, Religion of Israel, Eng. trans, i, 97-100
and to polytheism. (Amos, v. 26, viii, 14; Hosea, i, 13, 17,
etc. Cp. Jud. viii, 27 ; 1 Sam. vii. 3). These things Mr. Lang
seems to admit (p. 30c). note) despite iiis previous claim ; but
he builds (p. 332) on the fact that the Hebrews showed little
concern about a future state — that "early Israel, having, so
far as we know, a singular lack of interest in the future of the
soul, was born to give himself up to developing, undisturbed,
the theistic conception, the belief in a righteous Eternal" —
whereas later Greeks and Romans, like Egyptians, were much
concerned about life after death. Mr. Lang's own general
theory would really require that all peoples at a certain stage
should act like the Israelites; but he suspends it in the interest
of the orthodox view as to the early Hebrews. At the same
time he fails to explain why the Hebrews failed to adopt the

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IX ISRAEL. 71

future-state creed when they were " contaminated " — a pro-
position hardly reconcilable with the sentence just quoted.
The solution, however, is simple. Israel was not at all
" singular " in the matter. The early Greeks and Romans (cp.
as to Hades the Iliad, passim; Odyssey, B. xi, passim ; Tiele,
Outlines, p. 209, as to the myth of Persephone ; and Preller,
Rdmische Mythologie, ed. Kuhler, 1865, S. 452-5 as to the early
Romans) like the early Vedic Aryans (Tiele, Outlines, p. 117;
Midler, Anthropol. Relig., p. 269), and the early Babylonians and
Assyrians (Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, 181-2; Sayce,
Hibbert Lectures, p. 364) took little thought of a future state.
This attitude has again been erroneously regarded (e.g. Dickin-
son, The Greek View of Life, p. 35) as peculiar to the Greeks.
Mr. Lang's assumption may in fact be overthrown by the single
case of the Phoenicians, who showed no more concern about a
future life than did the Hebrews (see Canon Rawlinson's
History of Phoenicia, 18S9, pp. 351-2), but who are not pretended
to have given themselves up much to "developing, undisturbed,
the belief in a righteous Eternal ". The truth seems to be
that in all the early progressive and combative civilisations the
main concern was as to the continuance of this life. On that
head the Hebrews were as solicitous as any (cp. Kuenen, i,
65) ; and they habitually practised divination on that score.
Further, they attached the very highest importance to the
continuance of the individual in his offspring. The idea of a
future State is first found highly developed in the long-lived
cults of the long-civilised but unprogressive Egyptians ; and
the Babylonians were developing in the same direction. Yet
the Hebrews took it up (see the evidence in Schi'irer, Jewish
People in the time of Jesus, Eng. tr., Div. II, vol. ii, p. 179) just
when, according to Mr. Lang, their cult was " rescued, in a
great degree, from corruption " ; and, generally speaking, it
was in the stage of maximum monotheism that they reached
the maximum of irrationality. For the rest, belief in immor-
tality is found highly developed in a sociologically "degenerate"
or unprogressive people such as the Tasmanians (Midler,
Anthrop. ReL, p. 433), who are yet primitively pure on Mr.
Lang's hypothesis.

This primary polytheism is seen to the full in that
constant resort of Israelites to neighbouring cults, against
which so much of the Hebrew doctrine is directed. To
understand their practice, the modern reader has to get
rid of the hallucination imposed on Christendom by its

72 HISTORY OF FREETHOUCHT.

idea of revelation. The cult of Yahweh was no primordial
Hebrew creed, deserted by backsliding idolators, but a
finally successful tyranny of one local cult over others.
Therefore, without begging the question as to the moral
sincerity of the prophets and others who identified
Yahwism with morality, we must always remember that
they were on their own showing devotees of a special
local worship, and so far fighting for their own influence.
Similar prophesying may conceivably have been carried
on in connection with the same or other God-names in
other localities, and the extant prophets freely testify that
they had Yahwistic opponents ; but the circumstance
that Yahweh was worshipped at Jerusalem without any
image might be an important cause of differentiation in
the case of that cult. In any case, it must have been
through simple " exclusivism " that they reached any
form of " monotheism 'V

The inveterate usage, in the Bible-making period, of
forging and interpolating ancient or pretended writings,
makes it impossible to construct any detailed history of
the rise of Yahwism. We can but proceed upon data
which do not appear to lend themselves to the purposes
of the later adaptors. In that way we see cause to
believe that at one early centre the so-called ark of
Yahweh contained various objects held to have super-
natural virtue." In the older historic documents it has,
however, no such sacredness as accrues to it later,3 and
no great traditional prestige. This ark, previously moved
from place to place as a fetish,4 is said to have been
transferred to Jerusalem by the early King David,8 whose
story, like that of his predecessor Saul and his son
Solomon, is in part blended with myth.

As to David, compare i Sam. xvi, iS, with xvii, 33, 42.
Daond (= Dodo = Dumzi Tammuz = Adonis) was a

1 Cp. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, 398.

• See the myth oi the offerings put in it by the Philistines (1 Sam. vi)
:i 1 S;im. iii, <,. Cp ch. ii. 12-22. Contrast Lev. x\i, 2, tl.

* 1 bam. iv, 3-1 1. Cp. v, \ ii. 2. s 2 Sam., vi.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. ;j

Semitic deity (Sayce, Hib. Lect., pp. 52-57 and art. The .Winn-.
of the first three Kings of Israel, in Modern Review, Jan. 18S4)
whom David resembles as an inventor of the lyre (Amos, vi, 5 ;
cp. Hitzig, Die Psalmen, 2 Theil, 1836, S. 3). But Saul and
Solomon also were God-names (Sayce, as cited), as was Samuel
(Id., pp. 54, 1S1 ; cp. Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr.,
p. 120); and when we note these data, and further the plain fact
that Samson is a solar myth, being a personage Evemcrised
from Samas, the Sun-God, we are prepared to find further
traces of Evemeristic redaction in the Hebrew books. To say
nothing of other figures in the Book of Judges, we find that
Jacob and Joseph were old Canaanitish deities (Sayce,
Lectures, p. 51 ; Records of the Past, New Series, v, 4S) ; and
that Moses, as might be expected, was a name for more than
one Semitic God (Id. Lect., pp. 46-47) and in particular stood
for a Sun-God. Abraham, in turn, appears to be an ancient
deity (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt., i, 374, §309). Miriam was probably
in similar case. The Arabs even had a tradition (Tabari, ed.
Paris, 1867, i, 396, cited by Baring Gould, Legends of Old Test.
Characters, 1S71, ii, 138) that Joshua was the son of Miriam,
whence we may almost surmise another reduction of an ancient
cult to the form of history, perhaps obscuring the true original
of the worship of Mary and Jesus. It seems probable, finally,
that such figures as Elijah, who ascends to heaven in a fiery
chariot, and Elisha, the " bald head " and miracle-worker, are
similar constructions of personages out of Sun-God lore. In
such material lies part of the refutation of the thesis of Kenan
(Histoire des langues semitiques, 2e edit. pp. 7, 485) that the
Semites were natural monotheists, devoid of mythology.
[Renan is followed in whole or in part by Noldeke, Sketches
from Eastern History, Eng. tr., p. 6 ; Soury, Religion of Israel,
Eng. tr., pp. 2, 10 ; Spiegel, Erdnische Alterthumskunde, i, 3S9 ;
also Roscher, Draper, Peschel, and Bluntschli, as cited by
Goldziher, Mythology among the Hebrews, Eng. tr., p. 4, note.
On the other side compare Goldziher, ch. i ; Steinthal's Pro-
metheus and Samson, Eng. tr. (with Goldziher) pp. 391, 42S, etc.,
and his Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und den
Romern, 1863, S. 15-17; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i. 225; Smith,
Rel. of the Semites, p. 49 ; Ewald, History of Israel, Eng. tr., 4th
ed., i, 38-40; Muller, Nat. Rel., p. 314.] Renan's view seems to
be generally connected with the assumption that lite in a
"desert" makes a race for ever unimaginative or unitary in
its thought. The Arabian Nights might be supposed a sufficient
proof to the contrary. The historic truth seems to be that, stage
for stage, the a cient Semites were as mythological as any

74 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

other race ; but that (to say nothing of the Babylonians and'
Assyrians) the mythologies of the Hebrews and of the Arabs
were alike suppressed as far as possible in their monotheistic
stage. Compare Renan's own admissions, pp. 27, no, 475,
and Histoire du Peuple d' Israel, i, 49-50.

At other places, however, Yahweh was symbolised and
worshipped in the image of a young bull,1 a usage asso-
ciated with the neighbouring Semitic cult of Molech, but
probably indigenous, or at least early, in the case of
Yahweh also. A God, for such worshippers, needed to
be represented by something, if he were to be individualised
as against others ; and where there was not an ark or a
sacred stone or special temple or idol there could be no
cult at all. " The practices of ancient religion require a
fixed meeting place between the worshippers and their
God.": The pre-exilic history of Yahweh-worship seems
to be in large part that of a struggle between the
devotees of the imageless worship fixed to the temple at
Jerusalem, and other worships, with or without images,
at other and less influential shrines.

So far as can be gathered from the documents, it was
long before monotheistic pretensions were made in con-
nection with Yahwism. They must in the first instance
have seemed not only tyrannical but blasphemous to the
devotees of the old local shrines, who in the earlier
Hebrew writings figure as perfectly good Yahwists ; and
they clearly had no durable success before the period of
the Exile. Some three hundred years after the supposed
period5 of David, and again eighty years later, we meet
with ostensible traces' of a movement for the special
aggrandisement of the Yahweh cult and the suppression
of the others which competed with it, as well as of certain
licentious and vicious practices carried on in connection
with Yahweh-worship. Concerning these, it could be
claimed by those who had adhered to the simpler tradition

1 1 Kings, xii, 28 ; Hosea viii, 4-C. Cp. Jud. viii, 27; Hosea viii, 5.
- Smith, Religion oj the Semites, p. 196, But see above, p. 50.
cith cent. : ' 2 Kings, xviii, 4, 22 ; xxiii, 48.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 75

of one of the earl)- worships that they were foreign
importations. They were in fact specialities of a rich
ancient society, and were either native to Canaanite cities
which the Hebrews had captured, or copied by them from
such cities. But the fact that they were thus, on the
showing of the later Yahwistic records, long associated
with Yahwist practice, proves that there was no special
elevation about Yahwism originally.

Even the epithet translated "Holy" (Kadosh) had originally
no high moral significance. It simply meant "set apart ", "not
common " (Cp. Knenen, Religion of Israel, i, 43 ; Wellhausen,
Israel, in Prolegomena vol., p. 499) ; and the special sub-
stantive (Kadesh and Kedeshah) was actually the name for the
most degraded ministrants of both sexes in the licentious
worship (see Deut. xxiii, 17, 18, and marg. Rev. Vers. Cp.
1 Kings, xiv, 25 ; xv, 12 ; 2 Kings, xxiii, 7). On the question of
early Hebrew ethics it is somewhat misleading to cite Well-
hausen (so Mr. Lang, Making of Religion, p. 304) as saying
(Israel, p. 437) that religion inspired law and morals in Israel
with exceptional purity. In the context Wellhausen has said
that the starting-point of Israel was normal ; and he writes in the
Prolegomena (p. 302) that "good and evil in Hebrew mean
primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful : the applica-
tion of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary one, these
being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their effects ".

§ 2.
Given the co-existence of a multitude of local cults,
and of various local Yahweh-worships, it is conceivable
that the Yahwists of Jerusalem, backed by a priest-ridden
king, should seek to limit all worship to their own temple,
whose revenues would thereby be much increased. But
insoluble perplexities are set up as to the alleged move-
ment by the incongruities in the documents. Passing
over for the moment the prophets Amos and Hosea and
others who ostensibly belong to the eighth century B.C.,
we find the second priestly reform,1 consequent on a
finding or framing of "the law", represented as occurring

1 2 Kings, xxiii.

76 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

early in the reign of Josiah (641 — 610 B.C.). But later in
the same reign are placed the writings of Jeremiah, who
constantly contemns the scribes, prophets and priests in
mass, and makes light of the ark,1 besides declaring" that
in Judah there are as many Gods as towns, and in
Jerusalem as many Baal-altars as streets. The difficulty
is reduced by recognising the quasi-historical narrative as
a later fabrication ; but other difficulties remain as to the
prophetic writings ; and for our present purpose it is
necessary briefly to consider these.

1. The "higher criticism", seeking solid standing
ground at the beginning of the tangible historic period,
the eighth century, singles out3 the books of Amos and
Hosea, setting aside, as dubious in date, Nahum and
Joel ; and recognising in Isaiah a composite of different
periods. If Amos, the "herdsman ofTekoa", could be
thus regarded as an indubitable historical person, he
would be a remarkable figure in the history of Free-
thought, as would his nominal contemporary Hosea.
Amos is a monotheist, worshipping not a God of Israel
but a Yahweh or Elohim of Hosts, called also by the
name Aden or Adonai, "the Lord," who rules all the
nations and created the universe. Further, the prophet
makes Yahweh " hate and despise" the feasts and burnt-
offerings and solemn assemblies of his worshippers ;4 and
he meddles impartially with the affairs of the kingdoms
of Judah and Israel. In the same spirit, Hosea menaces
tin' solemn assemblies, and makes Yahweh desire " mercy
and not sacrifice "/' Similar doctrine occurs in the
reputedly genuine or ancient parts of Isaiah,6 and in
Micali." Isaiah too disparages the Sabbath and solemn
meetings, staking all upon righteousness.

2. These utterances, so subversive of the priestly
system, are yet held to have been preserved through the

1 Ter. i, 18; iii, 16 ; vi, 1 j; vii, 4-22 ; viii, S; xviii, 18 ; xx, 1,2; xxiii, 1 1.
'-' Jer. ii, 28 ; xi, 13.

So Kuenen, vol. i, App i to Ch. 1. ' Amos v, 21, 22.

5 Hosea ii, 11 ; vi, 0. 6 Isa. i, 11-14. 7 Mic. vi, 6-8.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 7;

ages — through the Assyrian conquest, through the Baby-
lonian Captivity, through the later period of priestlv
reconstruction — by the priestly system itself. In the
state of things pictured under Ezra and Nehemiah, only
the zealous adherents of the priestly law can at the outset
have had any letters, any literature ; it must have been
they, then, who treasured the anti-priestly and anti-ritual
writings of the prophets — unless indeed the latter were
preserved by the Jews remaining at Babylon.

3. The perplexity thus set up is greatly deepened

when we remember that the period assigned to the earlier

prophets is near the beginning of the known age of

alphabetic writing,1 and before the known age of writing

on scrolls. A herdsman of Judea, with a classic and

flowing style, is held to have written out his hortatory

addresses at a time when such writing is not certainly

known to have been practised anywhere else ; and the

pre-eminent style of Isaiah is held to belong to the

same period.

"His [Amos's] language, with three or four insignificant
exceptions, is pure, his style classical and refined. His literary
power is shown in the regularity of structure which often
characterizes his periods .... as well as in the ease with

which he evidently writes Anything of the nature of

roughness or rusticity is wholly absent from his writings"
(Driver, Introd. to Lit. of Old Testament, c. vi, § 3, p. 297, ed.
1891). Isaiah, again, is in his own narrow field one of the most
gifted and skilful writers of all antiquity. The difficulty is thus
nearly as great as that of the proposition that the Hebrew of
the Pentateuch is a thousand years older than that of the latest
prophetical books, whose language is substantially the same.
(Cp. Andrews Norton, The Pentateuch, ed. 1S63, pp. 47-4^ ;
Renan, Histoire des langues semitiques, ze edit., p. 118.)

4. The specialist critics, all trained as clergymen, and

1 Cp. M. Miiller, Natural Religion, pp. 560-1; Psychological Religion, pp 30
32; Wellhausen, Israel, p. 465. If the Moabite Stone be genuine
it is accepted by Stade (Geschichte des Vol/tes Israel, in Oncken's Series, 1881
i_ 86) — the Hebrew alphabetic writing is carried back to the gth century
B.C. An account of the Stone is given in The Witness of Assyria, bj I
Edwards, ch. xi. See again Mommsen, History of Rome, B. i, ch 14, I g
tr., 1894, i, 2S0, for a theory of the extreme antiquity of the alphabet.

78 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

loth to yield more than seems absolutely necessary to
scepticism, have surrendered the antiquity claimed for
Joel, recognising that the arguments for that are " equally
consistent with a date after the Captivity ".' One of the
conclusions here involved is that " Egypt is probably
mentioned only as the typical instance of a power hostile
to Judah ". Thus, when we remember the later Jewish
practice of speaking of Rome as " Babylon ", allusions
by Amos and Hosea to "Assyria" have no evidential
force. The same reasoning applies to the supposed
ancient portions of Isaiah.

5. Even on the clerical side, among the less con-
servative critics, it is already conceded that there are late
"insertions" in Amos. Some of these insertions are
among, or analogous to, the very passages relied on by
Kuenen to prove the lofty monotheism of Amos. If these
passages, however, suggest a late date, no less do the
others disparaging sacrifices. The same critics find inter-
polations and additions in Hosea. But they offer no proof
of the antiquity of what they retain.

The principal passages in Amos given up as insertions by
Canon Cheyne are :— iv, 13 ; v, 8-9 ; ix, 5-6 ; and ix, 8-15. See
his introduction to 1895 ed. of Prof. Robertson Smith's
Prophets of Israel, p. xv. Compare Kuenen, i, 46, 48. Dr.
Cheyne regards as insertions in Hosea the following ; i, 10-
ii, 1 ; " and David their King " in iii, 5 ; viii, 14 ; and xiv, 1-9 (as
cited, pp. xviii-xix). Obviously these admissions entail others.

6. The same school of criticism, while adhering to the
traditional dating of Amos and Hosea, has surrendered
the claim for the Psalms, placing most of these in the
same age with the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
and Ecclesiasticus.2 Now, the sentiment of opposition
to burnt-offerings is found in some of the Psalms in

1 Driver, Introd. to Lit. of Old Testament, c. vi, $ 2 (p. 290, ed. 1891).
Cp. Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i, 86; and Robertson Smith, art. Joel, in
J: neve. J int.

2 Cp. Wellhausen, Israel, p. 501 : Driver, c. vi (pp. 352 ft., esp. pp. 355,
3G1, 362, 365); Stade, Gesch. des Volhes Israel, i, 65.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 79

language identical with that of the supposed early-
prophets.1 Instead of taking the former for late echoes
of the latter, we may reasonably suspect that they belong
to the same culture-stage.

The principle is in effect recognised by Canon Cheyne when
he writes: "Just as we infer from the reference to Cyrus in
xliv, 28, xlv, 1, that the prophecy containing it proceeds from
the age of the conqueror, so we may infer from the fraternal
feeling towards Egypt and Assyria (Syria) in xix, 23-25 that the
epilogue was written when hopes of the union and fusion of
Israelitish and non-Israelitish elements first became natural for
the Jews, i.e. in the early Greek period " (Introd. to the Book of
Isaiah, 1895, pp. 109-110).

7. From the scientific point of view, finally, the element
of historical prediction in the prophets is one of the
strongest grounds for presuming that they are in reality
late documents. In regard to similar predictions in the
Gospels (Matt, xxiv, 15 ; Markxiii,2; Luke, xxi, 20) rational
criticism decides that they were written after the event.
No other course can consistently be taken as to early
Hebrew predictions of captivity and restoration ; and the
adherence of many Biblical scholars at this point to the
traditional view is psychologically on a par with their
former refusal to accept a rational estimate of the Penta-
teuchal narrative.

On some points, such as the flagrant pseudo-prediction in
Isaiah xix, 18, even conservative critics surrender. Thus
" Kdnig sees rightly that xix, 18 can only refer to Jewish
colonies in Egypt, and refrains from the arbitrary supposition that
Isaiah was supernaturally informed of the future establishment of
such colonies" (Cheyne, Introd. to Smith's Prophets of Israel.
p. xxxiii). But in other cases Dr. Cheyne's own positions
involve such an " arbitrary supposition ", as do Kuenen's; and
Smith explicitly posited it as to the prophets in general. And
even as to Isaiah xix, 18, whereas Hitzig, as Havet later, rightly
brings the date down to the actual historic time of the estab-
lishment of the temple at Heliopolis by Onias (Josephus, Ant.
xiii, 3, 1 ; Wars vii, 10, 2), about 160 B.C., Dr. Cheyne [Introd.

1 £..?., Ps. 1, 8-15 ; li, 16-17, where v. 19 is obviously a priestly addition,
meant to countervail w. 16, 17.

80 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

to the Book of Isaiah, p. 108) compromises by dating it about
b.c. 275.

The lateness of the bulk of the prophetical writings has been
ably argued by Ernest Havet (Le Christianisme et ses Origines,
vol. iv, 1878, ch. 6; and in the posthumous vol. La Modernite
des Prophctcs, 1S91), who supports his case by many cogent
reasonings. For instance, besides the argument as to
Isa. xix, 18, above noted: — (1) The frequent prediction of the
ruin of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Isa., ch. xxiii ; Jer. xxv, 22 ;
Ezek. xxvi, 7, ch. xxvh), false as to him (a fact which might be
construed as a proof of the fallibility of the prophets and the
candor of their transcribers), is to be understood in the light
of other post-predictions as referring to the actual capture of
the city by Alexander. (2) Hosea's prediction of the fall of
Judah as well of Israel, and of their being united, places the
passage after the exile, and may even be held to bring it down
to the period of the Asmoneans. So with many other details:
the whole argument deserves careful study. M. Havet's views
were of course scouted by the conservative specialists, as their
predecessors scouted the entire hypothesis of Graf, now taken
in its essentials as the basis of sound Biblical criticism. M.
Scherer somewhat unintelligently objected to him (Etudes sur la
litt. contemp., vii, 268) that he was not a Hebraist. There is no
question of philology involved. It was non-Hebraists who first
pointed out the practical incredibility of the central Penta-
teuchal narrative, on the truth of which Kuenen himself long
stood with other Hebraists. (Cp. Wellhausen, Prolegomena,
PP- 39. 347; also his (4th) ed. of Bleek's Einleitung in das alte
Testament, 1878, S. 154; and Kuenen, Hexateuch, Eng. tr., pp.xv,
43.) Colenso's argument, in the gist of which he was long
preceded by lay Freethinkers, was one of simple common-sense.
The weak side of M. Havet's case is his undertaking to bring
the prophets bodily down to the Maccabean period. This is
claiming too much. But his negative argument is not affected
by the reply (Darmesteter, Les Prophites d'lsracl, 1895, pp.
128-1 31) to his constructive theory.

It is true that where hardly any documentary datum
is intrinsically sure, it is difficult to prove a negative for
one more than for another. The historical narratives
being systematically tampered with by one writer after
another, and even presumptively late writings being inter-
polated by still later scribes, we can never have demon-
strative proof as to the original date of any one prophet.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 8l

Thus it is arguable that fragments of utterance from
eighth century prophets may have survived orally and
been made the nucleus of later documents. This view-
would be reconcilable with the fact that the prophets
Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Micah are all introduced with
some modification of the formula that they prophesied " in
the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of
Judah," Jeroboam's name being added in the cases of
Hosea and Amos. But that detail is also reconcilable
with absolute fabrication. To say nothing of sheer bad
faith in a community whose moral code said nothing
against fraud save in the form of judicial perjury, the
Hebrew literature is profoundly compromised by the
simple fact that the religious development of the people
made the prestige of antiquity more essential there for
the purposes of propaganda than in almost any other
society known to us. Hence an all-pervading principle
of literary dissimulation ; and what freethinking there was
had in general to wear the guise of the very force of un-
reasoning traditionalism to which it was inwardly most
opposed. Only thus could new thought find a hearing
and secure its preservation at the hands of the tribe of
formalists. Even the pessimist Koheleth, wearied with
science yet believing nothing of the doctrine of im-
mortality, must needs follow precedent and pose as the
fabulous King Solomon, son of the mythic David.

§ 3-

We are forced, then, to regard with distrust all
passages in the "early" prophets which express either a
disregard of sacrifice and ritual or a universalism incon-
gruous with all that we know of the native culture of
their period. The strongest ground for surmising a really
"high" development of monotheism in Judah before tin-
Captivity is the stability of the life there as compared
with northern Israel.1 In this respect the conditions.

1 Cp Kuenen, i, 15G; Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 139; Israel, p. |

$2 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

might indeed be considered favorable to priestly or other
culture ; but, on the other hand, the records themselves
exhibit a predominant polytheism. The presumption
then is strong that the "advanced" passages in the
prophets concerning sacrifice belong to an age when such
ideas had been reached in more civilised nations, with
whose thought travelled Jews could come in contact.

It is true that some such ideas were current in Egypt many
centuries before the period under notice — a fact which alone
discounts the ethical originality claimed for the Hebrew-
prophets. E.g., the following passage from the papyrus of Ani,
belonging to the Nineteenth Dynasty, not later than 1288 B.C.: —
" That which is detestable in the sanctuary of God is noisy
feasts; if thou implore him with a loving heart of which all the
words are mysterious, he will do thy matters, he hears thy
words, he accepts thine offerings " (Religion and Conscience in
Ancient Egypt, by W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1898, p. 160). The
word " mysterious" here may mean " solemn " or " liturgical ",
or may merely prescribe privacy. But in any case we must look
for later culture-contacts as the source of the later Hebrew
radicalism under notice, though Egyptian sources are not to
be wholly set aside. See Kuenen, i, 395 ; and Brugsch, as
there cited ; but cp. Wellhausen, Israel, p. 440.

It is clear that not only did they accept a cosmogony
from the Babylonians, but they were influenced by the
lore of the Zoroastrian Persians, with whom, as with the
monotheists or pantheists of Babylon, they would have
grounds of sympathy. It is an open question whether
their special hostility to images does not date from the
time of Persian contact.1 Concerning the restoration, the
later critical view is that only a few Jewish exiles returned
to Jerusalem "both under Cyrus and under Darius";
and that, though the temple was rebuilt under Darius
Hystaspis, the builders were not the Gola or returned
exiles, but that part of the Judahite population which had

1 As to a possible prehistoric connection of Hebrews and Perso-Aryans,
see Kuenen, i, 254, discussing Tide and Spiegel, and iii, 35, 44, treating of
Tiele's view, set forth in his Gudsdienst van Zarathustra, that fire-worship
was the original basis of Yahwism. Cp. Land's view, discussed p. 39S ;
and Kenan, Hist, des iangues semit., p. 473.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 83

not been deported to Babylon.1 Thus the separatist
spirit of the narratives of Ezra and Nehcmiah (which in
any case tell of an opposite spirit) is not to be taken as a
decisive clue to the character of the new religion. For
the rest, the many Jews who remained in Babylon or
spread elsewhere in the Persian empire, and who developed
their creed on a non-local basis, were bound to be in some
way affected by the surrounding theology. And it is
tolerably certain not only that was the notion of angels
derived by the Jews from either the Babylonians or the
Persians, but that their rigid Sabbath and their weekly
synagogue meetings came from one or both of these
sources.

That the Sabbath was an Akkado-Babylonian and Assyrian
institution is now well established (G. Smith, Assyrian Eponym
Canon, 1875, p. 20 ; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 76, and in
Variorum Teacher's Bible, ed. 1885, Aids, p. 71). It was
before the fact was ascertained that Kuenen wrote of the
Sabbath (i, 245) as peculiar to Israel. The Hebrews may have
had it before the Exile ; but it was clearly not then a great
institution ; and the mention of Sabbaths in Amos (viii, 5) and
Isaiah (i, 15) is one of the reasons for doubting the antiquity of
those books. The custom of synagogue meetings on the Sabbath
is post- exilic, and may have arisen either in Babylon itself (so
YVellhausen, Israel, p. 492) or in imitation of Parsee practice
(so Tiele, cited by Kuenen, iii, 35). The same alternative
arises with regard to the belief in angels, usually regarded as
certainly Persian in origin (cp. Kuenen, iii. 37; Tiele, Outlines,
p. 90; and Sack, Die altjiidische Religion, 18S9, S. 133). This
also could have been Babylonian (Sayce, in Var. Bible, as
cited, p. 71) ; even the demon Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit,
usually taken as Persian, being of Babylonian derivation (id.).
Cp. Darmesteter's introd. to Zendavesta, 2nd ed., ch. v. On
the other hand, the conception of Satan, the Adversary, as
seen in 1 Chr. xxi, 1 ; Zech. iii, 1, 2, seems to come from the
Persian Ahriman, though the Satan of Job has not Ahriman's
status. Such a modification would come of the wish to insist
on the supremacy of the good God. And this quasi-mono-
theistic view, again, we are led to regard, in tin- case of the
prophets, as a possible Babylonian derivation, or at least as a

1 Cheyne, Introd. to Isaiah, Prol. pp. xxx, xxxviii, following Kosters.

G J

84 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

result of the contact of Vahwists with Bahylonian culture. To-
a foreign influence, finally, must be definitely attributed the
later Priestly Code, over-ruling Deuteronomy, lowering the
Levites, setting up a high priest, calling the dues into the
sanctuary, resting on the Torah the cultus which before was
rested on the patriarchs, and providing cities and land for the
Aaronidae and the Levites (Wellhausen, Prolegomena, pp. 123,
127, 147, 149, 347; Israel, pp. 495, 497)— the latter an arrange-
ment impossible in mountainous Palestine, as regards the
land-measurements (Id. Proleg. p. 159, following Gramberg and
Graf), and clearly deriving from some such country as Baby-
lonia or Persia. As to the high-priest principle in Babylon
and Assyria, see Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 59-61.

Of the general effect of such contacts we have clear
trace in two of the most remarkable of the later books of
the Old Testament, Job and Ecclesiastes, both of which
clearly belong to a late period in religious development.
The majority of the critics still confidently describe Job'
as an original Hebrew work, mainly on the ground,
apparently, that it shows no clear marks of translation,
though its names and its local color are all non-Jewish.
In any case it represents, for its time, a cosmopolitan
culture, and contains the work of more than one hand.

Compare Cheyne, Job and Solomon, 1887, p. 72 ; Bradley,
Lectures on the Book of Job, p. 171 ; Bleek-Wellhausen, Einleitung,
§ 268 (291), ed. 1878, S. 542 ; Driver, Introduction, p. 405-8.
Kenan's dating of the book six or seven centuries before Eccle-
siastes (L'Ecctisiaste, p. 26 ; Job, pp. xv-xliii) is oddly uncritical.
Dr. Cheyne notes that in the sceptical passages the name
Yahweh is very seldom used (only once or twice, as in xii, 9 ;
xxviii, 28) ; and Dr. Driver admits that the whole book not only
abounds in Aramaic words, but has a good many " explicable
only from the Arabic ". Other details in the book suggest the
possible culture-influence of the Himyarite Arabs, who had
reached a high civilisation before 500 B.C. Dr. Driver's remark
that "the thoughts are thoroughly Hebraic " burkes the entire
problem as to the manifest innovation the book makes in
Hebrew thought and literary method alike. Cp. Kenan, Job,
185'), p. xxv, where the newness of the- whole treatment is
admitted.

What marks off the book of Job from all other Hebrew

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 85

literature is its dramatic and reflective handling of the
ethical problem of theism, which the prophets either
evade or dismiss by declamation against Jewish sins. Not
that it is solved in Job, where the role of Satan is an
inconclusive resort to the Persian dualistic solution, and
where the Deity is finally made to answer Job's free-
thinking by sheer literary thunder, much less ratiocinative
though far more artistic than the theistic speeches of the
friends. But at least the writer or writers of Job's
speeches consciously grasped the issue ; and the writer of
the epilogue evidently felt that the least Yahweh could do
was to compensate a man whom he had allowed to be
wantonly persecuted. The various efforts of ancient
thought to solve the same problem will be found to con-
stitute the motive power in many later heterodox systems,
theistic and atheistic.

In certain aspects the Book of Job speaks for a further
reach of early freethinking than is seen in Ecclesiastes
(Koheleth), which unquestionably derives from late foreign
influence. By an increasing number of students, though
not yet by common critical consent, it is dated about
200 B.C., when Greek influence was stronger in Jewry
than at any previous time.

Gratz even puts it as late as the time of Herod the Great.
But compare Tyler. Ecclesiastes, 1S74, p. 31; Plumptre's Eccle-
siastes, 18S1, introd., p. 34; Renan, L'Ecclesiaste, 1882, pp. 54-59 ;
Kuenen, Religion of Israel, iii, 82 : Driver, Introduction, pp. 446-7 ;
Bleek-YVellhausen, Einleitung, S. 527. Cheyne, and some others,
still put the date before 332 b.c.

But the thought of the book is, as Renan says, pro-
foundly fatigued; and the sombre avowals of the absence
of divine moral government are balanced by sayings,
probably interpolated by other hands, averring an ultimate
rectification even on earth. What remains unqualified
is the deliberate rejection of the belief in a future life,
•couched in terms that imply the currency of the doctrine;1

1 Eccles. iii, 19-J 1 .

86 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

and the deliberate caution against enthusiasm in religion.
Belief in a powerful but remote Deity, with a minimum of
worship and vows, is the outstanding lesson.1

That there was a good deal of this species of tired or
stoical semi-rationalism among the Jews of the Hellenistic
period may be inferred from various traces. It is told in
the Talmud that in the Maccabean period there came
into use the formula, " Cursed be the man that cherisheth
swine ; and cursed be the man that teacheth his son the
wisdom of the Greeks"; and there is preserved the saying
of Rabbi Simeon, son of Gamaliel, that in his father's
school five hundred learnt the law, and five hundred the
wisdom of the Greeks." Before Gamaliel, the Greek
influence had affected Jewish philosophic thought ; and it
is very probable that among the Sadducees who resisted
the doctrine of resurrection there were some thinkers of
the Epicurean school. But of Greek or other atheism
there is no direct trace in the Hebrew literature ;3 and
the rationalism of the Sadducees, who were substantially
the priestly party,4 was like the rationalism of the
Brahmans and the Egyptian priests — something esoteric
and withheld from the multitude. In the apocryphal
Wisdom of Solomon, which belongs to the ist century a.c.,
the denial of immortality, so explicit in Ecclesiastes, is
treated as a proof of utter immorality, though the deniers
are not represented as atheists.5 They thus seem to have
been still numerous, and the imputation of wholesale
immorality to them is of course not to be credited ;' but

1 Ch. v. Renan's translation lends lucidity.

2 Biscoe, History of the Acts of the Apostles, ed. 1829, p. So, following
Selden and Light foot.

a The familiar phrase in the Psalms (xiv, i ; liii, 1), " The fool hath said
in his heart, there is no God," supposing it to be evidence for anything,
clearly does not refer to any reasoned unbelief, Atheism could Dot well
be quite so general as the phrase, taken literally, would imply.

1 Cp. W. K. Sorley, Jewish Christians and Judaism, 1881, p. 9: Robertson
Smith, Old Testament in the Jen ish Church, ed. 1892, pp. 48-49. These writers
somewhat exaggerate the novelty of the view they accept. Cp. Biscoe,
On the Ait', ed. 1S29, p. 10]

1 Wisdom, c. 2.

' Cp. the implications in Ecclesiasticus vi, 4-6, xvi, 11-12, as to the ethics.
(■( many believers.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 87

there is no trace of any constructive teaching on their
part.

So far as the literature shows, save for the confused
Judaic-Platonism of Philo of Alexandria, there is prac-
tically no rational progress in Jewish thought after
Koheleth till the time of contact with revived Greek
thought in Saracen Spain. The mass of the people, in
the usual way, are found gravitating to the fanatical and
the superstitious levels of the current creed. The book of
Ruth, written to resist the separatism of the post-exilic
theocracy,1 never altered the Jewish practice, though
allowed into the canon. The remarkable Levitical legis-
lation providing for the periodical restoration of the land
to the poor never came into operation,2 any more than
the very different provision giving land and cities to the
children of Aaron and the Levites. None of the more
rationalistic writings in the canon seems ever to have
counted for much in the national life. To conceive of
"Israel", in the fashion still prevalent, as being typified in
the monotheistic prophets, whatever their date, is as com-
plete a misconception as it would be to see in Mr. Ruskin
the expression of the every-day ethic of commercial Eng-
land. The anti-sacrificial and universalist teachings in the
prophets and in the Psalms never affected, for the people
at large, the sacrificial and localised worship at Jerusalem ;
though they may have been esoterically received by some
of the priestly or learned class there, and though they
may have promoted a continual exodus of the less fana-
tical types, who turned to other civilisations. Despite
the resistance of the Sadducees and the teaching of Job
and Ecclesiastes, the belief in a resurrection rapidly
gained ground3 in the t\vo or three centuries before the
rise of Jesuism, and furnished a basis for the new creed ;
as did the Messianic hope and the belief in a speedy

1 Kuenen, ii, 242-3.

- Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus xxv, 8, Eng. tr., Pt. ii, p. «
In the Wisdom of Solomon, iii, ij, iv, 1, the old desire for 1 ffspring is
seen to be in part superseded by the newer belief in personal immortality.

88 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

ending of the world, with both of which Jewish fanaticism
sustained itself under the long frustration of nationalistic
faith before the Maccabean interlude and after the Roman
conquest. With the major hallucination thus in full
possession, the subordinate species of superstition
flourished as in Egypt and India; so that at the be-
ginning of our era the Jews were among the most super-
stitious peoples in the world.1 When their monotheism
was fully established, and placed on an abstract footing by
the destruction of the temple, it seems to have had no
bettering influence on the practical ethics of the Gentiles,
though it may have furthered the theistic tendency of the
Stoic philosophy. Juvenal exhibits to us the Jew prose-
lyte at Rome as refusing to show an unbeliever the way,
or guide him to a spring.2 Sectarian monotheism was
thus in part on a rather lower ethical and intellectual3
plane than the polytheism, to say nothing of the Epicure-
anism or the Stoicism, of the society of the Roman
Empire.

It cannot even be said that the learned Rabbinical
class carried on a philosophic tradition while the indigent
multitude thus discredited their creed. In the period after
the fall of Jerusalem, the narrow nationalism which had
always ruled there seems to have been even intensified.
In the Talmud '" the most general representation of the
Divine Being is as the chief Rabbi of Heaven; the angelic
host being his assessors. The heavenly Sanhedrim takes
the opinion of living sages in cases of dispute. Of the
twelve hours of the day, three are spent by God in study,
three in the government of the world (or rather in the
exercise of mercy), three in providing food for the world,
and three in playing with Leviathan. But since the
destruction of Jerusalem, all amusements were banished
from the courts of heaven, and three hours were employed

1 See Supernatural Religion, 6th ed., i, 97-100, 103- u 1 ; Mosheim, Comment
taries on Christian Affairs before Constant inet Vidal's trans., i, 70 ; Schiirer,

h People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr., Div. II, Vol. iii, p. 152.

2 Sat. xvi, <j6-io6. I |> I lorace, 1 Sat. v, 100.

RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL. 89

in the instruction of those who had died in infancy." So
little can a nominal monotheism avail, on the basis of a
completed Sacred Book, to keep thought sane when free-
thought is lacking.

'Rev. A. Edersheim, History of the Jewish Nation after the Destruction
Jerusalem, 1856, p. 462, citing the Avoda Sara, a treatise directed against
idolatry! Other Rabbinical views cited by Dr. Edersheim as being in
comparison "sublime" are no great improvement on the above — e.g., the
conception of deity as " the prototype of the high-priest, and the king ol
kings" "who created everything for his own glory". With all this in
view, Dr. Edersheim thought it showed "spiritual decadence" in Philo
Judaeus to speak of Persian magi and Indian gymnosophisis in the same
laudatory tone as he used of the Essenes, and to attend "heathenish
theatrical representations" (p. 372).

CHAPTER V.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE.

The highest of all the ancient civilisations, that of Greece,
was naturally the product of the greatest possible complex
of culture-forces;1 and its rise to pre-eminence begins
after the contact of the Greek settlers in ^Eolia and Ionia
with the higher civilisations of Asia Minor. The great
Homeric epos itself stands for the special conditions of
/Eolic and Ionic life in those colonies ;2 even Greek religion,
spontaneous as were its earlier growths, was soon influenced
by those of the East ;3 and Greek philosophy and art alike
draw their first inspirations from Eastern contact.4 What-
ever reactions we may make against the tradition of
Oriental origins,5 it is clear that the higher civilisation of
antiquity had Oriental (including in that term Egyptian)
roots. It matters not whether we hold the Phrygians
and Karians of history to have been originally an Aryan
stock, related to the Hellenes, and thus to have acted as
intermediaries between Aryans and Semites, or to have
been originally Semites, with whom Greeks intermingled.6
On either view, the intermediaries represented Semitic
influences, which they passed on to the Greek-speaking
race.

A Hellenistic enthusiasm has led a series of eminent

1 Cp. Tide, Outlines, pp. 205, 207, 212.

2 Cp. K. O. Miiller, Literature of Ancient Greece, ed. 1847, p. 77.

:i Ihincker, GeschichU des Alter thums, 2 Anil, iii, 209-210, 252-4, 319 ff.
1 E. Curtius, Griechische Geschichte, 1858, i, 28, 29, 35, 40, 41, 101, 203, etc.

5 See the able and learned essay of M. Reinach, Lc Mirage Orientate,
reprinted from U Anthropologic, [893. I do not find that its arguments

1 I any of tin; positions here taken up. See pp. 40-41.

6 Cp. K. O. Miiller, History of the Doric Race, Eng. tr , 1830, i, 8-10;
Busolt, Griechisi h Gest hichte, 1885, i, 33 ; Grote, Histoi yo) Greece, 10-vol. ed.,

3, iii, 3-5, 35-44; Duncker, iii, 136, «.: E. Meyer, Geschichte des AlterthumSt.
'• 2'J9"3Io v$$ 250-258) ; E. Curtius, i, 29.

( 90 )

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. gi

scholars to carry so far their resistance to the tradition of
Oriental beginnings as to take up the position that Greek
thought is "autochthonous."1 If it were, it could not
conceivably have progressed as it did. Only the tenacious
psychological prejudice as to race-characters and racial
" genius "' could so long detain so many students at a
point of view so much more nearly related to super-
naturalism than to science. It is safe to say that if any
people is ever seen to progress in thought, art, and life,
with measurable rapidity, its progress is due to the
reactions of foreign intercourse. The primary civilisa-
tions, or what pass for such, as those of Akkad and Egypt,
are immeasurably slow in accumulating culture-material ;
the relatively rapid developments always involve the
stimulus of old cultures upon a new and vigorous civilisa-
tion, well-placed for social evolution for the time being.
There is no point in early Greek evolution, so far as we
have documentary trace of it, at which foreign impact or
stimulus is not either patent or inferrible.2 In the very
dawn of history, the Greeks are found to be a composite
stock, growing still more composite ; and the very begin-
nings of its higher culture are traced to the non-Grecian
people of Thrace/ who worshipped the Muses. The
later supremacy of the Greek culture is thus to be
explained in terms not of an abnormal " Greek genius ",
but of the special evolution of intelligence in the Greek-
speaking stock, firstly through constant crossing with
others, and secondarily through its furtherance by the

1 Cp. on one side, Ritter, History of Aiuient Philosophy, Eng. n\, i, 151 ;
Xeller, History of Greek Philosophy, Eng. tr., 1881, i, 43-49 ; and on the other
Ueberweg, Hist, of Philos., Eng. tr., i, 31, and the weighty criticism of
Lange, History of Materialism, Eng. tr., i, 9, note 5.

- Cp. Curtius, i, 125.

:i As to the primary mixture of " Pelasgians " and Hellenes, cp. Busolt,
i, 27-32 ; Curtius, i, 27 ; Thirlwall, History of Greece, ed. 1839, i, 51-2, ti6
K. O. Midler (Doric Race, Eng. tr., i, 10) and Thirlwall, who follows him
(i, 45-47) decide that the Thracians cannot have been very different from
the Hellenes in dialect, else they could not have influenced the latter as
they did. This position is clearly untenable, whatever may have been the
ethnological facts. It would entirely negate the possibility ol reaction
between Greeks, Kelts, Egyptians, Semites, Romans, Persians, and Hindus

92 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

special social conditions of the more progressive Greek
city-states, of which conditions the most important were
their geographical dividedness, and their own consequent
competition and interaction.

§ i.
By the tacit admission of one of the ablest opponents
of the theory of foreign influence, Hellenic religion as
fixed by Homer for the Hellenic world was partly deter-
mined by Asiatic influences. Ottfried Miiller decided not
only that Homer the man (in whose personality he
believed) was probably a Smyrnean, whether of /Eolic or
Ionic stock,1 but that Homer's religion must have repre-
sented a special selection from the manifold Greek
mythology, necessarily representing his local bias.2 Now,
the Greek cults at Smyrna, as in the other /Eolic and
Ionic cities of Asia Minor, would be very likely to reflect
in some degree the influence of the Karian or other Asiatic
cults around them.3 The early Attic conquerors of Miletos
allowed the worship of the Karian Sun-God there to be
carried on by the old priests ; and the Attic settlers of
Ephesos in the same way adopted the neighbouring
worship of the Lydian Goddess (who became the Artemis
or " Great Diana " of the Ephesians), and retained the
ministry of the attendant priests and eunuchs.4 Smyrna
was apparently not like these a mixed community, but
one founded by Achaians from the Peloponnesps ; but the
neral Ionic and /Eolic religious atmosphere, set up by
common sacrifices,5 must have been represented in an
epic brought forth in that region. The Karian civilisation

1 Lit. of .Inc. Greece, pp. 41-47

3 Introduction to Scientific Mythology, Eng. tr., pp. 1S0, 181, 291. Cp.
Curtius, i, 126.

:| Cp. Curtius, i, 107, as to the absence in Homer of any distinction
between Creeks and barbarians; and Grote, 10-vol. ed., 1888, iii, 37-8, as
to the same feature in Archilochos.

1 I >uncker, Gcsch. des Alt. as cited, iii, 209-210 ; S. 257, 319 ff. Cp. K. O.
■Miiller, as last cited, pp. 1S1, 193; Curtius, i, 43-49, 53, 54, 107, 365, 373,

. etc. ; and Grote, iii, 39-41.

b Duncker, iii, 214; Curtius, i, 155, 121 ; Grote, iii, 279-2S0.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 93

had at one time spread over a great part of the /Egean,
including Delos and Cyprus.1 Such a civilisation must
have affected that of the Greek conquerors, who only on
that basis became civilised traders.2

It is not necessary to ask how far exactly the influence
may have gone in the Iliad : the main point is that even
at that stage of comparatively naif Hellenism the Asiatic
environment, Karian or Phoenician, counted for some-
thing, whether in cosmogony or in furthering the process
of God-grouping, or in conveying the cult of Cyprian
Aphrodite,' or haply in lending some characteristics to
Zeus and Apollo and Athene,4 an influence none the less
real because the genius of the poet or poets of the Iliad
has given to the whole Olympian group the artistic stamp
of individuality which thenceforth distinguishes the Gods
of Greece from all others. But soon the Asiatic influence
becomes clearly recognisable. There is reason to hold
with Schrader that the belief in a blissful future state, as
seen even in the Odyssey5 and in Hesiod, is "a new-
belief which is only to be understood in view of oriental
tales and teaching".0 In Hesiod, again, the Semitic
element increases,7 Kronos for instance being a Semitic
figure; while Semele, if not Dionysos, appears to be no
less so.8 But we may further surmise that in Homer, to
begin with, the conception of Okeanos, the earth-sur-

1 Busolt, Griecluschc Geschichte, 1S85, i, 171-2. Cp. S. 32-34; and
Curtius, i, 42.

- On the general question cp. Gruppe, Die griechische Culic und M\ .
S. 151 ff., 157, 158 ff., 656 ff., 672 ff.

3 Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 2 Aufl. i, 260; Tiele, Outlines, p. 211 ;
R. Brown, Jr., Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology, 1898, p. 130.

1 See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 210, 212. Cp., again, Curtius, Griechische
Geschichte, 1,95, as to the probability that the "twelve Gods" were adjusted
to the confederations of twelve cities, and again S. 126.

5 iv, 561 ff.

,; Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, Eng. tr., p. 423. William -
owitz holds that the verses Od. xi, 566-631 are interpolations made later
than 600 n.c.

1 Tiele, Outlines, p. 209 ; I'reller, S. 263.

8 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 54, 1S1. Cp. Cox, Mythology oj the Aryan
Nations, p. 260, note. It has not however been noted in the discussions on
Semele that Senilje is the Slavic name for the Earth as Goddess. Ranke,
History of Servia, Eng. tr., p. 43.

94 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

rounding Ocean-stream, as the origin of all things1 comes
from some Semitic source ; and that Hesiod's more
complicated scheme of origins from Chaos is a further
borrowing of Oriental thought — both notions being found
in ancient Babylonian lore, whence the Hebrews derived
their combination of Chaos and Ocean in the first verses
of Genesis." It thus appears that the earliest Oriental '
influence upon Greek thought was in the direction of
developing religion, with only the germ of rationalism
conveyed in the idea of an existence of matter before the
Gods, which we shall later find scientifically developed.

§2-
In the Iliad there is no thought of the possibility of
religious scepticism, though the Gods are so wholly in
the likeness of men that the lower deities fight with
heroes and are worsted. In the Odyssey there is a bare
hint of possible speculation in the use of the word athcos ;
but it is applied only in the phrase ovk uOeel, " not without
a God",4 in the sense of similar expressions in other
passages and in the Iliad.5 The idea was that sometimes
the Gods directly meddled. When Odysseus accuses the
suitors of not dreading the Gods,0 he has no thought of
accusing them of unbelief.7 Homer has indeed been
supposed to have exercised a measure of relative free-
thought in excluding from his song the more offensive

1 Until, xiv, 201, 302.

- Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 367 ff. ; Ancient Empties, p. 15S. Note
p. 3S7 in the Lectures as to the Assyrian influence, and p. 391 as to the
Homeric notion in particular.

1 It is unnecessary to examine here the view of Herodotos that many of
the Greek cults were borrowed from Egypt. Herodotos reasoned from
analogies, with no exact historical knowledge.

1 Od xviii, 352. 5 Od. vi, 240; //. v., 185. 8 Od. xxii, 39.

7 In Od xiv, is, avTLOeoi means not "opposed to the Gods" but " god-
like", in the ordinary Homeric sense of noble-looking or richly attired.
Cp. vi, 241. Vet a Scholiast on the former pasvige took it in the sense 1 i
tig. Clarke's ed. in Inc. Liddell and ij <>tt give no use o( uOtn<s,
in the sense of denying the Gods, before Plato 1 ipol. j<> C, etc.), or in the
sense of ungodly before Pindar (P. iv, 2SS) and .Eschylus [Eumen. 151).

FREETHOIV.HT IN GREECE. Q5

myths about the Gods,1 but such exclusion may be
sufficiently explained on the score that the epopees were
chanted in aristocratic dwellings, before womenkind,
without surmising any process of doubt on the poet's
part.

It is in Pindar (B.C. 518-442) that we first find such
a mental process avowed by a believer. In his first
Olympic Ode he plainly declares the need for bringing
afterthought to bear on poetic lore, that so men may
speak nought unfitting of the Gods ; and he protests that
he will never tell the tale of the blessed ones banqueting
on human flesh.2 In the ninth Ode he again protests
that his lips must not speak blasphemously of such a
thing as strife among the immortals.3 Here the critical
motive is ethical, though while repudiating one kind of
scandal about the Gods, Pindar placidly accepts others
no less startling to the modern sense. For such a
development we are not of course forced to assume a
foreign influence : mere progress in refinement and in
mental activity could bring it about ; yet none the less
it is probable that foreign influence did quicken the
process. The period of Pindar and .Eschylus follows on one
in which Greek thought, stimulated on all sides, had
taken the first great stride in its advance beyond all
antiquity. Egypt had been fully thrown open to the
Greeks in the reign of Psammetichus4 (B.C. 650) ; and a
great historian who contends that the " sheer inherent
and expansive force" of ''the" Greek intellect, "aided
but by no means either impressed or provoked from
without," was the true cause, yet concedes that inter-

1 Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 11. E. Curtius (G. G. i, 126) goes
so far as to ascribe a certain irony to the portraiture of the Gods (Ionian
Apollo excepted) in Homer, and to trace this to Ionian levity. To the
same cause he assigns the lack of any expression of a sense of stigma
attaching to murder. This sense he holds the Greek people had, though
Homer does not hint it. Cp. Grote (i, 24), whose inference Curtius im-
plicitly impugns.

3 Ol. i, 42-57, 80-85. 3 Ol. ix, 54-61

4 A ruler of Libyan stock, and so led by old Libyan connections to
make friends with Greeks. He reigned over fifty years, and the Greek
connection grew very close. Curtius i, 344-5. Cp. Grote, i, 144-155.

96 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

course with Egypt " enlarged the range of their thoughts
and observations, while it also imparted to them that
vein of mysticism which overgrew the primitive simplicity
of the Homeric religion," and that from Asia Minor in
turn they had derived " musical instruments and new
laws of rhythm and melody ", as well as " violent and
maddening religious rites".1 And others making similar
a priori claims for the Greek intelligence are forced
likewise to admit that the mental transition between
Homer and Herodotos cannot be explained save in terms
of "the influence of other creeds, and the necessary
operation of altered circumstances and relations".2 In
the Persae of iEschylus we even catch a glimpse of direct
contact with foreign scepticism, :1 though in the poet's
own thought there has occurred only an ethical judgment
of the older creeds, and a growth of pessimism4 that
hints of their final insufficiency. But these developments
in yEschylus and Pindar had been preceded by the great
florescence of early Ionian philosophy in the sixth
century, a growth which constrains us to look for the
effective fructification of the Greek inner life rather in
Asia Minor than in Egypt.

§3-
The Greeks varied from the general type of culture-
evolution seen in India, Persia, Egypt, and Babylon, and
approximated somewhat to that of ancient China, in that
their higher thinking was done not by an order of priests,
pledged to cults, but by independent laymen. In Greece
as in China this line of development is to be understood
as a result of early political conditions — in China, those
of a multiplicity of independent feudal States; in Greece,

1 Grote, io-vol. ed., 1888, i, 307, 326, 329, 413. Cp. i, 27-30; ii. 52;
iii, 39-41, etc.

- K. O. Miiller, Introd. to Mythology, p. 192.

:t "Then one [of the Persians] who before had in nowise believed in
[pr, recognised the existence of] the Gods, offered prayer and supplication,
doing obeisance to Earth and Heaven " (Persae, 497-9)

1 Prometheus, 247-231.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 97

those of a multiplicity of City-States, set up first by the
geographical structure of Hellas, and reproduced in the
colonies of Asia Minor and Magna Graecia by reason of
the acquired ideal and the normal state of commercial
competition. Such conditions prevented the growth of
a priestly caste or organisation.1 Neither China nor
Pagan Greece was imperialised till there had arisen
enough of rationalism to prevent the rise of a powerful
priesthood ; and the later growth of a priestly system in
Greece in the Christian period is to be explained in terms
first of a positive social degeneration, accompanying a
complete transmutation of political life, and secondly of the
imposition of a new cult, on the popular plane, specially
organised on the model of the political system that adopted
it. Under imperialism, however, the two civilisations ulti-
mately presented a singular parallel of unprogressiveness.
In the great progressive period, the possible gains
from the absence of a priesthood are seen in course of
realisation. For the Greek-speaking world in general
there was no dogmatic body of teaching, no written code
of theology and moral law, no Sacred Book.2 Each local
cult had its own ancient ritual, often ministered by priest-
esses, with myths, often of late invention, to explain it :
only Homer and Hesiod, with perhaps some of the now
lost epics, serving as a general treasury of myth-lore.
The two great epopees ascribed to Homer, indeed, had a
certain Biblical status ; and the Homerids or other bards
who recited them did what in them lay to make the old
poetry the standard of theological opinion ; but they too
lacked organised influence, and could not hinder higher
thinking. The special priesthood of Delphi, wielding the
oracle, could maintain their political influence only by
holding their function above all apparent self-seeking or
effort at domination. It only needed, then, such civic

1 As to ancient beginnings of such an organisation, see E. Curtius,
i, 92-94, 97.

- K. O. Miiller, Introd. to Mythology, pp. 188-192, 195 ; Curtius, i, j^(
is7> 3$9 i Duncker, iii, 340, 519-521, 563; Thirl wall, i, 200-204.

98 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

conditions as should evolve a leisured class, with a lead
towards stud}-, to make possible a growth of lay philosophy.
Those conditions first arose in the Ionian cities ;
because there first did Greek citizens attain commercial
wealth,1 in virtue of adopting the older commercial civil-
isation whose independent cities they conquered, and of
the greater rapidity of development which belongs to
colonies in general.2 There it was that, in matters of
religion and philosophy, the comparison of their own
cults with those of their foreign neighbours first provoked
their critical reflection, as the age of primitive warfare
passed away. And there it was, accordingly, that on a
basis of primitive Babylonian science there originated
with Thales of Miletos, a Phoenician by descent^ the
higher science and philosophy of the Greek-speaking race-
It is historically certain that Lydia had an ancient and
close historical connection with Babylonian and Assyrian
civilisation, whether through the " Hittites " or otherwise
(Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, 1884, pp. 217-229; Curtius,
Griechischc Geschichte, 1, 63, 207; Meyer, Geschichte des Alter-
thums, i, 166, 277, 299, 305-310, Soury ; Breviaire de Vhistoire dit
materialisme, 1881, pp. 30, 37 ff. Cp. as to Armenia, Edwards,
The Witness of Assyria, 1893, P- x44)! and in the seventh
century the commercial connection between Lydia and Ionia,
long close, was presumably friendly up to the time of the first
attacks of the Lydian Kings, and even afterwards (Herodotos,
i, 20-231. Alvattes having made a treaty of peace with Miletos,
which thereafter had peace during his long reign. This brings
us to the time of Thales (640-548 B.C.) At the same time, the
Ionian settlers of Miletos had from the first a close connection
with the Karians (Herod. 1, 146, and above, p. 93), whose
near affinity with the Semites, at least in religion, is seen in
their practice of cutting their foreheads at festivals (Id. ii, 01 ;
cp. Grote, ed. 1888, 1, 27, note ; E. Curtius, i, 36, 42 ; Busolt, i,
33; and Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumskunde, i, 228). Thales
was thus in the direct sphere of Babylonian culture before the
conquest of Cyrus; and his Milesian pupils or successors,
Anaximandros and Anaximenes, stand for the same influences.
Herakleitos in turn was of Ephesus, an Ionian city in the same

1 Curtius, i, 112

- Id i, 201, 204, 205, 381 ; Grote, iii, 5 ; Lange, Hist, of Materialism, i, 33.
I lerodotos, i, 170 ; Diogenes Latrtius, 'Unties, c. i.

KREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 99

culture-sphere ; Anaxagoras was of Klazomenai, another
Ionian city, as had been Hennotimos, of the same philosophic
school ; the Eleatic school, founded by Xenophanes and
carried on by Parmenides and the elder Zeno, come from the
same matrix, Elea having been founded by exiles from Ionian
Phokaia on its conquest by the Persians ; and Pythagoras, in
turn, was of the Ionian city of Samos, in the same sixth century.
Finally, Protagoras and Demokritos were of Abdera, an Ionian
colony in Thrace ; Leukippos, the teacher of Demokritos, was
either an Abderite, a Milesian, or an Elean ; and Archelaos,
the pupil of Anaxagoras and a teacher of Sokrates, is said to
have been a Milesian. Wellhausen, (Israel, p. 473 of vol. of Pro-
legomena, Eng. tr.) has spoken of the rise of philosophy on the
" threatened and actual political annihilation of Ionia " as
corresponding to the rise of Hebrew prophecy on the menace
and the consummation of the Assyrian conquest. As regards
Ionia this may hold in the sense that the stoppage of political
freedom threw men back on philosophy, as happened later at
Athens. But Thales philosophised before the Persian conquest.

§4-
Thales, like Homer, starts from the Babylonian con-
ception of a beginning of all things in water ; but in
Thales the motive and the sequel are strictly cosmological
and in nowise theological. The phrase attributed to him,
that "all things are full of Gods'',1 clearly meant that in
his opinion the forces of things inhered in the cosmos,
and not in personal powers who spasmodically interfered
with it.2 To the later doxographists he " seems to have
lost belief in the Gods".3 From the mere second-hand
and often unintelligent statements which are all we have
in his case, it is hard to make sure of his system ; but
that it was pantheistic4 and physicist seems clear. He
conceived that matter not only came from but was
resolvable into water ; that all phenomena were ruled by

1 The First Philosophers 0/ Greece, by A. Fairbanks, 1898, pp. 2, 3, 6. This
compilation usefully supplies a revised text of the ancient philosophic
fragments, with a translation of these and of the passages on the early
thinkers by the later, and by the epitomists.

- Cp. Lange, History of Materialism, Eng- tr , i, 8, note, Mr. Benn,
usually one of the best of guides, seems to me not to put the right con-
struction on the phrase (The Greek Philosophers, i, 8).

: Fairbanks, p. 4. 4 Diogenes Laertius, Thales, c. 9.

H 2

100 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

law or " necessity " : and that the sun and planets
(commonly regarded as deities), were bodies analogous
to the earth, which he held to be spherical but " resting
on water 'V For the rest, he speculated in meteorology
and in astronomy, and is credited with having predicted
a solar eclipse-' — a clear proof of his knowledge of
Chaldean science — and with having introduced geometry
into Greece from Egypt.' To him too is ascribed a
wise counsel to the Ionians in the matter of political
federation,4 which, had it been followed, might have
saved them from the Persian conquest : and he is one
of the many earlv moralists who laid down the Golden
Rule as the essence of the moral law.' With his maxim,
" Know thyself," he seems to mark a new departure in
ancient thought : the balance of energv is shifted from
myth and theosophy and poesy to analysis of conscious-
ness and the cosmic process.

From this point, Greek rationalism is continuous,
despite reactions, till the Roman conquest. ANAXI-
mandros, pupil and companion of Thales. was like him
an astronomer, geographer, and physicist, seeking for a
first principle (for which he invented the name) : affirm-
ing an infinite material cause, without beginning and
indestructible,6 with an infinite number of worlds: and
— still showing the Chaldean impulse — speculating curi-
ously on the descent of man from something aquatic, as
well as on the form of the earth (figured by him as a
cylinder7), and the nature and motions of the solar system,
and thunder and lightning."

1 Fairbanks, pp 3, 7. - rlerodotos, i, 74. I >i( g Laert., c. 3.

1 Herod, i, 170. Cp. Diogei es, c. 3. hit- Laert., < g

8 Fairbanks, pp 9-10. Mi' Benn (Greek Philosophers, i. 9) decides th.it
the early philosophers, while realising that ex nihilo nihil fit. had not
grasped the complementary truth that nothing can be annihilated Hut

ii if the teaching ascribed to Anaximandros beset aside as contradictory
isince he spoke of generation and destruction within the infinite), we have
the statement of I Hogenes Laertius (B ix, c. 9) that I Hogenes of Apollonia,
pupil of Aiiaximenes. gave the full l.ucretian formula.

■ Diogenes Lai rtius, however, (ii, 2) makes him agree with Thales.

8 Fairbanks, pp 9 [6. Diogenes makes him the inventor ol the gnomon
and ot tin- first map ami globe, as well as a maker of clocks Cp Grote,
i 330, »<

FREETHOUGHT IX GREECE. IOI

ANAXIMENES, yet another Milesian, pupil in turn of
Anaximandros, speculates similarl}-, making his infinite
and first principle the air, in which he conceives the earth
to be suspended ; theorises on the rainbow, earthquakes, the
nature and the revolution of the heavenly bodies (which,
with the earth, he supposed to be broad and flat) ; and
affirms the eternity of motion and the perishableness of
the earth.1 It is after a generation of such persistent
questioning of Nature that we find in Herakleitos of
Ephesus — still in the Ionian culture-sphere — a positive
and aggressive criticism of the prevailing beliefs. He has
stern sayings about "bringing forth untrustworthy wit-
nesses to confirm disputed points ", and about eyes and
ears being " bad witnesses for men, since their souls lack
understanding".'" "What can be seen, heard, and learned,
this I prize," is one of his declarations; and he is credited
with contemning book-learning, as having failed to give
wisdom to Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and
Hekataios.3 The belief in progress, he roundly insists,
stops progress.4 From his cryptic utterances it may be
gathered that he too was a pantheist;5 and from his
insistence on the immanence of strife in all things,6 as
from others of his sayings, that he was of the stoic mood.
It was doubtless in resentment of immoral religion that
he said ' Homer and Archilochos deserved flogging ; as he
is severe on the phallic worship of Dionysos- and on
popular pietism in general.1' One of his sayings, t/0os
avOpwiruj Baifxuji',1" "character is a man's daemon," seems to

1 Fairbanks, pp. 17-22.

-' Polybios, iv, 40; S^xtus Empiricus, Aduersus Mathematicos, viii, 1.
— Fairbanks, pp. 25, 27 ; Frag. 4, 14. Cp. 92, in, 1 1 j

:t Dio;.'. Laert. ix, 1, ; 2.

1 Fairbanks, Fr. 134.

* Id., Frag. 36, 67. 6 Id., Frag, 43, 44, 46, 62.

7 If indeed the saying (Diog. Laert. last cit.; be his, and not from Herak-
leides. See Fairbanks, Fr. 119 and note.

s Clemens Alexandrinus, Exhortation to the Heathen, c, 2. Wilson's trans .
p. 41. The passage is obscure, but Mr. Fairbanks' translation (Fr. 127) 1-
excessively so.

'■' Clemens, as cited, p. 32 ; Fairbanks, Fr. 124, 1 25, 130.

'" Fairbanks, Fr. 121.

102 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

be the definite assertion of rationalism in affairs as against
the creed of special providences.

But while thought was travelling so much faster in
Ionia than in the Greek motherland, it was travelling still
faster in the colonies planted from Ionia in Italy and
Thrace. About 550 B.C. was founded the city of Elea
(Hyela, or Velia), on the western Italian coast, south of
Paestum, by unsubduable Phokaians seeking a new home
after the Persian conquest, and after they had been
further defeated in the attempt to live as pirates in
Corsica.1 Thither came Xenophanes of Kolophon, aged
about thirty, likewise seeking freedom. In that hardy
polity, freedom of thought and of speech must have gone
hand in hand; for the Ionic pantheism of Xenophanes2
expressed itself in an attack on anthropomorphic religion,
no less direct and much more ratiocinative than that of
any Hebrew prophet upon idolatry. "Mortals," he wrote,
in a famous passage, " suppose that the Gods are born,
and wear man's clothing and have voice and body. But
if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their
hands and make works of art as men do, they would paint
their Gods and give them bodies like their own — horses
like horses, cattle like cattle."3 On Homer and Hesiod,
the myth-singers, his attack is no less stringent : " they
attributed to the Gods all things that with men are of
ill-fame and blame : they told of them countless nefarious
things, thefts, adulteries, and deception of each other".4
And when the Eleans, somewhat shaken by such criticism,*
asked him whether they should sacrifice and sing a dirge
to Leukothea, the child-bereft Sea-Goddess, he bade them
not to sing a dirge if they thought her divine, and not t<>

1 Herodotos, i, 163-7 : Grote, iii, 421.

- Fairbanks, pp. 79, 80.
Fairbanks, p. 67, Fr. 5, 6; Clemens Alex., Stromata, 13. v., Wilson's
tr., ii, 285-6. Cp. II vii, c. 4.

4 Fairbanks, Fr. 7.

* In his poetry lie is gravely religious, standing for respect to deity as
against the old myths. See the extract in Athena-us, B. xi, c. 7; lair
hanks, Fr 21.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. IO^

sacrifice if she were human.1 Beside this ringing
radicalism, not yet out of date, the physics and philo-
sophy of the Eleatic freethinker are less noticeable, the
physics being weak, though the philosophy was not
unsubtle nor unoriginal ; but it is interesting to find him
reasoning from fossil-marks that what was now land had
once been sea-covered, and been left mud.

A limit was doubtless soon set to free speech even in
Elea ; and the Eleatic school after Xenophanes, in the
hands of Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissos, is found
turning first to deep metaphysic and then to verbal
•dialectic, to discussion on being and not-being, and the
impossibility of motion, and the frivolous problem of
Achilles and the tortoise. From Parmenides, the most
philosophic mind of all,2 there is a rapid descent to
professional verbalism, popular life the while proceeding
on the old levels. The social difference between Greece
and the monarchic civilisations was after all only one of
degree : there as elsewhere the social problem was finally
unsolved ; and the limits to Greek progress were soon
approached. But the evolution went far in many places,
and it is profoundly interesting to trace it.

§ 5-
Compared with the early Milesians and with Xeno-
phanes, the elusive Pythagoras is not so much a ration-
alistic as a theosophic freethinker; but to Freethought
his name belongs in so far as the system connected with
it did rationalise and discarded mythology. If the bio-
graphic data be in any degree trustworthy, it starts like
Milesian speculation from Oriental precedents. Pythagoras
was of Samos in the .'Egean ; and the traditions have it
that he was a pupil of Pherekydes the Syrian, and that
before settling at Kroton in Italy he travelled in Egypt,

1 Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii, 23, § 27. A similar saying is attributed to
Herakleitos, on slight authority (Fairbanks, p. 54V

• See good estimates of him in Benn's Greek Philosophers, i, 17-10 ; and
Zeller, i, 580 ff.

104 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

and had intercourse with the Chaldean Magi. Some
parts of the Pythagorean code of life, at least, point to an
Eastern derivation.

The striking resemblances between the doctrine and
practice of the Pythagoreans and those of the Jewish Essenes
has led Zeller to argue (Philosophie der Griechen, Th. hi. Abth.
2), that the latter were a branch of the former. Bishop Light-
foot, on the other hand, noting that the Essenes did not hold
the specially prominent Pythagorean doctrines of numbers and
of the transmigration of souls, tiaces Essenism to Zoroastrian
influence (Ed. of Colossians, Appendix on the Essenes, pp.
150-1). This raises the issue whether both Pythagoreanism
and Essenism were not of Persian derivation ; and Dr. Schiuer
(Jewish People in the time of Jesus, Eng.tr., Div. II, vol. ii, p. 218)'
pronounces in favor of an Oriental origin for both. The new
connection between Persia and Ionia just at or before the time
of Pythagoras (fl. 530 b c. ?) squares with this view; but it is
further to be noted that the phenomenon of monasticism,
common to Pythagoreans and Essenes, arises in Buddhism
about the Pythagorean period ; and as it is hardly likely that
Buddhism in the sixth century B.C. reached Asia Minor, there
remains the possibility of some special diffusion of the new
ideal from the Babylonian sphere after the conquest by Cyrus,
there being no trace of a Persian monastic system. As to
Buddhism, the argument for a Buddhist origin of Essenism
shortly before our era (cp. A. Lillie, Buddhism in Christendom
and The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity ; E.
Bunsen, The Angel - Messiah ; or, Buddhists, Essenes, mid
Christians — all three to be read with much caution) does not
meet the case of the Pythagorean precedents for Essenism.

As regards the mystic doctrine that numbers are as
it were the moving principle in the cosmos, we can hut
pronounce it a development of thought in vacuo, and
look further for the source of Pythagorean influence in
the moral and social code of the movement, in its science,
in its pantheism,' its contradictory dualism," and perhaps
in its doctrine of transmigration of >ouls. On the side
of natural science its absurdities3 point to the fatal lack
of observation which so soon stopped progress in Greek

1 I airbanks, pp. 145, 151, 155, etc. - Id., p. 143. :i Id., p. 154.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. I05

physics and biology. Yet in the fields of astronomy,
mathematics, and the science of sound, the school seems
to have done good scientific work. It is recorded that
Philolaos, the successor of Pythagoras, was the first to
teach openly the true doctrine of the motion of the
earth1 — which, however, was also said to have been
previously taught by Anaximandros2 (from whom some
incline to derive the Pythagorean theory of numbers in
general3) and by Iketas of Syracuse.4 As to its politic?,
finally, it seems hard to solve the paradox that Pytha-
goras is pronounced the first teacher of the principle of
community of goods,0 and that his adherents at Kroton
formed an aristocratic league, so detested by the people
for its anti-democratism that its members were finally
massacred in their meeting place, their leader, according
to one tradition, being slain with them. The solution
seems to be that the early movement was in no way
monastic or communistic ; that it was however a secret
society ; and that, whatever its doctrines, its members
were mostly of the upper class.6 If they held by the
general rejection of popular religion attributed to Pytha-
goras, they would so much the more exasperate the
demos ; for though at Kroton as in the other Grecian
colonial cities there was considerable freedom of thought
and speech, the populace can nowhere have been free-
thinking. In any case, it was after its political over-
throw, and still more in the Italian revival of the second
century B.C., that the mystic and superstitious features
of Pythagorean ism were most multiplied ; and doubtless
the master's teachings were often much perverted by his
devotees. Thus we find the later Pythagoreans laying
it down as a canon that no story once fully current
concerning the Gods was to be disbelieved7- the com-

1 Diog. Laert , Philolaos. (B. viii.c. 7). - Hist of Astron. cited, p. 20.

3 See Benn, Greek Philosopher*, i, 1 1

1 Diog. Laert., in Life of Philohii

5 Diog. Laert., viii, i, 8.

8 The whole question is carefully sifted by Grote, iv, 7^-94.

7 Grote, Plato ami the other Companions oj Sokrates, ed i>.\ , iv, if>j

106 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

plete negation of philosophical freethought. It must have
taken a good deal of decadence to bring an innovating
sect to that pass ; and even about 200 B.C. we find the
freethinking Ennius at Rome calling himself a Pytha-
gorean ;l but the course of things in Magna Graecia was
mostly downward after the sixth century; the ferocious
destruction of Sybaris by the Krotoniates helping to
promote the decline.2 Intellectual life, in Magna Graecia
as in Ionia, obeyed the general tendency.

Before the decadence comes, however, the pheno-
menon of rationalism occurs on all hands in the colonial
cities, older and younger alike. At Syracuse we find the
great comic dramatist Epicharmos, about 470 B.C., treat-
ing the deities on the stage in a spirit of such audacious
burlesque3 [as must be held to imply unbelief. Aristo-
phanes at Athens, indeed, shows a measure of the same
spirit while posing as a conservative in religion ; but
Epicharmos was professedly something of a Pythagorean
and philosopher,4 and was doubtless protected by Hiero,
at whose court he lived, against any religious resentment
he may have aroused. The story of Simonides' answer to
Hiero's question as to the nature of the Gods — first
asking a day to think, then two days, then four, then
avowing that meditation only made the problem harder5
— points to the prevalent tone among the cultured.

§ 6.

At last the critical spirit finds utterance, in the great
Periklean period, at Athens, but first by way of importa-
tion from Ionia. ANAXAGORAS of Klazomenai is the first
freethinker historically known to have been legally
prosecuted and condemned for his freethought ; and it
was in the Athens of Perikles, despite Perikles' protection,
that the attack was made. Coming of the Ionian line of

1 Ennii Fragtnenta, ed. Hesselins, 1707, pp. 1, 4-7 ; Horace, Epist. ii,
i, 52 ; I'ersius, Sat. vi.
'-' Grote, History, iv, 97.

K <) Miiller, Dorians, Eng.tr . ii. 365-8; Mommsen, iii, 113.
4 Grote, i, $3<, in it. i Cicero, Dt tiatura iJeniuii. i, 22.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. IO7

thinkers, and himself a pupil of Anaximenes of Miletos,
he held firmly by the scientific view of the cosmos, and
taught that the sun, instead of being animated and a
deity as the Athenians believed, was " a red hot mass
many times larger than the Peloponnesos '" — and the
moon a fiery solid body having in it plains and mountains
and valleys — this while asserting that infinite mind was
the source and introducer of all the motion in the infinite
universe ;3 infinite in extent and infinitely divisible. This
"materialistic" doctrine as to the heavenly bodies was
propounded, as Sokrates tells in his defence, in books
that anyone could buy for a drachma ; and the anti-
Periklean party, striking at the statesman through his
friends, had him indicted for blasphemy, as the Athenian
laws fully entitled them to do. Saved by Perikles from
the death punishment, he either was exiled or chose to
leave the intolerant city ; and he made his home at
Lampsakos, where, as the story runs, he won from the
municipality the favor that every year the children should
have a holiday in the month in which he died.3

In this memorable episode we have a finger-post to the
road travelled later by Greek civilisation. At Athens
itself the bulk of the free population was ignorant and
bigoted enough to allow of the law being used by any
fanatic or malignant partisan against any professed
rationalist ; and there is no sign that Perikles, himself a
freethinker,4 saw or dreamt of applying the one cure for
the evil — the systematic bestowal of rationalistic instruc-
tion on all. The fatal maxim of ancient scepticism, that
religion is a necessary restraint upon the multitude,
brought it about that everywhere, in the last resort, the
unenlightened multitude became a restraint upon reason
and freethought. In the more aristocratically ruled
■colonial cities, as we have seen, philosophic speech was

' Fairbanks, pp. 245, 255, 2G1 ; Diog. Laert., A naxagoras (B. ii, c. 3, \ 4).
• Fairbanks, pp. 239-245. Cp. Grote, Plato, i, 54, and Ueberweg, i, 66,
.as to the nature of the Nous of Anaxagoras.

3 Diog. Laert., Anaxagoras, §$ 9, 10. * Plutarch, Perikles, c. 32.

108 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

substantially free : it was the Athenian democracy that
brought religious intolerance into Greek life, playing
towards science, in fcrm of law, the part that the fanatics
of Egypt and Palestine had played towards the wor-
shippers of other Gods than their own. To no man,
apparently, did it occur to resist the religious spirit by
systematic propaganda : that, like the principle of
representative government, was to be hit upon only in a
later age. And the spirit of pious persecution, once
generated, went from bad to worse, crowning itself with
crime, till at length the overthrow of Athenian self-
government wrought liberty of scientific speech at the
cost of liberty of political action.

While the people menaced freethinking in religion, the
aristocracies opposed freethinking in politics. Thus under the
Thirty Tyrants all intellectual teaching was forbidden; and
Kritias, himself accused of having helped to parody the
mysteries, sharply interdicted the political rationalism of
Sokrates. (Grote, vi, 476-7.) Meantime, Freethinkers of culture
were numerous enough. Archelaos, the most important
disciple of Anaxagoras, taught the social origin and basis of
morals; and another disciple, Metrodoros, of Lampsakos,
(Grote, i, 374: not to be confused with Metrodoros of Chios,,
and Metrodoros of Lampsakos the friend of Epicurus, both
also freethinkers; Cp. Cudworth, ed. Harrison, i, 32; Grote, i,.
395, n.) offered an allegorical interpretation of Homer, making
Zeus stand for mind, and Athene for art.

While Athens was gaining power and glory and beauty
without popular wisdom, the colonial city of Abdera, in
Thrace, founded by Ionians, had like others carried on
the great impulse of Ionian philosophy, and had produced
in the fifth century some of the great thinkers of the race.
Concerning the greatest of these, Dkmokkitos, and the
next in importance, PROTAGORAS, we have no sure dates ;'
but it is probable that the second, whether older or
younger, was influenced by the first, who indeed has
influenced all philosophy down to our own day. How

1 See the point discussed by Lange, i, 39, note.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 139

much he learned from his master Leukippos cannot now
be ascertained.1 Logically continuing the non-theistic
line of thought, Demokritos either struck out or
assimilated one of the most fruitful of all scientific
principles, the Atomic theory. That this idea again is a
direct development from Babylonian science is not
impossible : at least there seems to be no doubt that
Demokritos had travelled far and wide," whether or not
he had been brought up, as the tradition goes, by Persian
magi f and that he told how the cosmic views of
Anaxagoras, which scandalised the Athenians, were
current in the East.4 His atomic theory, held in con-
junction with a conception of "mind-stuff" similar to
that of Anaxagoras, may be termed the high-water mark
of ancient scientific thought ; and it is noteworthy that in
the same age Empedokles of Agrigentum, another
product of the freer colonial life, threw out a certain
glimmer of the Darwinian conception that adaptations
prevail in nature just because the adaptations fit organisms
to survive, and the non-adapted perish.5 In his teaching,
too, the doctrine of the indestructibility of matter is clear
and firm :6 and the denial of anthropomorphic deity is
explicit.7 But Empedokles wrought out no clear system :
" half-mystic and half-rationalist, he made no attempt to
reconcile the two inconsistent sides of his intellectual
character";4 and his explicit teaching of metempsychosis1'
and other Pythagoreanisms gave foothold for more
delusion than he ever dispelled. Demokritos, again,
shunned dialectic and discussion, and founded no school ;
and although his atomism was later adopted bv Epicurus,
it was no more developed on a basis of investigation and
experiment than was the biology of Empedokles. Greek

1 Cp. Ueberweg, i, 68-69

* Lange, i. 17; Clem. Alex. Stromata, i, 15 ; Diog. Laer. B. ix, c. vii, 2 (§35)
:i On this also ses Lange, i, 15, note. * Diog. Laert., B. ix. c. vii, 2 (j 3 1 1
:> Fairbanks, pp. 189-iyt. The idea is not put with any such definiteness

as is suggested by Lange, i, 33, 35, and Ueberweg, Hist, of Philos., I'ng tr ,

i, 62, n. But Uebsrweg's exposition is illuminating.

'' Fairbanks, pp. 136, 16 1 ' /,/ . p. 201. B Benn, i, 28.

,J Fairbanks, p. 205.

IIO HISTORY OF F REETHOUGHT.

society failed to set up the conditions needed for progress
beyond the point gained by its unguided forces.

Thus when Protagoras ventured to read, at the house
of the freethinking Euripides, a treatise of his own
beginning with the avowal that he offered no opinion
as to the existence of the Gods, life being too short for
the enquiry,1 the remark got wind, and he had to fly for
his life, though Euripides and most of the guests must
have been very much of the same way of thinking.'- In
the course of his flight, the philosopher was drowned ;
and his book was publicly burned — the earliest known
instance of censorship of the press.:i Partisan malice was
doubtless at work in his case as in that of Anaxagoras ;
for the philosophic doctrine of Protagoras became common
enough. It is not impossible, though the date is
doubtful, that the attack on him was one of the results of
the great excitement in Athens in the year 415 B.C. over
the sacrilegious mutilation of the figures of Hermes, the
familial or boundary-God, in the streets by night. It was
at that time that the poet Diagokas of Melos was
prosecuted for atheism, he having declared that the non-
punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that then
were no Gods.4 It has been surmised, with some reason,
that the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the
Melians by the Athenians in 410 B.C.5 For some time
after 415, the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts to
punish ever)- discoverable case of impiety : and parodies
of the Eleusinian mysteries (resembling the mock Masses
of Catholic Europe) were alleged against Alkibiades and
others." Diagoras, who was further charged with divulging
the Eleusinian and other mysteries, and with making
firewood of an image of Herakles,' became thence-
forth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient

1 Diogenes Laertius, B. ix, c. viii, $ 3 (51) ; cp Grote, vii, yg, note.
For a defence of Protagoras against Plato, see Grote, vii, 43-54.
' Beckmann, History of I nvmt ions, Eng. tr , [846, ii, 513.
4 Diod. Sic, xiii, 6 ; Hesychius, cit. in Cudworth, cd. Harrison, i, 131.
* Ueberweg, i, 80; Thukydides, v, 116.
■ Grote, vi, 13, 3J, J3, 4^-45. ' Athenagoras, Apol, c. 4.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. Ill

world,1 and a reward of a silver talent was offered for
killing him, and of two talents for his capture; alive;2
despite which he seems to have escaped. But no antidote
was found or sought to the bane of fanaticism ; and the
most famous publicist in Athens was the next victim.

§7-
The wide subject of the teaching of Sokrates,.
Plato, and Aristotle, must here be briefly noticed
with a view only to our special enquiry. All three must
be inscribed in any list of ancient Freethinkers ; and yet
all three furthered Freethought only indirectly, the two
former being in different degrees supernaturalists, while
the last touched on religious questions only as a philoso-
pher, avoiding all question of practical innovation.

The same account holds good of the best of the so-called
Sophists, as Gorgias the Sicilian, who was a nihilistic sceptic ;
Hii'pias of Elis, who impugned the political laws and prejudices
which estranged men of thought and culture ; and Prodikos of
Cos, author of the fable of Herakles at the Parting of the
Ways, who seems to have privately criticised the current Gods
as mere deifications of useful things and forces, and was later
misconceived as teaching that the things and forces were Gods.
Cp. Cicero, De nat. Deorum, i, 42 ; Ueberweg, vol. i, p. 78.

1. Sokrates was fundamentally and practically a
Freethinker in that in all things he thought for himself,
definitely turning away from the old ideal of mere
transmitted authority in morals.11 Being, however, pre-
occupied with public life and conduct, he did not carry
his critical thinking far beyond that sphere. In regard
to the extension of solid science, one of the prime
necessities of Greek intellectual life, he was quite re-
actionary, drawing a line between the phenomena which
he thought intelligible and traceable and those which he

1 Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, i, 23, 42 ; iii, 37 (the last reference gives
proof of his general rationalism) ; Lactantius, De ird Dei, C 9. In calling
Sokrates " the Melian ", Aristophanes (Cloiuls, 830) was held to have
virtually called him " the atheist ".

- Diod., xiii, 6; Suidas, s.v. Diagoras ; Aristophanes, Birds, 1073.

:l Zeller, Socrates and the Socratit Schools, Eng, tr, 3d. ed , p. 227; Hegel,
as there cited ; Grote, Plato, ed. 1885, i, 423

112 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

thought past finding out. " Physics and astronomy, in
his opinion, belonged to the divine class of phenomena
in which human research was insane, fruitless, and
impious.'"1 The sound scientific view led up to by so
many previous thinkers was set forth, even in religious
phraseology, by his great contemporary Hippokrates,'-
and he opposed it. While separating himself in practice
from the popular worships, he held by the belief in
omens, though not in all the ordinary ones ; and in one
of the Platonic dialogues he is made to say he holds by
the ordinary versions of all the myths, on the ground
that it is an endless task to find rational explanations
for them.:i He hoped, in short, to rationalise conduct
without seeking first to rationalise creed — the dream of
Plato and of a thousand religionists since.

Taken as illustrating the state of thought in the
Athenian community, the trial and execution of Sokrates
for " blasphemy '' and " corrupting the minds of the
young", goes far to prove, however, that there prevailed
in Athens nearly as much hypocrisy in religious matters
as exists in the England of to-day. Doubtless he was
liable to death from the traditionally orthodox Greek
point of view,4 having practically turned aside from the
old civic creed and ideals ; but then most educated
Athenians had in some degree done the same. Euripides
is so frequently critical of the old theology and mythology
in his plays5 that he too could easily have been indicted;
and Aristophanes, who attacked Euripides in his comedies
as unscrupulously as he did Sokrates, would no doubt
have been glad to see him prosecuted.''' The psychology

' Grote, History, i, 354 ; Xenophon, Memorabilia, i, 1, §j 6-9.

-' (irote, i, 334-5; Hippokrates, De Aeribus, Aqitis, Locis, c. 22 (49).
Plato, Phaednis, Jowett's trans., 3rd ed , 1, 434 ; Grote, History, i, 3^3

• Zeller, Socrates and the Socrattc Schools, as cited, p, 231. The case
against S okrates is bitterly ur^'ed by Forchhammer, Die Athencn mid
Sokrates, 1.S37 ; see in particular S. 8-11. Cp. Cirote, Hist., vii, Hi.

'•' See many of the passages cited by Bishop Westcott in his Essays in
the Hist, of ReJig. Thought in tin West. [891, pp. 102-127. Cp. Dickinson,
The Greek View of Life, pp. 46-49 ; Grote, Hist . i, 346-8.

' See Aristophanes' Frogs, 888-894.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. II3

of Aristophanes, who freely ridiculed and blasphemed the

Gods in his own comedies while reviling all men who did

not believe in them, is hardly intelligible1 save in the

light of parts of the English history of our own time,

when unbelieving indifferentists on the Conservative side

have been seen ready to join in turning the law against a

freethinking publicist for purely party ends. Indeed in

the case of Sokrates, not only party malice but the

individual dislikes he so industriously set up2 must have

counted for much in securing the small majority of the

Dikastery that pronounced him guilty ; and his own clear

preference for death over any sort of compromise did the

rest.3 He was old, and little hopeful of social betterment ;

and the temperamental obstinacy which underlay his

perpetual and pertinacious debating helped him to choose

a death that he could easily have avoided. But the fact

remains that he was not popular ; that the mass of the

voters as well as of the upper class disliked his constant

cross-examination of popular opinion, which must often

have led logical listeners to carry on criticism where he

left off; and that after all his ratiocination he left Athens

substantially irrational on some essential issues. His

dialectic method has done more to educate the later

world than it did for Greece. But in view of his own

limitations it is not surprising that through all Greek

history educated men (including Aristotle) continued to

believe firmly in the deluge of Deukalion4 and the invasion

of the Amazons5 as solid historical facts.

1 Nor is it easy to comprehend the mental state of the populace who
listened and laughed. The Athenian faith, as M. Girard remarks (Essai
sur Thucydide, 1884, pp. 258-9), "was more disposed to suffer the buffooneries
of a comedian than the serious negation of a philosopher ". It seemed to
think that jocular impiety did no harm, where serious negation might
cause divine wrath.

- " Nothing could well be more unpopular and obnoxious than the task
which he undertook of cross-examining and convicting of ignorance
every distinguished man whom he could approach " (Grote, vii, 95. Cp
pp. 141-144). Cp. also Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, ed. 1881, p. 316.

3 On the desire of Socrates to die, see Grote, vii, 152-164.

4 Grote, History, i, 94.

5 Id., i, 194. Not till Strabo do we find this myth disbelieved; and
Strabo was surprised to find most men holding by the old story while
admitting that the race of Amazons had died out. Id., p. 197.

114 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Such beliefs, of course, are on all fours with those
current in the modern religious world down till the
present century : we shall in fact best appraise the
rationality of Greece by making such comparisons. The.
residual lesson is that where Greek reason ended, modern
social science had better be regarded as only beginning.
Thukydides, the greatest of all the ancient historians,
and one of the great of all time, treated human affairs in
a spirit so strictly rationalistic that he might reasonably
be termed an atheist on that score even if he had not
earned the name as a pupil of Anaxagoras.1 But his task
was to chronicle a war which proved that the Greeks
were to the last children of instinct for the main
purposes of life, and that the rule of reason which they
are credited with establishing2 was only an intermittent
pastime.

2. The decisive measure of Greek accomplishment is
found in the career of Plato. One of the great prose
writers of the world, he has won by his literary genius—
that is, by his power of continuous presentation as well as
by his style — no less than by his service to supernaturalist
philosophy in general, a repute above his deserts as a
thinker. In the history of Frcethought he figures as a
man of genius formed by Sokrates and reflecting his
limitations, developing the Sokratic dialectic on the one
hand and finally emphasising the Sokratic dogmatism to
the point of utter bigotry. If the Athenians are to be
condemned for putting Sokrates to death, it must not be
forgotten that the spirit if not the letter of the La
drawn up by Plato in his old age fully justified them.8
That code, could it ever have been put in force, would
have wrought the death of every honest freethinker as
well as of most of the ignorant believers within its sphere.
Alone among the great serious writers of Greece does he

1 Life of Thukydides, by Marcellinus, c. 22, citing Antyllas. Cp. Girard,
Iissai suy Thucydide, p. 2jy ; and the prefaces of Hobbes and Smith to
their translations.

'- Girard, p, ;

' Cp. Grote, Plata, iv, 1G2, 381.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. Il5

implicate Greek thought in the gospel of intolerance
passed on to modern Europe from antiquity. It is recorded
of him ' that he wished to burn all the writings of
Demokritos that he could collect, and was dissuaded only
on the score of the number of the copies.

What was best in Plato, considered as a Freethinker,
was his early love of ratiocination, of "the rendering and
receiving of reasons ". Even in his earlier dialogues,
however, there are signs enough of an arbitrary temper,
as well as of an inability to put science in place of religious
prejudice. The obscurantist doctrine which he put in
the mouth of Sokrates in the Phacdrus was also his own,
as we gather from the exposition in the Republic. In
that brilliant performance he objects, as so many believers
and freethinkers had done before him, to the scandalous
tales in the poets concerning the Gods and the sons of
Gods ; but he does not object to them as being all untrue.
His position is that they are unedifying.2 For his own
part he proposes to frame new myths which shall edify
ths young: in his Utopia it is part of the business of the
legislator to frame or choose the right fictions ;3 and the
systematic imposition of an edifying body of pious fiction
on the general intelligence is part of his scheme for the
regeneration of society.1 Honesty is to be built up by fraud,
and reason by delusion. What the Hebrew Bible-makers
actually did, Plato proposed to do. The one thing to be
said in his favor is that by thus telling how the net is to
be spread in the sight of the bird he put the decisive
obstacle — if any were needed — in the way of his plan. It
is indeed inconceivable that the author of the Republic
and the Laws ever dreamt that either polity as a whole
would ever come into existence. He had failed com-

1 Diog. Laert., B. ix, c. vii, § 8 (40).

- Republic, B. ii and iii ; Jowett's trans, 3d. ed., iii, 60 ff., 68 ff. In B. x.
it is true, he does speak of the poets as unqualified by knowledge and
training to teach truth (Jowett's trans., iii. jii It.) ; but Plato's " truth " is
not objective but idealistic, or rather fictitious-didactic.

'■ Id., B. ii and iii ; Jowett, pp. 59, 69. etc.

1 Id., B. iii; Jowett, pp. 103-105.

I 2

HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

pletely as a statesman in practice :' as a schemer he does
not even posit the first conditions of success.

None the less, the prescription of intolerance in the
Laws2 classes Plato finally on the side of fanaticism, and
indeed ranks him with the most sinister figures on that
side, since his earlier writing shows that he would be
willing to punish men for rejecting what he knew to be
untruths.3 His psychology is as strange as that of Aris-
tophanes, but strange with a difference. He seems to
have practised "the will to believe" till he grew to be a
fanatic on the plane of the most ignorant of orthodox
Athenians ; and after all that science had done to
■enlighten men on that natural order the misconceiving of
which had been the foundation of their creeds, he
inveighs furiously in his old age against the impiety of
those who dared to doubt that the sun and moon and
stars were deities, as every nurse taught her charges.4
And when all is said, his Gods satisfy no need of the
intelligence, for he insists that they only partially rule the
world, sending the few good things but not the many evil5
— save in so far as evil may be a beneficent penalty and
discipline. At the same time, while advising the im-
prisonment or execution of heretics who did not believe
in the Gods, Plato regarded with even greater detestation
the man who taught that they could be persuaded or
propitiated by individual prayer and sacrifice.6 Thus he
would have struck alike at the freethiuking few and at

1 See the story of his and his pupil's attempts at Syracuse (Grote,
History, ix, 37-123). The younger Dionvsius, whom they had vainly
attempted to make a model ruler, seems to have been an audacious
unbeliever to the extent of plundering the temple ol Persephone at Locris,
one of Jupiter in the Peloponnesos, anil one ot .) u 11 1 tpius at Epidaurus.
It was noted that nevertheless he died in his bed. Cicero [De not. Deorum,
iii, .jj, 5)) and Valerius Maxirnus (i, 1) tell the story of the elder
Dionysius; but of him it cannot be true. In his day tin plunder of the
temples of Demeter ind Persephone in Sicily by the Carthaginians was
counted a deadly sin. See Freeman, History of Sicily, iv, 125-147

- Laws, \ ; Jowett, v, z<jy~
Republic, ii, iii, as cited. Cp. Laws, ii, iii ; Jowett, v. jj, 79.

1 Laws, Jowett. s trans, 3rd ed., v, 271-2. Compare the comment of
I lenn, i. 27J 2

'•> Republic, IV ii ; Jowett, iii, 62.

6 Laws, x, <jo6-7, 910 . Jowett, v, 293-4, 2^7-S.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. II J

the multitude who held by the general religious beliefs of
Greece, dealing damnation on all save his own clique, in
a way that would have made Torquemada blench.1 In
the face of such teaching as this, it may well be said that
" Greek philosophy made incomparably greater advances
in the earlier polemic period [of the Ionians] than after
its friendly return to the poetry of Homer and Hesiod "a
— that is, to their polytheistic basis. It is to be said for
Plato finally that his embitterment at the downward
course of things in Athens is a quite intelligible source for
his own intellectual decadence : a very similar spectacle
being seen in the case of our own great modern Utopist,
Sir Thomas More. But Plato's own writing bears witness
that among the unbelievers against whom he declaimed
there were wise and blameless citizens;3 while in the act
of seeking to lay a religious basis for a good society he
admitted the fundamental immorality of the religious
basis of the whole of past Greek life.

3. Of Aristotle it may here suffice to say that like
Sokrates he rendered rather an indirect than a direct
service to Freethought. Where Sokrates gave the critical
or dialectic method or habit, "a process of eternal value
and of universal application,"4 Aristotle supplied the
great inspiration of system, partly correcting the Sokratic
dogmatism on the possibilities of science by endless
observation and speculation, though himself falling into
scientific dogmatism only too often. That he was an
unbeliever in the popular and Platonic religion is clear.
Apart from the general rationalistic tenor of his
works,5 there was a current understanding that the
Peripatetic school denied the utility of prayer and
sacrifice ;6 and though the attempt of the anti-

1 On the general inconsistency of the whole doctrine, see Grote's Phi .

iv, 379-397-

2 Ueberweg, Hut. of Philos., Eng. tr., i, 25. Cp. Lange, i, 52-4. See.

however, Mr. Benn's final eulogy of Plato as a thinker, i, 273.

3 LflU's, x, 90S : Jowett, v, 295.
1 Grote, History, vii, 168.

5 Cp. Grote, Aristotle, 2nd ed., p. 10.

fi Origen, Aga nst Celsus, ii. 13 ; cp. i, 65 ; iii. 75 ; vii,

Il8 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Macedonian party to impeach him for impiety may have
turned largely on his hyperbolic hymn to his dead friend
Hermeias (who was a eunuch, and as such held peculiarly
unworthy of being addressed as on a level with semi-
divine heroes1) it could hardly have been undertaken at
all unless he had given solider pretexts. The threatened
prosecution he avoided by leaving the city, dying shortly
afterwards.

It is clear, further, that he was a monotheist, but a
monotheist with no practical religion. " Excluding such
a thing as divine interference with nature, his theology of
course excludes the possibility of revelation, inspiration,
miracles, and grace."2 His influence must thus have
been to some extent, at least, favorable to rational
science, though unhappily his own science is too often a
blundering reaction against the surmises of earlier thinkers
with a greater gift of intuition than he, who was rather a
methodizer than a discoverer.3 What was worst in his
doctrine was its tendency to apriorism, which made it in
a later age so adaptable to the purposes of the Roman
Catholic Church. For the rest, while guiltless of Plato's
fanaticism, he had no scheme of reform whatever, and
was as far as any other Greek from the thought of raising
the mass by instruction. His own science, indeed, was
not progressive ; and his political ideals were rather
reactionary; his clear perception of the nature of the
population problem leaving him in the earlier attitude
of Malthus, and his lack of sympathetic energy making
him a defender of slavery when other men had condemned
it.1 He was in some aspects the greatest brain of the

1 Grote, Aristotle, p. i j.

2 Benn, The Greek Philosophers, i, 352. Mr. Benn refutes Sir A. Grant's
view that Aristotle's creed was a " vague pantheism " ; but that phrase
loosely conveys the idea of its non-religiousness, so to speak. It might be
called a Lucreti.m monotheism, ("p. Benn, i, 294.

•' Cp. the severe criticisms of Benn, vol. i, ch. 6, and Lange, i, 82-90.
But see Lange's summary, p. 91, also p. 11, as to the unfairness of
Whewell ; and ch. v of Soury's Briviaire cle Vhistoirt du Materialisme, 1881,
esp. end.

1 Politics i. 2

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. Iig

ancient world ; and he left it, at the close of the
great Grecian period, without much faith in man,
while positing for the modern world its vague conception
of Deity.

The lack of fresh science, which was the proximate cause of
the stagnation of Greek thought, has been explained like other
things as a result of race qualities : " the Athenians," says Mr.
Benn (i, 42) " had no genius for natural science : none of them

were ever distinguished as savans It was, they thought,

a miserable trifling waste of time Pericles, indeed,

thought differently " On the other hand Lange decides

(i, n) that "with the freedom and boldness of the Hellenic
mind was united .... the gift of scientific deduction ".
These contrary views seem alike arbitrary. If Mr. Benn
means that other Hellenes had what the Athenians lacked, the
answer is that only special social conditions could have set up
such a difference, and that it could not be innate, but must be
a mere matter of usage. The Chaldeans were forward in
astronomy because their climate favored it to begin with, and
religion and their superstitions did so later. Hippokrates of
Cos became a great physician because, with natural capacity,
he had the opportunity to compare many practices. The
Athenians failed to carry on the sciences not because the
faculty or the taste was lacking among them — Perikles cannot
have been alone in his attitude ; and the " miserable trifling "
must, in the terms of the case, have been done by some native
Athenians as well as by immigrants — but because their political
and artistic interests, for one thing, preoccupied them, e.g.
Sokrates and Plato ; and because, for another, their popular
religion, popularly supported, menaced the students of physics.
But the Ionians, who had savans, failed equally to progress
after the Alexandrian period ; the explanation being again not
stoppage of faculty but the advent of conditions unfavorable
to the old intellectual life, which in any case, as we saw, had
been first set up by Babylonian contacts. On the " faculty "
theory, we should have to decide that somehow all the
Hellenes with such a faculty had happened to go to Ionia or
Sicily. (Compare, on the ethnological theorem of Cousin,
Guillaume Breton, Essai sur In poesie philosophique en Grice, 1882,
p. 10.) On the other hand, Lange's theory of gifts "innate"
in the Hellenic mind in general, merely reverses the fallacy.
Potentialities are "innate" in all populations, according to
their culture stage, and it was their total environment that
specialised the Greeks as a community.

120 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

§ 8.

The overthrow of the "free" political life of Athens
was followed by a certain increase in intellectual activity,
the result of throwing back the remaining store of energy
on the life of the mind. The new schools of philosophy
founded by Zeno the Stoic and Epicurus, whatever their
defects, compare not ill with those of Plato and Aristotle,
exhibiting greater ethical sanity and sincerity if less meta-
physical subtlety. Of metaphysics there had been enough
for the age : what it needed was a rational philosophy of
life. But the loss of political freedom, although thus for
a time turned to account, was fatal to continuous progress.
The first great thinkers had all been free men in a
politically free environment : the atmosphere of cowed
subjection, especially after the advent of the Romans,
could not breed their like ; and originative energy of the
higher order soon disappeared. Sane as was the moral
philosophy of Epicurus, and austere as was that of Zeno,
they are alike static or quietist, the codes of a society
seeking a regulating and sustaining principle rather than
hopeful of new achievement or new truth. And the
universal scepticism of Pyrrho has the same effect of
suggesting that what is wanted is not progress but balance.
Considered as Freethinkers, all three men tell at once
of the critical and of the reactionary work done by the
previous age. Pyrrho was the universal doubter ; Zeno
was substantially a monotheist ; Epicurus, adopting but
not greatly developing the science of Demokritos,1 turned
the Gods into a far-off band of glorious spectres, untroubled
by human needs, dwelling for ever in immortal calm,
neither ruling nor caring to rule the world of men." This
strange retention of the theorem of the existence of Gods,
with a ilat denial that they did anything in the universe,.

1 See, however, Wallace's Epicureanism (" Ancient Philosophies" series),.
1880, pp. 176 ff., 186 ff., p. 266, as to the scientific merits of the system.

2 The Epicurean doctrine on this and other heads is chiefly to be
gathered from the great poem of Lucretius. Prof. Wallace's excellent
treatise gives all the clues. See p. 202 as to the F.picuraan God-idea.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 121

might be termed the great peculiarity of average ancient
rationalism, were it not that what makes it at all intel-
ligible for us is just the similar practice of modern
non-Christian theists. The Gods of antiquity were
non-creative, but strivers and meddlers and answerers of
prayer ; and ancient rationalism relieved them of their
striving and meddling, leaving them no active or governing
function whatever, but for the most part cherishing their
phantasms. The God of modern Christendom had been
at once a creator and a governor, ruling, meddling,
punishing, rewarding, and hearing prayer ; and modern
theism, unable to take the atheistic or agnostic plunge,
relieves him of all interference in things human or cosmic,
but retains him as a creative abstraction who somehow
set up "law", whether or not he made all things out of
nothing. The psychological process in the two cases
seems to be the same — an erection of aesthetic habit into
a philosophic dogma.

Whatever may have been the logical and psychological
crudities of Epicureanism, however, it counted for much
as a deliverance to men from superstitious fears ; and
nothing is more remarkable in the history of ancient
philosophy than the affectionate reverence paid to the
founder's memory1 on this score through whole centuries.
The powerful Lucretius sounds his highest note of praise
in telling how this Greek had first of all men freed human
life from the crushing load of religion, daring to pass the
flaming ramparts of the world, and by his victory putting
men on an equality with heaven.2 The laughter-loving
Lucian two hundred years later grows gravely eloquent
on the same theme.3 And for generations the effect of
the Epicurean check on orthodoxy is seen in the whole
intellectual life of the Greek world, already predispose.!
in that direction. The new schools of the Cynics and

1 Compare Wallace, Epicureanism, pp. 64-71, and ch. xi ; and Mackintosh,
On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 4th ed., p. 29.

'-' De w) inn natura, i, 62-79.

3 Alexander seu Pseudomantis, cc. 25, 38, 47, Ci, cited by Wallace, pp
249-250.

122 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the Cyrenaics had alike shown the influence in their
perfect freedom from all religious preoccupation, when
they were not flatly dissenting from the popular beliefs.
Antisthenes, the founder of the former school
(fl. 400 B.C.), though a pupil of Sokrates, had been
explicitly anti-polytheistic.1 Aristippos of Cyrene, also
a pupil of Sokrates, who a little later founded the Hedonic
or Cyrenaic sect, seems to have put theology entirely
aside ; and one of the later adherents of the school,
Theodoros, was like Uiagoras labelled "the Atheist""
by reason of the directness of his opposition to religion ;
and in the Rome of Cicero he and Diagoras are the
notorious atheists of history. To Theodoros is attri-
buted an influence over the thought of Epicurus,4 who,
however, took the safer position of a verbal Theism.
The atheist is said to have been menaced by Athenian
law in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, who pro-
tected him ; and there is even a story that he was con-
demned to drink hemlock': but he was not of the type
that meets martyrdom, though he might go far tq
provoke it.6

In the same age the same freethinking temper is seen
in Stilpo of Megara, of the school of Euclides, who is
said to have been brought before the Areopagus for the
offence of saying that the Pheidian statue of Athene was
" not a God", and to have met the charge with the jest
that she was in reality not a God but a Goddess ; where-
upon he was exiled.7 Yet another professed atheist was
BlON of Borysthenes, pupil of Theodoros, of whom it is
told, in a fashion familiar to our own time, that in sickness

1 Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 13.
- Diogenes Laertius, B. ii, c. viii, §j 7, 14 (86, 100).
Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 1. 23, 42.

1 Diogenes, as cited, $ 12 (97).

' Id . \{ 15, [6 (101-2).

' I'rof. Wallace's account of the court of Lysimachos of Thrace as a

"favourite resort of emancipated freethinkers" (Epicureanism, p. 42) is

hardly borne out by his authority, Diogenes Laertius, who represents

Lysimachos as unfriendly towards Theodoros. Hipparchia the Cynic,

opposed rather than agreed with the atheist.

' /,/ . B. ii, c. xii, \ 5 (1 16).

FKEETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 123

he grew pious through fear.1 In the other schools,
Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, leant to monotheism";
Strato, the Peripatetic, called " the Naturalist ",
taught sheer pantheism3; Dikaiarchos, another disciple
of Aristotle, denied the existence of separate souls;4 and
Aristo and Cleanthes, disciples of Zeno, varied likewise
in the direction of pantheism; the latter's monotheism,
as expressed in his famous hymn, being one of several
■doctrines ascribed to him.5

Contemporary with Epicurus and Zeno and Pyrrho,
too, was Evemeros (Euhemerus), whose peculiar pro-
paganda against Godism seems to imply theoretic
atheism. His lost work, of which only a few extracts
remain, undertook to prove that all the Gods had been
simply famous men, deified after death ; the proof, how-
ever, being by way of a fiction about old inscriptions
found in an imaginary island.6 As above noted,7 the idea
may have been borrowed from sceptical Phoenicians, the
principle having already been monotheistically applied by
the Bible-making Jews.8 In any case, it seems to have
had considerable vogue in the Hellenistic world ; but
with the effect rather of paving the way for new cults than
■of setting up scientific rationalism in place of the old ones.

In Athens, indeed, the democracy, restored in a sub-
ordinate form by Demetrius Poliorketes (B.C. 307) tried
to put down the philosophic schools, all of which, but the
Aristotelian in particular, were anti-democratic, and
doubtless also comparatively irreligious. Theophrasics.
.the head of the Aristotelian school, was indicted for

1 Id., last cit. (117) and B. iv, c. vii, §$ 4, 9, 10 (52, 54, 55).
- Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 13.

3 Id., ib.; Acad. Quast. iv, 38.

4 Cicero, Tusculans, i, c. x, 21 ; c. xxxi, 77.

5 Sir A. Grant's trans, of the hymn is given in Capes' Stoicism ("Chief
Ancient Philosophies" series), 1880, p. 41 ; and theGreek text by Mahaffy,
'Greek Life and Thought, p. 262. Cp. Cicero, De nat. Deor., i, 14.

• Eusebius, Praep. Evang , B. ii, c. 2 ; Plutarch, Isis and Osuis, c. 23.

1 Pp. 51-2.

8 It may count for something that Diogenes the Babylonian, a follower
of Chrysippus, is found applying the principle to Greek mythology. Cicero,
De natura Deorum, i, 15.

124 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

impiety, which seems to have consisted in denouncing
animal sacrifice.1 These repressive attempts, however,
failed ; and no others followed at Athens in that era ;
though in the next century the Epicureans seem to have
been expelled from Lythos in Crete and from Messene in
the Peloponnesos, nominally for their atheism, in reality
probably on political grounds.2 Thus Zeno was free to
publish a treatise in which, besides far out-going Plato in
schemes for dragooning the citizens into an ideal life, he
proposed a State without temples or law courts or
gymnasia.3 In the same age there is trace of " an
interesting case of Rationalism even in the Delphic
oracle ".* The people of the island of Astypalaia, plagued
by hares or rabbits, solemnly consulted the oracle, which
briefly advised them to keep dogs and take to hunting.

It was in keeping with this general but mostly placid
and non-polemic rationalism that the New Academy, the
second birth of the Platonic school, in the hands of
Arkesilaos and Karneades, and later of the Carthaginian
Klitomachos, should be marked by that species of
scepticism thence called Academic — a scepticism which
urged the doubtfulness of current religious beliefs without
going the Pyrrhonian length of denying that any beliefs
could be proved. On this basis, in a health)- environment,
science and energy might have reared a constructive
rationalism; and for a time astronomy, in the hands of
Aristarchos of Samos (3rd cent, b.c), Eratosthenes
of Cyrene, the second keeper of the great Alexandrian
library (2nd century B.C.), and above all of Hipparchos
of Nikaea, the greatest of the Alexandrian school, was
carried to a height of perfection which could not be
maintained, and was only re-attained in modern times.5

1 Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, 1887, pp. 133-135 ; Diogenes
Laertius, B. ii, c. v, § 5 (38),

- Wallace, Epicureanism (pp. 245-C), citing Suidas, s.r. Epicurus.
1 >iogenes Laertius, B. vil, c. i, § 28 (35) ; Cp. Ori«en, Against Celsus,.
B i.e. 5.

1 Mahafly, as cited, p. 135, n. ; Athena-us, ix, 400.
History "/Astronomy betore cited, ch. vi

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. 125

"" History records not one astronomer of note in the three
centuries between Hipparchos and Ptolemy;' and
Ptolemy retrograded into error. Other science mostly
did likewise. The Greek world, already led to lower
intellectual levels by the sudden ease and wealth opened
up to it through the conquests of Alexander and the rule
of his successors, was cast still lower by the Roman
conquest. In the air of imperialism, stirred by no other,
original thought could not arise ; and the mass of the
Greek-speaking populations, rich and poor, gravitated to
the level of the intellectual1 and emotional life of more or
less well-fed slaves. In this society there rapidly mul-
tiplied private religious associations — thiasoi, eranoi,
orgeonoi — in which men and women, denied political life,
found new bonds of union and grounds of division in
cultivating worships, mostly Oriental, which stimulated
the religious sense and sentiment.' Such was the soil in
which Christianity took root and flourished; while
philosophy, after the freethinking epoch following on the
fall of Athenian power, gradually reverted to one or other
form of mystical theism or theosophy, of which the most
successful was the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria.3 When
the theosophic Julian rejoiced that Epicureanism had
disappeared,4 he was exulting in a symptom of the intel-
lectual decline that made possible the triumph of the faith
he most opposed.

Here and there, through the centuries, the old intel-
lectual flame burns whitely enough : the noble figure of
Epictetus in the first century of the new era, and that
of the brilliant Lucian in the second, in their widely
different ways remind us that the evolved faculty was still
there if the circumstances had been such as to evoke it.

1 Lucian's dialogue Philopseudes gives a view of the superstitions of
average Greeks in the second century of our era. Cp. Mr. Williams' 11. te
to the first Dialogue of the Dead in his trans., p. 87.

2 See M. Foucart's treatise, Des associations religieuses die: Us Grecs, 1S73,
2e partie.

1 On the early tendency to orthodox conformity among the unbelieving
Alexandrian scholars, see Mahaffy, Creek Life and Thought, pp. 260-1.
1 Frag, cited by Wallace, p. 258.

126 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Menippus in the first century B.C. had played a similar
part to that of Lucian, in whose freethinking dialogues he
so often figures ; but with less of subtlety and intel-
lectuality. But the moral doctrine of Epictetus is one of
endurance and resignation ; and the almost unvarying
raillery of Lucian, making mere perpetual sport of the
now moribund Olympian Gods, was hardly better fitted
than the all-round scepticism of Sextus Empiricus to
inspire positive and progressive thinking.

Sextus, it is true, strikes at ill-founded beliefs, and so
makes for reason : but he has no idea of a method which
shall reach sounder conclusions. Lucian, again, thought
soundly and sincerely on life ; his praise of the men whose
memories he respected, as Epicurus and Demonax (if
the Life of Demonax attributed to him be really his), is
grave and heartfelt ; and his ridicule of the discredited
Gods was perfectly right so far as it went. In the period
of declining pagan belief, the maxim that superstition was
a good thing for the people must have wrought a quantity
and a kind of corruption that no amount of ridicule of
religion could ever approach. Polybios (fl. B.C. 150)
agrees with his complacent Roman masters that their
greatness is largely due to the carefully cultivated super-
stition of their populace ; and charges with rashness and
folly those who would uproot the growth;1 and Strabo,
writing under Tiberius, confidently lays down the same
principle of governmental deceit." So far had the doctrine
evolved since Plato preached it. But to counteravail it
there needed more than a ridicule which after all reached
only the class who had already cast off the beliefs derided,
leaving the multitude unenlightened. The lack of the
needed machinery of enlightenment was of course part of
the general failure of the Graeco- Roman civilisation; and

1 Polybios, ]'. vi, c. 5G. Cp. B. xvi, Frag 5 (12), where he speaks
impatiently of the miracle-stories told of certain cults, and, repeating his
1 'pinion that some such stories are useful for preserving piety among the
people, protests that they should be kept within bounds,

B. i, c. 2, $ 8. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, c. 8) puts the more decent
principle that all the apparent absurdities have good occult reasons.

FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE. I2J

no one man's efforts could have availed, even if any man
of the age could have grasped the whole situation. Tin-
historic fact is that the higher life of Greece finally
followed the fortunes of that of Rome ; and it is thither
that we must look for the last records of the decadent
rationalism of the old Mediterranean world.

CHAPTER VI.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME.
§1-

The Romans, so much slower and later than the Greeks
in their intellectual development, were in some respects
peculiarly apt to accept freethinking ideas when Greek
rationalism at length reached them. After receiving from
their Greek neighbours in Southern Italy, in the pre-
historic period, the germs of higher culture, in particular
the alphabet, they rather retrograded than progressed for
centuries, the very alphabet degenerating for lack of
literary activity1 in the absence of any culture class, and
under the one-idea'd rule of the landowning aristocracy,
whose bent to military aggression was correlative to the
smallness of the Roman facilities for commerce. In the
early republican period, the same conditions of relative
poverty, militarism, and aristocratic emulation prevented
any development of the priesthood beyond the rudimentary
stage of a primitive civic function ; and the whole of these
conditions in combination kept the Roman Pantheon
peculiarly shadowy, and the Roman mythology abnormally
undeveloped.

The character of the Roman religion has been usually
explained in the old manner, in terms of their particular
" genius " and lack of genius. On this view the Romans
primordially tended to do whatever they did — to he slightly
religious in one period, and highly so in another. By no writer
has the subject been more unphilosophically treated than by

1 Mommsen, History of Rome, V>. i, c. 14 (Eng. tr. 1894, vol. i, pp.
^82-283). Mommsen's opinion of the antiquity of v.ritiiif,' among the Latins
(p. 280) is hardly intelligible. He places its introduction about or before
1000 h.c. ; yet he admits that they ^ot their alphabet from the < .neks, and
he can show no Greek contacts for that period. Gp. pp. 1C7-8 (ch. 10).

( 128 )

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. I2Q

Mommsen, whose chapter on Roman religion (vol. i, ch. 12) is
an insoluble series of contradictions. The differentiation of
Greek and Roman religion is to be explained by the culture-
history of the two peoples; and that, in turn, was determined
by their geographical situation and their special contacts.
Roman life was made systematically agricultural and militarist
by its initial circumstances, where Greek life in civilised Asia
Minor became industrial, artistic, and literary. The special
"genius" of Homer, or of various members of an order of
bards developed by early colonial-feudal Grecian conditions,
would indeed count for much by giving permanent artistic
•definiteness of form to the Greek Gods, where the early
Romans, leaving all the vocal arts mainly to the conservative
care of their women and children as something beneath adult
male notice, missed the utilisation of poetic genius among
them till they were long past the period of romantic simplicity
(cp. Mommsen, B. i, c. 15, Eng. tr. 1894, vol. i. pp. 285-300).
Hence the comparative abstractness of their unsung Gods
(cp. Boissier, La religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, 4e edit,
i, 8), and the absence of such a literary mythology as was
evolved and preserved in Greece by local patriotisms under
the stimulus of the great epopees and tragedies. The doctrine
that "the Italian is deficient in the passion of the heart", and
that therefore " Italian " literature has " never produced a true
■epos or a genuine drama" (Mommsen, c. 15, vol. i, p. 284), is
one of a thousand samples of the fallacy of explaining a
phenomenon in terms of itself. On the same verbalist method,
Mommsen decides as to the Etruscan religion that " the
mysticism and barbarism of their worship had their foundation
in the essential character of the Etruscan people" (ch. 12,
p. 232).

Thus when Rome, advancing in the career of conquest,
had developed a large aristocratic class, living a city life,
with leisure for intellectual interests, and had come in
continuous contact with the conquered Grecian cities of
Southern Italy, its educated men underwent a literary and
a rationalistic influence at the same time, and were the
more ready to give up all practical belief in their own
slightly defined Gods when they found Greeks explaining
away theirs. Indeed Greek rationalism was already old
when the Romans began to develop a written and artistic
literature : it had even taken on the popular form given

I30 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

to it by Evemeros a century before the Romans took it
up. Doubtless there was scepticism among the latter
before Ennius : such a piece of religious procedure as the
invention of a God of Silver (Argentimis), son of the God
of Copper {JEsculanus), on the introduction of a silver
currency, B.C. 269, must have been smiled at by the
more intelligent.1

Mommsen states (ii, 70) that at this epoch the Romans
kept " equally aloof from superstition and unbelief", but though
superstition was certainly the rule, there are traces of ration-
alism. On the next page, the historian himself admits that the
faith of the people had already been shaken by the interference
allowed to the priestly colleges in political matters; and in
another chapter (B. ii, c. 13; vol. ii, 112) he recalls that a
consul of the Claudian gens had jested openly at the auspices-
in the first Punic war, d.c. 249. The story is told by Cicero,
De natura Deorum, ii, 3. The sacred poultry on being let out of
their coop would not feed, so that the auspices could not be
taken ; whereupon the consul caused them to be thrown into
the water, ctiam per jocum Deos inridens, saying they might
drink if they would not eat. His colleague Junius in the same
war also disregarded the auspices ; and in both cases, accord-
ing to Balbus the Stoic in Cicero's treatise, the Roman fleets
were duly defeated ; whereupon Claudius was condemned by
the people, and Junius committed suicide. Cp. Valerius
Maximus, 1. i, c. iv, §3. Such stories would fortify the agelong
superstition as to auspices and omens, which was in full force
among Greek commanders as late as Xenophon, when many
cultured Greeks were rationalists. But it was mainly a matter
of routine, in a sphere where freethought is slow to penetrate.
Cato, who would never have dreamt of departing from a
Roman custom, was the author of the saying (Cicero, De Die.
ii, 24) that haruspices might well laugh in each other's faces.
He had in view the Etruscan practice, being able to see the
folly of that, though not of his own. Cp. Mommsen, iii, 116.

But it is with the translation of the Sacred History of
Evemeros by Ennius, about 200 B.C., that the literary
history of Roman Freethought begins. In view of the

1 Mommsen, B. ii, c. 8, Eng. tr. ii, 70. Such creation of deities by
mere abstraction of things and functions had been the rule in the popular
as distinguished from the civic religion. Cp. Augustine, De civitate Dei, iv,
iG, 23 ; vi, 9, etc.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. 131

position of Ennius as a teacher of Greek and belles lettres
(he being of Greek descent, and born in Calabria), it
cannot be supposed that he would openly translate an
anti-religious treatise without the general acquiescence of
his aristocratic patrons. Cicero says of him that he
"followed" as well as translated Evemeros ;' and his
favorite Greek dramatists were the freethinking Euripides
and Epicharmos, both of whom he translated." The
popular superstitions, in particular those of soothsaying
and divination, he sharply attacked." If his patrons all
the while stood obstinately to the traditional usages of
official augury and ritual, it was in the spirit of political
conservatism that belonged to their class and their civic
ideal, and on the principle that religion was necessary for
the control of the multitude. In Etruria, where the old
culture had run largely to mysticism and soothsaying on
oriental lines, the Roman government took care to
encourage it, by securing the theological monopoly of the
upper-class families,4 and thus set up a standing hot-bed
of superstition. In the same spirit they adopted from
time to time popular cults from Greece, that of the
Phrygian Mother of the Gods being introduced in the
year 204 B.C. The attempt to suppress the Bacchic
mysteries, P>.c. 186, of which a distorted and extravagant
account5 is given by Livy, was made on grounds of policy
and not of religion ; and even if the majority of the senate
had not been disposed to encourage the popular appetite
for emotional foreign worships, the multitude of their own
accord would have introduced the latter, in resentment of
the exclusiveness of the patricians in keeping the old

1 De natura Deorum, i, 42.

- Mr. Shuckburgh (History of Home, 1894, p. 401, note) cites a translated
passage in his fragments (Cicero, De Div. ii, 50; De nat. Deorum, iii, 32),
putting the Epicurean view that the Gods clearly did not govern human
affairs, " which he probably would have softened if he had not agreed with
it ". Cp. Mommsen, iii, 113 (B. ii, c 13).

3 Fmgmcntii, ed. Hesselius, p. 226; Cicero, De Divinal one, i. 58.

1 Mommsen, i, 301, ii, 71 ; iii, 1 17 (B. i, c. 15 ; B. ii, c. 8 ; B. iii, c. 13).
Cicero, De Div. i, 41 .

" Livy, xxix, 18.

K Z

132 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

domestic and national cults in their own hands.1 As new
Eastern conquests multiplied the number of foreign slaves
and residents in Rome, the foreign worships multiplied
with them; and with the worships came such forms of
Freethought as then existed in Greece, Asia Minor, and
Egypt.2 The general social tendency being downwards,
it was only a question of time when the rationalism should
be overgrown by the superstition.

§ 2.
While self-government lasted, rationalism among the
cultured classes was fairly common. The great poem of
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, with its enthusiastic
exposition of the doctrine of Epicurus, remains to show
to what a height of sincerity and ardor a Roman free-
thinker could rise. No Greek utterance that has come
down to us makes so direct and forcible an attack as his
on religion as a social institution. He is practically the
first systematic freethinking propagandist ; so full is he of
his purpose that after his stately prologue to alma Venus,
who is for him but a personification of the genetic forces
of Nature, he plunges straight into his impeachment of
religion as a foul tyranny from which thinking men were
first freed by Epicurus. The sonorous verse vibrates with
an indignation such as Shelley's in Queen Mab : religion is
figured as horribili super aspectu mortalities iustaus ; a little
further on its deeds are denounced as scelerosa atque impia,
" wicked and impious," the religious term being thus
turned against itself ; and a moving picture of the sacrifice
•of Iphigeneia justifies the whole. "To so much of evil
could religion persuade." It is with a bitter conscious-
ness of the fatal hold of the hated thing on most men's

' Cp. Boissier, La religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, ed. 1892, i,

'•* The decree carried by the Catonic party in the Senate against the
<lreek rhetors, uti Romas ne essent (Aulus Gellius, xv, 11), was passed on
grounds of funeral conservatism, as was the later decree against the Latin
rhetors. Both failed in their purpose. Cp. Shuckburgh, p. 520.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. I33

ignorant imagination that he goes on to speak of the fears1
so assiduously wrought upon by the votes, and to set up
with strenuous speed the vividly imagined system of
Epicurean science by which he seeks to fortify his friend
against them. That no thing comes from nothing or
lapses into nothing ; that matter is eternal ; that all things
proceed " without the Gods " by unchanging law, are
his insistent themes ; and for nigh two thousand years a
religious world has listened with a reluctant respect.

And yet throughout the whole powerful poem we have
testimony to the pupillary character of Roman thought in
relation to Grecian. However much the earnest student
may outgo his masters in emphasis and zeal of utterance,
he never transcends the original irrationality of asserting
that "the Gods" exist, albeit it is their glory to do
nothing. It is in picturing their ineffable peace that he
reaches his finest strains of song,2 though in the next
breath he repudiates every idea of their control of things
cosmic or human. He swears by their sacred breasts,
proh sancta dcum pectora, and their life of tranquil joy,
when he would express most vehemently his scorn of the
thought that it can be they who hurl the lightnings which
haply destroy their own temples and strike down alike
the just and the unjust.

The explanation of the anomaly seems to be twofold.
In the first place, Roman thought had not lived long
enough — it never did live long enough — to stand con-
fidently on its own feet and criticise its Greek teachers.
In Cicero's treatise On the Nature of the Gods, the
Epicurean and the Stoic in turn retail their doctrine as
they had it from their school, the Epicurean affirming the
existence and the inaction of the Gods with equal con-
fidence, and repeating without a misgiving the formula
about the Gods having not bodies but quasi-bodies with

' Cp. v, 11G6.

2 De rentm natura, ii, 646-650 (the passage cited by Mr. Gladstone in
the House of Commons in one of the Bradlaugh debates, with a confession
of its noble beauty) ; and again ii, ioyo-1105, and iii, 18-22.

134 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

not blood but quasi-blood ; the Stoic, who stands by most
of the old superstitions, professing to have his philo-
sophical reasons for them. Each sectarian derides the
beliefs of the other ; neither can criticise his own creed.
It would seem as if in the habitually militarist society,
even when it turns to philosophy, there must prevail a
militarist ethic and psychology in the intellectual life ;
each man chosing a flag or a leader and fighting through
thick and thin on that side thenceforth. On the other
hand the argumentation of the high-priest Cotta in the
dialogue turns to similar purpose the kindred principle of
civic tradition. He argues in turn against the Epicurean's
science and the Stoic's superstition, contesting alike the
claim that the Gods are indifferent and the claim that
they govern ; and in the end he brazenly affirms that
while he sees no sound philosophic argument for religious
beliefs and practices, he thinks it is justifiable to maintain
them on the score of prescription or ancestral example.
Here we have the senatorial or conservative principle.1
In terms of that ideal, which prevailed alike with believers
and indifferen tists,2 and mediated between such rival
schools as the Epicurean and Stoic, we ma}- partly
explain the Epicurean theorem itself. For the rest, it is
to be understood as an outcome partly of surviving senti-
ment and partly of forced compromise in the case of its
Greek framers, and of the habit of partisan loyalty in the
case of its Roman adherents.

In the arguments of Cotta, the unbelieving high-priest,
we presumably have the doctrine of Cicero himself.' With
his vacillating character, his forensic habit, and his genius

1 See the account of the doctrine of the high-priest Scaevola, preserved
by Augustine, De civ. Dei, iv, 27. He and Varro (Id., iv, 31 ; vi, 5-7)
agreed in rejecting the current myths, but insisted on the continued civic
acceptance of them. On the whole question compare Boissier, La religion
romaine, i, 47-63

-Thus the satirist LUCILIUS, who ridiculed the popular beliefs, was
capable, in his capacity <>f patriot, of crying out against the lack of respect
shown to religion and the Gods. (I-ioissier, pp. 51-52.) The purposive
insanity set up in their thinking by such men must of course have been
destructive to character.

Cp. the De Divinatione, i, 2.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. I35

for mere speech, he could not but betray his own lack of
intellectual conviction ; and such weakness as his found
its natural support in the principle of use and wont, the
practice and tradition of the commonwealth. On that
footing, he had it in him to boast like any pedigree'd
patrician of the historic religiousness of Rome, he himself
the while being devoid of all religious belief. Doubtless
he gave philosophic color to his practice by noting the
hopeless conflict of the creeds of the positive sects, very
much as in our own dav conservative dialectic finds a
ground for religious conformity in the miscarriages of the
men of science.1 But Cicero does not seem even to have
had a religious sentiment to cover the nakedness of his
political opportunism. In his treatise On Divination he
shows an absolute disbelief in all the recognised practices,
including the augury which he himself officially practised;
and his sole excuse is that they are to be retained "on
account of popular opinion and of their great public
utility".2 In his countless private letters, again, he
shows not a trace of religious feeling,3 or even of interest
in the questions which in his treatises he declares to be
of the first importance.4 Even the doctrine of immortality,
to which he repeatedly returns, seems to have been for
him only a forensic theme, never a source of the private
consolation he ascribed to it.D

In the upper-class Rome of Cicero's day, his type
seems to have been predominant,6 the women alone being
in the mass orthodox,7 and in their case the tendency was
to add new superstitions to the old. In the supreme
figure of Julius C-Esar we see the Roman brain at its
strongest ; and neither his avowed unbelief in the already

1 E.g., Mr. A. J. Balfour's Foundations of Belief .

- Dc Divinatione, ii, 33, 34, Cp. ii 12 ; and De nat. Deorum, i, 22.

:! Boissier, i, 58.

4 Dc nat. Deorum, ii, 1.

5 Boissier, p. 59. .

6 " It seems to me that on the whole, amon» the educated and the rich,
the indifferent must have been in the majority " (Boissier, p. 61).

' Id., p. 59.

I36 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

popular doctrine of immortality,1 nor his repeatedly
expressed contempt for the auspices,2 withheld him from
holding and fulfilling the function of high pontiff. The
process of scepticism had been rapid among the men of
action. The illiterate Marius carried about with him a
Syrian prophetess ; of Sulla, who unhesitatingly plundered
the temple of Delphi, it was said, with no great pro-
bability, that he carried a small figure of Apollo as an
amulet f of Caesar, unless in so far as it may be true that
in his last years, like Napoleon, he grew to believe in
omens as his powers failed, under the stress of perpetual
conflict,4 it cannot be pretended that he was aught but a
convinced freethinker.5 The greatest and most intel-
lectual man of action in the ancient world had no part in
the faith which was supposed to have determined the
success of the most powerful of all the ancient nations.

Dean Merivale, noting that Caesar " professed without
reserve the principles of the unbelievers ", observes that " free-
thinker as he was, he could not escape from the universal
thraldom of superstition in which his contemporaries were
held " (History of the Romans under the Empire, ed. 1865, iir
424). The reproach, from a priest, is piquant, but misleading.
All the stories on which it is founded apply to the last two or
three years of Caesar's life ; and supposing them to be all true,,
which is very doubtful, they would but prove what has been
suggested above, that the overstrained soldier, rising to the
dizzy height of a tremendous career, partly lost his mental
balance, like so many another. Such is the bearing of the
doubtful story (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii, 2) that after the breaking
down of a chariot (presumably the casualty which took place
in his fourfold triumph : see Dion, xliii, 21) he never mounted
another without muttering a charm. M. Boissier (i, 70) makes
the statement of Pliny apply to Caesar's whole life; but
although Pliny gives no particulars, even Dean Merivale

1 Sallust, Bellum Catilin., c. 51.

2 Suetonius, Julius, cc. 59, 77 ; Cicero, l)e Divinatione, ii, 24. Cp.
Merivale, History of the Romans under the Umpire, ed. 1 865, ii, 424.

1 Plutarch, bulla, c. 29; Marius, c. 16.

4 Compare the fears which jjrew upon Cromwell in his last days.

s Pompeius on the other hand had many seers in his camp ; but after
his overthrow expressed natural doubts about Providence. Cicero,.
De Div. ii, 24, 47; Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 75.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. 137

(p. 372) connects it with the accident in the triumph. To the
same time belongs the less challengeable record (Dion Cassius,
lx, 23) of his climbing on his] knees up the steps of the Capitol
to propitiate Nemesis. The very questionable legend, applied
so often to other captains, of his saying, / have thee, Africa,
when he stumbled on landing (Sueton. Jul. 59), is a proof not of
superstition but of presence of mind in checking the super-
stitious fears of the troops ; and was so understood by Suetonius;
as was the rather flimsy story of his taking with him in Africa a
man nicknamed Salutio (Sueton. ibid.) to neutralise the luck of
the opposing Cornelii. The whole turn given to the details by
the clerical historian is arbitrary and unjudicial. Nor is he
accurate in saying that Caesar "denied the Gods" in the
Senate. He actually swore by them, per Deos immor tales, in the
next sentence to that which he denied a future state. The
assertion of the historian (p. 423) that in denying the immor-
tality of the soul Cassar denied " the recognised foundation of
all religion", is a no less surprising error. The doctrine never
had been so recognised in ancient Rome. A Christian ecclesiastic
might have been expected to remember that the Jewish religion,
believed by him to be divine, was devoid of the " recognised
foundation" in question, and that the canonical book of
Ecclesiastes expressly discards it. Of course Caesar offered
sacrifices to Gods in whom he did not believe. That was the
habitual procedure of his age.

§3-
It is significant that the decay of rationalism in Rome
begins and proceeds with the Empire. Augustus, whose
chosen name was sacerdotal in its character,1 made it part
of his policy to restore as far as possible the ancient cults,
many of which had fallen into extreme neglect, between
the indifference of the aristocratic class2 and the devotion
of the populace to the more attractive worships introduced
from Egypt and the East. That he was himself a
habitually superstitious man seems certain ;3 but even had
he not been, his policy would have been natural from the

1 Boissier, i, 73.

2 See the citation from Varro in Augustine, Dc civ. Dei, vi, 2. Cp.
Suetonius, Augustus, 29.

3 The only record to the contrary is the worthless scandal as to hi.^
" suppers of the Twelve Gods" (Sueton. Aug. 70).

138 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Roman point of view. A historian of two centuries later
puts in the mouth of Maecenas an imagined counsel to
the young emperor to venerate and enforce the national
religion, to exclude foreign cults, to put down alike
atheism and magic, to control divination officially, and
to keep an eye on the philosophers.1 What the empire
sought above all things was stability ; and a regimen of
religion, under imperial control, seemed one of the
likeliest ways to keep the people docile. Julius himself
had seemed to plan such a policy,2 though he also planned
to establish public libraries, which would hardly have
promoted faith among the educated.

Augustus, however, aimed at encouraging public re-
ligion of every description, repairing or rebuilding eighty-
two temples at Rome alone, giving them rich gifts,
restoring old festivals and ceremonies, reinstituting
priestly colleges, encouraging special foreign worships,
and setting up new civic cults ; himself playing high
pontiff and joining each new priesthood, to the end of
making his power and prestige so far identical with
theirs ;:) in brief, anticipating the later ruling principle of
the Church of Rome. The natural upshot of the whole
process was the imperial apotheosis, or raising of each
emperor to Godhead at death. The usage of deifying
living rulers was long before common in the East,4 and
had been adopted by the conquering Spartan Lysander
in Asia Minor as readily as by the conquering Alexander.
Julius Caesar seems to have put it aside as a nauseous
tlattcry ;& but Augustus wrought it into his policy. It

1 Dion Cassius, Hi, 36.

2 E.g. his encouragement of a new college of priests founded in his
honor. Dion, xliv, 6.

1'oissier, pp. 67-108.

1 L'Abbe Beurher, Le Culte Impmal, 1891, introd. and ch. 1 ; Boissier,
ch. 2.

•'■ It would seem that the occasion on which he enraged the Senate by
not rising to receive them (SuetOD Jul. 78) was that on which they came to
.innounce that they had made him a God, Jupiter Julius, with a special
temple and a special priest. See Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, v, 418.
He might very well have intended to rebuke their baseness. But cp.
Boissier, i, 122, citing Dion, xlvi, 6

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. IJO,

was the consummation of the old political conception of
religion.

In a society so managed, all hope of return to self-
government having ceased, the level of thought sank
accordingly. There was practically no more active free-
thought. Horace, with his credat Judczus Apclla, and his
frank rejection of the fear of the Dcos tristes,1 was no
believer, but he was not one to cross the emperor ;' Ovid
could satirise3 the dishonest merchant who prayed to the
Gods to absolve his frauds; but he hailed Augustus as the
sacred founder and restorer of temples,4 and prayed for
him as such, and busied himself with the archaeology of
the cults ; Virgil, at heart a pantheist with rationalistic
leanings,5 but sadly divided between Lucretius and
Augustus, his poetical and his political masters,6 tells all
the transition from the would-be scientific to the newly-
credulous age in the two wistful lines —

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ....
Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes ;7

"" happy he who has learned the causes of things ; fortunate
also he who has known the rural Gods ". The Gods, rural
and other, entered on their due heritage in a world of
decadence ; Virgil's epic is a religious celebration of
antiquity ; and Livy's history is written in the credulous
spirit or at least in the tone of an older time, with a few
concessions to recent common-sense.8 In the next genera-
tion, Seneca's monotheistic aversion to the popular
superstitions is the high-water mark of the period, and
represents the elevating power of the higher Greek
Stoicism. On this score he belongs to the freethinking
age, while his theistic apriorism belongs to the next.'1

As the empire proceeds, the echoes of the old frec-

1 i Sat., v, 98-103.

• As to the conflict between Horace's bias and his policy, cp. Boissier,
i, 193-201.

3 Fasti, v, 673-692.

4 Fasti, ii, 61-66.

5 iEneid, vi, 724-7. 6 Cp. Boissier, i, 228-9. ' Georgia, ii, 490, 493.
h Cp. Boissier, i, 193. ,J Cp. Boissier, ii, 84-92.

I40 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

thought become fewer and fewer. It is an entire miscon-
ception to suppose that Christianity came into the
Roman world as a saving counterforce to licentious
unbelief. Unbelief had practically disappeared before
Christianity made any headway ; and that creed came as
one of many popular cults, succeeding in virtue of its
various adaptations to the special conditions, moral and
economic. It was easy for the populace of the empire to
deify a man : at Rome it was the people, now so largely
of alien stock, who had most insisted on deifying Caesar.1
But the upper class soon kept pace with them in the zest
for religion. In the first century, the elder Pliny recals
the spirit of Lucretius by the indignant eloquence with
which he protests against the burdensome belief in im-
mortality ; but though Seneca and others reject the fear
of future torment, Pliny is the last writer to repudiate
with energy the idea of a future state.2 A number of
epitaphs still chime with his view ; but already the
majority are on the other side f and the fear of hell was
normally as active as the hope of heaven ; while the belief
iu an approaching end of the world was proportionally as
common as it was later under Christianity.4 Thus,
whatever may be the truth as to the persecutions of the
Christians in the first two centuries of the empire, the
motive was in all cases certainly political or moral, as in
the earlier case of the Bacchic mysteries, not hostility to
its doctrines as apart from Christian attacks on the
established worships.

Some unbelievers there doubtless were after Petroni us,
whose perdurable maxim that " Fear first made Gods in
the world ",s adopted in the next generation by STATIUS,"
was too pregnant with truth to miss all acceptance among

1 Suetonius, Jul. 88.

2 Hist. nat. vii, 55 (56). Cp. Boissier, i, 300.
:1 /(/., pp. 301-3.

4 See the praiseworthy treatise of Mr. J. A. Farrer, Paganism and
Christianity, 1891, cc. 5, 6, and 7.

* Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. Frag, xxii, ed. Burmanni. The whole
passage is noteworthy.

'• Theba'id, iii, 661.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. 141

thinking men. The fact that Statins in his verse ranked
Domitian with the Gods made its truth none the less
pointed. The Alexandrian rationalist Chaeremon, who
had been appointed one of the tutors of Nero, had
explained the Egyptian religion as a mere allegorising of
the physical order of the universe.1 It has been remarked
too that in the next century the appointment of the free-
thinking Greek Lucian by Marcus Aurelius to a post of
high authority in Egypt showed that his writings gave no
great offence at court,'* where indeed, save under the two
great Antonines, religious seriousness was rare. These,
however, were the exceptions : the whole cast of mind
developed under the autocracy, whether in the good
or in the bad, made for belief and acquiescence or
superstition rather than for searching doubt and sustained
reasoning.

The statement of Mosheim or of his commentators {Eccles.
Hist., Cent. I, Pt. I. c. i, §21, note ; Murdock's trans., Reid'sed.)
that Juvenal (Sat. xiii, 86) " complains of the many atheists at
Rome " is a perversion of the passage cited. Juvenal's allusion
to those who put all things down to fortune and deny a moral
government of the world, begins with the phrase "sunt qui",
" there are (some) who " ; he makes far more account of the
many superstitious, and never suggests that the atheists are
numerous in his day. Neither does he "complain": on the
contrary his allusion to the atheists as such is non-condemnatory
as compared with his attacks on pious rogues, and is thus part of
the ground for holding that he was himself something of a Free-
thinker— one of the last among the literary men. In the tenth
Satire (346 ff.) he puts the slightly theistic doctrine, sometimes
highly praised (ed. Ruperti, 18 17, in loc), that men should not
pray for anything, but leave the decision to the Gods, to whom
man is dearer than to himself. There too occurs the famous
doctrine (356) that if anything is to be prayed for it should be
the mens sana in corpora sano, and the strong soul void of the
fear of death. The accompanying phrase about offering " the
intestines and the sacred sausages of a whitish pig " is flatly
contemptuous of religious ceremonial; and the closing lines,

1 Porphyry, Epistle to Anebo (with Jamblichus). Chaeremon, however,
regarded comets as divine portents. Origen, Against Celsus, H i, c 59.
- I'rof. C. Martha, Les moralistes sous I' empire roniain, ed. 1SS1, p. 341.

142 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

placing the source of virtue and happiness within, are strictly
naturalistic. In the two last :

Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia ; nos [or sed] te
Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, cceloque locamus,

the frequent reading abest for habcs seems to make the better
sense : " No divinity is wanting, if there be prudence ; but it is
we, O Fortune, who make thee a Goddess, and throne thee in
heaven." In any case, the insistence is on man's lordship
of himself. (The phrase occurs again in Sat. xiv, 315.)

As regards the general tone of Roman literature from the
first century onwards, the summing up of Renan is substantially
just : — "The freethinkers .... diminish little by little and
disappear .... Juvenal alone continues in Roman society,
down to the time of Hadrian, the expression of a frank
incredulity . . . Science dies out from day to day. From the
death of Seneca, it may be said that there is no longer a
thoroughly rationalistic scholar. Pliny the Elder is inquisitive
but uncritical. Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, avoid
commenting on the inanity of the most ridiculous inventions.
Pliny the Younger (Ep. vii, 27) believes in puerile stories of
ghosts ; Epictetus (xxxi, 5) would have all practise the
established worship. Even a writer so frivolous as Apuleius
feels himself bound to take the tone of a rigid conservative
about the Gods (Florida, i, 1 ; De magia, 41, 55, 56, 63). A
single man, about the middle of this century, seems entirely
exempt from supernatural beliefs; that is Lucian. The scientific
spirit, which is the negation of the supernatural, exists only in
a few ; superstition invades all, enfeebling all reason " (Les
Evangiles, ed. 1877, pp. 406-7).

§4-
One element of betterment there was in the life of
declining Rome, until the Roman ideals were superseded
by Oriental. Even the Augustan poets, Horace and Ovid,
had protested like the Hebrew prophets, and like Plato
and like Cicero, against the idea that rich sacrifices
availed with the Gods above a pure heart ; and such
doctrine prevailed more and more.' The men who grew
up under the autocracy, though inevitably feebler and

1 Plato, 2 Alcib.; Cicero, Pro Cluentio, c 68; Horace, Cam., iii, 23, 17;
Ovid, Heroides, Acont. Cydipp., 191-2; Persius, Sat. ii, 09 ; Seneca, be
Beneficiis,i,6. Cp. Diod. Sic. xii, 20; Varro, in Arnobius, Ad.- Gentes,vu,i.

FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME. I4J

more credulous in their thinking than those of the
commonwealth, developed at length a concern for conduct,
public and private, which lends dignity to the later philo-
sophic literature, and lustre to the imperial rule of the
Antonines. This concern it was that, linking Greek
theory to Roman practice, produced a code of rational
law which could serve Europe for a thousand years. This
concern too it was, joined with the high moral quality of
their theism, that ennobled the writing of Seneca1 and
Epictetus and Maximus of Tyre ; and irradiates the words
as well as the rule of Marcus Aurelius. In them was
anticipated all that was good2 in the later Christian ethic,
even as the popular faiths anticipated the Christian
dogmas; and they cherished a temper of serenity that the
Fathers fell far short of. To compare their pages with
those of the subsequent Christian fathers — Seneca with
Lactantius, "the Christian Seneca" ; Maximus with Arno-
bius ; Epictetus with Tertullian ; the admirable Marcus,
and his ideal of the " dear city of Zeus ", with the shrill
polemic of Augustine's City of God and the hysteria of the
Confessions — is to prove a rapid descent in magnanimity,
sanity, self-command, sweetness of spirit, and tolerance.
Any prosecution of Christians under the Antonines was
certainly on the score of political turbulence or mal-
practices, not on that of heresy ; a crime created only by
the Christians themselves, in their own conflicts. The
scientific account of the repellent characteristics of the
Fathers, of course, is not that their faith made them what
they were, but that the ever-worsening social and
intellectual conditions assorted such types into theii
ecclesiastical places, and secured for them their influence
1 iver the types now prevailing among the people. The new
church organisation was above all things a great economic

1 On Seneca's moral teaching, cp. Martha, Lcs Moralistes sous V empire
remain, pp. 57-66; Boissier, La religion romaine, Li, 80-82. M I
further examines fully the exploded theory that Seneca received Christian
teaching.

- Seneca was so advanced in his theoretic ethic as to consider all war
on a level with homicide. Epist. xcv, 30.

144 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

endowment for a class of preachers, polemists and propa-
gandists ; and between the closing of the old spheres of
public life and the opening of the new,1 the new faith was
established as much by political and economic conditions
as by its intellectual adaptation to an age of mental
twilight.

Of the religion of the educated Pagans in its last
forms, it is finally to be said that it was markedly ration-
alistic as compared with the Christianity which followed,
and has been on that ground stigmatised by Christian
orthodoxy down till our own day. The religion of
Marcus Aurelius is self-reverence, self-study, self-rule,
plus faith in Deity; and it is not to be gainsaid that he
remains the noblest monarch in history; the nearest
parallel being the more superstitious but still ethically
rationalistic Julian, the last of the great Pagans. In such
rulers the antique philosophy was justified of its children ;
and if it never taught them to grapple with the vast
sociological problem set up by the Empire, and so failed
to preserve the antique civilisation, it at least did as much
for them in that regard as the new faith did for its
followers.

1 It is to he noted that preaching had begun among the moralists of
Rome in the first century ; and was carried on by the priests of Isis in the
second ; and that in Egypt monasticism had long been established.
Martha, as cited, p. 67 ; Boissier, i, 356-9. Cp. Mosheim, Cent. II, Pt. II,
c. iii , $ § 13, 14, as to monasticism.

CHAPTER VII.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS.

§1.

The Christian Gospels, broadly considered, stand for a
certain measure of freethinking reaction against the
Jewish religion, and are accordingly to be reckoned with
in the present enquiry; albeit their practical outcome
was only an addition to the world's supernaturalism and
traditional dogma. To estimate aright their share of
Freethought, we have but to consider the kind and
degree of demand they made on the reason of the ancient
listener, as apart, that is, from the demand made on their
basis for the recognition of a new Deity. When this is
done, it will be found that they express in parts a process
of reflection which outwent even critical common-sense
in a kind of ecstatic Stoicism, an Oriental repudiation of
the tyranny of passions and appetites ; in other parts a
mysticism that proceeds as far beyond the credulity of
ordinary faith. Socially considered, they embody a
similar opposition between an anarchistic and a partly
orthodox or regulative ideal. The plain inference is that
they stand for many independent movements of thought
in the Grseco- Roman world.

Any attentive study of the Gospels discloses not
merely much glossing and piecing and interpolating of
documents but a plain medley of doctrines, of ideals, of
principles ; and to accept the mass of disconnected utter-
ances ascribed to "the Lord", many of them associated
with miracles, as the oral teaching of any one man, is a
proceeding so uncritical that in no other study could
it now be followed. The simple fact that Paul's
Epistles show no knowledge of any Jesuine miracles

( 145 ) L

I46 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

or teachings whatever, except as regards the Last Supper
(1 Cor. xi, 24-25, — a passage obviously interpolated
after the Synoptics), admits of only three possible
interpretations : — (1) his Jesus had not figured as a
teacher at all ; or (2) Paul gave no credit or attached no
importance to reports of his teachings. Either of these
views (of which the first is plainly the more plausible)
admits of (3) the further conclusion that Paul's Jesus was
not the Gospel Jesus, but an earlier one — a likely enough
hypothesis ; but on that view the mass of Dominical
utterances in the Gospels is only so much the less
certificated. When, then, it is admitted by all open-
minded students that the events in the narrative are in
many cases fictitious, even when they are not miraculous,
it is wholly inadmissible that the sayings should be trust-
worthy, as one man's teachings.

Analysing them in collation we find even in the
Synoptics, and without taking into account the Fourth
Gospel, such wide discrepancies as the following : —

1. The doctrine : " the Kingdom of God is within you " (Lk. xvii, 21),
side by side with promises of the speedy arrival of the Son of Man, whose
coming = the Kingdom of God (Cp. Matt, iii, 2, 3 ; iv, 17 ; Mk. i, 15).

2. The frequent profession to supersede the Law (Mt. v, 21, 33, 38, 43,
etc.) ; and the express declaration that not one jot or tittle thereof is to be
superseded (Mt. v, 17-20).

3. Proclamation of a Gospel for the poor and the enslaved (Lk. iv, 18) ;
with the tacit acceptance of slavery (Lk. xvii, 7, 9, 10; where the word
translated "servant" in the A.V., and let pass by McClellan, certainly
means " slave ").

4. Stipulation for the simple fulfilment of the Law as a passport to
eternal life, with or without further self-denial (Matt, xix, 16-21 ; Lk. x. 28) ;
on the other hand a stipulation for simple benevolence, as in the Egyptian
ritual (Mt. xxv ; cp. Lk, ix, 48) ; and yet again stipulations for blind faith
(Mt. x, 15) and for blood redemption (Mt. xxvi, 28).

5. Alternate promise (Mt. vi, 33 ; xix, 29) and denial (Mt. x, 34-39) of
temporal blessings.

6. Alternate commands to secrecy (Mt. xii, 16 ; viii, 4 ; ix, 30 ; Mk. iii,
12 ; v, 43 ; vii, 36) and to publicity (Mt. vii, 7-8 ; Mk. v, 19) as to miracles,
with a frequent record of their public performance.

7. Specific restriction of salvation to Israelites (Mt. x, 5, G; xv, 24 ;
xix, 28) ; equally specific declaration that the Kingdom of God shall be to
another nation (Mt. xxii, 43) ; no less specific assurance that the Son of

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 147

Man (not the Twelve as in Mt. xix, 28) shall judge all nations, not merely
Israel (Mt. xxv, 32 ; cp. viii, 11).

8. Profession to teach all, especially the simple and the childlike (Mt.
xviii, 3 ; xi, 25, 28-30; Mk. x, 15) ; on the contrary a flat declaration (Mt.
xiii, 10-16: Mk. iv, n ; Lk. viii, 10 ; cp. Mk. iv, 34) that the saving teaching
is only for the special disciples ; yet again (Mt. xv, 16 ; Mk. vi, 52 ; viii,
17, 18) imputations of lack of understanding on them.

9. Companionship of the teacher with " publicans and sinners "
{Mt. ix, 10) ; and on the other hand a reference to the publicans as falling
far short of the needed measure of loving kindness (Mt. v, 46).

10. Explicit contrarieties of phrase, not in context (Mt. xii, 30;
Lk. ix, 50).

n. Flat contradictions of narrative as to the teacher's local success
(Mt. xiii, 54-58 ; Lk. iv, 23).

12. Insistence that the Mesiah is of the Davidic line (Mt. i; xxi, 15;
Lk. i, 27 ; ii, 4) and that he is not (Mt. xxii, 43-45 ; Mk. xii, 35-37 ; Lk. xx).

13. Contradictory precepts as to limitation and non-limitation of
forgiveness (Mt. xviii, 17, 22).

Such variously serious discrepancies count for more
than even the chronological and other divergences of the
records concerning the Birth, the Supper, the Crucifixion,
and the Resurrection, as proofs of diversity of source; and
they may be multiplied indefinitely. The only course for
criticism is to admit that they stand for the ideas of a
variety of sects or movements, or else for an unlimited
manipulation of the documents by individual hands.
Many of them may very well have come from various
so-called " Lords " and " Messiahs " ; but they cannot be
from a single teacher.

It remains to note the so-far rationalistic character of
such teaching as the protests against ceremonialism, the
favoring of the poor and the outcast, the extension of the
future life to non-Israelites, and the express limitation of
prayer (Mt. vi, 9 ; Lk. xi, 2) to a simple expression of
religious feeling — a prescription which has been abso-
lutely ignored through the whole history of the Church,
despite the constant use of the one prayer prescribed —
itself a compilation of current Jewish phrases.

The expression in the Dominical prayer translated " Give
us this day [or day by day] our daily bread" (Mt. vi, 11;
Lk. xi, 3) is pointless and tautological as it stands in the

L 2

I48 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

English and other Protestant versions. In verse 8 is the-
assurance that the Father knows beforehand what is needed ;
the prayer is therefore to be a simple process of communion
or advocation, free of all verbiage ; then, to make it specially
ask for the necessary subsistence, without which life would
cease, and further to make the demand each day, when in the
majority of cases there would be no need to offer such a
request, is to stultify the whole. If the most obvious necessity
is to be urged, why not all the less obvious ? The Vulgate-
trans., " Give us to-day our super-substantial- bread,'' though
it has the air of providing for the Mass, is presumptively
the original sense ; and is virtually supported by McClellan
(N.T. 1875, ii, 645-7), who notes that the repeated use of the-
article, tov aprov rjfxCov tov eVtovcrtov, implies a special meaning,
and remarks that of all the suggested translations " daily " is
" the very one which is most manifestly and utterly con-
demned ". Compare the bearing of the verses Mt. vi, 25-26,.
31-34, which expressly exclude the idea of prayer for bread,
and Luke xi, 13. Naturally the average theologian {e.g., Dr.
Lightfoot, cited by McClellan) clings to the conception of a
daily appeal to the God for physical sustenance ; but in so
doing he is utterly obscuring the original doctrine. Properly
interpreted, the prayer forms a curious parallel to the close of
the tenth satire of Juvenal, above cited, where all praying for
concrete boons is condemned, on the ground that the Gods
know best, and that man is dearer to them than to himself;,
but where there is permitted (of course illogically) an appeal
for soundness of mind and spiritual serenity. The documents
would be nearly contemporary, and, though independent,
would represent kindred processes of ethical and rational
improvement on current religious practice. On the other
hand the prayer " lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil " — which again rings alien to the context — would
have been scouted by Juvenal as representing a bad survival
of the religion of fear.

It may or may not have been that this rationalisation
of religion was originally preached by the same sect or
school as gave the exalted counsel to resist not evil and
to love enemies — a line of thought found alike in India
and in China and, in the moderate form of a veto on
retaliation, in Greece and Rome.1 But it is inconceivable

1 Eg.. Plato, Crito, Jowett's tr. 3d. ed., ii, 150; Seneca, De Ira, ii, 32.
Valerius Maximus (iv, 2, 4) even urges the returning of benefits for injuries.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. I49

that the same sect originally laid down the doctrines of
the blood sacrifice and the final damnation of those who
did not accept the Messiah (Mt. x). The latter dogmas,
with the myths, naturally became the practical creed of
the later Church, for which the counsel of non-solicitous
prayer and the love of enemies were unimaginable ideals.1
Equally incapable of realisation by a State Church was
the anti-Pharisaical and " Bohemian " attitude ascribed
to the founder, and the spirit of independence towards
the reigning powers. For the rest, the crazy doctrine
that a little faith might suffice to move mountains — a
development from the mysticisms of the Hebrew prophets
— could count for nothing save as an incitement to
prayer in general. The freethinking elements in the
Gospels, in short, were precisely those which historic
•Christianity inevitably cast aside.

§ 2.
Already in the Epistles the incompatibility of the
■original critical spirit with sectarian policy has become
clear. Paul — if the first epistle to the Thessalonians be
his — exhorts his converts to " prove all things, hold fast
what is good "2 ; and by way of making out the Christist
•case against unpliable Jews he argues copiously in his
own way; but as soon as there is a question of "another
Jesus"3 being set up, he is the sectarian fanatic pure
and simple ; and he no more thinks of applying the
•counsel of criticism to his dogma1 than of acting on his
prescription of love in controversy. The attitude
towards slavery now becomes a positive fiat in its
support'; and all political freethinking is superseded by

1 It is impossible to find in the whole patristic literature a single

display of the "love" in question. In all early Christian history there

is nothing to represent it save the attitude of martyrs towards their

executioners — an attitude seen often in Pagan literature. (Cp. Aelian,

Vay. Hisi. xii, 49.)

- 1 Thess. v, 21. 3 2 Cor. xi, 4. 4 Cp. Rom. ix, 14-21.

5 1 Coy. vii, 20-24 (where the phrase translated in English "use it
rather " unquestionably means " rather continue" = remain a slave. Cp.
E[h. vi, 5, and Variorum Teacher's Bible in loc.

150 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

a counsel of conformity.1 The slight touch of rationalism
in the Judaic epistle of James, where the principle of
works is opposed to that of faith, is itself quashed by an
anti-rational conception of works.3

§ 3.
When the new creed, spreading through the Empire,,
comes actively in contact with Paganism, the rationalistic
principle of anti-idolatry, still preserved by the Jewish
impulse, comes into prominence ; and in so far as they
criticised Pagan myths and Pagan image-worship, the
early Christians may be said to have rationalised.3 As
soon as the cult was joined by lettered men, the primitive
rationalism of Evemeros was turned by them to account ;
and a series of Fathers, including Clement of Alexandria,
Arnobius, Lactantius, and Augustine, pressed the case
against the Pagan creeds with an unflagging malice
which, if exhibited by later rationalists towards their own
creed, Christians would characterise in strong terms.
But the practice of criticism towards other creeds was
with the religious as with the philosophical sects, no help
to self-criticism. The attitude of the Christian mass
towards Pagan idols and the worship of the Emperor was
rather one of frenzy4 than of intellectual superiority5 ;
and the Fathers never seem to have found a rationalistic
discipline in their polemic against Pagan beliefs. Where
the unbelieving Lucian brightly banters, they taunt and
asperse, in the temper of barbarians deriding the Gods of
the enemy. None of them seems to realise the bearing

1 Rom. xiii, 1. Cp. Tit. iii, 1. The anti-Roman spirit in the Apocalypse
is Judaic, not Gentile-Chiistian ; the book being of Jewish origin.
- fames ii, 21.

3 The Apology of Athenagoras (2d. c.) is rather a defence of monotheism
than a Christian document ; hence no doubt its speedy neglect by the
Church.

4 Cp. Tertullian, De Idolatria, passim, and Ad Scapulam, c. 5.

5 For the refusal to worship men as Gods, they had of course abundant
Pagan precedent Cp. Plutarch, his and Osiris, cc. 23, 24; Arrian,
Alexander's Expedition, iv, 11 ; Curtius, viii, 5-8 ; Plutarch, A rtaxerxes.c. 22;
Herodotos, vii, 13G.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. I51:

against his own creed of the Pagan argument that to die
and to suffer is to give proof of non-deity.1 In the end,
the very image-worship which had been the main ground
of their rational attack on Paganism became the universal
usage of their own church ; and its worship of saints and
angels, of Father, Son, and Virgin Mother, made it
more truly a polytheism than the creed of the later-
Pagans had been.2 It is therefore rather to the heresies
within the Church than to its attacks on the old
polytheism that we are to look for early Christian
survivals of ancient rationalism ; and for the most part,
after the practically rationalistic refusal of the early
Ebionites to accept the doctrine of the Virgin Birth,
these heresies were but combinations of other theosophies
with the Christian.

Already in the spurious Epistles to Timothy we have
allusion to the "antitheses of the gnosis"* or pretended
occult knowledge ; and to early Gnostic influences may
plausibly be attributed those passages in the Gospel,
above cited, which affirm that the Messiah's teaching is
not for the multitude but for the adepts.5 All along,
Gnosticism6 stood for the influence of older systems on
the new faith ; an influence which among Gentiles, un-
trained to the cult of sacred books, must have seemed
absolutely natural. In the third century, Ammonios
Saccas, of Alexandria, said to have been born of Christian
parents, set up a school which sought to blend the
Christian and the Pagan systems of religion and philo-

1 E.g. Tertullian, De Testimonio Anima, c. 1 ; Arnobius, Adversus Gentes,
i, 41, etc.; Lactantius, Divine Institutes, c. xv ; Epit. c. vii.

a Cp. Farrer, Paganism and Christianity, ch. 7.

3 Irenasus, Against Heresies, i, 26. Cp. Hagenbach, Lchrbuch dcr Dog-
viengeschiehte, 3te Aufl., § 23, 4 (S. 37), as to Cerinthus.

* 1 Tim. vi, 20. The word persistently translated " oppositions" is a
specific term in Gnostic lore. Cp. R. W. Mackay, Rise and Progress of
Christianity, 1854, p. 115, note.

» Cp. Harnack, Outlines 0/ the History of Dogma, Mitchell's trans., p. 77
(c. 6), p. 149 (B. ii, c. 6) ; Gieseler, Comp. of Eccles. Hist, i, $ 63, Eng. tr. i,
234, as to the attitude of Origen.

6 The term Gnostic, often treated as if applicable only to heretical
sects, was adopted by Clemens of Alexandria as an honorable title. Cp.
Gieseler, p. 241, as cited.

152 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

sophy into a pantheistic whole, in which the old Gods
figured as subordinate daimons or as allegorical figures,
and Christ as a reformer.1 The special leaning of the
school to Plato, whose system, already in vogue among
the scholars of Alexandria, had more affinity to Christi-
anity than any of its rivals,2 secured for it adherents of
many religious shades,3 and enabled it to develop an
influence which permanently affected Christian theology;
this being the channel through which the doctrine of the
Trinity entered. According to Mosheim, almost no other
philosophy was taught at Alexandria down to the sixth
century.4 Only when the regulative zeal of the Church
had began to draw the lines of creed definitely* on anti-
philosophic lines did the syncretic school, as represented
by Plotinus, Porphyry, and Hierocles,6 declare itself
against Christianity.

Among the church sects, as distinguished from the
philosophic, the syncretic tendency was hardly less the
vogue. Some of the leading Fathers of the second century,
in particular Clement of Alexandria and Origen, show the
Platonic influence strongly,1 and are given, the latter in
particular, to a remarkably free treatment of the sacred
books, seeing allegory wherever credence had been made
difficult by previous science,8 or inconvenient by accepted
dogma. But in the multiplicity of Gnostic sects is to be
seen the main proof of the effort of Christians, before the
complete collapse of the ancient civilisation, to think with

1 Mosheim, Ecclcs. Hist., Cent. II, Pt. II, c. i, \\ 4-12. Cp., however,
Abbe Cognat, Clement d' Alexandria 1859, pp. 421-3, and Ueberweg, i, 239, as
to the obscurity resting on the original teaching of Ammonios.

2 Cp. Gieseler, Compendium, i, $ 52 (trans, vol. i, p. 102).
'■s Id., §§ 54, 55, pp. 186-190.

4 E. H., Cent. Ill, Ft. II, c. i, §$ 2-4.

6 As to the earlier latitudinarianism, cp. Gieseler as cited, p. 166.

6 Gieseler, § 55.

7 Mosheim, E. II., Cent. Ill, Pt. II, c. iii, §$ 1-7; Gieseler, as cited,
{ 52, pp. 162-5 '• Eusebius, Eecles. Hist, vi, 19 ; B. Saint-Hilaire, De
I' -cole d'Alexandrie, 1845, p. 7 ; Baur, Church History, Eng. tr. ii, 3-8. But
cp. Cognat, Clnnent d A'.exandrie, 1. v, ch. 5.

* Cp. Mosheim on Origen, Comnt. de rebus Christ, ante Const., §$ 27, 28,
summarised in Schlegel's note to Ec Hist., Keid's ed., pp. 100-1 ; Gieseler,
$ 63 ; Kenan, Marc-Aurelc, pp. 114, 140.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 153

some freedom on their religious problems.1 In the terms
of the case — apart from the Judaising of the Elcesaites
and Clemens Romanus — the thought is an adaptation of
Pagan speculation, chiefly Oriental and Egyptian ; and
the commonest characteristics are, (1) in theology, an
explanation of the moral confusion of the world by
assuming two opposed Powers,2 or by setting a variety of
good and bad subordinate powers between the world and
the Supreme Being ; and (2) in ethics, an insistence either
on the inherent corruptness of matter or on the incom-
patibility of holiness with physical pleasure.3 The sects
influenced chiefly from Asia teach as a rule a doctrine of
two great opposing Powers ; those influenced from Egypt
seek rather the solution of graduation of power under
one chief God. All alike showed some hostility to the pre-
tensions of the Jews. Thus : —

1. Saturninus of Antioch (2nd c.) taught of a Good and an Evil Power,
and that the world and man were made by the seven planetary spirits,
without the knowledge or consent of either Power ; both of whom, how-
•ever, sought to take control, the Good God giving men rational souls, and
subjecting them to seven Creators, one of whom was the God of the Jews.
Christ was a spirit sent to bring men back to the Good God ; but only
their asceticism could avail to consummate the scheme. (Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, i, 24 ; Epiphanius, Hcereses, xxiii.)

2. Similarly Marcion (son of a bishop of Pontus) placed between the
good and bad Powers the Creator of the lower world, who was the God
.and Lawgiver of the Jews, a mixed nature, but just ; the other nations
being subjects of the Evil Power. Jesus, a divine spirit sent by the

1 " Gnosis was an attempt to convert Christianity into philosophy; to
place it in its widest relation to the universe, and to incorporate with it the
ideas and feelings approved by the best intelligence of the times." Mackay,
Rise and Progress of Christianity, p. 109. But cp. the per contra on p. no:
" it was but a philosophy in fetters, an effort of the mind to form for itself
a more systematic belief in its own prejudices". Again (p. 115): "a
reaction towards freethought was the essence of Gnosis ".

2 This view could be supported by the Platonists from Plato, Laws,
B. x. Cp. Chaignet, La vie et les ecrits de Platon, 1871, p. 422 ; and Milman,
Hist, of Christianity, B. ii, c. v, ed. Paris, 1840, i, 288. It is explicitly set
forth by Plutarch, /. and 0., cc. 45-49.

3 On the subject in general cp. Mosheim, E. H., Cent. II, Pt. II, c v :
also his Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians before Const ant ine, Eng.
tr. vol. ii ; Harnack, Outlines of the Hist, of Dogma, ch. 4 ; King, The Gnostics
and their Remains; Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity. l';irt 111, $$ 10,

11, 12 ; Kenan, L'Eglise Chriticnne, ch. ix, x ; Milman. Hist, of Christianity,
B ii, c. 5 ; Lardner, Hist, of Heretics, in Works, ed. 1835, vol. viii ; Baur,
Church History, Pt. III.

154 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Supreme God to save men, was opposed by both the God of the Jews and
the Evil Power ; and asceticism is the way to carry out his saving purpose.
Of the same cast were the sects of Bardesanes and Tatian. (Irenasus, Against
Heresies, r, 27, 28 ; Epiphanius, Hawses, c. 56 ; Eusebius, Eecles. Hist., iv, 30.
Mosheim, E. H., Cent. II, Pt. II, ch. v, §§ 7-9. As to Marcion see Har-
nack, Outlines, ch. 5; Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, Part III,
§§ 7, 12, 13; Irenaeus, iv, 29, 30; Tertullian, Against Marcion.)

3. The Manichean creed (attributed to the Persian Mani or Mani-
chaeus, 3rd c.) proceeded on the same dualistic lines. In this the human
race had been created by the Power of Evil or Darkness, who is the God
of the Jews, and hence the body and its appetites are prirnordially evil, the
good element being the rational soul, which is part of the Power of Light.
By way of combining Christism and Mithraism, Christ is virtually iden-
tified with Mithra, and Manichaeus claims to be the promised Paraclete.
Ultimately the Evil Power is to be overcome, and kept in eternal darkness,
with the few lost human souls. Here again the ethic is extremely ascetic, and
there is a doctrine of purgatory. (Milman, Hist, of Christianity, B. iii. ch. i ;
Mosheim, E. H., Cent. Ill, Pt. II, c. 5, \\ 2-1 1 ; Beausobre, Hist. Critique de
Manichee ei du Manichiismc, 1734; Lardner, Cred. of the Gospels, Pt. II, ch. 63.)

4. Among the Egyptian Gnostics, again, Basilides taught that the one
Supreme God produced seven perfect secondary Powers, called ^Eons (Ages),
two of whom, Dynamis and Sophia (Power and Wisdom) procreated superior
angels, who built a heaven, and in turn produced lower grades of angels,
which produced others, till there were 365 grades, all ruled by a Prince
named Abraxas (whose name yields the number 365). The lowest grade
of angels, being close to eternal matter (which was evil by nature), made
thereof the world and men. The Supreme God then intervened, like the
Good Power in the Oriental system, to give men rational souls, but left
them to be ruled by the lower angels, of whom the Prince became God of
the Jews. All deteriorated, the God of the Jews becoming the worst.
Then the Supreme God sent the Prince of the /Eons, Christ, to save men's
souls. Taking the form of the man Jesus, he was slain by the God of the
Jews. Despite charges to the contrary, this system too was ascetic, though
lenient to paganism. Similar tenets were held by the sects of Carpocrates
and Valentinus, all rising in the 2nd century; Valentinus setting up Thirty
/Eons, male and female, in pairs, with four unmarried males, guardians of
the Pleroma or Heaven, namely Horus, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus.
The youngest iEon, Sophia, brought forth a daughter, Achamoth (Scientia),
who made the world out of rude matter, and produced Demiourgos, the
Artificer, who further manipulated matter. (Irenxus, B. i, cc. 24, 25 ; B. ii.)

These sects in turn split into others, with endless peculiarities.

Such was the relative Freethought of credulous
theosophic fantasy,1 turning fictitious data to fresh

1 " Mysticism itself is but an insane Rationalism" (Hampden, Hampton
Lect. on Scholastic Philosophy, 3d. ed. intr. p. liii). It may be described as-
freethought without regard to evidence— that "lawless thought " which
Christian polemists are wont to ascribe to rationalists.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 155

purpose by way of solving the riddle of the painful earth.
The problem was to account for evil consistently with
belief in a Good God ; and the Orientals, inheriting a
dualistic religion, adapted that ; while the Egyptians,
inheriting a syncretic monotheism, set up grades of
Powers between the All-Ruler and men, on the model of
the grades between the Autocrat, ancient or modern, and
his subjects. The Manichaeans, the most thoroughly
organised of all the outside sects, appear to have absorbed
many of the adherents of the great Mithraic religion, and
held together for centuries, despite fierce persecution and
hostile propaganda, their influence subsisting till the
Middle Ages.1 The other Gnosticisms fared much worse.
Lacking sacred books, often setting up a severe ethic as
against the frequently loose practice of the Churches,2 and
offering a creed unsuited to the general populace, all alike
passed away before the competition of the organised
Church, which founded on the Canon3 and the concrete
dogmas, with many Pagan rites and beliefs4 and a few
great Pagan abracadabras added.

§ 4.
More persistently dangerous to the ancient Church
were the successive efforts of the struggling spirit of
reason within to rectify in some small measure its most
arbitrary dogmas. Of these efforts the most prominent
were the quasi-Unitarian doctrine of Arius (4th c.) and

1 Gieseler, §$ 61, 86 (pp. 228, 36s, 370).

2 In the fourth century and later, however, the gospel of asceticism won
great orthodox vogue through the writings of the so-called Dionysius the
Areopagite (Mosheim, Cent. IV, Pt. II, c. iii, § 12).

3 Compare the process by which the Talmudic system unified Judaism.
Wellhausen, Israel, as cited, pp. 541-2 ; Milman, History of Christianity,
B. ii, c. 4. Ed. Paris, 1840, i, 276.

4 "There is good reason to suppose that the Christian bishops mul-
tiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jews and the pagans more
friendly to them " (Mosheim, E. H., Cent. II, Pt. II, c. iv. Cp. c. iii, $ 17 ;
C iv, $$ 3-7; Cent. IV, Pt. II, c. iii, §§ 1-3; c. iv, $§ 1-2; Cent. V, Pt II,
c. iii, \ 2.) This generalisation is borne out by nearly every other church
historian. Cp. Harnack, Outlines, Pt. II, B. i, c. 1 ; Milman, B. iv, c 5,
pp. 367-374 ; Gieseler, §$98, 99, 101, 104; Renan, Marc-Aurile, 3e. edit.,
p. 630. Baur, Church History, Eng. tr. ii, 285-9.

156 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the opposition by Pelagius and his pupil C.elestius
(early in 5th c.) to the doctrine of hereditary sin — a
Judaic conception dating from Tertullian and unknown
to the Greeks.1

The former was the central and one of the most
intelligible conflicts in the vast medley of early discussion
over the nature of the Person of the Founder — a theme
susceptible of any conceivable formula, when once the
principle of deification was adopted. Between the
Gnosticism of Athenagoras, which made the Logos the
direct manifestation of Deity, and the Judaic view that
Jesus was "a mere man", for stating which the Byzantine
Theodotos was excommunicated at Rome by Bishop
Victor2 in the third century, there were a hundred possible
fantasies of discrimination3 ; and the record of them is a
standing revelation of the intellectual delirium in the
ancient Church. Arianism itself, when put on its defence,
pronounced Jesus to be God, after beginning by declaring
him to be merely the noblest of created beings, and thus
became merely a modified mysticism, fighting for the
conception homoiousios (of similar nature) as against that
of homoousios (of the same nature).4 Even at that, the
sect split up, its chief dissenters ranking as semi-Arians,
and many of the latter at length drifting back to Nicene
orthodoxy.5 At first strong in the East, where it perse-
cuted when it could, it was finally suppressed, after
endless strifes, by Theodosius at the end of the fourth
century; only to reappear in the West as the creed of

1 Gieseler, § 87, p. 373 ; Hagenbach, Lehrbuch der Dogmcngescliichte, 3te
Aufl. § 108.

• (.ieseler, $ 60, p. 218.

•' Cp. Gieseler, $$80-83, pp. 328-353 ; Harnack, Outlines, Pt. II, B. i,
•esp pp. 201-2.

1 In the end the doctrine declared orthodox was the opposite of what
had been declared orthodox in the Sabellian and other controversies
(Mosheim, Cent. IV, Pt. II. c. v, § 9) ; and all the while " the Arians and
the orthodox embraced the same theology in substance" (Murdock, note
on Mosheim, Reid's ed., p. 161). An eminent modern Catholic, however,
has described Arianism as " a deistic doctrine which had not the courage to
I ury itself in the fecund obscurities of dogma " (Ozanam, La Civilisation chritienne
ihez les Francs, 1849, p. 35).

5 Gieseler, $83, p. 345.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 1 57

the invading Goths and Lombards. In the East it had
stood for ancient monotheism ; in the West it prospered
by early missionary chance till the Papal organisation
triumphed. Its suppression meant the final repudiation
of rationalism ; though it had for the most part subsisted
as a fanaticism, no less than did the Nicene creed.

Pelagianism, which unlike Arianism was not an
ecclesiastical but a purely theological division,1 fared better,
the problem at issue involving the permanent crux of
religious ethics. Augustine, whose supreme talent was
the getting up of a play of dialectic against every
troublesome movement in turn, without regard to his
previous positions,3 undertook to confute Pelagius and
Caslestius as he did every other innovator; and his
influence was such that after they had been acquitted of
heresy by a church council in Palestine and by the
Roman pontiff, the latter was induced to change his
ground and condemn them, whereupon many councils
followed suit, eighteen Pelagian bishops being deposed in
Italy. But though the movement in its first form was
thus crushed, and though in later forms it fell con-
siderably short of the measure of ethical rationalism seen
in the first, it soon took fresh shape in the form of
so-called semi-Pelagianism, and so held its ground while
any culture subsisted 3; while Pelagianism on the subject
of the needlessness of " prevenient grace ", and the power
of man to secure salvation of his own will, has been
chronic in the Church.

For a concise view of the Pelagian tenets see Murdock's
note on Mosheim, following Walch and Schlegel (Reid's
edition, pp. 208-9). They included (1) denial that Adam's sin
was inherited ; {2) assertion that death is strictly natural, and

1 "Pelagianism is Christian rationalism" (Harnack, Outlines, Pt. II..
B. ii, c. iv, § 3, p. 364. m

• He was first a Mamchean ; later an anti-Mamchean, denying pre-
destination ; later, as an opponent of the Pelagians, an assertor of pre-
destination. Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress 0/ Christianity, Pt. V, $ 15. A.9
to his final Manicheanism, see Milman, Hist, of Latin Christianity, 3rd ed..

i. 152-

a Cp. Harnack, Outlines, Pt. II, B. II, c. v, $ 1 (p. 3S6).

158 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

not a mere punishment for Adam's sin ; (3) denial that children
and virtuous adults dying unbaptized are damned, a middle
state being provided for them ; (4) assertion that good acts
come of a good will, and that the will is free ; grace being an
enlightenment of the understanding, and not indispensable to all
men. The relative rationalism of these views is presumptively
to be traced to the facts that Pelagius was a Briton and
Caelestius an Irishman, and that both were Greek scholars.
(When tried in Palestine they spoke Greek, like the council,
but the accuser could speak only Latin.) They were thus bred
in an atmosphere not yet laden with Latin dogma. In
" confuting " them, Augustine developed the doctrine (intel-
ligible as that of an elderly polemist in a decadent society) that
all men are predestined to salvation or damnation by God's
" mere good pleasure " — a demoralising formula which he at
times hedged with illogical qualifications. (Cp. Murdock's note
on]Mosheim, as cited, p. 210; Gieseler, § 87.) But an orthodox
champion of Augustine describes him as putting the doctrine
without limitations (Rev. W. R. Clarke, Si. Augustine, in "The
Fathers for English Readers " series, p. 132.) It was never
adopted in the East (Gieseler, p. 387) ; but became part of
Christian theology, especially under Protestantism. On the
other hand the Council of Trent erected several Pelagian
doctrines into articles of faith ; and the Protestant churches
have in part since followed. See Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions
on Philosophy and Literature, 1852, pp. 493-4, note; and Milman,
Hist, of Latin Christianity, i, 142, 149.

The Latin Church thus finally maintained in religion
the tradition of sworn adherence to sectarian formulas
which has been already noted in the Roman philosophic
sects, and in so doing reduced to a minimum the
■exercise of the reason, alike in ethics and in philosophy.
Its dogmatic code was shaped under the influence of
(1) Irenaeus and Tertullian, who set Scripture above
reason and, when pressed by heretics, tradition above
even Scripture,1 and (2) Augustine, who had the same
tendencies, and whose incessant energy secured him an
enormous influence. That influence was used not only
to dogmatise every possible item of the faith but to

1 Cp. Hampden, Bampton Lectures on The Scholastic Philosophy, 1848,
pp. xxxv-xxxvi, and refs.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 159

enforce in religion another Roman tradition, formerly
confined to politics — that of systematic coercion of
heretics. Before Augustine there had indeed been
abundant mutual persecution of the bitterest kind
between the parties of the Church ; the Donatists in
particular, with their organisation of armed fanatics, the
Circumcelliones, had inflicted and suffered at intervals
all the worst horrors of civil war in Africa during a
hundred years ; and the slaying of the Pagan girl-philo-
sopher Hypatia1 by the Christian monks of Alexandria is
one of the vilest episodes in the whole history of religion.
On the whole it is past question that the amount of
homicide wrought by all the Pagan persecution of the
earlier Christians was not a tithe of that wrought by
their successors in their own quarrels. But the spirit
which had so operated, and which had been repudiated
even by the bitter Tertullian, was raised by Augustine to
the status of a Christian dogma,2 which of course had
sufficient support in the Sacred Books, Judaic and
Jesuist, and which henceforth inspired such an amount
of murderous persecution in Christendom as the ancient
world had never seen. When, the temple revenues having
been already confiscated, the Pagan worships were finally
overthrown and the temples appropriated by the edict of
Honorius in the year 408, Augustine " though not entirely
consistent, disapproved of the forcible demolition of the
temples".3 But he had nothing to say against the forcible
suppression of their worship, and of the festivals.

Under the Eastern Empire, when once a balance of
creed was attained in the Church, the same coercive

' Sokrates, Eccles. Hist., B. vii, c. 15.

2 Epist. 93. Cp. Schlegel's notes on Mosheim, in Reid's ed., pp. 159,
198; Rev. W. R. Clarke, Saint Augustine, pp. 86-87 (a defence) ; Milman,
history of Latin Christianity, B. ii, c. 2, 3d. ed., i, 163 ; Boissier, La Jin du
pagamsme, 2e edit., i, 69-79. Harnack's confused and contradictory estimate
ot Augustine (Outlines, Pt. II, B. II, cc. iii, iv) ignores this issue. He
notes, however, (pp. 362-3) some of Augustine's countless self-contradictions.

;t Milman, Hist, of Christianity, B. iii, c. 8 ; ed. cited, ii, 182, 188, and note.
For the views of Ambrose, see p. 184. In Gaul, St. Martin put down the old
shrines by brute force. Id., p. 179. Temples had previously been robbed
and demolished by bands of monks in the East. Libanius, Orat.pro Templis.

l6o HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

ideal was enforced, with differences in the creed insisted
on. Whichever phase of dogma was in power, persecution
of the others went on as a matter of course.1 Athanasians
and Arians, Nestorians and Monophysites, used the same
weapons to the utmost of their scope ; Cyril of Alexan-
dria led his fanatics to the pillage and expulsion of the
Jews as his underling Peter led them to the murder of
Hypatia; other bishops wrought the destruction of temples
throughout Egypt ;2 Theodosius, Marcian, St. Leo, Zeno,
Justinian, all used coercion against every heresy without a
scruple, affirming every verbal fantasy of dogma at the point
of the sword. It was due to no survival of the love of
reason that some of the more stubborn heresies, driven
into communion with the new civilisation of the Arabs,
were the means of carrying some of the seeds of ancient
thought down the ages, to fructify ultimately in the
mental soil of modern Europe.

§ 5-
Against the orthodox creed, apart from social and
official hostility, there had early arisen critics who rea-
soned in terms of Jewish and Pagan beliefs, and in terms
of such rationalism as survived. Of the two former sorts,
some remains have been preserved, despite the tendency
of the Church to destroy their works. Of the latter,
apart from Lucian, we have traces in the Fathers and in
the Neo-Platonists.

Thus Tertullian (De Testimonio Aninta, c. 2) speaks of
some who believe in a non-active and passionless God, and
disdain those who turn Christian out of fear of a hereafter;
and again (c. 3) of Stoics who deride the belief in demons.
Jamblichos, too (On the Mysteries, B. x, c. 2), speaks of
opponents of the worship of the Gods in his day (early in
4th c). Cp. Minucius Felix (2nd c), Octavius, c. 5. In the fifth
century, again, Salvian makes a polemic against those who
in Christian Gaul denied that God exercised any government

1 Gibbon, c. 47. Bohn ed. v, 211-252, 264, 268, 272.

2 Milman, as cited, p. 178.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. l6l

on earth. (De Gubernatione Dei, I. 4.) They seem, however, to
have been normal Christians driven to this view by the
barbarian invasions. Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius,
seems to have attacked the Christians partly as rationalist,
partly as conservative. See Renan, L'Eglise Chretienne, p. 493.
As to Crescens, the enemy of Justin Martyr (2 Apol., c. 3), see
id., p. 492. Cp. Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, passim, as to pagan
objections. What remains of Porphyry will be found in
Lardner's Testimonies of the Heathen, ch. 37.

The Dialogue with Trypho by Justin Martyr (about 150)
is a mere documental discussion between a Christian and
a Jew, each founding on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the
Christian doing nearly all of the argument. There is
not a scintilla of independent rationalism in the whole
tedious work.1 Justin was a type of the would-be
•philosopher" who confessedly would take no trouble to
study science or philosophise, but who found his sphere
in an endless manipulation of the texts of Sacred Books.
But the work of the learned Origen Against Celsus
preserves for us a large part of the True Discourse of Celsus,
a critical and extremely well-informed argument against
Christianity by a Pagan of the Platonic" school in the
time of Hadrian,'' on grounds to a considerable extent
rationalistic.4 The line of rejoinder followed by Origen, one
of the most cultured of the Christian Fathers, is for the
most part otherwise. When Celsus argues that it makes
no difference by what name the Deity is called, Origen
answers' that on the contrary certain God-names have a
miraculous or magical virtue for the casting out of evil
spirits ; that this mystery is known and practised by the
Egyptians and Persians ; and that the mere name of
Jesus has been proved potent to cast out many such
demons. When on the other hand Celsus makes a Jew

1 The Controversy between Jason and Papiscus regarding Christ, mentioned
by Origen (Ag. Celsus, B iv, c. 4) seems to have been of the same nature.

2 Origen repeatedly calls him an Epicurean : but this is obviously false.
The Platonising Christian would not admit that a Platonist was anti-
Christian.

:i So Origin. Kain, however, dates the treatise 177-8.
' Cp. Kenan, Mare lurch \e edit., pp 346-371.
* B i, cc. 24, 25

l62 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

argue against the Christist creed on the basis of the
Jewish story that the founder's birth was illegitimate,1 the
Father's answer begins in sheer amiable ineptitude,2
which soon passes into shocked outcry.3 In other
passages he is more successful, as when he convicts
Celsus' Jew of arguing alternately that the disciples were
deceived and that they were deceivers.4 This part of the
discussion is interesting chiefly as showing how educated
Jews combated the Gospels in detail, at a level of
criticism not always above that of the believers. Some-
times the Jew's case is shrewdly put, as when he asks,s
*' Did Jesus come into the world for this purpose, that we
should not believe him ? " — a challenge not to be met by
Origen's theology. One of the acutest of Celsus' thrusts
is the remark that Jesus himself declared that miracles
would be wrought after him by followers of Satan, and
that the argument from miracles is thus worthless.6 To
this the rejoinder of Origen is suicidal ; but at times the
assailant, himself a believer in all manner of miracles,
gives away his advantage completely enough.

Of a deeper interest are the sections in which Celsus
(himself a believer in a Supreme Deity and a future state,
and in a multitude of lower Powers, open to invocation)
rests his case on grounds of general reason, arguing that
the true Son of God must needs have brought home his
mission to all mankind7 ; and sweeps aside as foolish the
whole dispute between Jews and Christians,8 of which he
had given a sample. Most interesting of all are the
chapters9 in which the Christian cites the Pagan's
argument against the homocentric theory of things.
Celsus insists on the large impartiality of Nature, and re-
pudiates the fantasy that the whole scheme is adjusted
to the well-being and the salvation of man. Here the
Christian, standing for his faith, may be said to carry on,
though in the spirit of a new fanaticism, the anti-

1 B. i, cc. 28, 32. • c. :! cc. 37, 39.

B ii, c. 2G. ' P. c. "■ ii, c. 49.

ii, c. 30. B. iii, iv, cc. 23-30, 54-60, 74.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 163

scientific humanism first set up by Sokrates ; while the
Pagan, though touched by religious apriorism and prone
to lapse from logic to mysticism in his turn, approaches
the scientific standpoint of the elder thinkers who had
set religion aside.1 Not for fifteen hundred years was his
standpoint to be regained among men. His protest
against the cultivation of blind faith,2 which Origen tries
to meet on rationalistic lines, would in a later age be
regarded as conveying no imputation. Even the simple
defensive subtleties of Origen are too rationalistic for the
succeeding generations of the orthodox. The least em-
bittered of the Fathers, he is in his way the most
reasonable ; and in his unhesitating resort to the principle
of allegory wherever his documents are too hard for belief,
we see the last traces of the spirit of reason as it had
been in Plato, not yet paralysed by faith. Henceforth,
till a new intellectual life is set up from without,
Christian thought is more and more a mere disputation
over the unintelligible, in terms of documents open
always to opposing constructions.

Against such minds, the strictest reason would be
powerless ; and it was fitting enough that Lucian, the
last of the great Freethinkers of the Hellenistic world,
should merely turn on popular Christianity some of his
serene satire3 — more, perhaps, than has come down to us ;
though on the other hand his authorship of the Dc Morte
Percgrini, which speaks of the "crucified sophist", has
been called in question.4 The forcible-feeble dialogue
Philopatris, falsely attributed to Lucian, but clearly
belonging to the reign of Julian, is the last expression of
general scepticism in the ancient literature. The writer,
a bad imitator of Lucian, avows disbelief alike in the

1 Cp. A. Kind, Teleologie und Naturalismus in dev altchristlichen Zeit, 1875;
Soury, Byeviaire dc Vhistoire du Materialisms, pp. 331-340.

'-' I), i, cc. 9-11. :l Cp. Renan, Marc-AurUe, pp. 373-7.

4 Christian excisions have been suspected in the Pere°rinus, § n, (B
nays, Lucian und die Kyniker, 1S79, S. 107J. But see Mr. J. M. Cotterill'

>ius Proteus, Edinburgh, 1879, for a theory of the spuriousness of the
treatise, which is surmised to be a fabrication of I [enri Etienne.

M _'

164 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

old Gods and in the new, and professes to respect, if
any, the "Unknown God" of the Athenians; but he
makes no great impression of intellectual sincerity.
Apart from this, and the lost anti-Christian work of
Hierocles, governor of Bithynia under Diocletian, the last
direct literary opponents of ancient Christianity were Por-
phyry and Julian. As both were believers in man)'
Gods, and opposed Christianity because it opposed these,
neither can well rank on that score as a Freethinker,
even in the sense in which the speculative Gnostics were
so. The bias of both, like that of Plutarch, seems to
have been to the utmost latitude of religious belief; and,
apart from personal provocations, it was the exiguity
of the Christian creed that repelled them. Porphyry's
treatise, indeed, was answered by four Fathers,1 all of
whose replies have disappeared, doubtless in fulfilment
of the imperial edict for the destruction of Porphyry's
book — a dramatic testimony to the state of mental free-
dom under Theodosius II.2 The answer of Cyril to-
Julian has survived probably in virtue of Julian's status.
His argumentations against the unworthy elements, the
exclusiveness, and the absurdities of the Jewish and
Christian faith are often reasonable enough, as doubtless
were those of Porphyry ;;i but his own theosophic positions
are hardly less vulnerable : and Porphyry's were probably
no better, to judge from his preserved works. Yet it is
to be said that the habitual tone and temper of the two
men compares favorably with that of the polemists on
the other side. They had inherited something of the
elder philosophic spirit, which is so far to seek in patristic
literature, outside of Origen.

After Julian, open rationalism being already extinct,
anti-Christian thought was simply tabooed ; and though
the leading historians for centuries were Pagans, they

1 Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and l'hilostorgius.
* Cod. Justin., De Summa Trinitate, 1. I, tit. i, c. 3.
3 Cp. Mackav, Rise and Progress of Christianity, p, if>o. Chrysostom (De
Mundt Creatione, \i, .5) testifies that he "led many away from the faith".

He ably anticipated the " higher criticism " of the Book of Daniel.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 165

■only incidentally venture to betray the fact. With public
lecturing forbidden, with the philosophic schools at Athens
closed and plundered by imperial force,1 with heresy
ostracised, with Pagan worship, including the strong rival
cult of Mithraism, suppressed by the same power,2 un-
belief was naturally little heard of after the fifth century.
About its beginning we find Chrysostom boasting3 that the
works of the anti-Christian writers had persuaded nobody,
and had almost disappeared. It was only too true. Save
for a few quasi-rational heresies, such as that of the
Unitarian Anomeans or Eunomians, who condemned
the worship of relics,4 and whom Chrysostom himself
denounced as unbelievers, the spirit of sane criticism
had gone, with science, with art, with philosophy,
with culture. But the verdict of time is given in the
persistent recoil of the modern spirit from the literature
of the age of faith to that of the elder age of nascent
reason ; and the historical outcome of the state of
things in which Chrysostom rejoiced was the re-establish-
ment of universal idolatry and practical polytheism in
the name of the creed he had preached.

It might safely have been inferred, but it is a matter
of proved fact, that while the higher intellectual life was
thus being paralysed, the primary intellectual virtues were
attainted. As formerly in Jewry, so now in Christendom,

1 By Justinian, in 529. The banished thinkers were protected by
Chosroes in Persia, who secured them permission to return (Finlav, Hist.
t Greece, ed. Tozer, i, 277, 287). Theodosius II had already forbidden all
public lectures by independent teachers (Id., pp. 2S2-3).

- Theodosius I, Arcadius, and Theodosius II (379-450) successively
passed laws forbidding and persecuting Paganism (Finlav i, 286). Mith-
raism was suppressed in the same period (Jerome, Epit. cvii, ad Lactam ,
Sokrates, Eccles. Hist. P. v, c. 16). It is to be remembered that Constans
and Constantius, the sons of Constantine, had commenced to persecute
Paganism as soon as their father's new creed was sufficiently established
(Cod. Theod. xvi, 10, 2, 4), and this with the entire approval of the whole
Church. It was not their fault that it subsisted till the time of Theodosius
II (Cp. Gieseler, § 75, pp. 306-8). On the edict of Theodosius I, see
Milman, B, iii, c. 8, as cited, p. 186.

1 /;; S. Babylam, contra Julianum, c. ii. Cp. his Horn, iv >>n istCor.,Eng.
tr. 1839, p. 42. 4 Jerome Vigilantium, cc. <j, 11.

1 66 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the practice of pious fraud became normal : all early
Christian literature, and most of the ecclesiastical history
of many succeeding centuries, is profoundly compromised
by the habitual resort to fiction, forgery, and interpola-
tion. The mystical poetry of the Pagans, the Jewish
history of Josephus, the Gospels, the Epistles, all were
interpolated in the same spirit as had inspired the pro-
duction of new Gospels, new Epistles, new books of
Acts, new Sibylline verses. And even where to this
tendency there was opposed the growing demand of the
organised Church for a faithful text, when the documents
had become comparatively ancient, the disposition to
invent and suppress, to reason crookedly, to delude and
mislead, was normal among Churchmen. This is the
verdict of orthodox ecclesiastical history, a dozen times
repeated.1 It of course carries no surprise for those who
have noted the religious doctrine of Plato, of Polybios,.
of Cicero, of Varro, of Strabo, of Dion Cassius.

While intelligence thus retrograded under the reign
of faith, it is impossible to maintain, in the name of
historical science, the conventional claim that the faith
wrought a countervailing good. What moral betterment
there was in the decaying Roman world was a matter of
the transformed social conditions, and belongs at least as
much to Paganism as to Christianity : even the asceticism
of the latter, which in reality had no reformative virtue
for society at large, was a pre-Christian as well as an
anti-Christian phenomenon. It is indeed probable that in
the times of persecution the Christian community would
be limited to the more serious and devoted types? — that

1 Mosheim, E. II., Cent. II, Ft. II, c. iii, § 8 ; c. iv, $ 15; Cent. Ill,
Pt. I.e. ii, $ 5; Ft. II, c iii, $$ 10, 11 ; Cent. IV., Pt. II, c. iii, $$ 3, 16;
f'.ieseler, § 63, p. 235; Waddingtun, Hist, of the Chinch, 1833, pp. 38-39;
Milman, Hist, of Chr., B. iv, c. 3, ed. cited, ii, 337. Cp. Mackay, Rise and
Progress of Christianity, pp. 11-12.

- Cp. the explii it admissions of Mosheim, E II ., Cent. II, Ft. II, c. iv,
j 16; Cent. Ill, I't II, c. ii, §$ 4. 6; Cent. IV, Pt. II, C. ii, { 8; c. iii, $ 17;
(.ieseler, § 103, vol. ii, p. 56. It is to be noted, however, that even the
martyrs were at times bad characters who sought in martyrdom remission
for their sins (Gieseler, § 74, p. 206; De Wette, as there cited).

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. 167

is to say, to those who would tend to live worthily under
any creed. But that the normal Christian community
was superior in point of morals is a poetic hallucination,
set up by the legends concerning the martyrs and by the
vauntings of the Fathers, which are demonstrably un-
trustworthy. The assertion, still at times made by
professed Positivists, that the discredit of the marriage tie
in Roman life necessitated a new religion, and that the
new religion was regenerative, is only a quasi-scientific
variation of the legend.

The evidence as to the failure of the faith to reform its
adherents is continuous from the first generation onwards.
Paul complains bitterly of the sexual licence among his first
Corinthian converts (1 Cor. v, 1, 2) and seeks to check it by
vehement commands, some mystical [id. v. 5) some prescribing
ostracism (vv. 9-13) — a plain confession of failure, and a
complete reversal of the prescription in the Gospel (Mt. xviii, 22)
If that could be set aside, the command as to divorce could
be likewise. Justin Martyr (Dial, with Tryplio, c. 141) describes
the orthodox Jews of his day as of all men the most given to
polygamy and arbitrary divorce. (Cp. Deut. xxiv, 1 ; Edersheim,
History, p. 294). Then the Christian assumption as to Roman
degeneration and Eastern virtue cannot be sustained.

At the beginning of the third century, we have the decisive
evidence of Tertullian that many of the charges of immorality
made by serious Pagans against Christians were in large part
true. First he affirms (Ad Nationes, B. i, c. 5) that the Pagan
charges are not true of all, "not even of the greatest part of
us". In regard to the charge of incest (c. 16) instead of
denying it as the earlier apologist Minucius Felix had done, in
the age of persecution, he merely argues that the same offence
occurs through ignorance among the Pagans. The chapter
concludes by virtually admitting the charge, with regard to
misconduct in "the mysteries". Still later, when he has
turned Montanist, Tertullian explicitly charges his former
associates with sexual licence (De Jejuniis cc. 1, 17; Dc
Virginibus Velaudis, c. 14) ; pointing now to the heathen as
showing more regard for monogamy than do the Christians
(De Exhort. Castitatis, c. 1

From the fourth century onward, the history of the Church
reveals at every step a conformity on the part of its members
to average pagan practice. The third canon of the Nicene
Council for1 ics of all ranks from keeping as companions

l63 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

or housekeepers women who are not their close blood relations.
In the fifth century Salvian denounces the Christians alike of
Gaul and Africa as being boundlessly licentious in comparison
with the Arian barbarians (De Gubernatione Dei, lib. 5, 6, 7).
They do not even, he declares, deny the charge, contenting
themselves with claiming superior orthodoxy. (Cp. Bury,
Hist, of the Later Roman Empire, i, 19S-9, and Finlay, ii, 219, for
another point of view.) On all hands, heresy was reckoned the
one deadly sin (Gieseler, § 74, p. 295, and refs.), and all real
misdeeds came to seem venial by comparison. As to sexual
vice and crime among the Christianised Germans, see Gieseler,
§125, vol. ii, 158-160.

In the East, the conditions were the same. The story of

the indecent performances of Theodora on the stage (Gibbon,

c. 40), probably untrue of her, implies that such practices

openly occurred. Milman (Hist. o/Chr., B. iv, c. ii, ed. cited, ii,

327) recognises general indecency, and notes that Zosimus charged

it on Christian rule. Salvian speaks of unlimited obscenity in the

theatres of Christian Gaul (De Gub. Dei, 1. 6). Cp. Gibbon as

to the character of the devout Justinian's minister Trebonian ;

who, however, was called an atheist. (Suidas, s.v.) On the

collapse of the iconoclastic movement, license became general

(Finlay, Hist, of Greece, ed. Tozer, ii, 162). But even in the

fourth century, Chrysostom's writings testify to the normality

of all the vices, as well as the superstitions, that Christianity is

supposed to have banished ; the churches figuring, like the

ancient temples, as places of assignation. (Cp. the extracts of

Lavollee, Les Mccurs Byzantines, in Essais de litterature ct

d'histoire, 1891, pp. 48-62, 89; the S. P. C. K.'s St. Chrysostom's

Picture of his Age, 1875, pp. 6,94, 96, 98, 100, 102-4, IO&> x94 !

Chrysostom's Homilies, Eng. tr. 1839, Horn, xii on 1st. Cor.,

pp. 159-164; Jerome, adv. Vigilantium, cited by Gieseler, ii, 66,

note 19, and in Gilly's Vigilantius and his Times, 1844, pp. 406-7.)

The clergy were among the most licentious of all, and

Chrysostom had repeatedly to preach against them (Lavollee,

ch. 4 ; Mosheim, as last cited ; Gibbon, c. 47, Bolm ed.

iv. 232). The position of women was practically what it had

been in post-Alexandrian Greece and Asia- Minor (Lavolk'e,

ch. 5; cp. St. Chrysostom's Put. of his Age, pp. 1S0-2) ; and the

practice corresponded. Indeed the supposition that the

population of Constantinople as wc see it under Justinian,

or that of Alexandria in the same age, could have been

morally austere, is fantastic.

It would indeed be unintelligible that intellectual
decline without change of social system should put

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS. l6g

morals on a sound footing. The very asceticism which
seeks to mortify the body is an avowal of the vice from
which it recoils, and in so far as this has prevailed under
Christianity it has specifically hindered general temper-
ance,1 inasmuch as the types capable of self-rule thus
leave no offspring.

On the other hand, with the single exception of the
case of the gladiatorial combats (which had been de-
nounced in the first century by the Pagan Seneca,2 but
lasted in Rome long after Christianity had become the
State religion f while the no less cruel combats of men
with wild beasts were suppressed only when the finances
of the falling Empire could no longer maintain them),4
the vice of cruelty seems to have been in no serious
degree cast out.5 Cruelty to slaves was certainly not less
than in the Rome of the Antonines ; and Chrysostom"
denounces just such atrocities by cruel mistresses as had
been described by Horace and Juvenal. The story of the
slaying of Hypatia, indeed, is decisive as to Christian
ferocity.7

In fine, the entire history of Christian Egypt, Asia,
and Africa, progressively decadent till their easy conquest
by the Saracens, and the entire history of the Christian
Byzantine empire, at best stagnant in mental and
material life during the thousand years of its existence,
serve conclusively to establish the principle that in the
absence of Freethought no civilisation can progress.
More completely than any of the ancient civilisations to
which they succeeded, they cast out or were denuded of

1 Cp. Gieseler, ii, 67-8.

- Epist. vii, 5 ; xcv, 33. Cp. Cicero, Tusculans, ii. 17.

:i Cp. the Bohn ed. of Gibbon, note by clerical editor, iii, 359.

1 The express declaration of Salvian, De Gubernatiune Dei, 1. 6. On the
general question compare Mr. Farrer's Paganism and Christianity, ch. 10 ;
.Milman, as last cited, p. 331 ; and Gieseler, ii, 71, note 6.

5 As to the specially cruel use of judicial torture by the later Inquisition
see H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force, 3d. ed, p. 452,

6 Lavollce, as cited, p. 92. Cp. 5/. Chrysostom's Picture of his Age,
p. 112, and the admissions of Milman, B. iv, c. 1.

7 As to the spirit of hatred roused by controversy among believers, see
Gieseler, § 104, vol. ii, pp. 64-67.

170

HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the spirit of free reason. The result was strictly con-
gruous. The process, of course, was in terms of socio-
political causation throughout ; and the rule of dogma
was the symptom or effect of the process, not the
extraneous c?use. But that is only the clinching of the
sociological lesson.

CHAPTER VIII.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM.1
§1.

The Freethinking of Mohammed may be justly said
to begin and end with his rejection of popular poly-
theism, and his acceptance of the idea of a single God.
That idea he held as a kind of revelation, not as a result
of any traceable process of reasoning ; and he affirmed it
from first to last as a fanatic. One of the noblest of
fanatics he may be, but hardly more.

That the idea, in its most vivid form, reached him in
middle age by way of a vision, is part of the creed of his
followers ; and that it derived in some way from Jews, or
Persians, or Christians, as the early unbelievers declared,"
is probable enough. But there is evidence that among
his fellow-Arabs the idea had taken some slight root
before his time, even in a rationalistic form, and it is
clear that there were before his day many believers,
though also many unbelievers, in a future state.3 The
Moslems themselves preserved a tradition that one Zaid,
who died five years before the Prophet received his first
inspiration, had of his own accord renounced idolatry
without becoming either Jew or Christian ; but on being

1 The strict meaning of this term, given by Mohammed (" the true
religion with God is Islam": Sura iii, 17) is "submission" — such beiu-
the attitude demanded by the Prophet. " Moslem " means one who accepts
Islam. Koran means strictly, not " book ", but " reading " or recitation.

'-' Rodwell's trans, of the Koran, ed. 1S61, Pref. p. xv.

:) Sale, Preliminary Discourse to trans, of the Koran, ed. 1833, i, 42, Cp
Freeman, History and Conquests of the Saracens, 1856, p. 35. The late Prof.
Palmer, in introd. to his trans, of the Koran (Sacred Books of the East
series), i, p. xv, says that " By far the greater number had ceased to believe
in anything at all" ; but this is an extravagance, confuted by himself in
other passages — e.g. p. xi

( I/I )

I72 HISTORY OF FKEETHOUGHT.

told by a Jew to become a Hanyf,1 that is to say, of the
religion of Abraham, who worshipped nothing but God,
he at once agreed.2 In the oldest extant biography of
Mohammed, an address of Zaid's has been preserved, of
which six passages are reproduced in the Koran ;:1 and
there are other proofs4 that the way had been parti}'
made for Mohammedanism before Mohammed. He uses
the term Hanyf repeatedly as standing for his own
doctrine.5 The doctrine of a Supreme God was indeed
general ; c and Mohammed's insistence on the rejection of
the lesser deities or "companions of God" was but a
preaching of unitarianism to half-professed Monotheists
who yet practised polytheism and idolatry. The Arabs
at his time, in short, were on the same religious plane as
the Christians, but with a good deal of unbelief; and the
Prophet used traditional ideas to bring them to his
unitary creed. The several tribes were further to some
extent monolatrous,7 somewhat as were the Semitic tribes
of Palestine ; and before Mohammed's time a special
worshipper of the star Sirius sought to persuade the
Koreish, Mohammed's tribe, to give up their idols and
adore that star alone. Thus between their partially

I The word meanseither convert or pervert : in Heb.and Syr. "heretic";
in Arabic, " orthodox ". It must not be confounded with Hanyfite, the
name of an orthodox sect, founded by one Hanyfa.

- See Rodwell's trans, of the Koran, ed. 1861, pref. pp. xvi, xvii ; and
Sura xvi (lxxiii in Rodwell's chron. arrangement) v. 121, p. 252, note 2.

'■'■ Sprenger, Das Leben unit die Lehre des Mohammad, i, 83, flf. Cp. 60, ft".

1 Rodwell, p. 497, note to Sura iii (xcvii) 19 ; and pref. p. xvi; Caussiu
tie Perceval, Essai sur Vhistoire des Arabes avant I'Islamisme, 1847, i, 321 6
' To the great mass of the citizens of Mecca, the new doctrine was simply
the Hanyfism to which they had become accustomed ; and they did not at
first trouble themselves at all about the matter." Palmer, introd. to trans.
of Koran, i, p. xxiv. Cp. Sprenger, as cited, i, 46-60, 65.

6 The word Hanyf or H anif recurs in Sura ii, 129; iii, 60, 89; iv, 124;

vi, 79, 102 ; x, 105; xvi, 121 ; xxii, 32J xxx, 20. ("p. II. I >en-nl>< uirg, La

ience des religions et I'Islamisme, 1886, pp. 42-3. Palmer's translation, marred

II unfortunately is by slanginess, is on such points specially trustworthy.
Rodwell's does not always indicate the use of the word hanyj ; but the
German version of Ullman, the French of Kasimirski, and Sale's, do not
indicate it at all. Sprenger, (S. 1 j) derives the llanyfs from Esscnes who
had almost lost all knowledge of the Bible.

'■ Cp Sale's Prelim. Discourse, as cited, i, 38 ; and Palmer, introd., p. xv.
" Sale, pp. 3., -4 1.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. 173

developed monotheism, their partial familiarity with
Hanyf monotheism, and their common intercourse with
the nominally monotheistic Jews and Christians, the
Arabs were in a measure prepared for the Prophet's
doctrine ; which, for the rest, embodied many cf their
own traditions and superstitions as well as man)' orally
received from Christians and Jews.

"The Koran itself is, indeed, less the invention or conception of
Mohammed than a collection of legends and moral axioms borrowed from
desert lore and couched in the language and rhythm of desert eloquence,
but adorned with the additioned charm of enthusiasm. Had it been
merely Mohammed's own invented discourses, bearing only the impress of
his personal style, the Koran could never have appealed with so much
success to every Arab- speaking race as a miracle of eloquence."1

The final triumph of the religion, however, was due
neither to the elements of its Sacred Book nor to the
moral or magnetic power of the Prophet. This power
it was that won his first adherents, who were mostly his
friends and relatives, or slaves to whom his religion was
a species of enfranchisement.2 From that point forward
his success was military — thanks, that is, to the valor
of his followers — his fellow citizens never having been
won in mass to his teaching. Such success as his might
conceivably be gained by a mere military chief. Nor
could the spread of Islam after his death have taken place
save in virtue of the special opportunities for conquest
lying before its adherents — opportunities already seen by
Mohammed, either with the eye of statesmanship or with
that of his great general, Omar.3 It is an error to
assume, as is habitually done, that it was the unifying
and inspiring power of the religion that wrought the

1 Palmer, introd. to his Haroun Alraschid, 1881, p. 14. Cp. Derenbourg,
La science dcs religions ct I'islamisme, p. 44, controverting Kuenen.

'* Kodwell, note to Sura xcvi (R. i), 10.

3 Kenan ascribes the idea wholly to Omar. Etudes d'hist ;•■ e et </<• 1 1 itiqiie,
ed. 1862, p. 250. The faithful have preserved a sly saying that " ( )mar was
many a time of a certain opinion, and the Koran was then revealed
accordingly". Noldeke, Enc. Brit. art. on Koran, m Sketches from Eastern
History, 1892, p. 28. On the other hand, Sedillot decide-, (Hist \re des
Arabes, 1854, p. 60) that "in Mohammed it is the political ilea that
dominates ".

174 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Saracen conquests. Warlike northern barbarians over-
ran the Western Empire without any such stimulus ; the
prospect of booty, and racial kinship,1 sufficed them for
the conquest of a decadent community ; and the same
conditions existed for the equally warlike Saracens, who
also, before Mohammed, had learned something of the
military art from the Grseco-Romans.2 Their religious
ardor would have availed them little against the Pagan
legions of unbelieving Csesar ; and as a matter of fact
they could never conquer, though they curtailed, the
comparatively weak Byzantine Empire ; its moderate
economic resources and traditional organisation sufficing
to sustain it, despite intellectual decadence, till the age of
Saracen greatness was over. Nor did their faith ever
unify them save ostensibly, for purposes of common
warfare against the racial foe — a kind of union attained
in all ages and with all varieties of religion. Deadly
domestic strifes broke out as soon as the Prophet was
dead. It would be as true to say that the common racial
and military interest against the Grseco - Roman and
Persian States unified the Moslem parties, as that Islam
unified the Arab tribes and factions. Apart from the
inner circle of converts, indeed, the first conquerors were
in mass not at all deeply devout, and many of them
maintained to the end of their generation, and after his
death, the unbelief which from the first met the Prophet
at Mecca.:) A general fanaticism grew up later. But
had there been no Islam, enterprising Arabs would
probably have overrun Syria and Persia and Africa and
Spain all the same. Attila went further, and he is not
known to have been a monotheist or a believer in
Paradise. Nor were Jenghix Khan and Tamerlane in-
debted to religious faith for their conquests.

1 On the measure of raci.il unity sel up bj Abyssinian attacks as well as
by the pretensions of the Byzantine and Persian empires, see Sedillot,
pp. 30, 38.

Prof. Stanislas Guyard, /-<' Civilisation Musulmane, 1884, p. 11.

Kenan, Etudes, pp. 257-2OO.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. I75

On the other hand, when a Khalifate was anywhere
•established by military force, the faith would indeed serve
as a nucleus of administration, and further as a means of
resisting the insidious propaganda of the rival faith, which
might have been a source of political danger. It was
their Sacred Book and Prophet that saved the Arabs from
accepting the religion of the states they conquered as did
the Goths and Franks. The faith thus so far preserved
their military polity when that was once set up ; but
it was not the faith that made the polity possible, or gave
the power of conquest, as is conventionally held. At
most it partly facilitated their conquests by detaching a
certain amount of purely superstitious support from the
other side.

It may perhaps be more truly claimed for the Koran
that it was the basis of Arab scholarship ; since it was in
order to elucidate its text that the first Arab grammars and
dictionaries and literary collections were made.1 Here
again, however, the reflection arises that some such
development would have occurred in any case, on the
basis of the abundant pre-Islamic poetry, given but the
material conquests. The first conquerors were illiterate,
and had to resort to the services and the organisation
of the conquered 2 for all purposes of administrative
writing, using for a time even the Greek and Persian
languages. There was nothing in the Koran itself to
encourage literature; and the first conquerors either
despised or feared that of the conquered.3

When the facts are inductively considered, it appears
that the Koran was from the first rather a force of intel-

1 Prof. Guyard, as cited, pp. iG, 51 ; C. E. Oelsner, Des effets de la reli
dc Mohammed, etc., 1810, p. 130.

- Guyard, p. 21 ; Palmer, Haroun Alraschid, introd. p. 19.

3 Whether Omar caused the destruction of the library of Alexandria is
still a disputed point. See Gibbon, c. 51. (Bonn ed . vi, 65). But the act
would be in keeping with the tone of early Islam, and even with later acts.
Cp. Oelsner, as cited, pp. 142-3.

176 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

lectual fixation than one of stimulus. As we have seen,,
there was a measure of rationalism as well as of mono-
theism among the Arabs before Mohammed : and the
Prophet set his face violently against all unbelief. The
word unbeliever or infidel in the Koran normally signifies
merely rejector of Mohammed: but a number of passages l
show that there were specific unbelievers in the doctrine
of a future state as well as in miracles ; and his opponents
put to him challenges which showed that they rationally
disbelieved his claim to inspiration.- Hence, clearly, the
scarcity of miracles in his early legend, on the Arab side.
On a people thus partly " refined, sceptical, incredulous,''1
whose poetry showed no trace of religion,4 the triumph
of Islam gradually imposed a tyrannous dogma, entailing
abundance of primitive superstition under the aegis of
monotheistic doctrine. Some moral service it did com-
pass, and for this the credit seems to be substantially due
to Mohammed ; though here again he was not an in-
novator. Like previous reformers,5 he vehemently de-
nounced the horrible practice of burying alive girl children ;
and when the Koran became law his command took
effect. His limitation of polygamy, too, may have counted
for something, despite ths unlimited practice of his latter
years. For the rest he prescribes, in the traditional Eastern
fashion, liberal almsgiving; this, with normal integrity and
patience, and belief in "God and the Last Day. and the
Angels, and the Scriptures, and the Prophets"6 is the
gist of his ethical and religious code, with much stress on
hell-fire and the joys of Paradise, and at the same time on
predestination, and with no reasoning on either issue.

I Sura vi, 25, 29 ; xix, 67 ; xxvii, 68-70; liv, 2; Ixxxiii, 10-13. Accord in-
to lviii, 28, however, some polytheists denied the future state.

- Cp. Kenan, Etudes d'histoin it de critique, pp. 23J i

II Kenan, as cited, p. 232.

4 Id., p. 235.

5 Sedillot, p. 39.

,; See the passage cited with praise by the sympathetic Mr. Boswortb
Smith (Sura ii) in his Mohammed and Mohammedanism, 2d ed , p. 181 ; where
also delighted praise is given to the "description of Infidelity" in Sura.
xxiv, 39-40- The " infidels " in question were simply non-Moslems.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. IJJ

§3-
The history of Saracen culture is the history of the
attainment of saner ideas and a higher plane of thought.
Within a century of the Hejra1 there had arisen some
rational scepticism in the Moslem schools, as apart from
the chronic schisms and strifes of the faithful. A school
of theology had been founded by Hasan-al-Basri at
Bassorah ; and one of his disciples, Wasil ibn Atta,
rejected the predestination doctrine of the Koran as
inconsistent with the future judgment ; arguing for free-
will and at the same time for the humane provision of a
purgatory. From this beginning dates the Motazileh or
class of Motazilites (or Mu'tazilites),2 the freethinkers of
Islam. Other sects of a semi-political character had
arisen even during the last illness of the Prophet, and
others soon after his death.3 One party sought to impose
on the faithful the " Sunna " or "traditions", which
really represented the old Arabian ideas of law, but were
pretended to be unwritten sayings of Mohammed.4 To
this the party of Ali (the Prophet's cousin) objected ;
whence began the long dispute between the Shiah or
Shiites, the anti-traditionists, and the Sunnites ; the
conquered Persians tending to stand with the former,
and generally, in virtue of their own thought, to supply
the heterodox element under the later Khalifates.5 Thus
Shiites were apt to be Motazilites.6 On Ali's side, again,
there broke away a great body of Kharejites or Separa-
tists, who claimed that the Imaum or head of the Faith
should be chosen by election, while the Shiites stood for

1 The Flight (of the Prophet from Mecca, in 622), from which begins the
Mohammedan era.

'-' Weil, Gcschichtc dcr Chalifen, ii, 261-4 ; Dugat, Histoiredes / i« et

des theologiens Musulmans, 1878, pp. 48-55; H. Steiner, Die Mu'taziliten, odei
die Freidevker im Islam, 1865, S. 49-50 ; Guyard, p. 36. The term MotaziLi
broadly means " dissenter ", or " belonging to a sect ".

;t Steiner, Si.

4 Palmer, introd. to Haroun Alraschid, p. 14.

5 As to the Persian influence on Arab thought, cp A Miiller, DalsLu .
i, 469 ; Palmer, as last cited ; and Weil, Geschichtt dcr Chalifen, ii, 214 fl".

c Weil, ii, 261.

lyS HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

succession by divine right.1 All this had occurred before
any schools of theology existed.

The Motazilites, once started, divided gradually into
a score of sects,2 all more or less given to rationalising
within the limits of monotheism.3 The first stock were
named Kadaritcs, because insisting on man's power
(Kadar) over his acts.4 Against them were promptly
ranged the jabaritcs, who affirmed that man's will
was wholly under divine constraint (jabar). Yet
another sect, the Sifatitcs, opposed both of the others,
standing for a literal interpretation of the Koran, which
is in parts predestinationist, and in parts assumes free
will ; while the main body of orthodox, following the
text, professed to respect as insoluble mystery the con-
tradictions they found in it.5

It is to be noted that, while the heretics in time came
under Greek and other foreign influences, their criticism
of the Koran was at the outset entirely their own.6 The
Shiites, becoming broadly the party of the Persians,
admitted in time Persian, Jewish, Gnostic, Manichean,
and other dualistic doctrines, and generally tended
to interpret the Koran allegorically.7 A particular school
of allegorists, the Bathenians, even tended to purify the
idea of deity in an agnostic direction.8 All of these
would appear to have ranked generically as Motazilites ;
and the manifold play of heretical thought gradually
forced a certain habit of reasoning on the orthodox,9 who
as usual found their advantage in the dissidences of the
dissenters. On the other hand, the Motazilites found
new resources in the study and translation of Greek

1 G. ] »ugat, Ilistoire des philosophes et des theologiens Mussulmans, p. 44.
Dugat, p. 55; Steiner, S. 4.

1 " Motazilism represents in Islam a Protestantism of the shade of
Schleiermacher ' (Kenan, Averroes et I' Avcrrdisme, 3eed., p, 104). Cp. Syed
Ameer Ali, Cnt. Exam, of Life of Mohammed, pp. 300-8.

4 Dugat, pp. 28, 44 ; Guyard, p. 36; Steiner, 24-5 ; Kenan, Averrois, p. 101.
Guyard, pp. 37-38; G. D. Osborn, The Khaltfs of Baghdad, 1878, p. 134.

8 Steiner, S. id. Major Osborn (work cited, p. 136) attributes their rise
to the influence of Eastern Christianity, but gives no proof.

1 Guyard, p. 40. I »ugat, p. 34. 9 Steiner, S. 5.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. Iji,

works, scientific and philosophical.1 They were thus the
main factors, on the Arab side, in the culture-evolution
which went on under the Abassidc Khalifs (750-1258).
Greek literature reached them mainly through the Syrian
Christians, in whose hands it had been put by the
Nestorians, driven out of their scientific school at Edessa
and exiled by Leo the Isaurian (716-741) ;2 possibly also
in part through the philosophers who, on being exiled
from Athens by Justinian, settled for a time in Persia.
The total result was that already in the ninth century,
within two hundred years of the beginning of Moham-
med's preaching, the Saracens in Persia had reached not
only a remarkable height of material civilisation, their
wealth exceeding that of Byzantium, but a considerable
though quasi-secret measure of scientific knowledge and
rational thought.4

Secresy was long imposed on the Motazilites by the
orthodoxy of the Khalifs,5 who as a rule atoned for many
crimes and abundant breaches of the law of the Koran
by a devout profession of faith. Freethinking, however,
had its periods of political prosperity. The Khalif El-
Mansour, though he played a very orthodox part,*
favored the Motazilites (754-775), being generally a
patron of the sciences ; and under him were made the

1 Steiner, S. 5, 9, 88-9.

- Sedillot, Hist. desArabes, p. 335 ; Prof. A. Midler, Der Islam (in Oncken's
series) i, 470; Ueberweg, i, 402.

:' Ueberweg, p. 403 ; Weil, Gesch. der Clialifen, ii, 2S1.

1 For an orthodox account of the beginnings of freethinking (called
Zcndihism or atheism) see Weil, ii, 214. Cp. S. 261 ; also Tabari's
Chronicle, l't. v, c. 97; and Renan, Averroes, p. 103. Already, among the
OmmayadeKhalils, Yezid III held the Motazilite tenet of hec will /

'Steiner, S. 8. An association called " Brethn Purity" or

" Sincere Brethren " seemed to have latterly carried Motazilism far. They
were in effect the encyclopedists of Arab science. Ueberweg, i, 411.
See Dr. F. Dieterici, Die Naturanschauung und Natui

loten Jdhrhundert, aus den schriften der lautem Briidi • . S. viii,

and Fliigel, as there cited. Fliigel dates the writings of the Brethren :i
970 ; but the association presumably existed earlier. Cp. Kenan,
Averroes, p. 104; and S. Lane-I'oole s Studies m a Mosque, iSg3, ch. <■,
as to their performance.

"He made five pilgrimages to Mecca, and die 1 on the last, thus
attaining to sainthood.

X 2

l8o HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

first translations from the Greek.1 Despite his orthodoxy
he encouraged science ; and it was as insurgents and not
as unbelievers that he destroyed the sect of Rewandites,
(a branch of the anti-Moslem Ismailites) who are said to
have believed in metempsychosis.2 Partly on political
but partly also on religious grounds his successor El-
Mahdi made war on the Ismailites, whom he regarded as
Atheists, destroying their books and causing others to be
written against them.3 They were anti-Koranites; hardly
Atheists; but a kind of informal rationalism approaching
to Atheism, and involving unbelief in the Koran and
the Prophet, seems to have spread considerably, despite
the slaughter of many unbelievers by El-Mahdi. Its source
seems to have been Persian aversion to the alien creed.4 The
great philosophic influence, again, was that of Aristotle ;
and though his abstract God-idea was nominally adhered
to, the scientific movement promoted above all things the
conception of a reign of law.5 El Hadi, the successor of
El Mahdi, persecuted much and killed many heretics ;
and Haroun Alraschid (Aaron the Orthodox) menaced
with death those who held the moderately rational tenet
that "the Koran was created",6 as against the orthodox
dogma (on all fours with the Brahmanic doctrine con-
cerning the Veda) that it was eternal in the heavens and
uncreated.

Haroun's crimes, however, consisted little in acts of
persecution. The Persian Barmekides (the family of his
first Vizier, surnamed Barmek) were regarded as pro-
tectors of Motazilites ; 7 and one of the sons, Jaafer, was
even suspected of atheism, all three indeed being charged

1 Weil, Gesch. der Chalifcn, ii, 81 ; Du^at, pp. 59-61 ; A. Midler, Der Islam,
i, 470. In Mansour's reign was born El-Allaf, " Sheikh of the Motazilites."
' I >ugat, p. 62.

3 Dugat, p. 71.

4 Id. p. 72 ; Tabari's Chronicle, Pt. v, c. 97, Zotenberg's trans., 1S74, iv,
447"453- Tabari notes (p. 44S) that all the Moslem theologians agree in
thinking ~cndehism much worse than any of the false religions, since it
rejects all and denies God as well as the Prophet.

6 Cp. Steiner, S. 55 II., 66 ff. ; Ueberweg, Hist, of rhllos., i, 405.
' I >ugat, p. 76.

7 Dngat, p. 79; Osborn, Khalijs of Baghdad, p. 195.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. l8l

with it.1 Their destruction, on other grounds, does not

seem to have altered the conditions for the thinkers ; but

Haroun's incompetent son Emin was a devotee and

persecutor. His abler brother and conqueror Mamoun,

on the other hand, directly favored the Motazilites,

partly on political grounds, to strengthen himself with the

Persian party, but also on the ground of conviction.2 He

even imprisoned some of the orthodox theologians who

maintained that the Koran was not a created thing,

though, like certain persecutors of other faiths, he had

expressly declared himself in favor of persuasion as

against coercion.3 In one case he inflicted a cruel

torture. Compared with others, certainty, he did not

carry his coercion far, though, on being once publicly

addressed as " Ameer of the Unbelievers ", he caused

the fanatic who said it to be put to death.4 In private

he was wont to conduct meetings for discussion, attended

by believers and unbelievers of every shade, at which

the only restriction was that the appeal must be to

reason, and never to the Koran.5 Concerning his personal

bias, it is related that he had received from Kabul a

book in old Persian, " The Eternal Reason," which

taught that reason is the only basis for religion, and that

revelation cannot serve as a standing ground.6 The story

is interesting, but enigmatic ; the origin of the book

being untraceable. The fact remains, however, that

Mamoun was of all the Khalifs the greatest promoter of

science1 and culture; the chief encourager of the study

and translation of Greek literature;8 and, despite his

1 Palmer, Haroun Alraschid, p. S2. They were really Theists.

2 Weil, Geschichlc der Chalifen, ii, 215, 261, 2S0 ; A. Miiller, Der Islam,
S- 5M-5-

J Dugat, pp. 85-96.

1 Id. p. 83.

5 See extract by Major Osborn, Khalifs, p. 250.

* Osborn, Khalifs, p. 249.

1 He it was who first caused to be measured a degree of the earth's
surface. The attempt was duly denounced as atheistic by a Leading
theologian, Takyuddin. Montucla, Hist, des Mathemattques, id. Lalande, i,
355, ff. ; Draper, Conflict of Religion and Science, p. 109.

'A. Miiller, Der Islam, i, 509 ff. Weil, Gesch. der Chaliftn, ii, 2S0 ft".

l82 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

coercion of the theologians on the dogma of the eternity of
the Koran, tolerant enough to put a Christian at the head
of a college at Damascus, declaring that he chose him not
for his religion but for his science. In the same spirit he
permitted the free circulation of the apologetic treatise of
the Armenian Christian Al Kindy, in which Islam and
the Koran are freely criticised. As a ruler, too, he ranks
among the best of his race for clemency, justice, and decency
of life, although orthodox imputations were cast on his
subordinates. His successors Motasim and Wathik were
of the same cast of opinion, the latter being, however,
fanatical on behalf of his rationalistic view of the Koran
as a created thing.1

A violent orthodox reaction set in under the worthless
and Turk-ruled Khalif Motawakkel2 (847-861), by whose
time the Khalifate was in a state of political decadence,
partly from the economic exhaustion following on its
tyrannous and extortionate rule, partly from the divisive
tendencies of its heterogeneous sections, partly from the
corrupting tendency of all despotic power.3 Despite the
official restoration of orthodoxy, the private cultivation of
science and philosophy proceeded for a time ; the study
and translation of Greek books continued ;4 and ration-
alism of a kind seems to have subsisted more or less
secretly to the end. In the tenth century it is said to
have reached even the unlearned. Faith in Mohammed's
mission and law began again to shake ; and the learned
disregarded its prescriptions. Mystics professed to find the
way to God without the Koran. Many decided that
religion was useful for regulating the people, but was not
for the wise. On the other side, however, the orthodox
condemned all science as leading to unbelief,8 and

1 Dugat, pp. 105-11 1. Apart from this one issue, general tolerance seems
to have prevailed. Osborn, Khalifs, p. 2G5.
Dugat, p. 112; Steiner, S. 79.
\ good analysis is given by Dugat, pp. 337-348.
1 The whole of Aristotle, except, apparently, the Politics, had been
translated in the time of the philosopher Avicenna (fl. 1000).

5 Steiner, Die Wulu-.ililoi, S. 10-11, following (iazzali (Al-Gazel) ; "Weil,
Gtsch do- Chali/en, iii, 72.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. 183

■developed an elaborate and quasi-systematic theology. It
was while the scientific encyclopedists of Bassorah were
amassing the knowledge which, through the Moors,
renewed thought in the West, that Al-Ashari built up the
Kaldm or scholastic theology which thenceforth reigned
in the Mohammedan East ;l and the philosopher Al-Gazel,
on his part, employed the ancient and modern device of
turning a profession of philosophical scepticism to the
account of orthodoxy.2

In the struggle between science and religion, in a
politically decadent State, the latter inevitably secured
the administrative power.3 Under the Khalifs Motamid
(d. 892) and Motadhed (d. 902), all science and phil-
osophy wrere proscribed, and book-sellers were put upon
their oath not to sell any but orthodox [books.4 Thus,
though philosophy and science had secretly survived,
when the political end came the popular faith was in
much the same state as it had been under Haroun
Alraschid. Under Islam as under all the faiths of the
world, in the East as in the West, the mass of the people
remained ignorant as well as poor ; and the learning and
skill of the scholars served only to pass on the saved
treasure of Greek thought and science to the new civil-
isation of Europe. The fact that the age of military and
political decadence was that of the widest diffusion of
rationalism is naturally fastened on as giving the explana-
tion of the decline ; but the inference is pure fallacy.
The Bagdad Khalifate declined as the Christianised
Roman Empire declined, from political and external
causes ; and the Turks who overthrew it proceeded to
overthrow Christian Byzantium, where rationalism never
reared its head.

1 Guyard, pp. 41-42 ; Renan, Averroes, pp. 104-5. Il was at nrst unfixed.
but later definitely orthodox.

- Lleberweg, i, 405, 414; Steiner, S. 11.
Hence, among other things, a check on the practice of anatomy,
religious feeling being opposed to it under I ilam as under Christianity.
Dugat, pp. 62-3.

4 Dugat, pp. 123-S.

184 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

The conventional view is thus set forth in a popular work
(The Saracens, by Arthur Gilman, 1887, p. 385) :— " Uncon-
sciously Mamun began a process by which that implicit faith
which had been at once the foundation and the inspiration of
Islam, which had nerved its warriors in their terrible warfare, and
had brought the nation out of its former obscurity to the
foremost position among the peoples of the world, was to be
taken from them." We have seen that this view is entirely
erroneous as regards the rise of the Saracen power ; and it is
no less so as regards the decline. The Eastern Saracens had
been decisively defeated by the Byzantines in the very first
flush of their fanaticism and success; and the Western had
been routed by Charles Martel long before they had any
philosophy. There was no overthrow of faith among the
warriors of the Khalifate. The enlistment of Turkish mercen-
aries by Mamun and Motasim, by way of being independent of
the Persian and Arab factions in the army and the State,
introduced an element which, at first purely barbaric, became
as orthodox as the men of Haroun's day had been. Yet the
decadence, instead of being checked, was furthered. Nor
were the strifes set up by the rationalistic view of the Koran
nearly so destructive as the mere faction-fights and sectarian
insurrections which began with Motawakkel. The falling-
away of cities and provinces under the feeble Moktader (908-
932) had nothing whatever to do with opinions, but was strictly
analogous to the dissolution of the kingdom of Charlemagne
under his successors, through the rise of new provincial
energies ; and the tyranny of the Turkish mercenaries was on
all fours with that of the Pretorians of the Roman Empire,
and with that of the Janissaries in later Turkey. The writer
under notice has actually recorded (p. 408) that the warlike
sect of Ismailitic Karmathians, who did more than any other
enemy to dismember the Khalifate, were unbelievers in the
Koran, deniers of revelation, and disregarders of prayer. The
later Khalifs, puppets in the hands of the Turks, were one and
all devout believers. On the other hand, fresh Moslem and
non-Moslem dynasties arose alternately as the conditions and
opportunities determined. Jenghiz Khan, who overran Asia,
was no Moslem ; neither was Tamerlane ; but new Moslem
conquerors did overrun India, as Pagan Alexander had done
in his day. Theological ideas counted for as little in one case
as in the other. Sultan Mahmoud of Gha/ni (997-1030), who
reared a new empire on the basis of the province of Khorassan
and the kingdom of Bokhara, and who twelve times success-
fully invaded India, happened to be of Turkish stock ; but he

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. 1S5.

is also recorded to have been in his youth a doubter of a
future state, as well as of his personal legitimacy. His later
parade of piety (as to which see Baron De Slane's tr. of Ibn
Khallikan's Biog. Diet., iii, 334) is thus a trifle suspect (British
India, in Edin. Cab. Lib., 3rd ed. i, 189, following Ferishta) ;
and his avarice seems to have animated him to the full as
much as his faith, which was certainly not more devout than
that of the Brahmans of Somnauth, whose hold he captured.
During his reign, besides, unbelief was rife in his despite (Weil,
Geschichte der Chalifen, iii, 72). The conventional theorem as
to the political importance of faith, in short, will not bear
investigation. Even Freeman here sets it aside (Hist, and
Conq. of the Saracens, p. 124).

§4-

It is in the later and nominally decadent ages of the
Bagdad Khalifate, when science and culture and even
industry relatively prospered by reason of the personal
impotence of the Khalifs, that we meet with the most
pronounced and the most perspicacious of the Free-
thinkers of Islam. In the years 970-1057 flourished at
Bagdad the blind poet Aboul-Ala El Marri, who in his
verse derided all religions as alike absurd, and yet was
for some reason never persecuted. One of his sayings
was that "The world holds two classes of men; intel-
ligent men without religion, and religious men without
intelligence".1 He may have escaped on the strength of
a character for general eccentricity, for he was an ardent
vegetarian and an opponent of all parentage, declaring
that to bring a child into the world was to add to the
sum of suffering.2

A century later still, and in another region, we come
upon the (now) most famous of all Eastern Freethinkers,
Omar Khayyam. He belonged to Naishapur in Khorassan,
a province which had long been known for its rationalism,3
and which had been part of the nucleus of the great
Asiatic kingdom created by Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni

1 Dugat, p. 167; Weil, iii, 72. - Dugat, pp. [64-168

3 Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, ii, 215

l86 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

at the beginning of the eleventh century, soon after the
rise of the Fatimite dynasty in Egypt. Under that
Sultan flourished Ferdusi (Firdausi), one of the chief
glories of Persian verse. After Mahmoud's death, his
realm and parts of the Khalifate in turn were overrun by
the Seljuk Turks under Togrul Beg ; under whose grand-
son Malik it was that Omar Khayyam, astronomer and
poet, studied and sang in Khorassan. The Turk-
descended Shah favored science as strongly as any of
the Abassides ; and when he decided to reform the
calendar, Omar was one of the eight experts he employed
to do it. Thus was set up for the East the Jalali
calendar, which, as Gibbon has noted,1 "surpasses the
Julian and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian
style ". Omar was in fact one of the ablest mathema-
ticians of his age.2

Beyond all question, the poet-astronomer was un-
devout ; and his astronomy doubtless helped to make him
so. His first English translators, reflecting the tone of
the first half of the century, have thought fit to moralise
censoriously over his attitude to life ; and the first,
Professor Cowcll, has austerely decided that Omar's
gaiety is " but a risus sardonicus of despair".3 Even the
subtler Fitzgerald, who has so admirably rendered some
of the audacities which Cowell thought " better left in the
original Persian", has the air of apologising for them
when he partly concurs in the same estimate. But
despair is not the name for the humorous melancholy
which Omar weaves around his thoughts on the riddle of
the universe. In epigrams which have never been
surpassed for their echoing depth, he disposes of the
theistic solution ; whereafter, instead of offering another
shibboleth, he sings of wine and roses, of the joys of life
and of their speedy passage. It was his way of turning
into music the undertone of all mortality; and that it is

1 Decline and Fall, c. 57. Bohn ed ., vi, 382, and note.

1 See the preface to Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubdiyat,

a Cited in introd. to Dole's variorum ed. of the Rubaiyat, 1896, i, p. xix.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. 1S7

now preferable, for any refined intelligence, to the
affectation of zest for a "hereafter" on which no one
wants to enter, would seem to be proved by the remark-
able vogue he has secured in modern England, chiefly
through the incomparable version of Fitzgerald. Much
of the attraction, doubtless, is due to the canorous
cadence and felicitous phrasing of those singularly fortunate
stanzas ; but the thoughts of Omar remain their kernels :
and whereas the counsel, " Gather ye roses while ye
may," is common enough, it must be the weightier
bearing of his deeper and more daring ideas that gives the
quatrains their main hold to-day. Never popular in the
Moslem world, he has had in ours an unparalleled
welcome ; and it must be because from his scientific
vantage ground in the East, in the age of the Norman
Conquest, he had attained the vision and chimed with
the mood of a later and larger age.

That Omar in his day and place was not alone in his
mood, lies on the face of his verse. The allusions to the
tavern, a thing suspect and illicit for Islam, show that he
was in a society more Persian than Arab ; and doubtless
Persian thought, always leaning to heresy, and charged
with germs of scientific speculation from immemorial
antiquity, prepared his rationalism ; though his monism
excludes alike dualism and theism. " One for two I
never did misread," is his summing up of his philosophy.'
But the same formula would serve for the philosophy of
the sect of Sufis, who in all ages seem to have included
unbelievers as well as devoutly mystical pantheists.
Founded, it is said, by a woman, Rabia, in the first century
of the Hejra,2 the sect really carries on a pre- Mohammedan
mysticism, and may as well derive from Greece as

1 Fitzgerald's pref., 4th ed. p. xiii. Cp. quatrains cited in art, S«/fi m,
in Rclig. Systems of the World, 2nd ed. pp. 325-6.

2 Guyard, as cited, p. 42. But cp. Ueberweg, i, 411.

3 It is not impossible that the name may have come originally from tin-
Greek sophoi, "the wise," though it is usually connected with sun tin-
robe worn by the Sufite. There are other etymologies. Cp. Fraser,
Histor. and Deserip. Account of Persia, 1834, p. 323, note ; and art Suftism in
Relig. Systems of the World, 2d ed., p. 315 ; and bugat, p. 326.

l88 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

from Asia. Its original doctrine of divine love, as
a reaction against Moslem austerity, gave it a fixed
hold in Persia, and became the starting point of innu-
merable heterodox doctrines.1 Under the Khalif Moktadir,
a Persian Sufi is recorded to have been tortured and
executed for teaching that every man is God.2 In later
ages, Sufiism became loosely associated with every species
of independent thinking ; and there is reason to suspect
that the later poets Sadi (fl. 13th c.) and Hafiz3 (fl. 14th
c.) as well as hundreds of lesser status, held under the
name of Sufiism views of life not far removed from those
of Omar Khayyam ; who, however, had bantered the
Sufis so unmercifully that they are said to have dreaded
and hated him.4 In any case, Sufiism has included such
divergent types as Al Gazel, the sceptical defender of the
faith, devout pantheistic poets such as Jami,6 and singers
of love and wine such as Hafiz, whose extremely concrete
imagery is certainly not as often allegorical as serious
Sufis assert, though no doubt it is sometimes so.6 It
even became nominally associated with the' destructive
Ismai'litism of the sect of the Assassins, whose founder,
Hasan, had been the schoolfellow of Omar Khayyam.7

Of Sufiism as a whole it may be said that whether as
inculcating quietism, or as widening the narrow theism of
Islam into pantheism, or as sheltering an unaggressive
rationalism, it has made for freedom and humanity in the
Mohammedan world, lessening the evils of ignorance
where it could not inspire progress.8 On its more
philosophic side, too, it connects with the long movement
of speculation which, passing into European life through

1 Cp. Renan, Averroes, p. 293, as to Sufi latitiulinarianism.

2 Guyard, p. 44 , Relig. Systems, p. 319,.

:) Hafiz in his own day was reckoned impious by many. Cp. Malcolm,
Sketches of Persia, 1827, ii, 100.

1 Fitzgerald's pref., p. x.

5 Whose Salaman and Absal, translated by Fitzgerald, is so little noticed
in comparison with the Rubaiyat of Omar.

I I I trowne, in Religious Systems, as cited, p. 321 ; Dugat, p. 331.

7 I itzgerald's pref., following Mirkhond ; Eraser, Persia, p. 329;

8 Cp. Dugat, p. 336; Syed Ameer Ali, pp. 311-315.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. 189

the Western Saracens, revived Greek philosophic thought
in Christendom after the night of the Middle Ages, at the
same time that Saracen science passed on the more
precious seeds of real knowledge to the new civilisation.

§5-

There is the less need to deal at any length in these
pages with the professed philosophy of the Arabs, seeing
that it was from first to last but little associated with any
practical repudiation of dogma and superstition.1 In the
East, the rationalistic Al Kindi (fl. 850) seems to have
been led to philosophise by the Motazilite problems ; but
his successors mostly set them aside, developing an
abstract logic and philosophy on Greek bases, or studying
science for its own sake, but as a rule professing a devout
acceptance of the Koran." Such was Avicenna (Ibn
Sina) in the East (d. 1037), though in comparison with
his predecessor Alfarabi, who leant to Platonic mysticism,
he is a rationalistic Aristotelian.3 After Algazel (d. 1111),
who attacked both of these somewhat in the spirit of
Cicero's sceptical Cotta attacking the Stoics and the
Epicureans,4 uncritical orthodoxy prevailed in the Eastern
schools; and it is in Moorish Spain that we are to look
for the last efforts of Arab philosophy.

The course of culture-evolution there broadly corre-
sponds with that of the Saracen civilisation in the East.
In Spain the Moors came into contact with the Roman
imperial polity, and at the same time with the different
culture elements of Judaism and Christianity. To both
of these faiths they gave complete toleration, and thus
strengthened their own in a way that no other policy
could have availed to do. Whatever was left of Graco-
Roman art, handicraft, and science, saving the arts of
portraiture, they encouraged ; and whatever of agricul-
tural science remained from Carthaginian times they

1 Cp. Renan, Averroes, p. 101. 2 Steiner, Die Mutaxiliten, S. G.

3 Ueberweg, i, 412. 4 Cp. Renan, Averroes, p. 97.

1 90 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

zealously adopted and improved. Like their fellow-
Moslems in the East, they further learned all the science
that the preserved literature of Greece could give them.
The result was that under energetic and enlightened
khalifs the Moorish civilisation became the centre of light
and knowledge as well as of material prosperity for
mediaeval Europe. Whatever of science the world
possessed was to be found in their schools ; and thither
in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, flocked
students from the Christian States of western and
northern Europe. It was in whole or in part from
Saracen hands that the modern world received astronomy,
chemistry, mathematics, medicine, botany, jurisprudence,
and philosophy. They were in fact the revivers of
civilisation after the age of barbarian Christianity.1

While the progressive period lasted, there was, of
course, an abundance of practical Freethought. But
after a marvellously rapid rise, the Moorish civilisation
was arrested and paralysed by the internal and the
external forces of anti-civilisation — religious fanaticism
within and Christian hostility without. Everywhere we
have seen culture-progress depending more or less clearly
on the failure to find solutions for political problem:-.
The most fatal defect of all Arab civilisation — a defect
involved in its first departure by way of conquest, and in
its constantly military basis — was the total failure to
substitute any measure of constitutional rule for despotism.
It was thus politically unprogressive, even while advancing
in other respects. But in other respects also it soon
reached the limits set by the conditions.

Whereas in Persia the Arabs overran an ancient
< ivilisation, containing many elements of rationalism
which acted upon their own creed, the Moors in Spain
found a population only slightly civilised, and predisposed
by its recent culture, as well as by its natural conditions,"

1 Cp. Seignobos, Hist it la Civ , ii, 58 . and post, ch x.

'-' Cp. Buckle, lntrod. to Hist, of Civ. in England, 3-vol ed. i, 123-4.

FREF.THOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. IQI

to fanatical piety. Thus when, under their tolerant rule,
Jews and Christians in large numbers embraced Islam,
the new converts became the most fanatical of all.1 All
rationalism existed in their despite, and, abounding as
they did, they tended to gain power whenever the Khalif
was weak, and to rebel furiously when he was hostile.
When, accordingly, the growing pressure of the feudal
Christian power in Northern Spain at length became a
menacing danger to the Moorish States, weakened by
endless intestine strife, the one resource was to call in a
new force of Moslem fanaticism in the shape of the
Almoravide3 Berbers, who, to the utmost of their power,
put down everything scientific and rationalistic, and
established a rigid Koranolatry. After a time they in
turn, growing degenerate while remaining orthodox, were
overrun by a new influx of conquering fanatics from
Africa, the Almohades, who, failing to add political
science to their faith, went down in the thirteenth
century before the Christians in Spain, in a great battle
in which their prince sat in their sight with the Koran in
his hand.3 Here there could be no pretence that
"unbelief" wrought the downfall. The Jonah of Free-
thought, so to speak, had been thrown overboard ; and
the ship went down with the flag of faith flying at even-
masthead.4

It was in the last centuries of Moorish rule that there
flourished the philosophers whose names connect it with
the history of European thought, retaining thus a some-
what factitious distinction as compared with the nun
of science, many of them nameless, who developed and
transmitted the sciences. The pantheistic Avempace
(Ibn Badja: d. 1138) was physician, astronomer, and
mathematician, as well as metaphysician : as was
Abubacer (Abu Bekr, also known as Ibn Tophail :

1 Lane- Poole, The Moms in Sfiiiit, p. 73.

- Properly Morabethin = men of God or of religion ; otherwise known
as " Marabouts".
3 Sedillot, p. 298.
1 Cp. Dozy, Hist, des Musulmans d'Espagne, iii, j ^-286 ; Ueberweg, i, 1 1 5

ig2 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

d. 1185), who regarded religious systems as "only a
necessary means of discipline for the multitude",1 and as
being merely symbols of the higher truth reached by the
philosopher. Averroes, the most famous of all, because
the most far-reaching in his influence on European
thought, is pre-eminently the expounder of Aristotle, and
as regards religion was more complaisant than Abubacer,
pronouncing Mohammedanism the most perfect of all
popular systems,2 and preaching a patriotic conformity on
that score to philosophic students. He expressly opposed,
too, the scientific rationalism of the Motecallemin, whom
he likened to the Motazilites." Even this, however,
could not save him from proscription, at the hands of a
Khalif who had long favored him, for the offence of
cultivating Greek antiquity to the prejudice of Islam.
All study of Greek philosophy was proscribed at the
same time, and all books found on the subject were
destroyed/ Disgraced and banished from court, Averroes
died at Morocco in 1198, and soon afterwards the Moorish
rule in Spain perished, in the odour of sanctity.5

§ 6.

Of later Freethought under Islam there is little to
record ; but the phenomenon has never disappeared.
Motazilism is still heard of in Arabia itself." In the
Ottoman Empire, indeed, it is little in evidence; but in
Persia — where the rise and the tragic end of the Bab
sect in our own age7 is a further proof of heterogeneity —
the ancient leaning to rationalism is still common. About
[830, a British traveller estimated that, assuming there

1 uberweg, i, 415.
- Ueberweg, i, 416 ; Steiner, S. G ; Renan, Averroes, p. 1G2, ft".

Kenan, p. 106, note.
■ Renan, Averroes, p. 5. Cp. Avert, p. iii.

[i. Ueberweg, i, 415-417.
' Dugat, p. 59. The Ameer AH Syed, Moulvi, M A , LL.B., whose
Critual Examination oj tin Life and Teaehings of Mohammed appeared in 1873,
was a Motazilite of a moderate type.

: See the good account of this sect by E. C. Browne in Religious Systems
Cp. Renan, Lcs Ap&tres, pp. 378-381.

FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM. I93

■were between 200,000 and 300,000 Sufis in the country,
those figures probably fell greatly short of the number
" secretly inclined to infidelity 'V Whatever be the value
of the figures, the statement is substantially confirmed by
laterobservers.3 Persian Freethought is, of course, the Free-
thought of ignorance, and seems to co-exist with astro-
logical superstition3 ; but there is obviously needed only
science, culture, and material development to produce,
on such a basis, a renascence as remarkable as that of
modern Japan.

In the British dominions, Mohammedans, though less
ready than educated Hindus to accept new ideas, cannot
escape the rationalising influence of European culture.
Nor was it left to the British to introduce the rationalistic
spirit in Moslem India. At the end of the sixteenth
century, the eclectic Emperor Akbar,4 himself a devout
worshipper of the Sun,5 is found tolerantly comparing all
religions,6 depreciating Islam,7 and arriving at such
general views on the equivalence of all creeds, and on
the improbability of eternal punishment,8 as pass for
liberal among Christians in our own day. If such views
could be generated by a comparison of the creeds of
pre-British India, they must needs be encouraged now.
The Mohammedan mass is of course still deeply fanatical,
and habitually superstitious ; but not any more immovably
so than the early Saracens. In the present century has
arisen the fanatical Wahabi sect, which aims at a puritanic
restoration of primeval Islam, freed from the accretions
of later belief, such as saint-worship ; but the movement,
though variously estimated, has had small success, and

1 Fraser, Persia, p. 330. This writer (p. 329) describes Sufiisra as " the
superstition of the freethinker ", and as " often assumed as a cloak to cover
entire infidelity".

2 E.g. Dr. Wills, The Land of the Lion and the Sun, ed. 1891, p. 339.

3 Fraser, Persia, p. 331 ; Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, ii, 10S.

4 See the documents reproduced by Max Midler, Introd. to the Scien

Religion, ed. 1S82, App. 1.

6 Id., pp. 214, 216.

8 Id., pp. 210, 217, 224, 225. 7 Id., pp. 224, 226. B Id., pp. 820, 229.

194 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

seems destined to extinction.1 Of the traditional seventy-
three sects in Islam, only four to-day count as orthodox.*
It may be worth while in conclusion to note that the
comparative prosperity or progressiveness of Islam as a
proselytising and civilising force in Africa — a phenomenon
regarded even by some Christians with satisfaction, and
by some with alarm 3 — is not properly a religious phe-
nomenon at all. Moslem civilisation suits with negro life
in Africa in virtue not of the teaching of the Koran, but
of the comparative nearness of the Arab to the barbaric
life. He interbreeds with the natives, fraternises with
them (when not engaged in kidnapping them), and so
stimulates their civilisation ; where the European colonist,
looking down on them as an inferior species, isolates,,
depresses and degrades them. It is thus conceivable
that there is a future for Islam at the level of a low
civilisation ; but the Arab and Turkish races out of
Africa are rather the more likely to concur in the
rationalistic movement of the higher civilisation.

1 Guyard, p. 45 ; Steiner, S. 5, note. Cp. Spencer, Study oj Sociology,
c. xii, p. 292 ; Bnsworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, 2d ed.,

PP- 3I5-J"'

- Derenbourg, p. 72 ; Steiner, S. r.

3 Cp. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, Lectures I and
IV ; Canon Isaac Taylor, address to Church Congress at Wolverhampton,
1887, and letters to Times, Oct. and Nov., 1887.

CHAPTER IX.

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

It would be an error, in view of the biological generali-
sation proceeded on in this enquiry, to suppose that even
in the Dark Ages, so called, the spirit of critical reason
was wholly absent from the life of Christendom. It had
simply grown very rare, and was the more discountenanced
where it strove to speak. But the most systematic sup-
pression of heresies could not secure that no private
heresy should remain. Apart, too, from such elementary
rationalism as was involved in semi-Pelagianism,1 critical
heresy chronically arose even in the Byzantine provinces,
which by the curtailment of the Empire had been left the
most homogeneous and therefore the most manageable of
the Christian States. It is necessary to note those
survivals of partial freethinking, when we would trace
the rise of modern thought.

§i.

In the early ages of heresy-smashing, apart from the
wider movements, single teachers here and there stood
for a measure of reason as against the fast-multiplying
insanities of faith. Thus the Italian monk Jovinian,
(end of 4th c.) fought against the creed of celibacy and
asceticism, and was duly denounced, vituperated, ecclesi-
astically condemned, and banished, penal laws being at
the same time passed against those who adhered to him.'
Contemporary with him was the Eastern Aekius, who
advocated priestly equality as against episcopacy, and
objected to prayers for the dead, to fasts, and to the too

1 According to which God predestinated good, but merely foreknew evil.
- Mosheim, E. II., Cent. IV, Pt. II, c. iii, § 22 ; Gieseler, J 106, ii, 75.

195 ) 0 2

I96 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

significant practice of slaying a lamb at the Easter
festival.1 In this case matters went the length of
schism. With less of practical effect, in the next cen-
tury, Vigilantius of Aquitaine made a more general
resistance to a more manifold superstition, condemning
and ridiculing the veneration of the tombs and bones of
martyrs, pilgrimages to shrines, the miracle stories there-
with connected, and the practices of fasting, celibacy,
and the monastic life. He, too, was promptly put down,
largely by the efforts of his former friend Jerome, the
most voluble and the most scurrilous pietist of his age,
who had also denounced the doctrine of Jovinian.2 For
centuries no such appeal was heard in the West ; the
next ferment of a rationalistic sort being the new con-
troversy over image-worship raised in Byzantium.

§2.

It was probably from some indirect influence of the
new anti-idolatrous religion of Islam that in the eighth
century the soldier-emperor, Leo the Isaurian, known as
the Iconoclast, derived his aversion to the image-worship*
which had long been as general in the Christian world as
ever under polytheism. Save on this one point, how-
ever, he was an orthodox Christian and Trinitarian, and
his long effort to put down images and pictures was in
itself rather fanatical4 than rationalistic, though a measure
of freethinking was developed among the religious party
he created.8 Of this spirit, as well as of the aversion to

1 Gieseler, $ 106, vol. ii, p. 74; Mosheim, Cent. IV, 1't. II, c. iii, $ 21 ;
and Schickels note in Keid's ed., p. 152.

- Milman, Hist. ofChr., B. iii, c. 11, (ii. 268-270); Mosheim, Cent. V

It II, c. iii, § [4; Gilly, Vigilantius and his Times, 1844, pp. 8, 389 ft". ,

470 ff. As to Jerome's persecuting ferocity, see also Gieseler, ii, 65, note.

For a Catholic polemic on Jerome's side, see Amedee Thierry, Saint Jerome,

iii . pp. 141, 363-6.

3 For Leo's contacts with the Saracens see Finlay, Hist, of Greece, ed.
Tozer, ii, 14-20, 24, 31-2, 34-5, 37, etc., and compare p. 218.

1 As to liis hostility to letters, see Gibbon, ch. 53. liohn. ed. vi, 228.
Of course the other side were not any more liberal. Cp. Finlay, ii, 222.

4 Gieseler, ii, 202. l'er. Ill, Div. I, l't. i, § 1. In the next century,
this was a ii 1 to have gone in some churches to the point of rejection of
Christ. Id., p. 207, note 28.

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I97

image-worship,1 something must have survived the official
restoration of idolatry ; but the traces are few. In the
ninth century, when Saracen rivalry had stung the
Byzantines into some partial revival of culture and
science,2 the all-learned Photius, who reluctantly
accepted ecclesiastical office, earned a dangerous repute
for freethinking by declaring from the pulpit that earth-
quakes were produced by earthly causes and not by
divine wrath.3 But though the reigning emperor, Michael
the Drunkard, was something of a freethinker, and could
even with impunity burlesque the religious processions of
the clergy,4 the orthodox populace joining in the laugh,
there was no such culture at Constantinople as could
develop a sober rationalism, or sustain it against the
clergy if it showed its head.

§3-
It was in a sect whose doctrine at one point coincided
with iconoclasm that there were preserved such rude
seeds of oriental rationalism as could survive the rule of
the Byzantine emperors, and carry the stimulus of heresy
to the west. The rise of the Paulicians in Armenia dates
from the seventh century, and was nominally by way of
setting up a creed on the lines of Paul as against the
paganised system of the church. Their original tenets
seem to have been anti-Manichean, anti-Gnostic (though
partly Marcionite), opposed to the worship of images and
relics, to sacraments, to the adoration of the Virgin, of
saints, and of angels, and to the acceptance of the Old
Testament ; and in an age in which the reading of the
Sacred Books had already come to be regarded as a

1 Id., pp 205, 207; Finlay, ii, 195.

2 On their connection at this time with the culture-movement of the
Khalifate of Mamoun, see Finlay, ii, 224-5; Gibbon, ch. 53, ed. cited, vi,
228-9.

3 Finlay, ii, 181, note. Cp. Mosheim, Cent. IX, l't. II, c. iii, J 7; and
Gibbon, ch. 53, ed. cited, vi, 229. Finlay declares (p. 222) that n> Greek
of the intellei tu d calibre of Photius, John the Grammarian, and Leo the
Mathematician, has since appeared.

1 Finlay, ii, 174-5, l^°-

I98 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

privilege of monks and priests, they insisted on reading
the New Testament for themselves.1 In course of time
they acquired some Manichean and Gnostic character-
istics2; and in the ninth century, when they had become
a powerful and militant sect, often at war with the
empire, they were marked by their refusal to make any
difference between priests and laymen. Anti-ecclesias-
ticism was thus a main feature of the whole movement.
The first iconoclastic emperor, who agreed with them on
the subject of images, had nevertheless persecuted them
by way of avoiding the stigma of their other heresies.3
They were thus driven over to the Saracens, whose advance-
guard they became as against the Christian State; but
the iconoclast Constantine Copronymus sympathetically4
transplanted many of them to Constantinople and
Thrace, thus introducing their doctrine into Europe.
The Empress Theodora (841-855), who restored image-
worship," sought to exterminate those left in Armenia,
slaying, it is said, a hundred thousand. The remnant
were thus driven wholly into the arms of the Saracens,
and did the empire desperate mischief during many
generations.

Meantime those planted in Thrace, in concert with
the main body, carried propaganda into Bulgaria, and
these again were further reinforced by refugees from
Armenia in the ninth century, and in the tenth by a

1 Gibbon, ch. 54 ; Mosheim, Cent. IX, Pt. II, ch. v ; Gieseler, Per. Ill,
Div. I, Pt. i, § 3; G. S. Faber, The Ancient Vallenses and Waldenses, 1838,
pp. 32-(o. Some fresh light is thrown on the Paulician doctrines by the
discovery of the old Armenian book The Key of Truth, edited and translated
by F. C. Conybeare, Oxford, 1898. It belonged to the ancient Armenian
sect of Thonraki. For a criticism of Mr. Conybeare's theories see the
Church Quarterly Review, Jan., 1899, Art. V.

2 Gieseler; Per. Ill, $$45, 46, vol. ii, pp. 489, 492. The sect of
Euchites al 0 anti priestly, seem to have joined them. Faber denies any
Manichean element.

■'■ Gibbon, as cited, vi, 242.

1 Gibbon, vi, 245, and note; Finlay, ii, 60.

5 Despite the express decision, the use of statues proper (aydK/iaTa)
gradually disappeared from the Greek church, the disuse anally creating a
strong antipathy, while pictures and ikons remained in reverence (Tozer's
note to Finlay, ii, 165).

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I99

fresh colony transplanted from Armenia by the emperor
John Zimisces, who valued them as a bulwark against the
barbarous Slavs.1 Fresh persecution under Alexius I at
the end of the eleventh century failed to suppress them ;
and imperial extortion constantly drove to their side
numbers of fresh adherents,1' while the Bulgarians for
similar reasons tended in mass to adopt their creed as
against that of Constantinople. Thus it came about
that from Bulgaria there passed into Western Europe,3
partly through the Slavonic sect called Bogomilians,4
partly by more general influences,5 a contagion of demo-
cratic and anti-ecclesiastical heresy ; so that the very
name Bulgar became the French froz^/r— heretic — and
worse.6 It specified the most obvious source of the new
anti-Romanist heresies of the Albigenses, if not of the
Yaudois (Waldenses).

§ 4-
In the West, meanwhile, where the variety of social
■elements was favorable to new life, heresy of a ration-
alistic kind was not wholly lacking. Though image-
worship finally triumphed there as in the East, it had
strong opponents, notably Claudius, bishop of Turin
(fl. 830), under the emperor Louis the Pious, son of
•Charlemagne, and his contemporary Agobard, bishop of
Lyons.1 It is a significant fact that both men were born
in Spain ; and either to Saracen or to Jewish influence—
the latter being then strong in the Moorish and even in

1 Gibbon, vi, 246 ; Finlay, iii, G4 ; Mosheim, Cent. X, Pt. II, ch. v.

2 Finlay, iii, 66.

3 Gibbon, as cited ; Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought,
pp. 91-96; Mosheim, Cent. XI, Pt. II, c. v.

1 Finlay, iii, 67-68 ; Mosheim, Cent. XII, Pt. II, c. v, $ 2.

5 Gieseler, Per. Ill, Div, II, Pt. iii, §46.

6 Gibbon, vi, 249, note '. Poole, p. 91, note ] De Potter, L'Esfiit Ac
L'Eglise, ed. 1S21, vi, 16, note.

7 For excellent accounts of both, see Mr. K. Lane Poole's Illustrations
■of the History of Medieval Thought, 1884, pp, 28-50. As to Claudius, cp.

Monastier, Hist, of the Vaudois Church, Eng. tr , 1S48, pp. ij--i-\ and Faber,
'J he Ancient Vallenses, B. iii, c. 4.

200 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the Christian1 world — may fairly be in part attributed
their marked bias against image-worship. Claudius was
slightly and Agobard well educated in Latin letters, so
that an earl}' impression2 would seem to have been at
work in both cases. However that may be, they stood
out as singularly rationalistic theologians in an age of
general ignorance and superstition. Claudius vehemently
resisted alike image-worship, saint-worship, and the
Papal claims, and is recorded to have termed a council
of bishops which condemned him " an assembly of
asses".3 Agobard, in turn, is quite extraordinary in the
thoroughness of his rejection of popular superstition,
being not only an iconoclast but an enemy to Drayer for
change in the weather, to belief in incantations and the
power of evil spirits, to the ordeal by fire, to the wager
of battle,4 and to the belief in the verbal inspiration of
the Sacred Books.

A grain of rationalism, as apart from professional
self-interest, may also have entered into the outcry made
at this period by the clergy against the rigidly pre-
destinarian doctrine of the monk Gottschalk.5 His
enemy, Rabanus or Hrabanus (called "the Moor''),,
seems again to represent some Saracen influence, inas-
much as he reproduced the scientific lore of Isidore of
Seville. '' But the philosophic semi-rationalism of John
Scotus (d. 875), later known as Erigena (John the Scot — ?
of Ireland7 — the original " Scots " being Irish) seems to be
traceable to the Greek studies which had been cherished
in Christianised Ireland while the rest of Western

1 See Mr. Poole's Illustrations, pp. 4G-48, for an account of the
privileges then accorded to Jews.

2 This is not incompatible with their having opposed both Saracens
(Claudius in actual war) and Jews, as Christian bishops.

Poole, Illustrations, p. 37.
4 This when the church tound its account in adopting all such usages.
Lea, Superstition and Force, pp. 242, 280, etc.
I \ ">]'•. pp. 50-52.
'• Noai k, Philo chichtliches Lexikon, s. v. Rabanus. As to the

doubtful works in which Rabanus coincides with Scotus Erigena, cp
le, p 336; Noack, as cited ; Ueberweg, i, 367-8.
' LJeberweg, i, yyj. Hut cp. Poole, pp. 55-56, note.

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 201

Europe lost them, and represents at once the imperfect
beginning of the relatively rationalistic philosophy of
Nominalism,1 and the first western revival of the philo-
sophy of Plato and Aristotle, howbeit by way of accommo-
dation to the doctrine of the Church.2 Called in by the
abbot Hincmar, himself a normally superstitious believer/
to answer Gottschalk,4 Scotus Erigena in turn was
accused of heresy, as he well might be on many points.
His doctrine that the Deity could not cause evil was, in
particular, Platonic, and goes back in a direct line to the
Gnostics ; but he must be credited with some original
thought.5

From this point onward, the movement of new ideas
may for a time be conveniently traced on two general
lines, one that of the philosophic discussion in the
schools, reinforced later by Saracen influences, the other
that of partially rationalistic and democratic heresy
among the common people, by way first of contagion
from the East. The latter was on the whole as influential
for sane thought as the former, apart from such scholarly
freethinking as that of Berengar of Tours and Roscelin.
Berengar (fl. 1050) was led by moral reflection to doubt
the priestly miracle of the Eucharist," and thence " to
open the whole question of the meaning of authority ",
to which, however, he had outwardly to succumb. His
stimulus seems to have counted for much ; though not
till Zwingli was his doctrine widely professed. Roscelin
(fl. logo), on the other hand, was led by his logical and
Nominalistic training to dispute the dogma of the Trinity,

1 Ueberweg, pp. 366, 371 ; Poole, pp. 99, 101, 336.

2 Ueberweg, pp. 356-365. That there was, however, an Irish

ticism as early as the eighth century is shown by Mosheim, Cent VIII,
1 i II., c. iii, § 6, note 3.

3 Lea, as cited, p. 280.

4 As to the cruel punishment of Gottschalk by Hincmar, see Hampden.
Bampton Lectures on The Scholastic Philosophy, 3rd. ed, p. 418.

6 Poole, pp. 64, 76.

6 Poole. 103. He later argued his case on grounds supplied by John
Scotus. As to his forced prevarications, see Mosheim, Cent XI. Pt. 11
ch. iii, $ § 13-18- Earlier still than John the Scot, Ratramnus, or Berl
(rl 850), had suggested a semi-rational view of the Eucharist.

202 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

but got no further in philosophy than tritheism,1 and

seems to have treated the question as one of dialectic

rather than of faith. The popular heresies bit rather

-deeper into practical life.

It is doubtless true of the Paulicians that " there was no
principle of development in their creed : it reflected no genuine
freedom of thought " (Poole, Illustrations, p. 95) ; but the same
thing might be — and has been — said of scholasticism itself.
It may indeed be urged that "the contest between Ratramn
and Pashasc on the doctrine of the Eucharist ; of Lanfranc
with Berengar on the same subject ; of Anselm with Roscelin
on the nature of Universals ; the complaints of Bernard
against the dialectical theology of Abelard ; are all illustrations
of the collision between Reason and Authority .... varied
forms of rationalism — the pure exertions of the mind within
itself .... against the constringent force of the Spiritual
government " (Hampden, The Scholastic Philos., 3d ed., p. 37) ;
but none of the scholastics ever professed to set Authority
aside. None dared. Scotus Erigena indeed affirmed the
identity of true religion with true philosophy, without pro-
fessing to subordinate the latter; but the most eminent of the
later scholastics affirmed such a subordination. "The
vassalage of philosophy consisted in the fact that an in-
passable limit was fixed for the freedom of philosophising in
the dogmas of the Church" (Ueberweg, i, 357); and some of the
chief dogmas were not allowed to be philosophically discussed ;
though " with its territory thus limited, philosophy was indeed
allowed by theology a freedom which was rarely and only by
exception infringed upon" [lb.). In course of time, the further
narrowing of the field forced a reaction on the part of the
Aristotelian scholastics against orthodoxy ; and some, " notably
Pomponatius and his followers, came secretly to favor a
direction of thought hostile to the dogmatic supra-naturalism
of the Church " (///.). But this progress is hardly to be credited
to the thought of their predecessors. The popular heresy
might have had similar results in an atmosphere of education;
and in its beginnings it was the hardier movement.

§5.

The first Western traces of the imported Paulician

heresy are about the year 1000, when a rustic of Chalons
is heard of as di itroying a cross and a religious picture,

1 Or ditheism. Poole, pp. 103-4, an(' note '• CP- P- 99-

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 20J

and asserting that the prophets are not wholly to be
believed.1 From this time forward, the world having
begun to breathe again after the passing of the year iooo
without any sign of the Day of Judgment, heresy begins
to multiply. In the year 1022 (sometimes put as 1017)
we hear of a secret society of so-called Manicheans at
Orleans, ten canons of one church being members.'
An Italian woman was said to be the founder, and
all were burned alive on their refusal to recant.
According to the records, they denied all miracles,
including the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection ; rejected
Baptism and the miracle of the Eucharist ; and affirmed
the eternity of matter and the non-creation of the world.
They were also accused, like the first Christians, of
promiscuous nocturnal orgies and of eating sacrificed
infants ; but unless such charges are to be held valid in
the other case, they cannot be here.3 The stories told of
the Manichean community who lived in the castle of
Montforte, near Turin, a few years later, and who were
likewise burned alive, are similarlv mixed with fable.4

A less savage treatment may have made possible the
alleged success of Gerhard, bishop of Cambray and Arras,
in reconciling to the church at Arras, in 1025 or 1030, a
number of laymen, also said to have been taught by an
Italian, who as a body rejected all external worship-
setting aside baptism and the sacraments, penance and
images, funeral rites, holy oil, church bells, altars and
•even churches — and denied the necessity of an order ol
priests.5 None of the Protestants of a later age were so
thorough-going; but the fact that the sect stood to
the old Marcionite veto on marriage and the sexual
instinct, gives to their propaganda its own cast "t

1 Mosheim, Cent X, Pt. II, ch. v, $3 ; Poole, Illustrations, p. 91.

2 Mosheim, Cent. XI, Pt. II, ch. v, $ 3 ; J »e Potter, L'Espn 'glise,

vi, iS-iq ; Poole, pp. yG-yS ; Lea, History of the Inquisition, i, 10S . Gieseler,
Per. Ill, Div. II. § 46,

a Cp. Murdoch's note on Mosheim, Keid's ed., p. 3S6 ; Monastier, Hist.
■of the VauJois Church, p. 33.

4 De Potter, pp. 20-21 ; Gieseler, as cited, p

5 Mosheim, as last cited, ; 4; Gieseler, ii, 49

204 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

fanaticism. This last tenet it seemingly was that gave
the Paulicians their common Greek name of cathari,1
" the pure," corrupted in Italian to gazzari, whence
presumably the German word for heretic, ketzer.2 Such a
doctrine had the double misfortune that if acted on it
left the sect without the normal recruitment of members'
children, while if departed from it brought on them the
stigma of wanton hypocrisy ; and as a matter of fact
every movement of the kind, ancient and modern, seems
to have contained within it the two extremes of asceticism
and license, the former generating the latter.

It could hardly, however, have been the ascetic
doctrine that won for the new heresy its vogue in
medieval Europe ; nor is it likely that the majority of
the heretics even professed it.3 If, on the other hand,
we ask how it was that in an age of dense superstition so
many uneducated people were found to reject so promptly
the most sacrosanct doctrines of the Church, it seems
hardly less difficult to account for the phenomenon on
the bare ground of their common - sense. Critical
common-sense there must have been, to allow of it at all ;
but it is reasonable to suppose that then, as clearly
happened later at the Reformation, common-sense had a
powerful stimulus in pecuniary interest.

We have considered the rise of Christianity without
resort to that factor for any part of the explanation,
beyond noting it in the case of the rise of the Christian
priesthood ; because the economic principle in history is
still so little recognised that to suggest it, however
guardedly, in connection with the rise of a religion,
especially of the Christian, is to give an opening for
misrepresentation that is sure to be taken. It is, how-

1 Mosheim, Cent XI, Pt. II, cli. v, $ 2 and Murdock's notes ; Cent. XII,

1 • II. .1. v. : j 4.5-

'•'These etymologies are disputed. Cp Murdock's note to Mosheim,
Reid'sed., p. 385, and Gieseler, ii, .|S6. The Chazari, a Slavic (?) people,
partly Christian and partly Moslem in the 9th century (Gieseler, as cited),
aame oi at gave Bougre.

1. Mosheim, Cent. XII, Pt. II, ch. v,

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 205

-ever, the historic fact that as soon as Christianity had
become the religion of the State, not only were the
revenues of the temples confiscated as we have seen, but
a number of Christians took to the business of plundering
pagans in the name of the laws forbidding sacrifice, and
confiscating the property of the temples. Libanius in
his Oration for the Temples1 (390), addressed to Theodosius,
circumstantially avers that the bands of monks and
others who went about demolishing and plundering
temples were also wont to rob the peasants, adding :

" They also seize the lands of some, saying, it is sacred ; and many are
deprived of their paternal inheritance upon a false pretence. Thus those
men thrive upon other people's ruin who say ' they worship God with
fasting'. And if they who are wronged come to the pastor in the city . . .

he commends (the robbers) and rejects the others Moreover, if

they hear of any land which has anything that can be plundered, they cry
presently, ' Such an one sacrificeth, and does abominable things, and a
troop ought to be sent against him . And presently the self-styled

reformers ((Twc^ponerTai) are there Some of these . . . deny their

proceedings. . . . Others glory and boast and tell their exploits

But they say, ' We have only punished those who sacrifice, and thereby
transgress the law, which ; forbids sacrifice'. O emperor, when they
say this, they lie ... . Can it be thought that they who are not able to
bear the sight of a collector's cloak, should despise the power of your
government? .... I, appeal to the guardians of the law" [to confirm
the denial].2

The whole testimony is explicit and weighty,3 and, being
corroborated by Ammianus Marcellinus, is accepted by
clerical historians.4 Ammianus declares that some of the
courtiers of the Christian emperors before Julian were
"glutted with the spoils of the temples".5

With this evidence as to Christian practice in the

1 See it translated in full by Lardner, in his Testimonies of Am
Heathen, ch. 49. Works, ed. 1S35, vol. viii.

2 Lardner, as cited, pp. 25-27.

3 As to the high character of Libanius, who used his influence to
succour his Christian friends in the reign of Julian, see Lardner, pp. 15-17

1 Milman, Hist, of Christianity, B. iii, c. G: vol. ii, p. tji. See the
passage there cited from the Funeral Oration of Libanius on Julian,
Christians building houses with temple stones; also the further pas
pp. 129, 161, 212 of Mr. King's trans, of the Oration in his Julian tht
Emperor (Bohn Lib.).

5 Ammianus, xxii, 4.

206 HISTORY OF FREETHOl'GHT.

fourth century on the one hand, and the later evidence as
to the Reformation on the other, we are entitled to infer
some play of financial motive in the Middle Ages. And
whereas it is intelligible that such rapacity as Libanius.
describes should promote a heresy which rejected alike
religious ceremonial and the claims of the priest, it is-
further reasonable to surmise that resentment of priestly
rapacity and luxury helped men to similar heresy in
Western Europe when the doctrine reached them. If
any centuries are to be singled out as those of maximum
profligacy and extortion among the clergy, they are the
ninth and the three following.1 It had been part of the
policy of Charlemagne everywhere to strengthen the
hands of the clergy by way of checking the power of the
nobles2 ; and in the disorder after his death the conflicting
forces were in semi-anarchic competition. The feudal
habit of appointing younger sons and underlings to
livings wherever possible ; the disorders and strifes of the
papacy ; and the frequent practice of dispossessing priests
to reward retainers, thereby driving the dispossessed to
plunder on their own account, must together have created
a state of things almost past exaggeration. Thus ortho-
doxy and heterodoxy alike had strong economic motives ;
and in these may be placed a main part of the explanation
of the gross savagery of persecution now normal in the
Church. Such a heresy, for instance, as that of Gott-
schalk, by denying to the priest all power of affecting
the predestined course of things here or hereafter, im-
peached the very existence of the whole hierarchy, and
was resented accordingly. The same principle entered

1 Cp. Gieseler, Per. Ill, $$ 24. 34 ; Mosheim, Cent. IX, Pt. II, c. ii,
({ 1-4; with his and Murdock's refs. ; Cent. X, Pt. II, c. ii, }§ 1, 2;
Cent XI, Pt. II. c. ii, § 1; c. iii, }$ 1-3 : Cent. XII, Pt. II, c. ii, } 1 ;
Cent. XIII, Pt. II, c. ii, $$ 1-7. The authorities are often eminent church-
men, as Agobard, Ratherius, Bernard, and Gregory IX. The common
expectation, in the tenth century, that the world would end in the year
1000, led to an enormous bestowal of landed and other property on the
clergy. See Mosheim, Cent X, Pt. II, c. iii, § 3. Against this proceeding
the next a^e naturally reacted.

2 See Mosheim, Cent. VIII. 1 "t II, c. ii, § 5, note 2.

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 20J

.nto the controversies over the Eucharist. Still more
would the clergy resent the new Manichean heresy, of
which every element, from the Euchite tenet of the
necessity of personal prayer and mortification as against
the innate demon, to the rejection of all the rites of
normal worship and all the pretensions of priests, was
radically hostile to the entire organisation of the Church.
When the heretics in due course developed a priestly
system of their own,1 the hostility was only the more
embittered.

Persecution soon took the dimensions of massacre.
Bishop Wazon of Luttich (d. 1048) in vain protested
against the universal practice of putting the heretics to
death.2 Manicheans found in 1052 at Goslar, in Ger-
many, were hanged,3 a precedent being thus established
in the day of small things. The occurrence of the first
and second crusades, the work respectively of Peter the
Hermit and St. Bernard, created a period of new
fanaticism, somewhat unfavorable to heresy ; but even
in that period the new sects were at work,4 and in the
twelfth century, when crusading had become a mere
feudal conspiracy of conquest and plunder,5 heresy re-
appeared, to be duly met by slaughter. A perfect
ferment of anti-clerical heresy had arisen in Italy,
France, and Flanders. Peter de Brueys (burned in 1130),
opposing infant baptism, the use of churches, holy crosses,
prayers for the dead (a great source of clerical income),
and the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist,
set up the sect of Petrobrussians. The monk Henry
(died in prison, 1148) took a similar line, directly de-
nouncing the clergy in Switzerland and France ; as did
Tanquelin in Flanders (killed by a priest, 11 25) : though
in his case there seems to have been as much of religious

'!->'

1 Mosheim, Cent. XII, Pt. II, ch. v, $ 6.

1 Gieseler, Per. Ill, { 46, end.

1 Monastier, Hist, of the Vaudois Ch., p. 32.

4 Cp. Heeren, Essai sur I' influence des Croisades, 1S0S, p. 172.

* Sir G. Cox, The Crusades, p. in.

208 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

hallucination as of the contrary. A peasant, Eudo
of Stella (died in prison), is said to have half-revolutionised
Brittany with his anti-ecclesiastical preaching.1 The more
famous monk Arnold of Brescia (strangled or crucified in
1 155), a pupil of Abailard, simplified his plan of reform into
a proposal that the whole wealth of the Church, from the
Pope to the monks, should be transferred to the civil
power, leaving churchmen to lead a spiritual life on
voluntary offerings.2 Among the other heresies of the
time Arianism revived ; on the other hand a wandering
sect of anarchists, called the Caputiati, wore on their
caps a leaden image of the Virgin ; while the Apostolici,
advocates of a return to primitive simplicity and to
chastity, reproduced what they supposed to be the morals
of the early Church, including the profession of ascetic
cohabitation.3 These called themselves the "chaste
brethren and sisters"; and in this period of new depar-
tures probably originated the " Brethren of the Free
Spirit ", (fratrcs liberi spirit its)1 who in the next and the
fourteenth century are found widespread in Northern
Europe,5 and whose name is the forecast of that of the
libertini of the Reformation period. In Italy, during the
period of the Renaissance, all alike were commonly called
paterini, a word of no clear meaning.6

The original catliavi, scattered between Constantinople
and Lombardy, are reckoned to have numbered in all, in
the twelfth century, some 4,000 persons.7 Though soon
hardly distinguishable from the other anti-clerical sects,
they figure freely in the rolls of persecution. About 1170
four cathari from Flanders are burned alive at Cologne ;

1 Mosheim, Cent. XI I, l't II, ch. v, §$ 7-9, and varior. notes: Monastier,
pp. 38-41, 43-47 I Milman, Hist, of Latin Chr., v, 384-390.
' Mosheim, as last cited, $ 10 ; Monastier, p. 49.
3 Mosheim, as last cited, $§ 14-1G.

• Mosheim, Cent XI, l't. II, c. v, J 3; Cent. XIII, Pt. II, ch. v, § 9.
Vs to their rise cp. Gieseler, Per. Ill, Div. iii, $ 90 (American ed. 1865,
ii, 590, note).

■] 1 lieim, Cent XI, l't. II, c. ii, $ T3, and note; Milman, Latin
Christianity, v, 401. On the sects in general see De Potter, vi, 217-310.
Murdock's note to Mosheim, p. 426; Monastier, pp. 106-7.

CHRISTENDOM IX THE MIDDLE AGES. 209

and others (called boni homines) at Toulouse; in France
and England laws are passed excommunicating them ;
at an oecumenical council at Rome in 1179, a sweeping
canon was drawn up for the same purpose; and within
the next twenty years the Pope and the Emperor
successively continued the attack.1 Beheading, hanging,
burning, confiscation of property and burning of houses
were the normal methods. Soon the Church saw fit to
take more systematic measures against a spread of heresy
which threatened to reduce it to poverty. In the middle
of the twelfth century, the new ideas were preached so
near Rome as Orvieto.3 In the latter part of the century
a foremost place was taken by the sect of Waldenses, or
Vaudois (otherwise the Poor Men of Lyons), which
— whether deriving from ancient dissent surviving in the
Vaux or Valleys of Piedmont,3 or taking its name and
character from the teaching of the Lyons merchant,
Peter Waldus, or an earlier Peter of Vaux or Valdis4 —
conforms substantially to the general heretical tendencies
of that age, in that it rejected the Papal authority,
stipulated for poverty on the part of priests and denied
their special status, opposed prayers for the dead, and
preached peace and non-resistance. Manicheans and
non-Manichean Albigenses and Waldenses were on all
fours for the Church, as opponents of its claims. A first
attempt made by Pope Innocent III to force the people
of Orvieto to take an oath of fidelity, in the year 1199,
ended in the killing of his representative by the people.*
The Papacy accordingly laid plans to destroy the enemy
at its centre of propagation.

1 De Potter, vi, 23.
-Id., p. 26.

3 Cp. Mosheim, Cent. XII, P. II, c. v, § n, and notes in Reid's ed. ;
Monastier, Hist. of the Vaudois Church, Eng. tr.r 1S4S, pp. 12-29; Faber,
The Ancient Vallcnses and Albigenses, pp. 28, 2S4, etc. As Vigilantius took
refuge in the Cottian Alps, his doctrine may have survived there, as argued
by Monastier (p. 10) and Faber (p. 290). The influence of Claudius of
Turin, as they further contend, might also come into play. On the whole
subject see Gieseler, Per. Ill, Div. iii, J 88.

4 Cp. Mosheim with Faber, 13. Ill, cc. 3, S, and Monastier, pp. 53-82.

5 De Potter, vi, 28.

210 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

§6.

In Provence and Languedoc, the scene of the first
great Papal crusade against anti-clerical heresy, there
were represented all the then existing forces of popular
Freethought; and the motives of the crusade were equally
typical of the cause of authority.

1. In addition to the Paulician and other movements
of religious rationalism above noted, the Languedoc region
was a centre of semi-popular literary culture, which was
to no small extent anti-clerical, and by consequence
somewhat anti-religious. The Latin-speaking jongleurs
or minstrels, known as Goliards,1 possessing as they did a
clerical culture, were by their way of life committed to a
joyous rather than an ascetic philosophy ; and though
given to blending the language of devotion with that of
the drinking-table, very much after the fashion of Hafiz,
they were capable of burlesquing the mass, the creed,
hymns to the Virgin, the Lord's Prayer, confessions, and
parts of the Gospels.2 Denounced by some of the
stricter clergy, they were protected by others. They
were in fact the minstrels of the free-living churchmen.3

2. A kindred spirit is seen in much of the verse alike
of the northern Trouveres and the southern Troubadours.
A modern Catholic historian of mediaeval literature com-
plains that their compositions " abound with the severest
ridicule of such persons and of such things as, in the
temper of the age, were highly estimated and most
generally revered," and notes that in consequence they
were ranked by the devout as " lewd and impious
libertines".4 In particular they satirised the practice of

1 Bartoli, St<ria delta Lfttcvatura Italiana, 1878, p. 262, note, also his
/ Pri "I i: del Rinascimento, 1877, p. 37. In this section and in the next
chapter I am indebted for various clues to the Rev. John Owen's Skeptics
of the Italian Rtnaissance. As to the Goliards generally, see that work,
pp. 38-45 ; Bartoli, Storia, cap. viii ; and Gebhart, Lo Origines it la Renais-
sanseen Italic, 1879, pp. 125-G.

2 Bartoli, Storia, pp. 271-9. Cp. Schlegel's note to Mosheim, Reid's
ed., p. 332, following Ratherius , Gebhart, as cited.

1 ited, pp. 43, 45 ; Bartoli, Storia, i, 293.
1 R« ■■. fi eph I n, Literary History oj the Middle Ages, ed. 1846,

p. 229. Cp. Owen, p. 4J

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 211

■excommunication and the use made by the Church of
Hell and Purgatory as sources of revenue.1 Their anti-
clerical poetry having been as far as possible destroyed
by the Inquisition, its character has to be partly inferred
from the remains of the northern trouveres, — e.g., Ruteboeuf
and Raoul de Houdan, of whom the former wrote a Voye
de Paradis, in which Sloth is a canon and Pride a bishop,
both on their way to heaven ; while Raoul has a Songe
d'enfer in which Hell is treated in a spirit of the most
audacious burlesque.2 The Provencal literature, further,
was much influenced by the culture of the Saracens,3 who
held Sicily and Calabria in the ninth and tenth centuries,
and had held part of Languedoc itself for a few years
in the eighth. On the passing of the duchy of Pro-
vence to Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, at
the end of the eleventh century, not only were the
half- Saracenised Catalans mixed with the Provencals,
but Raymond and his successors freely introduced the
arts and science of the Saracens into their dominion.4 In
the Norman kingdom of Sicily, too, the Saracen influence
was great even before the time of Frederic II ; and thence
it reached through Italy to Provence,5 carrying with it
everywhere, by way of poetry, an element of anti-clerical
and even anti-Christian rationalism.6 And though this
spirit was not that of the cathari and Waldenses, yet the
fact that the latter strongly condemned the Crusades7
was a point in common between them and the sympathisers
with Saracen culture. And as the tolerant Saracen
schools of Spain were in that age resorted to by the youth
of all the countries of Western Europe for scientific

1 Owen, p. 43 ; Bartoli, Storia, p. 295, as to the French fabliaux.

2 Labitte, La divine comedie avant Dante, in Charpentier ed. of Dante,

PP- 133-4-

■ Sismondi, Literatim <>1 Southern Europe, Eng. tr., i, 7-1-95.

4 Sismondi, as cited, p, 70.

b Zeller, Histoire d' Italic, 1853, p. 152.

c " The Troubadours in truth were freethinkers" (Owen, Italian Skef
p. 48)

1 Heeren, Rssai sur V influence da Cioisad.s, 1S0S, p, 174, nott Owen,
Italian Skeptics, p. 44, note.

P _'

212 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

teaching1 — all the latest medical and most other scientific
knowledge being in their hands — the influence of such
culture must have been peculiarly strong in Provence."

3. The medieval mystery-plays and moralities, already
common in Provence, mixed at times with the normal
irreverence of illiterate faith3 a vein of surprisingly pro-
nounced skeptical criticism,4 which at the least was a
stimulus to critical thought among the auditors, even if
they were supposed to take it as merely dramatic. Inas-
much as the drama was hereditarily Pagan, and had been
continually denounced and ostracised by Fathers and
Councils,5 it would be natural that its practitioners, even
when in the service of the Church, should be unbelievers.

4. The philosophy and science of both the Arabs and
the Spanish Jews were specially cultivated in the Provence
territory. The college of Montpellier practised on Arab
lines medicine, botany, and mathematics ; and the Jews,
who had been driven from Spain by the Almohades, had
flourishing schools at Xarbonne, Beziers, Nimes, and
Carcassonne, as well as Montpellier, and spread alike the
philosophy of Averroes and the semi-rational theology of
Maimonides.8

For the rest, every one of the new literary influences
that were assailing the Church would tend to flourish in
such a civilisation as that of Languedoc, which had been
peaceful and prosperous for over two hundred years. Its
probable lack of military strength may have been one of
the inducements to Innocent III, a zealous assertor of

1 Sismondi, as cited, p. 82; Owen, pp. 66, 68; Mosheim, Cent. XI,
Pt. II, ch. i, $4; XII, Ft. II, ch. i, $ 9, and Keid's note to $ 8 ; Hampden,

mpton Lectures, p. 446. The familiar record that Gerbert, afterwards
Pope Sylvester II, studied in Spain among the Arabs (Ueberweg, i, 369),
has of late years been called in question (Ueberweg, p. 430; Poole,
Illustrations, p. 88) ; but its very currency depended on the commonness of
such a proceeding in his age.

- Sismondi, p 83.

G II Lewes, The Spanish Drama, 1846, pp. 11-14; Littre, Etudes
mr les bar! arcs et k moyen age, $e edit. p. 356.

4 See the passages cited by Mr. Owen, p. 58.
I p Bartoli, Storia, pp. 200-2.

6 Gebhart, Lcs Origines de la Renaissance, pp. 4, 17, Renan, Averrols et
i'Aieriuisme, pp. 145, 183, 185.

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 2IJ

the Papal power,1 to attack it in preference to other and
remote centres of enmity. In the first year of his
pontificate, 1198, he commenced an Inquisition2 in the
doomed region ; and in the year 1207, when as much
persecution had been accomplished as the lax faith of the
nobility and many of the bishops would consent to, the
scheme of a crusade against the dominions of Raymond
Count of Toulouse was conceived. The alternate weak-
ness and obstinacy of Raymond, and the fresh provocation
given by the murder of the arrogant papal legate, per-
mitted the success of the scheme in such hands. The
crusade was planned exactly on the conditions of those
against the Saracens— the heretics at home being declared
far worse than they.3 The crusaders were freed from
pavment of interest on their debts, exempted from the
jurisdiction of all law courts, and absolved from all their
sins past or future.4 To earn this reward they were to
give only forty days' service — a trifle in comparison with
the hardships of the crusades to Palestine. " Never
therefore had the cross been taken up with a more
unanimous consent."5 Bishops and nobles in Burgundy
and France, the English Simon de Montfort, the Abbot
of Citeaux, and the Bernardine monks throughout Europe,
combined in the cause. The result was such a campaign
of crime and massacre as European history cannot match.6
Despite the abject submission of the Count of Toulouse
and the efforts of his nephew the Count of Albi to make

1 As to this Pope's character compare Sismondi, Hist, of the Crusades
against the Albigenses (Eng. tr. from vols, vi and vii of his Histoire des
Franqais) p. 10; Hallam, Europe during the Middle Ages, nth ed., ii, 198;
Mosheim, Cent. XIII, l't. II, c. ii, \\ 6-8.

3 As to previous acts of inquisition and persecutiou by Pope Alexander
III, see Llorente, Hist. Crit. de V Inquisition en Espa^nc, French trans., 2eedit.,
i, J7-30. Cp. Gieseler, Per. Ill, Div. iii, § 89 (Amer. ed. ii, 5

8 Sismondi, Crusades against the Albigenses, p. 21.

4 On the history of indulgences, see Lea, History of the Inquisition, i.
41-47. For later developments cp. his Studies in Church History, 1S69.
p. 450; Vieusseux, History of Switzerland, 1840, pp. 121, 125.

* Sismondi, Crusades, p. 23.

,; For a modern Catholic defence of the whole proceedings, see the
Comte de Montalembert's Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie, 1 je edit,
intr., pp. 35-40.

214 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

terms, village after village was fired, all heretics caught
were burned, and on the capture of the city and castle of
Carcassone every man, woman, and child within the walls
was slaughtered, many of them in the churches, whither
they had run for refuge. The legate, Arnold, abbot of
Citeaux, being asked at an early stage how the heretics
were to be distinguished from the faithful, gave the never-
to-be-forgotten answer, " Kill all, God will know his
own".1 Seven thousand dead bodies were counted in the
great church of St. Mary Magdalene. The legate
in writing estimated the total quarry at 15,000 ; others
put the number at sixty thousand.2 Systematic treachery,
authorised and prescribed by the Pope,3 completed the
success of the undertaking. The Church had succeeded,
in the name of religion, in bringing half of Europe to the
attainment of the ideal height of wickedness, in that it
had learned to make evil its good ; and the Papacy had
on the whole come nearer to destroying the moral sense
of all Christendom1 than any conceivable combination of
other causes could ever have done in any age.

The first crusade was followed by others, in which
Simon de Montfort reached the maximum of massacre,
varying his procedure by tearing out eyes and cutting off
noses when he was not hanging victims by dozens or
burning them by scores or putting them to the sword by
hundreds5 (all being done "with the utmost joy");8
though the " White Company" organised by the Bishop
of Toulouse7 maintained a close rivalry. The Church's

1 Sismondi, Crusades, p. 35, and refs.

2 Id., p. 37, and refs.

Id., pp. 21, 41. Cp. p. 85 as to later treachery towards Saracens;
and p. 123 as to the deeds <>f the Bishop of Toulouse. See again pp. 140-2
as to the massacre of Marmande.

1 As to the international character of the crusade, see Sismondi,
Crusades, p, 53. It was the Pope, finally, who first faltered, when " the
whole of Christendom demanded the renewal of those scenes of massacre "
(/./ , p. 95). The bishops assembled in council at Lavaur, in 1213,
demanded the extermination of the entire populaton oi Toulouse. On the
rrn - eneral, cp. Lea, // the Inquisition, B. i, c. 4 ; Gieseler,

Per in. i>iv iii, { ■

5 Sismondi, p. O2, ff. ' Pp. 77, 78. 1 Pp. 74, 75.

CHRISTENDOM IX THE MIDDLE AGES. 215

great difficulty was that as soon as an army had bought its
plenary indulgence for all possible sin by forty days'
service it disbanded. Nevertheless, "the greater part of
the population of the countries where heresy had pre-
vailed was exterminated".1 Organised Christianity had
contrived to murder the civilisation of Provence and
Languedoc while the fanatics of Islam in their compara-
tively bloodless manner were doing as much for that of
Moorish Spain. It was owing to no lack of the principle
of evil in the Christian system, but simply to the much
greater and more uncontrollable diversity of the political
elements of Christendom, that the whole culture and
intelligence of Europe did not undergo the same fate.
The dissensions and mutual injuries of the crusaders
ultimately defeated their ideal ;' after Simon de Montfort
had died in the odour of sanctity3 the crusade of
Louis VIII of France in 1226 seems to have been essen-
tially one of conquest, there being practically no heretics
left ; and the disasters of the expedition, crowned by the
king's death, took away the old prestige of the movement.
Meanwhile, the heresy of the Albigenses, and kindred
ideas, had been effectually driven into other parts of
Europe ; 4 and about 1231 we find Gregory IX burning a
multitude of them at the gates of the church of Santa
Maria Majora in Rome,5 and compassing their slaughter
in France and Germany.6 The political heterogeneity of
Europe, happily, made heresy indestructible.

1 P. 87. "The worship of the reformed Albigenses had everywhere
ceased" (p. 115)- Cp. p. 116 as to the completeness of the final massacres.
It is estimated (Monastier. p. 115, following De la Mothe-Langon) that a
million Albigenses were slain in the first halt of the thirteenth century.
The figures are of course speculative.

- Id., pp. 115, 117 :i P- 13.V i Id< PP- 235-9-

5 Id., p. 236 ; Llorente, as cited, i, 60-G4.

6 Matthew Paris records that in 124c) four hundred and forty-three
heretics were burned in Saxony and Pomerania. Previously multitudes
had been burned by the inquisitor Conrad, who was himself finally
murdered in revenge. He was the confessor of Saint Elizabeth of
Hungary, and he taught her among other things, " Be merciful to your
neighbor," and " Do to others whatsoever you would that they should
do to you ". See his praises recorded by Montalembert, as cited, vol. i„
ch. 10. Cp. Gieselcr, Per. Ill, l>iv iii. \ 8g (ii, 567).

2l6 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

§7-

Despite the premium put by the Church on devotion
to its cause and doctrine, and despite its success in
strangling specific forms of heresy, hostility to its own
pretensions germinated everywhere,1 especially in the
countries most alien to Italy in language and civilisation.
Its own economic conditions, constantly turning its priest-
hood, despite all precautions, into a moneyed and wealth-
seeking class, ensured it a perpetuity of ill-will and
denunciation. The popular literature which now began
to grow throughout Christendom with the spread of
political order was everywhere turned to the account of
anti-clerical satire; and only the defect of real knowledge
secured by the Church's own policy prevented such
hostility from developing into rational unbelief.

It is somewhat of a straining of the facts to say of the
humorous tale of Reynard the Fox, so widely popular in the
thirteenth century, that it is essentially anti-clerical to the
extent that " Reynard is laic ; Isengrim [the wolf] is clerical "
(Bartoli, Storia delta Lctteratura Italiana, i, 307 ; cp. Owen,
Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 44). The Reynard epic, in
origin a simple humorous animal-story, had various later
forms. Some of these, as the Latin poem, and especially the
version attributed to Peter of St. Cloud, were markedly anti-
clerical, the latter exhibiting a 'spirit of all-round profanity
hardly compatible with belief (cp. Gervinus, Geschichte der
deutschen Dichtung, 5te Ausg. i, 227-8; Gebhart, Les Origines de
la Renais. en Italie, 1879, p. 39) ; but the version current in the
Netherlands, which was later rendered into English prose by
Caxton, is of a very different character (Gervinus, S. 229, ff.).
In Caxton's version it is impossible to regard Reynard as laic
and Isengrim as clerical ; though in the Latin and other
versions the wolf figures as monk or abbot. (See also the
various shorter satires published by Grimm in his Reinhurt
I uchs, 1834.) Sometimes the authorship is itself clerical, one
party or order satirising another; sometimes the spirit is
religious, sometimes markedly irreverent. (Gervinus, S.
214-221.) The anti-clerical tendency was strongest in France,
where in the thirteenth century lay scholarship stood highest.

1 Il.il!.im, Middle Ages, nth ed., ii, 218 ; Lea, History of the Inquisition, i,
5-34 ; Gieseler, $ 90 (ii, 572).

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 2\J

In the reign of Philippe le Bel (end of 13th c.) was composed
the poem Fauvel, by Francois de Rues, which is a direct
attack on pope and clergy (Saintsbury, Short Hist, of French
Lit., 1S82, p. 57). But the remark that the Roman de la Rose
is a "popular satire on the beliefs of Romanism" (Owen,
p. 44) can hardly be taken without qualification. The Roman
is rather an intellectual expression of the literary reaction
against asceticism (cp. Bartoli, p. 319, quoting Lenient) which
had been spontaneously begun by the Goliards and Troubadours.
At the same time this lengthy poem, one of the most popular
books in Europe for two hundred years, does stand for the
new secular spirit alike in "its ingrained religion and its
nascent freethought " (Saintsbury, p. 87) ; and with the
Reynard epic it may be taken as representing the beginning of
" a whole revolution, the resurgence and affirmation of the
laity, the new force which is to transform the world, against
the Church " (Bartoli, Storia, i, 308 ; Cp. Demogeot, Hist, de la
litt. Fr., 5e 6d., pp. 130-1, 157 ; Lanson, pp. 132-6). The semi-
irreligious cynicism of Jean de Meung's part of the work (Cp.
the pseudo-Chaucerian English version, Bell's ed. of Chaucer,
1878, passage in vol. iv, p. 230) and the frequent flings at the
clergy, were sufficient to draw upon it the anger of the church
(Sismondi, Lit. of Southern Europe, i, 216).

For lack of other culture than Biblical, the popular
heresy tended to run into mysticisms which were only so
far more rational than the dogmas and rites of the Church
that they stood for some actual reflection. The sect of
the Brethren of the Free Spirit, however (apparently that
known in France by the names of Turlupins and Beguins,
and in Germany and Belgium as Bcguttac or Beghards1),
developed a pantheism which suggests some contact with
the philosophical thought2 then being introduced from
Saracen Spain. As usual, the profession of spiritual
freedom carried with it a measure of antinomianism, thus
strengthening the hands of the Church against it. The
Brethren, however, had a sacred book of their own. The
Nine Rocks, and in virtue of their doctrine of individual

1 Mosheim, Cent XIII, Pt. II, c. ii, §} 40-43, and notes; c, v, $9.
Various other names were given.

2 Gieseler (Per. Ill, Div. iii, § 90 ; Amer. ed. 1865, ii. 590) holds that
the Brethren derived their doctrine from that of Amalrich of Bena (see
below, p. 222).

2l8 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

inspiration and sanctification1 were persistent and dan-
gerous enemies to the priesthood. Concurrently, at the
beginning of the century, the Eternal Gospel of the Abbot
Joachim, of Flora in Calabria, expressed a spirit of innova-
tion2 and revolt that seemed to promise the utter dis-
ruption of the Church. Adopted by the " Spiritual "
section of the Franciscans, it brought heresy within the
organisation itself, as did the movement of the ultra-
Franciscan Fraticelli, who had their Gospel of the Holy
Spirit, composed by John of Parma.3 The old cohesive
and political force of the central system, nevertheless, and
the natural strifes of the new movements, whether within
or without4 the Church, sufficed to bring about their
absorption or their destruction. It needed a special
concurrence of economic, political, and culture forces to
disrupt the fabric of the Papacy.

The Church, too, spontaneously evolved measures of
protection calculated to bring some of the main forces of
disaffection round to its own side. The great orders of
Mendicant Friars, the special feature of thirteenth century
Christianity, realised the impulse of conscientious believers to
disarm criticism of priestly avarice and worldliness by creating a
priesthood of poverty. Nothing availed more to restore and
preserve the Church's prestige. Yet the descent of the new
orders to the economic level of the old was only a question of
time. The corporate life carried with it the power to amass
wealth by donations or bequests ; and the party within any
( )rder willing to amass, soon overbore those who refused.
The Humiliaii, founded before the thirteenth century, had to be
suppressed by the Pope in the sixteenth, for sheer corruption
of morals. The Franciscans, vowed to poverty, soon obeyed

1 A full account of their tenets is given by Mosheim, Cent. XIII,
Pt. II, c. v, $$ 9-1 1, and notes.

2 It asserted a new dispensation, that of the Holy Spirit, superseding the
Christian. The Introduction to the hook, produced about the middle of the

tury by the Franciscan Gerhard, made St. Francis the angel of
Rev. xiv, 6; and the ministers of the new order were to be his friars.
Mosheim, Cent. XIII, Pt. II, c. ii, $$ 33-36 and notes. Cp. Lea, History of
the Inqui \ition, iii, 1 '(-24.

• 1 eberweg, i, 431 ; Mosheim, Cent. XIII, Pt. II, c. ii, §$ 39, 40.

4 As to the external movements connected with Joachim's Gospel, see
Moshe m, sect, last cited, c. v, $$ 13-15- They were put down by sheer
ted. Cp. (Jeberweg, i, 431 ; Lea, Hist. o/Inq., pp. 25-6, 8G.

CHRISTENDOM IX THE MIDDLE AGES. 2ig

the economic law ; and when the Spiritual section resisted the
demoralisation, the other had the support of the Popes against
them. Thus even in the thirteenth century they were
attacked by the Sorbonne doctor, William of St. Amour, in a
book on The Perils of the Latter Times (praised in the Roman de la
Rose, Eng. ed. cited, p. 228) ; and in England in the fourteenth
century we find Wiclif assailing the begging friars as the
earlier satirists had assailed the abbots and monks. The
worst of the trouble for the Church was that the mendicants
were detested by bishops and the regular priests, whose
credit they undermined, and whose revenues they intercepted.
That the Franciscans and Dominicans remained socially
powerful till the Reformation was due to the energy developed
by their corporate organisation and the measure of education
they soon secured on their own behalf. (Cp. Mosheim,
Cent. XIII, Pt. II, c. ii, §5 18-40; Hallam, Europe in the Middle
Ages, ch. vii, pt. 2 (nth ed., ii, 305 ff.) ; Gebhart, Les Origines
de la Renaissance, p. 42 ; Berington, Lit. Hist, of the Middle Ages,
p. 244; Lea, Hist, of Inq., B. iii, c. 1.) The special work of the
Dominicans was the establishment everywhere of the Inquisition
(Mosheim, as last cited, c. v. §§ 3-6, and notes; Llorente,
Hist. Crit. dc I'lnquis. en Espagne, as cited, i, 49-55, 68, etc.).

§8.

The indestructibility of Freethought, meanwhile, was
being proved in the philosophic schools. Already in the
ninth century we have seen Scotus Erigena putting the
faith in jeopardy by his philosophic defence of it. In the
eleventh century, the simple fact of the production of a
new argument for the existence of God by Anselm, arch-
bishop of Canterbury, is a proof that, apart from the
published disputes, a measure of doubt had arisen in the
schools.

It is urged (Poole, Illustr. of the Hist, of Medieval Thought,
pp. 104-5) that though the argumentation of Anselm seems
alien to the thought of his time, there is no proof that the
idea of proving the existence of God was in any way pressed
on him from the outside. It is, however, inconceivable that
such an argument should be framed if no one had raised a
doubt. And as a matter of fact the question icas discussed in
the schools, Ansehn's treatise being a reproduction of his
teaching. The monks of Bee, where he taught, urged him to-

220 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

write a treatise wherein nothing should be proved by mere
authority, but all by necessity of reason or evidence of truth,
and with an eye to objections of all sorts (Pncfatic in
Monologium). It is further on record that in the twelfth
century, John of Salisbury put in his list of "things about
which a wise man may doubt, so ... . that the doubt extend
not to the multitude," some " things which are reverently to be
enquired about God himself" (Poole, p. 223). Further, the
nature of part of Anselm's argument, and the very able but
friendly reply of Gaunilo (a Count of Montigni, who entered a
convent near Tours, 1044-1083) shows that the subject wa
within the range of private discussion. Anselm substantially
follows St. Augustine (Ueberweg, i, 381) ; and men cannot
have read the ancient books which so often spoke of atheism
without confronting the atheistic idea. It is not to be supposed
that Gaunilo was an unbeliever ; but his argumentation is that of a
man who had pondered the problem. (See it in Ueberweg, i,
384-5 ; cp. Ch. de Remusat, Saint Anselme, 1853, pp. 61-2 ; Dean
Church, Saint Anselm, ed. 1888, pp. 86-7). As to previous uses
of Anselm's argument cp. Poole, Illustrations, p. 338, ff.

Despite the ostensibly rationalistic nature of his
argument, however, Anselm stipulated for absolute sub-
mission of the intellect to the creed of the Church;1 so
that the original sub-title of his Proslogium, Fides quaerens
intellectum, in no way admits rational tests. In the next
century Abailard takes up the more advanced position
that reason must prepare the way for faith, since otherwise
faith has no certitude.2 He, however, was in the main
di pendent on the authority either of Aristotle3 or of the
Scriptures, though he partly sets aside that of the
Fathers.4 When St. Bernard accused him of Arianism
and of heathenism lie was expressing personal ill-will
rather than criticising. Abailard himself complained that
many heresies were current in his time;5 and as a matter
o\ fact "more intrepid virus than his were promulgated
without risk by a multitude of less conspicuous masters".0

1 ' ■ rweg, i, 379-380. '-' Ueberweg, i. 387.

•'' S' <• < it Iwm 1 ' tie in L'eln.'rwi'g, i, 391.

* Ueberweg, i. 394-5.
Hampden, I lamptoo Le< tures, pp 1 20-1.

' ' ' ' '"'■ 1 '75-

CHRISTENDOM IX THE MIDDLE AGES. 221

For instance, Bernard Sylvester (of Chartres) in his
cosmology, treated theological considerations with open
disrespect1; and William of Conches, who held a similar
tone on physics,2 taught, until threatened with punishment,
that the Holy Ghost and the universal Soul were con-
vertible terms.3 If, as is said, Abailard wrote that " a
doctrine is believed not because God has said it but
because we are convinced by reason that it is so ",4 he
went as far on one line as any theologian of his time ; but
his main service to freethought seems to have lain in the
great stimulus he gave to the practice of reasoning on all
topics. His enemy, St. Bernard, on the contrary, gave
an "immense impulse to the growth of a genuinely
superstitious spirit among the Latin clergy".5

The worse side of scholasticism at all times was that it
was more often than not a mere logical expatiation in
vacuo ; this for sheer lack of real knowledge. John of
Salisbury probably did not do injustice to the habit of
verbiage it developed.6 With him begins some measure
of a new life, introduced into philosophy through the
communication of Aristotle to the western world by the
Saracens, largely through the mediation of the Jews.7
The latter, in their free life under the earlier Moorish
toleration, had developed something in the nature of a
school of philosophy, in which the Judaic Platonism set
up by Philo of Alexandria in the first century was blended
with the Aristotelianism of the Arabs. As early as the
eighth and ninth centuries, anti-Talmudic (the Karaites)
and pro-Talmudic parties professed alike to appeal to
reason;8 and in the twelfth century the mere production

1 Id. pp. 1 17-123, 169. • Ueberweg, i, 39S.

3 Poole, p. 173. 4 Id. p. 153.

5 Id. p. 161. Contrast the singularly laudatory account of St. Bernard
given by two contemporary Positivists, Mr. Cotter Morrison in his /
and Times of St. Bernard ; and Mr. F. Harrison in his essay on that work in
his Choice 0/ Boohs.

6 Cp. Poole, pp. 220-2, and the extracts of Hampden, pp. 43S-443.

7 Ueberweg, i, 419, 430 ; Hampden, p. 443, ft". John of Salisbury tells
of having heard many discourse on physics ahter qitam fides habe.tt.
Hampden, p. 443. Cp. Renan, Avenues, Pt. ii, c. i, p. 173.

8 Ueberweg, i, 41S.

222 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

of the Guide of the Doubting by the celebrated Moses
Maimonides tells of a good deal of practical rationalism,
of which, however, there is no direct literary result, save
of a theosophic kind. The doctrine which makes Aristotle
a practical support to rationalism, and which was adopted
by the Motazilites of Islam — the eternity of matter — was
rejected by Maimonides, on Biblical grounds; though his
attempts to rationalise Biblical doctrine made him odious
to the orthodox Jews, some of whom, in France, did not
scruple to call in the aid of the Christian inquisition
against his partisans.1

The habit of debating for debating's sake made it
possible that in the schools the new influence of Aristotle
and Averroes should go far without seriously affecting
doctrine, belief, or life.2 Some teachers, as Amalrich of
Bena (end of 12th c.) and his pupil David of Diuant,
under the Arabic influence, taught a pantheism akin to
that noted as flourishing among the Brethren of the Free
Spirit ;J and this seems likewise to have been the creed
of many of the Franciscan Fraticelli. But the Church
promptly put a veto on the study of Aristotle and his
commentators at Paris, interdicting first the Physics and
soon after the Metaphysics;* and this held until 1237.
From the time of the adoption of Aristotle by the Church,
and his establishment on a canonical footing in the
theological system of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), scholas-
ticism counts for little in the liberation of European life
from either dogma or superstition.5 The practically
progressive forces are to be looked for outside. In the
thirteenth century in England we find the Franciscan
friars in the school of Robsrt Grosstete at Oxford dis-
cussing the question "Whether there be a God?"6 but

1 1 Feberweg, i, ;

2 The description by Mr. Lecky (Rationalism in Europe, ed. 1SS7, i, 48)
r,f l" and iIh' Aral, philosophy in general as a " stern and uncom-

mising infidelity" is hopelessly astray.

I" rweg, i, 388, .| ,1
1 Poole, p. 225 Uel , i, 431.

'■ Cp 1 Sebhart, Les Origines de la Renaissance, pp. 29- 1 ;
■ton, Lit. Hist, of the Middle Ages, p. .'45.

CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 223

such a dispute was an academic exercise like another ;
and in any case the authorities could be trusted to see
that it came to nothing.

We shall perhaps best understand the inner life of the
schools in the Middle Ages by likening it to that of the
universities of our own day, where there is unquestionably
much unbelief among teachers and taught, but where the
economic and other pressure of the institution suffices to
preserve an outward acquiescence. In the Middle Ages
it was much less possible than in our da}' for the un-
believer to strike out a free course of life and doctrine for
himself. If then to-day the scholarly class is in large
measure tied to institutions and conformities, much more
so was it then. The cloister was almost the sole haven
of refuge for studious spirits, and to enjoy the haven they
had to accept the discipline and the profession of faith.
We may conclude, accordingly, that such works as
Abailard's Sic ct Xon, setting forth opposed views of so
many problems, stood for and made for a great deal of quiet
scepticism ; that the remarkable request of the monks of
Bee for a ratiocinative teaching, which should meet
even extravagant objections, covered a good deal of
resigned unfaith ; and that in the Franciscan schools at
Oxford the disputants were not all at heart orthodox.1
15 ut the unspoken and unwritten word died, the liter a
scripta being solely those of faith, and liberation had to
come from without. Even when a bold saying won
general currency — as that of King Alfonso the Wise of
Castile (1223-1284), that " if he had been of God's council
when he made the world he could have advised him
better", it did but crystallise scepticism in a jest, and
supply the enemy with a text against impiety.

1 Cp. Lange, i, 218, as to the phrnses of the Paris scholastics in the
13th c. : "Nothing more can be known because of the science of theology."
" The Christian religion prevents us from learning anything more.''

CHAPTER X.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE.

What is called the Renaissance was, broadly speaking, an
evolution of the culture forces seen at work in the later
"Middle Ages", reinforced by the recovery of classic
literature. Renascent Italy is, after ancient Greece, the
great historical illustration of the sociological law that the
higher civilisations arise through the passing-on of seeds
of culture from older to newer societies, under conditions
that specially foster them and give them freer growth.
The straitened and archaic Byzantine art, unprogressive
in the hidebound life of the Eastern Empire, developed in
the free and striving Italian communities till it paralleled
the sculpture of ancient Greece ; and it is to be said for
the Church that, however she might stiile rational thought,
she elicited the arts of painting and architecture (statuary
being tabooed as too much associated with Pagan
worships), even as Greek religion had promoted archi-
tecture and sculpture. In virtue, however, of the tendency
of the arts to keep religion anthropomorphic where deeper
culture is lacking, popular belief in Renaissance Italy was
substantially on a par with that of polytheistic Greece.

1 lefore the general recovery of ancient literature, the
main motives to rationalism, apart from the tendency of
the Aristotelian philosophy to set up doubts about creation
and Providence and a future state, were (i) the spectacle
of the competing creed of Islam,1 made known to the
Italians first by intercourse with the Moors, later by the
( Crusades ; and further and more fully by the Saracenised
culture of Sicily and commercial intercourse with the

1 Cp. Renan, Averrols, pp. 2S0-2, 295.
( 224 )

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 225

East ; (2) the spectacle of the strife of creeds within '
Christendom ; and (3) the spectacle of the worldliness and
moral insincerity of the bulk of the clergy. The first clear
traces of rational unbelief appear in the thirteenth century
when the Emperor Frederic II had the repute of being an
infidel" in the double sense of being semi-Moslem3 and
semi-atheist. He was in reality superstitious enough ;
he worshipped relics ; and he was nearly as merciless as
the Popes to rebellious heretics and Manicheans ; but he
is recorded to have ridiculed the doctrine of the Virgin
Birth, the viaticum, and other dogmas, " as being
repugnant to reason and to nature";4 and his general
hostility to the Pope would tend to make him a bad
Churchman. Of his son Manfred it is recorded that he
was a thorough Epicurean, believing neither in God nor
the saints.5 But positive unbelief in a future state,
mockery of the Christian religion, and even denial of
Deity — usually in private, and never in writing — are fre-
quently complained of by the clerical writers of the time
in France and Italy.6

The commonest form of rationalistic heresy seems to
have been unbelief in immortality. Thus Dante in the
Inferno estimates that among the heretics there are more
than a thousand followers of Epicurus, " who make the
soul die with the body,"7 specifying among them the

1 Cp. Burckhardt, Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1S92,
pp. 490, 492.

2 He was currently believed to have written a treatise dealing with
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed as The Thru Impostors. The story is certainly
a myth ; and probably no such book existed in his century. Cp. Maclaine's
note to Mosheim, Cent. XIII, Pt. I, end; Renan, Averrols, pp. 280-1, 295.

3 The Moslems were inclined to regard him as of their creed " because
educated in Sicily". Cantu, Gli Eretici d' Italia, i, 66.

4 Cantu, Gli Eretici d' Italia, i, 65-66 ; Renan, Averrols, pp. 2S7-291, 296.
3 G. Villani, I stone fiorentine, vi, 46.

,; Mosheim, Cent. XIII, I't. I, c. ii, j 2, citing in particular Moneta's
Summa contra Catharos et Valdenses, lib. cc. 4, 11, 15; Tempier (bishop
of Paris), Indiculum Errorum (1272) in the Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima, t. \\\ .
Bulaeus, Hist. Acad. I'ans, iii, 433. Cp. Renan, Averroes, pp. 230-1, citing
William of Auvergne, and pp. 283, 2S5 ; Ozanam, Dante, pp. 47, 48 ;
Gebhart, Les Origines de la Rtnaissanct en Italic, pp. 79-81 ; Lange, i, _.

7 Inferno, Canto x, 14-15, 118.

226 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Emperor Frederic II, a cardinal,1 the Ghibelline noble
Farinata degli Uberti, and the Guelph Cavalcante Caval-
canti.2 He was thinking, as usual, of the men of his own
age ; but the world of Dante is so distinctly that of the
Middle Ages that there is ground for the inference that
this particular heresy had existed in previous centuries,3
having indeed probably never disappeared from Italy.
Other passages in his works4 show, in any case, that it
was much discussed in his time ; and it is noteworthy
that, so far as open avowal went, Italian freethought had
got no further two hundred years later.5 Dante's own
poetic genius, indeed, did much to arrest intellectual
evolution in Italy on the side of belief. Before his time,
as we have seen, the trouveres of northern France and the
Goliards of the south had handled hell in a spirit of
burlesque ; and his own teacher, Brunetto Latini, had
framed a poetic allegory, II Tesoretto, in which Nature
figures as the universal power, behind which the God-idea
disappeared/' But Dante's tremendous vision effaced all
others of the kind ; and his intellectual predominance in
virtue of mere imaginative art is at once the great charac-
teristic and the great anomaly of the Renaissance.
Happily the profound malignity of his pietism was in large
part superseded by a sunnier spirit ; but his personality

1 Ottavio Ubaldini, d. 1273, of whom the commentators tell that he
said that if there were such a thing as a soul he had lost his for the cause
of the Ghibellines.

As to whom see Renan, Averrocs, p. 285, note; Gebhart, Renaissance,
p. 81. His son, also mentioned by Dante, was reputed an atheist
imerone, vi, 9). Hut see Owen, Skeptics 0/ the Ital. Renais., p. 138, note.
3 The chronicler Giovanni Villani (iv, 29) actually records that among
many other heretics in 11 15 and 1117 were some "of the sect of the
1 . who " with armed hand defended the said heresy" against

the rthodos I p Ozanam, Dante, 2e edit., pp. 47-48 to supposed secret
anti-< Christian societies.

1 In the Cottvito, ii, 9, he writes that "amongst all the bestialities, that

is the most foolish, the most vile, the most damnable, which believes no

other lifi to be after this life". Another passage (iv, 5) heaps curses on the

■olish and vile beasts . . . who presume to speak against our

Faith."

5 " 1 ■ le n'a eu aucune mauvaise pensee que le 13c n'ait cue

avant lui " (Renan, . ; |>. 2 ji).

• < p Labitte, La Divine Comedie avant Dante, as cited, p. 139.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 227

and his poetry helped to hold the balance of authority on
the side of faith.1 Within a few years of his death there
was burned (^1327) one of the most daring heretics of the
early Renaissance, Cecco d'Ascoli, a professor of
philosophy and astrology at Bologna, who, combining
anti-Christian opinion with the universal belief in astrology,
declared that Jesus lived as a sluggard (come tin poltrone)
with his disciples, and died on the cross, under the com-
pulsion of his star.2 Such audacity was not often repeated.
As against Dante, the great literary influence for
tolerance and liberalism if not rationalism of thought was
Boccaccio (1313 — 1375), whose Decameron3 reflects every
aspect of the Renaissance — its levity, its license, its
humor, its bantering anti-clericalism, its incipient
tolerance, its irreverence, its partial freethinking, as well
as its exuberance in the joy of living. The most significant
part of its contents, in the present connection, is the
famous story of The Three Rings,* embodied later by
Lessing in his Nathan the Wise as an apologue of tolerance.
Such a story, introduced with whatever parade of orthodox
faith, could not but make for rational scepticism, sum-
marising as it does the whole effect of the inevitable
comparison of the rival creeds made by the men of Italy
and those of the East in their intercourse. The story
itself, centring on Saladin, is of Eastern origin5 and so tells
of even more freethinking than meets the eye in the
history of Islam.6 Current in Italy before Boccaccio, it

1 As to an element of doubt, even in Dante, concerning Divine govern-
ment, see Burckhardt, p. 497. But the attempt made by some critics to
show that the " sins " to which Dante confessed had been intellectual — i.e.,
heresies — falls to the ground. See Dollinger, Studies in European History,
Eng. tr. 1890, pp. 87-90.

- G. Villani, x, 39. It is to be noted that the horoscope of Jesus was
cast by several professed believers, as Albertus Magnus and Pierre d'Ailli,
Cardinal and Bishop of Cambrai, as well as by Cardan. See Bayle, art.
Cardan, note Q.

3 Cp. Owen, pp. 128, 135-142; Hallam, Lit. Hist., i, 141-2.

4 Decani, (iior. i, now 3.

5 Dr. Marcus Landau, Die Qutllen des Dekamevon, 2te Anil. 1884, S [82.

c The story is recorded to have been current among the Motecallemin
— a party kindred to the Motizilites in Bagdad. Kenan, Averroes, p. 2 (4,
citing Dozy. Kenan thinks it may have been of Jewish origin. Id., note.

Q -

22S HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

had been improved from one Italian hand to another;1
and the main credit for its full development is Boccaccio's.2
The Church speedily scented the hostility in Boccaccio's
book, first denouncing it, then seeking to expurgate all
the anti-clerical passages ;;) and the personal pressure
brought to bear upon him had the effect of dispiriting and
puritanising him ; so that the Decameron finally wrought
its effect in its author's despite.4

Side by side with Boccaccio, his friend Petrarch
(1304 — 1374), who with him completes the great literary
trio of the early Italian Renaissance, belongs to Free-
thought in that he too, with less aggressiveness but also
without recoil, stood for independent culture and rational
habit of mind as against the dogmatics and tyrannies of
the Church.5 He was in the main a practical humanist,
out of sympathy with the verbalising scholastic philosophy
of his time, and disposed to find his intellectual guide in
the sceptical yet conservative Cicero. The scholastics
had become as fanatical for Aristotle or Averroes as the
churchmen were for their dogmas ; and Petrarch made
for mental freedom by resisting all dogmatisms alike."
The general liberality of his attitude has earned him the
titles of "the first modern man"7 and "the founder of

1 It is found some time before Boccaccio in the Cento Novelle antic/ie
(No. 72 or 73) in a simpler form ; but Landau (S. 183) thinks Boccaccio's
immediate source was the version of Busone da Gubbio (b. 12S0) who had
improved on the version in the Cento Novelle, while Boccaccio in turn
improved on him by treating the Jew more tolerantly. Bartoli (IPrecursoti
del B 1 .S76, pp. 26-28) disputes any immediate debt to Busone; as

. Mr ( >wen, Skeptics oftht Italian Renaissance, p. 29, note.

- Burckhardt [Renaissance in Italy, p. 493, note) points out that Boccaccio
is the first to name the Christian religion, his Italian predecessors avoiding
the idea; and that in one Eastern version the story is used polemically
against the Christians.

< '.sen, p. 142, and refs.

4 Id. pp. 143-5. He was even so far terrorised by a monk's menaces as
to pi give up his classical studies; and would have done so but

for Petrari h's persuasion. 1'etrarch's letter (Epist. Senil, i, 5) is translated
(Lett xii) by M. Develay, Lettres it Petrarqtu a lloccace.

i As to his anti-clericalism, cp. Gebhart, Qrigines de la Renaissance, p. 71,
and ref Owen, p 113,

the exposition of Mr. Owen, pp. 109-128, and refs. on p, 113.

7 Kenan, Aiertvls, p. 328.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 229

modern criticism"1 — both somewhat high-pitched.2 He
represented in reality the balancing and clarifying influence
of the revived classic culture on the fanaticisms developed
in the Middle Ages ; and when he argued for the rule of
reason in all things 3 it was not that he was a deeply
searching rationalist, but that he was spontaneously averse
to all the extremes of thought around him, and was
concerned to discredit them. For himself, having little
spaculative power, he was disposed to fall back on a
simple and tolerant Christianity. His judgment, like his
literary art, was clear and restrained ; opening no new
vistas, but bringing a steady and placid light to bear on
its chosen sphere.

From this time forward till the Catholic reaction after
the Reformation, a large measure of rationalistic and
anti-clerical thought is a constant feature in Italian life.
It was so ingrained that the Church had on the whole to
leave it alone. From Pope to monk, the mass of the
clergy had forfeited respect ; and gibes at their expense
were household words,4 and the basis of popular songs.
The popular poetic literature, with certain precautions,
carried the anti-clerical spirit as far as to parade a
humorous non-literary scepticism, putting in the mouths
of the questionable characters in its romances all manner
of anti-religious opinions which it would be unsafe to print
as one's own, but which in this way reached appreciative

1 Mezieres, Petrarque, 1868, p. 362.

- It is to be noted that in his opposition to the scholastics he had pre-
decessors. Cp. Gebhart, Origines de la Renaissance en Italie, p. 65 ; and ref.
to John of Salisbury above, p. 221.

< Kven, p. 113. It is to be remembered that Dante also (Convito, ii, 8.
9 ; iii, 14 ; iv, 7) exalts Reason ; but he uses the word in the old sense of
mere mentality — the thinking as distinguished from the sensuous element
in man ; and he was fierce against all resort to reason as against faith.
Petrarch was of course much more of a rationalist. As to his philosophic
scepticism, see Owen, p. 120. He drew the line only at doubting those
things " in which doubt is sacrilege". Nevertheless he grounded his belief
in immortality not on the Christian creed but on the arguments of the
Pagans (Burckhardt, p. 546).

4 Cp. Gebhart, Renaissance en Italie, pp. 72-3 ; Burckhardt, pp. 458-465 ;
Lea, History of the Inquisition, i, 5-34. " The authors of the most scandalous
satires were themselves mostly monks or beneficed priests." (Burck-
hardt, p. 465 )

230 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

readers who were more or less in sympathy with the
author's sentiments and stratagems. The Morgantc
Maggiore of Pulci (1488) is the great type of such early
Voltairean humor : ' it revives the spirit of the Goliards,
and passes unscathed in the new Renaissance world,
where the earlier Provencal impiety had gone the way of
the Inquisition bonfire, books and men alike. Beneath
its mockery there is a constant play of rational thought,
and every phase of contemporary culture is glanced at in
the spirit of always unembittered humor which makes
Pulci "the most loveable among the great poets of the
Renaissance ".2 As he had specially satirised the clergy
and ecclesiastical miracles, his body was refused burial
in consecrated ground ; but the general temper was such
as to save him from clerical enmity up to that point.

Shortly after his death, too, we find a freethinking
physician at Bologna, Gabriele de Salo, protected by his
patrons against the wrath of the Inquisition, although he
" was in the habit of maintaining that Christ was not
God, but son of Joseph and Mary . . . . ; that by his
cunning he had deceived the world ; that he may have
died on the cross on account of crimes which he had
committed,"11 and so forth. This was in 1497. Nineteen
years before, Galeotto Marcio had come near being
burned for writing that any man who lived uprightly
according to his own conscience would go to heaven,
whatever his faith ; and it needed the Pope, Sixtus IV,
his former pupil, to save him from the Inquisition,*
Others, who went further, ran similar risks ; and in 1500-
Giorgio da Novara was burned at Bologna, presumptively
for denying the divinity of Jesus.5 A bishop of Aranda,
however, is said to have done the same with impunity, in
the same year." Humorous blasphemy generally seems

1 See it well analysed by Mr. Owen, pp. 147-160. It is noteworthy that
Pulci is found affirming tin; doctrine of an Antipodes with absolute open-
: 1 with impunity, over a hundred years before Galileo.

■ ' I ■■' a, p too So also Leigh Hunt, and the editor of the Parnaso-
Italiano, there < ited.

1 Burckhardt, p. 502. '/</., p. 500. i Id., p. 502. c Id., p. 503, note.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 23I

to have fared better than serious unbelief; so that there
was doubtless much more of the latter than was avowed.

One of the great literary figures of the later Renais-
sance, Machiavelli (1469 — 1527) is the standing proof
of the divorce of the higher intelligence of Italy from the
faith as well as the cause of the Church before the
Reformation. To him the Church was the supreme
evil in Italian politics,1 the " stone in the wound " ; and
in a famous passage he gives his opinion that "our religion
having shown us the truth and the true way, makes us
esteem less political honor (I'onore del mondo) " ; and
that whereas the Pagan religion canonised only men
crowned with public honor, as generals and statesmen,
" our religion has glorified rather the humble and con-
templative men than the active," placing the highest
good in humility and abjection, teaching rather to suffer
than to do, and so making the world debile and ready to
be a prey to scoundrels.3 The passage which follows,
putting the blame on men for thus misreading their
religion, is a fair sample of the grave mockery with which
the men of that age veiled their unfaith.3 Machiavelli
was reputed in his own world an atheist ; and he
certainly was no religionist. He indeed never avows
atheism, but neither did any other writer of the epoch4 ;
and the whole tenor of his writings is that of a man
who had at least put aside the belief in a prayer-answering
Deity.5 Guicciardini, his contemporary, who in com-
parison was unblamed for irreligion, though an even
warmer hater of the Papacy, has left in writing the most
explicit avowals of incredulity as to the current con-
ceptions of the supernatural, and declares concerning
miracles that as they occur in every religion they prove

1 Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, i, 12.

2 Discorsi soft a Tito Livio, ii, 2.

3 For another point of view, see Owen, as cited, p. 167.

4 Burckhardt, pp. 499-500. Cp. Owen, pp. 165-168.

5 Mr. Owen's characterisation of Machiavelli's Asino d'oro as a " satire
on the Freethought of his age" (p. 177) will not stand investigation. See
his own note, p. 17S.

232 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

none.1 At the same time he professes firm faith in
Christianity2 ; and others who would not have joined him
there were often as inconsistent in the ready belief they gave
to magic and astrology. The time was after all one of artistic
splendor and scientific and critical ignorance ;3 and its Free-
thought had the inevitable defects that ignorance entails.
Of the literary freethinking of the age, the most
famous representative is Pomponazzi (1462 — 1525), for
whom it has been claimed that he " really initiated
the philosophy of the Italian Renaissance ".4 The
Renaissance, however, was in reality as good as over when
Pomponazzi's treatise on the Immortality of the Soul
appeared : and that topic was the commonest in the
schools and controversies of that day.5 What is remark-
able in his case is not his elaborate denial of immortality,
which we have seen to be common in Dante's time, but
his contention that ethics could do very well without
the belief6 — a thing that it still took some courage to
affirm, though the spectacle of the life of the faithful might
have been supposed sufficient to win it a ready hearing.
Presumably his rationalism, which made him challenge
the then canonical authority of Aristotle, went further
than his avowed doubts as to a future state ; since his
profession of obedience to the Church's teaching, and
his reiteration of the old academic doctrine of twofold
truth — one truth for science and philosophy and another
for theology7 — are as dubious as any in philosophic

1 Burckhardt, p. 4G4 ; Owen, p. 180, and refs.

2 < »wen, p. 181. Compare the whole account of Gricciardini's rather
confused opinions.

:i Despite the fact that Italy had most of what scientific knowledge
existed. Burckhardt, p. 292.

4 F. Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, 1868, p. 30.

6 ( (wen, pp. 197-8, and refs. Cp. Renan, Averroes, pp. 353-362.

6 Cp. Owen, pp. 201, 218 ; Lange, i, 220-225.

7 This principle had been affirmed by so high an orthodox authority as
Albertn. Magnus. Cp. Owen, pp. 211-212, note. While thus officially
recognised, it was of coins'' denounced by the devout when they saw how
it availed to save heretics from harm. Mr. Owen lias well-pointed out
(p. 238) the inconsistency of the believers who maintain that faith is
independent of reason, and yet denounce as blasphemous the profession to
believe by faith what is not intelligible by philosophy.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 233

history.1 Of him more justly than of Petrarch might it
be said that he is the father of modern criticism, since he
anticipates the treatment given to Biblical miracles
by the rationalising German theologians of last century,2
He, too, was a fixed enemy of the clergy ; and it was not
for lack of will that they failed to destroy him.

Whether his metaphysic on the subject of the im-
mortality of the soul had much effect on popular thought
may be doubted. What the Renaissance most needed
both in its philosophic and its practical thought was a
scientific foundation; and science, from first to last, was
more hindered than helped by the environment. In the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, charges of necro-
mancy against physicians and experimenters were
frequently joined with imputations of heresy, and on
such charges not a few were burned.3 The economic
conditions, too, were all unfavorable to solid research/
Medicine was nearly as dogmatic as theology. Even
philosophy was in large part shouldered aside by the
financial motives which led men to study law in prefer-
ence5 ; and when the revival of ancient literature gained
ground it absorbed energy to the detriment of scientific
stud}'," the wealthy amateurs being ready to pay high
prices for manuscripts of classics, and for classical
teaching ; but not for patient investigation of natural
fact. The humanists, so-called, were often forces of
enlightenment and reform ; witness such a type as the
high-minded Pomponius Laetus,7 one of the many
"pagan'' scholars of the later Renaissance; but the
discipline of mere classical culture was insufficient to
make them, as a body, qualified leaders either of thought
or action,8 in such a society as that of decaying Italy.

1 Owen, p. 209, note. - Id., p. 210. :! Burckhan.lt, p ;

1 When Galileo in the sixteenth century was made Professor oi Mathe-
matics at Pisa, his salary was only 60 scudi, when the Professor of Medicine
got 2,000. (Karl von Gebler, Galileo Galilei, Eng. tr. 1S79, p. 9.)

5 Gebhart, pp. 59-63 ; Burckhardt, p. 211.

6 Cp. Burckhardt, p. 291.

7 Burckhardt, pp. 279-280.
6'Id. Part iii, c. II.

234 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Only after the fall of Italian liberties, the decay of the
Church's wealth and power, the loss of commerce, and
the consequent decline of the arts, did men turn to
truly scientific pursuits. From Italy, indeed, after the
Reformation, came the new stimulus to Freethought
which affected all the higher civilisation of northern
Europe. But the failure to solve the political problem,
a failure which led to the Spanish tyranny, meant the
establishment of bad conditions for the intellectual as for
the social life ; and an arrest of Freethought in Italy was
a necessary accompaniment of the arrest of the higher
literature. What remained was the afterglow of a great
and energetic period rather than a spirit of enquiry.

§2.

Inasmuch as the direct process of the Renaissance
was continuous only in Italy, it is properly to Italian
history that the name applies. A similar process of
course occurred later in France and in England, and in a
sense in Germany ; but the great intellectual revivals
in these countries were tardy results of Italian influence.
There is indeed no more remarkable figure in the Middle
Ages than Roger Bacon (? 1214 — 1294) the English Fran-
ciscan friar, schooled at Paris. For heresies which we
cannot now trace, he underwent two long imprisonments
at the hands of his superiors, the first lasting ten years.
His works remain to show the scientific reach of which
his age was capable, when helped by the lore of the
Arabs; but in the England of that day his ideals of
research were as unattainable as his wrath against
clerical obstruction was powerless.1 The English
Renaissance properly sets -in in the sixteenth century,
when the glory of that of Italy is passing away. In
the fourteenth century, indeed, a remarkable new
life is seen arising in England in the poetry of
Chaucer, from contact with the literature of Italy and

1 See the careful notice by Professor Adamson in Diet of Nat. Biog.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 235.

France ; but while Chaucer reflects the spontaneous
medieval hostility to the self-seeking and fraudulent
clergy, he shows no trace of the Renaissance spirit
of unbelief; and after his day there is social retrogression
and literary relapse in England for two centuries. That
there was some practical rationalism in his day, however,,
we gather from the Vision of Piers Ploughman, by the
contemporary poet Langland (fl. 1360-90), where there is
a vivid account of the habit among anti-clerical laymen of
arguing against the doctrine of original sin and the
entailment of Adam's offence on the whole human
race.1 Langland's reply is mere angry dogmatism.
There flourished, further, a remarkable amount of
heresy of the species seen in Provence and Northern
Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such
sectaries being known in England under the generic
name of " Lollards", derived from the Flemish, in which
it seems to have signified singers of hymns.2 Lollards or
" Beghards ", starting from the southern point of propa-
gation, spread all over civilised Northern Europe, meeting
everywhere persecution alike from the regular priests and
the mendicant monks ; and in England as elsewhere their
anti-clericalism and their heresy were correlative. In the
formal Lollard petition to Parliament in 1395, however,
there is evident an amount of innovating opinion which
implies more than the mere stimulus of financial pressuiv.
Not only the Papal authority, monasteries, clerical celi-
bacy, nuns' vows, transubstantiation, exorcisms, bought
blessings, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, offerings to
images, confessions and absolutions, but war and capital
punishment and "unnecessary trades", such as those of
goldsmiths and armorers, are condemned by those early
Utopists.3 In what proportion they really thought out

1 Vision of Piers Ploughman, vv. 5S09, ff. Wright's ed., Lib. of Old
Authors, pp. 179-180.

'-' Mosheim, E. H., Cent. XIV, Pt. II, c. ii, £ 36 and note. Cp. Green
Short History of the English People, ch. v, sect. 3, ed. 1881, p. 235.

3 Cp. Green, ch. v, sect. 5, p. 253 ; Massingberd, The English Reforma-
tion, 4th ed., p. 171.

236 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the issues they dealt with we can hardly ascertain ; but a
chronicler of Wiclif's time, living at Leicester, testifies
that you could not meet two men in the street but one
was a Lollard.1 The movement substantially came to
nothing, suffering murderous persecution in the person
of Oldcastle (Lord Cobham) and others, and dis-
appearing in the fifteenth century in the ruin of the civil
wars ; but apart from Chaucer's poetry it is more sig-
nificant of Renaissance influences in England than
almost any other phenomenon down to the reign of
Henry VIII.

In the powerful Wiclif,' again, we see rather a superior
mind of the Middle Ages, scholastically nourished, than
a man of the Renaissance. It is still doubtful whence
he derived his marked protestantism as to Romish
dogmas ; but it would seem that he too must have been
reached by the older Paulician or other southern heresy.3
In any case, his practical and moral resentment of
ecclesiastical abuses was the mainspring of his doctrine ;
and his heresies as to transubstantiation and other
articles of faith can be seen to connect with his anti-
priestly attitude. He, however, was morally disinterested
as compared with the would-be plunderers who formed
the bulk of the anti-Church party of John of Gaunt;
and his failure to effect any reformation was due to the
fact that on one hand there was not intelligence enough
in the nation to respond to his doctrinal common-sense,
while on the other he could not so separate ecclesiastical
from feudal tyranny and extortion as to set up a political
movement which should strike at clerical evils without
inciting some to impeach the nobility who held the

1 Cited by Lechler, John Wycliffc and his English Precursors. Eng. tr.,
1 ■• "1- ed., ]>. 440.

J I p Prof. Montagu Burrows, Wiclif s Place in History, ed 1884, p. 49.
As early as 1 s86 a form o\ heresy approaching the Albigensian and the
Waldensian is found in the province oi Canterbury, certain persons there
maintaining that Christians were not bound by the authority of the Pope
ami the Fathers, but solely by that oi the Bible and " n< 1 essary reason ".
Wilkins' I 'otn ilia, ii, 124

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 237

balance of political power.1 The revolt led by John Ball
in 1381, though in no way promoted by Wiclif,3 showed
that the country people suffered as much from lay us
from clerical oppression.

The time, in short, was one of extreme ferment, and
not only were there other reformers who went much
farther than Wiclif in the matter of social reconstruction, a
but we know from his writings that there were heretics
who carried their criticism as far as to challenge the
authority and credibility of the Scriptures. Against these
accusatores and inimici Scripturac he repeatedly speaks in
his treatise Dc veritate Scripturac Sacrae,* which is thus
one of the very earliest works in defence of Christianity
against modern criticism.5 His position, however, is
wholly medieval. The infinite superiority of Christ to all
other men, and Christ's virtual authorship of the entire
Scriptures, are his premisses — a way of begging the
question so simple-minded that it is clear the other side
was not heard in reply, though these arguments had
formed part of his theological lectures,6 and so pre-
supposed a real opposition. Wiclif was in short a typical
Protestant in his unquestioning acceptance of the Bible
as. a supernatural authority; and when his demand for
the publication of the Bible in English was met by
"worldly clerks" with the cry that it would "set
Christians in debate, and subjects to rebel against their
sovereigns," he could only protest that they "openly

1 Charged with setting vassals against tyrant lords, he was forced to plead
that he taught the reverse, though he justified the withholding of tithes
from bad curates. See the passages cited in Lewis's Life of Wiclif, ed.
1820, pp. 224-5. Cp- Burrows, as cited, p. 19; Le Bas, Life of Wiclif,
1832, p. 357-9.

3 See Lechler's John Wychffe and his English Precursors, pp. 371-6.

3 Cp. Green, Short History, ch. v, sect. 4.

4 Lechler, as cited, p. 23G. This treatise forms the sixth book of
Wiclifs theological Summa.

5 Baxter, in the address To the doubting and unbelieving readers, prefixed to
his Reasons of the Christian Religion, 16G7, names Savonarola, Campanella,
Ficinus, Vives, Mornay, Grotius, Cameron, and Micraelius, as defenders
of the faith, but no writer of the fourteenth century.

4 Lechler, p. 236.

238 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

slander God, the author of peace, and his holy law".1
Later English history proved that the worldly clerks were
perfectly right, and YYiclif the erring optimist of faith.
For the rest, his essentially dogmatic view of religion did
nothing to counteract the spirit of persecution ; and
the passing of the Statute for the Burning of Heretics in
1401, with the ready consent of both Houses of Parlia-
ment, constituted the due dogmatic answer to dogmatic
criticism. Yet within three years the Commons were
proposing to confiscate the revenues of the higher clergy :
so far was anti-clericalism from implying heterodoxy.

Of a very different type from Wiclif is the remarkable
personality of the Welshman Reginald Pecock (1395 ? —
1460?), who seems divided from Wiclif by a whole era of
intellectual development, though born within about ten
years of his death. It is a singular fact that the most
genuinely rationalistic mind among the serious writers of
the fifteenth century should be an English bishop. It
was as the rational and temperate defender of the Church
against the attacks of the Lollards in general that he
formulated the principle of natural reason as against
Scripturalism. This attitude it is that makes his treatise,
the Repressor of overmuch Banning of the Clergy, the most
modern of theoretic English books before Bacon. In a
series of serenely argued points he urges his thesis that
the Bible is not the basis of the moral law, but merely
an illustration thereof, and that the natural reason is
obviously presupposed in the bulk of its teaching. It is
the position of Hooker, anticipated by a hundred years ;
and this in an age of such intellectual backwardness
and literary decadence that the earlier man must be
pronounced by far the more remarkable figure. In such
a case the full influence of the Renaissance seems to be
at work ; though in the obscurity of the records we can
do no more than conjecture that the new contacts with
French culture between the invasion <>f France by

1 Lechler, p. ji j.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 23

Henry V in 1415 and the expulsion of the English in
145 1 may have introduced forces of thought unknown or
little known before. If indeed there were English oppo-
nents of Scripture in Wiclif's day, the idea must have;
ripened somewhat in Pecock's. Whether, however, the
victories of Jeanne D'Arc made some unbelievers as well
as many dastards among the English, is a problem that
does not seem to have been investigated.

Pecock's reply to the Lollards creates the curious
situation of a churchman rebutting heretics by being
more profoundly heretical than they.1 In his system, the
Scriptures " reveal " only supernatural truths not other-
wise attainable, a way of safeguarding dogma not likely
to reassure believers. There is reason, indeed, to suspect
that Pecock held no dogma with much zeal ; and when in
his well-named treatise (now lost), The Provoker, he
denied the authenticity of the Apostles' Creed, " he
alienated every section of theological opinion in Eng-
land".3 He was in short far too intelligent for his age;
and the reward of his effort to reason down the menacing
Lollards and rebut Wiclif,3 was his formal disgrace and
virtual imprisonment. In that age of brutal strife, when
" neither the Church nor the opponents of the Church
had any longer a sway over men's hearts",4 he figures
beside the mindless prelates and their lay peers somewhat
as does More later beside Henry VIII, as Reason versus
the Beast ; and it was illustrative of his entire lack of

1 A German ecclesiastical historian of last century (Werner, Kirchen-
geschichU des iSten Jahrhunderts, 1756, cited by Lechler), calls Pecock the first
English Deist. See a general view of his opinions in Lewis' Life of Dr.
Reynold Pecock (rep. 1820) ch. v. The heresies charged on him are given on
p. 160 ; also in the R. T. S. Writings and Examinations, i.Sji, pp. 200-1.

2 Miss A. M. Cooke, art. Reginald Pecock in Diet, oj Nat. Bi
This valuable notice is the best short account of Pecock. It is character
istic of the restricted fashion in which history is still treated that neither
in the Student's History of Prof. Gardiner nor in the Short History of Green
is any mention made of Pecock.

3 lie repels, c.i,'., Wiclif's argument that a priest's misconduct sufficed
to destroy his right to his endowments. Repressor, Babington's ed. in
Rolls Series, i860, ii, 413.

4 Gardiner, Student's Ilistoj y, p, 330. Cp. Green, ch. vi, Sec. i, 2, pp.
267, 275; Stubb's, Const. Hist., iii, 031-3.

24O HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

fanaticism that he made the demanded recantations, and
went his way in silence to solitude and death. The ruling"
powers disposed of Lollardism in their own way ; and in
the Wars of the Roses every species of heretical thought
seems to disappear.

§ 3-
As regards France, the record of intellectual history
between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries is
hardly less scanty than as regards England. In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries the intellectual life of the
French philosophic schools was more vigorous and
expansive than that of any other country; so that, look-
ing further to the Provencal literature and to the French
beginnings of Gothic architecture, France might even be
said to lead the Renaissance. In the latter part of the
thirteenth century, too, rationalism at the Paris university
seems to have been frequently carried in private to a
rejection of all the dogmas peculiar to Christianity.1
From about the middle of the fourteenth century, how-
ever, there is a relative arrest of French progress for some
two centuries." Three main forces served to check
intellectual advance : the loss of the communal liberties
which had been established in France between the
eleventh and thirteenth centuries ; 3 the repressive power
of the Church ; and the devotion of the national energies
to war. Drained off chronically by the Eastern crusades,
French energy was kept running in anti-intellectual
channels by the crusades against the Albigenses, the mam-
wars of the unification of France, the wars with the

1 Ueberweg, i, 471, Cp. p. 460, on Simon of Tournay ; Lange, i, 218.

- Gebhart, Orig. <le la Renais. en Italic, pp. 2, 19, 24-29, 32-35, 41-50; Le
e'lerc and Kenan, Hist. Litt. dc la France an XI Vt Steele, i, 4 ; ii, 123 ; Littre,
Etudes sur les barbares ct le moyen age, 3e edit., pp. 424-9. It is noteworthy
that French culture affected the very vocabulary ol i 'ante, as it did that
ol his teacher, Brunetto Latini. Cp. Littre, Etudes, as cited, pp. 399-400.
The influence of F'rench literature is further seen in Boccaccio, and in
I lllan literature in general from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
< rebhart, pp. 209-221.

J Gebhart, pp. 35-41.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 24I

Flemings and the English, the ruinous English invasion
under Edward III, and the still more destructive invasion
under Henry V ; so that in the fifteenth century France
was hardly more civilised than England. It is from the
French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII, that the
real renascence in France broadly dates. Earlier impulses
had likewise come from Italy : Lanfranc, Anselm, Peter
Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and others of lesser note, '
had gone from Italy to teach in France or England ;
but it needed the full contact of Italian civilisation to raise
monarchic France to the stage of general and independent
intellectual life.

During the period in question, there had been established
the following universities : — Paris, 1200 ; Toulouse, 1220;
Montpellier, 1289; Avignon, 1303; Orleans, 1312 ; Cahors,
1332; Angers, 1337; Orange, 1367; Dole, 1422; Poitiers, 1431 ;
Caen, 1436; Valence, 1454; Nantes, 1460; Bourges, 1463;
Bordeaux, 1472 (Desmaze, L'Universite de Paris, 1876, p. 2.
Other dates for some of these are given on p. 31). But the
militarist conditions prevented any sufficient development of
such opportunities. In the fourteenth century, says Littre
{Etudes sur les barbarcs etle moyen age, p. 419) "the university of
Paris .... was more powerful than at any other epoch. . . .
Never did she exercise such a power over men's minds." But
he also decides that in that epoch the first florescence of
French literature withered away (p. 387). The long location
of the anti-Papacy at Avignon (1305-1376) doubtless counted
for something in French culture (V. Le Clerc, Hist. Litt. de la
France au XlVe sitele,i, 37 ; Gebhart, pp. 221-6) but the devas-
tation wrought by the English invasion was sufficient to coun-
tervail that and more. See the account of it by Petrarch (letter
of the year 1360) cited by Littre, Etudes, pp. 416-7; and by
Hallain, Middle Ages, i, 59, note. Cp. Michelet, Hist, dc France,
liv. vi, ch. 3. As to the consequences of the English invasion
of the fifteenth century see Martin, Hist, dc France, 4e edit,
vi, 132- C33; Sismondi, Hist, des Francais, 1S3, i, xii, 582 ; Hallam,
Middle Ages, i, 83-87.

In northern France of the fourteenth century, as in
Provence, and Italy, and England, there was a manifold

1 Gebhart, p. 54.

242 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

stir of innovation and heresy : there as elsewhere the
insubordinate Franciscans with their Eternal Gospel, the
Paterini, the Beghards, fought their way against the
Dominican Inquisition. But the Inquisitors burned
books as well as men ; and much anti-ecclesiastical
poetry, some dating even from the Carlovingian era,
shared the fate of many copies of the Talmud, translations
of the Bible, and, a fortiori, every species of heretical
writing. In effect, the Inquisition for the time " ex-
tinguished freethought " * in France. As in England, the
ferment of heresy was mixed with one of democracy ;
and in the French popular poetry of the time there
are direct parallels to the contemporary English
ouplet, " When Adam delved and Eve span, Where
was then the gentleman?"2 Such a spirit could no
more prosper in feudal France than in feudal England;
and when France emerged from her struggle with
the English, to be effectively solidified by Louis XI,
there was in her life little of the spirit of free enquiry. It
has been noted that whereas the chronicler Joinville, in
the thirteenth century, is full of religious feeling, Froissart
in the fourteenth, priest as he is, exhibits hardly any ; and
again Comines, in the fifteenth, reverts to the orthodoxy
of the twelfth and thirteenth.3 The middle period was
one of indifference, following on the killing out of heresy: 4
the fifteenth century is a resumption of the Middle Ages,
and Comines has the medieval cast of mind,5 although of
a superior order. There seems to be no community
of thought between him and his younger Italian con-
temporaries, Machiavelli and Guicciardini ; though

1 Littr&, as cited, pp. 411-413.

2 Le Clerc, as cited, p. 259 ; Gebhart, pp. 48-9.

:1 Sir James F. Stephen, I Ionic Sabbatica, [892, i, 42.

* The Italians said of the French Pnpe Clement VI (1342-52) that he
bad small religion. M. Villani, Cronica, iii, 43 (ed. 1554).

' Cp. Dr. T. Arnold, Lectures on Modern History, 4th ed. pp. 111-118;
l'uckle, 3-vol. ed., i, 326-7; Sir [. F Stephen, Horae Sabbatica, i, 121. "It
i hardly too much to say that Comines's whole mind was haunted at all
times and at every point by a belief in an invisible and immensely powerful
and artful man whom he called God." (Stephen, as cited).

FKEETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 243

" even while Comines was writing, there were un-
equivocal symptoms of a great and decisive change ".'

The special development in France of the spirit of
"chivalry" had joined the normal uncivilising influence
of militarism with that of clericalism ; the various Knightly
Orders, as well as knighthood pure and simple, being all
under ecclesiastical sanctions, and more or less strictly
vowed to "defend the church";'" while supremely in-
competent to form an intelligent opinion. It is the more
remarkable that in the case of one of the crusading
Orders, heresy of the most blasphemous kind was finally
charged against the entire organisation, and that it was
on that ground annihilated. It remains incredible, how-
ever, that the Order of the Templars can have systemati-
cally practised the extravagances or held the tenets laid
to their charge. They had of course abused their power
and departed from their principles like every other re-
ligious Order enabled to amass wealth ; and the hostility
they aroused is perfectly intelligible from what is known
of the arrogance of its members and the general ruffianism
of the Crusaders. Their wealth alone goes far to explain
the success of their enemies against them ; for though the
numbers of the Order were much smaller than tradition
gives out, its possessions were considerable. These were
the true ground of the French king's attack. But that
its members were as a rule either Cathari or anti-Christians,
either disguised Moslems or Deists, or that they practised
obscenity by rule, there is no reason to believe. What
seems to have happened was a resort by some unbelieving
members to more or less gross burlesque of the mysteries
of initiation — a phenomenon paralleled in ancient Greece
and in the modern Catholic world, and which stood
rather for hardy irreligion than for any reasoned heresy
whatever.

1 Buckle, i, 329.

- Uuckle, ii, 133; Hallam, Middle Ages, in. 395-6. Religious ceremon'e;
•were attached to the initiation of kniglus in the 13th century. Scignoho ;.
Hist, de la Civilisation, ii, 15.

K Z

244 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

The long-continued dispute as to the guilt of the Knights-.
Templars is still chronically reopened. Hallam, after long
hesitation, came finally to believe them guilty, partly on the
strength of the admissions made by Michelet in defending
them (Europe in the Middle Ages, nth ed. i, 138-142 — note of
1848). He attaches, however, a surprising weight to the
obviously weak "architectural evidence" cited by Hammer-
Purgstall. The excellent summing-up of Mr. H. C. Lea
(History of the Inquisition, New York ed. 1888-90, B. iii, c. 5, pp.
263-276) perhaps gives too little weight to the mass of curious,
confirmatory evidence cited by writers on the other side (e.g. F.
Nicolai, Versuch iiber die Beschuldigungen welche dem Tcmpelher-
renorden gemacht warden, 1782) ; but his conclusion as to the
falsity of the charges against the Order as a whole seems
irresistible. The solution that offensive practices occurred
irregularly (Lea, pp. 276-7) is pointed to even by the earlier
hostile writers (Nicolai, S. 17). That there was no Catharism in
the Order seems certain (Lea, p. 249). The suggestion that the
offensive and burlesque practices were due to the lower grade
of "serving brethren", who were contemned by the higher,
seems however without firm foundation. The courage for
such freaks, and the disposition to commit them, were rather
more likely to arise among the crusaders of the upper class,
who could come in contact with Moslem-Christian unbelief
through those of Sicily.

For the further theory that the " Freemasons " (at that
period really cosmopolitan guilds of masons) were already
given to freethinking, there is again no evidence. That they
at times deliberately introduced obscene symbols into church
architecture is no proof that they were collectively unbelievers
in the Church's doctrines ; though it is likely enough that some
of them were. Obscenity is the expression not of an intel-
lectual but of a physical and unreasoning bias, and can
perfectly well concur with religious feeling. The fact that the
medieval masons did not confine obscene symbols to the
( hurches they built for the Templars (Hallam, as cited, pp..
140-1) should serve to discredit alike the theory that the
Templars were systematically anti-Christian, and the theory
that the Freemasons were so. That for centuries the builders
of the Christian churches throughout Europe formed an anti-
Christian organisation, is a grotesque hypothesis. It could
well be that there survived among the freemasons various
(inostic ideas; since the architectural art itself came in a
direct line from antiquity. Such heresy, too, might conceivably
be winked at by the Church, which depended so much on the

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 245

heretics' services. But their obscenities were the mere ex-
pression of the animal imagination and normal salacity of all
ages. Only in modern times, and that only in Catholic
countries, has the derivative organisation of Freemasonry been
identified with freethought propaganda. In England in the
seventeenth century the Freeinasonic clubs— no longer con-
nected with any trade — were thoroughly royalist and orthodox
(Nicolai, S. 196-8).

§ 4-
Some remarkable intellectual phenomena, however, do
•connect with the French university life of the first half of
the fourteenth century. William of Occam (d. 1347),
the English Franciscan, who taught at Paris, is on the
whole the most rationalistic of medieval philosophers.
Though a pupil of the Realist Duns Scotus, he became
the renewer of Nominalism ; and his anticlerical bias was
such that he had to fly from France to Bavaria for pro-
tection. To the same refuge fled Marsiglio of Padua,
author (with John of Jandun) of the Defensor Pacis (1324),
"the greatest and most original political treatise of the
Middle Ages,"1 in which it is taught that, though monarchy
may be expedient, the sovereignty of the State rests with
the people ; and the hereditary principle is flatly rejected ;
while it is insisted that the Church properly consists of all
Christians, and that the clergy's authority is restricted to
-spiritual affairs and moral suasion.2 Of all medieval writers
on politics, he is the most modern. Only less original is
Occam, who at Paris came much under Marsiglio's in-
fluence. His philosophic doctrines apparently derive
from Pierre Aureol (Petrus Aureolus, d. 1321), who
with remarkable clearness and emphasis rejected both
Realism and the doctrine that what the mind perceives are
not realities but forma spccularcs. Pierre it was who
•enounced the Law of Parsimony in philosophy and
science — that causes are not to be multiplied beyond
mental necessity — which is specially associated with the

1 Poole, Illustrations, p. 2C5.

2 hi., pp. 266-276.

246 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

name of Occam. Both anticipated modern criticism alike-
of the Platonic and the Aristotelian philosophy ; and
Occam in particular drew so decided a line between the
province of reason and that of faith, that there can be
little doubt on which side his allegiance lay. Whereas
Duns Scotus had reduced the number of matters of faith
held by Thomas Aquinas to be demonstrable by reason,
Occam denied that there was any such. He granted that
on rational grounds the existence of a God was probable,
but denied that it was strictly demonstrable, and rejected
the ontological argument of Anselm. As to matters of
faith he significantly observed that the will to believe the
indemonstrable is meritorious.1

Contemporary with Occam was Durand de St.
Pourcain, who became a bishop (d. 1332), and, after
ranking as of the school of Thomas Aquinas, rejected and
opposed its doctrine. With all this heresy in the air, the
principle of " double truth ", originally put in currency by
Averroism, came to be held in France as in Italy, in a
sense which implied the consciousness that theological
truth is not truth at all.2 Occam's pupil, Buridan, rector
of the University of Paris (fl. 1340), substantially avoided
theology, and dealt with moral and intellectual problems
on their own merits.' It is recorded by Albert of Saxony,
who studied at Paris in the first half of the century, that
one of his teachers held by the theory of the motion of
the earth.4 Even a defender of Church doctrines, Pierre
d'Ailly, accepted Occam's view of Theism.5 On the other
hand, the Spanish physician Ravmund of Sebonde/ who
taught philosophy at Toulouse, undertook (about 1335) to
establish Christianity on a rational foundation7 in his

J Ueberweg, i, 460-4 ; cp. Poole. Illustrations, pp. 275-281.
- Cp. Ueberweg, p. 464. Mr. Poole's judgment (p. 280) that Occam
"starts from the point of view of a theologian", hardly does justice to his

attitude towards theology. Occam had indeed to profess acceptance of
theology ; but he could not well h.i l«ss account of its claims.

;i Ueberweg, pp. 465-6. ' Id. p. * Id. ib.

' This name has many foms ; and it is contended that Sabieude is the-
correct one. So- I 1 ■ en / tnings with the Skeptics, 1881, ii, 423.

7 Cp Hallam, Introd. to Lit. of Europe, ed. 1S72, i, 142-4.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 247

Theologia Naturalis, made famous later by Montaigne. But
Raymund set up no school of thought, and the intellectual
Nominalists were followed, in the evil times after the
invasion of Edward III, by minds of a different order,1
seeking in mysticism and quietism a solace for the ills of
life ; while for the nation at large there was little intellectual
life worthy of the name. The remarkable case of Nicolaus
of Autricuria, who in 134S was forced to recant his teaching
of the atomistic doctrine," illustrates at once the per-
sistence of the spirit of reason in times of darkness and the
impossibility of its triumphing in the wrong conditions.

§5-
The life of the rest of Europe in the early Renaissance
period has little special significance in the history of
Freethought. The poetry of the German Minnesingers,
a development from that of the Troubadours, developed
the same anti-clerical features' ; and the story of Reynard
the Fox was turned to anti-ecclesiastical purpose in
Germany as in France. Material prosperity rather than
culture, however, was the main feature of German progress
in the Middle Ages ; architecture being the only art greatly
developed. Heresy of the anti-ecclesiastical order indeed
abounded ; and was duly persecuted ; but the higher
freethinking developments were in the theosophic rather
than the rationalistic direction. The principal German
figure of the period is Master Eckhart (d. 1329), who,
finding religious beliefs excluded from the sphere of
reason by the freer philosophy of his day, undertook to
show that they were all matters of reason. He was, in
fact, a mystically reasoning preacher; and he taught in
the interests of popular religion. Naturally, as he philo-

1 It is true that Occam had, broadly speaking, "an unbroken line
successors" down to the Reformation 1 I'oole, p. 281) ; but in France they
in no sense dominated thought in the period after him.

2 Lange, Hist, of Materialism, i, 225 6

3 Gervinus, Gesch. der deutschen Dichtung, st<' Ausg. i, 489 ;■>■> Even in
the period before the Minnesingers, the cli retry bad its anti-cli
side. Id. S. 194.

248 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

sophised on old bases, he did not really subject his beliefs
to any sceptical scrutiny ; but took them for granted and
proceeded speculatively upon them. This sufficed to
bring him before the Inquisition at Cologne, where he
recanted conditionally on an appeal to the Pope. Dying
soon after, he escaped the Papal bull condemning twenty-
eight of his doctrines. His school later divided into a
heretical and a Church party, of which the former, called
the " false free spirits ", seems to have either joined or
resembled the antinomian Brethren of the Free Spirit,
then numerous in Germany. The other section became
known as the " Friends of God ". Through Tauler and
others, Eckhart's pietistic doctrine gave a lead to later
Protestant evangelicalism ; but the system as a whole can
never have been held by any popular body.1

Dr. Lasson pronounces (Ueberweg, i, 483) that the type of
Eckhart's character and teaching " was derived from the
innermost essence of the German national character ". At the
same time he admits that all the offshoots of the school
departed more or less widely from Eckhart's type, that is, from
the innermost essence of their own national character. It
would be as plausible to say that the later mysticism of
Fenelon derived from the innermost essence of the French
character. The Imitatio Christi has been similarly described
as expressing the German character, on the assumption that it
was written by Thomas a Kempis. Many have held that the
author was the Frenchman Gerson (Hallam, Lit rod. to Lit. of
Europe, ed. 1872, i, 139-140). It was in all probability, as was
held by Suarez, the work of several hands, one a monk of the
twelfth century, another a monk of the thirteenth, and the
third a theologian of the fifteenth ; neither Gerson nor Thomas
a Kempis being concerned (Le Clerc, Hist. Litt. du XI Vc
Siccle, 2e edit., pp. 384-5).

In the Netherlands and other parts of western
Europe, including even Spain, the popular anti-ecclesi-
astical heresy of the thirteenth century spread in various
degrees ; but there is no outstanding trace of literate or

1 For a very full account of Eckhart's teaching, see Dr. A. Lasson's
monograph (§ 106) in Ueberweg's Hist, oj Philos., i, 4G7-484. Cp. Lea,
Jlist. of the Inquisition, ii, 354-9, 362-9, as to the sects.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE. 249

properly rationalistic freethinking. Lack of leisured
culture in the Low Countries, and the terrorism of the
Inquisition in Spain, would sufficiently account for the
absence of avowed unbelief, though everywhere, probably,
some was set up by the contact of travellers with the
culture of Italy. That was the chief source of practical
criticism of Christian dogmas ; and the extent to which a
unitarian theism was now connected with the acceptance
of the philosophy of Averroes1 is a ground for crediting
much of such freethinking to the Arab stimulus ; though
it was by reason rather of the heresy of Italian Averroists
than of any active teaching of Averroes himself that he
came to figure as Antichrist for the faithful.2 Petrarch in
his letters speaks of much downright hostility to the
Christian system on the part of Averroists3 ; and the
association of Averroism with the great medical school
of Padua4 must have promoted practical scepticism among
physicians. Being formally restricted to the schools,
however, it tended there to undergo the usual scholastic
petrifaction ; and the common-sense Deism it encouraged
outside had to subsist without literary discipline. In this
form it probably reached many lands, without openly
affecting culture or life ; since Averroism itself was pro-
fessed generally in the Carmelite order, who claimed for
it orthodoxy.5

1 It was identified with the heresy of Amalrich of Bena and David of
Dinant. Renan, Averroes, pp. 222-3. Cp. pp. 286-300.

2 Id., pp. 301-315- 3 Id-, pp. 333-7- ' Ll-. PP- 326-7.

6 Id., pp. 318-320. Two Englishmen, the Carmelite John of Bacon-
thorpe (d. 1346) and Walter Burleigh, were among the orthodox Averroists;
the latter figuring as a Realist against William of Occam. Roger Bacon,
on the other hand, seems to have drawn from Averroes some of his inspira-
tion to research (Id., p. 263).

CHAPTER XL

THE REFORMATION.
§1.

In a very broad and general sense, the ecclesiastical

revolution known as the Reformation was a phenomenon

of Freethonght. It was, however, much more akin to

a revolt against a hereditary king than to the process

of self-examination and logical scrutiny by which men

pass from belief to disbelief in a theory of things, a dogma,

or a document. This becomes the more clear when we

note that the Reformation was only the culmination or

explosion of certain social and political forces seen at

work throughout Christendom for centuries before. In

point of mere doctrine, the Protestants of the sixteenth

century had been preceded and even distanced by heretics

of the eleventh, and by teachers of the ninth. The

absurdity of relic-worship, the folly of pilgrimages and

fastings, the falsehood of the doctrine of transubstantiation,

the heresy of prayers to the saints, the unscripturalness of

the hierarchy — these and a dozen other points of protest

had been raised by Paulicians, by paterini, by beghards, by

Lollards, long before the time of Luther. As regards his

1 1 arcr predecessors, indeed, this is now a matter of accepted

Protestant history. What is not properly realised is that

the conditions which wrought political success where

before there had been political failure were strictly political

mditions; and that to these, and not to supposed

differences in national character, is due the geographical

course of the Reformation.

We have seen that the spirit of reform was strong
in Italy three hundred years before Luther ; that some of
the strongest movements within the Church were strictly

( 250 )

THE REFORMATION. 25 1

reformatory, and originally disinterested in a high degree.
In less religious forms the same spirit abounded throughout
the Renaissance ; and at the end of the fifteenth century
Savonarola was preaching reform religiously enough at
Florence. His death, however, was substantially due to
the perception that ecclesiastical reform, as conducted by
him, was a socio-political process, whence the reformer
was a socio-political disturber.1 Intellectually he was no
innovator : on the contrary he was a hater of literary
enlightenment ; and he was as ready to burn astrologers
as his enemies were to burn him." That he failed in his
crusade, and that Luther succeeded in his, was due to no
difference between Italian and German character, but to
the vast difference in the political potentialities of the
two cases. The fall of public liberty in Florence, which
must have been preceded as it was accompanied by a
relative decline in popular culture/ and which led to the
failure of Savonarola, may be in a sense attributed to
Italian character ; but that character was itself the
product of peculiar social and political conditions.

In England, again, the so-called Reformation was
purely a political process ; which at the outset had no
doctrinal principle behind it. Lollardism, once numeric-
ally powerful, had come to nothing; and even the designs
of Parliament on the revenues of the Church had failed
through the alliance knit between Church and crown in
the periods when the latter needed backing. At the
accession of Henry VIII, England was more orthodox
than any of the other leading States of Northern Europe.4

1 He actually sent organised bodies of boys, latterly accompanied by
bodies of adults, to force their way into private houses and confiscate
things thought suitable for the reformatory bonfire. Burckhardt, p. 477 ;
Perrens, J home Savonarole, ze edit., pp. 140-1 The things burned included
pictures and busts of inestimable artistic value, and manuscripts of exquisite
beauty. Perrens, p. 229. Savonarola, too, actually proposed to put
obstinate gamblers to the torture, hi., p. ij,-i.

2 Burckhardt, pp. 476-7.

3 As to the education of the Florentine common people in the fourteenth
century, cp. Burckhardt, pp. 203-4.

4 Cp. Froude, History of England, ed. 1872, i, 173: Burnet, Hist ■ f the
Reformation, Nares' ed., i, 17-18. Henry "cherished churchmen more
than any king in England had ever done ".

252 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

The personal need of the despotic king for a divorce
which the Pope dared not give him was the first vera
causa, leading to the rejection of the Papal authority.
On this the plunder of the monasteries followed, as a
forced measure of finance,1 of precaution against Papal
influence, and for the creation of a body of new interests
vitally hostile to a Papal restoration. The king and the
people were alike Romanists in doctrine ; and on the
accession of Queen Mary the nation gladly reverted to
Romish usages, though the spoil-holders would not
surrender a yard of Church lands. Protestantism was
only slowly built up by the new clerical and heretical pro-
paganda, and by the state of hostility set up between
England and the Catholic Powers. It was the episode of
the Spanish Armada that, by identifying Catholicism with
the cause of the great national enemy, made the people
grow definitely anti-Catholic. Even in Shakspere's dramas,
the old state of things is seen not yet vitally changed. In
Scotland, though there the priesthood had fewer friends
than almost anywhere else, the act of Reformation was
one of pure and simple plunder of Church property by the
needy nobility, in conscious imitation of the policy of
Henry VIII, at the time when the throne was vacant; and
there too Protestant doctrine was only gradually established
by the new race of preachers, trained in the school of
Calvin. In Ireland, on the other hand, Protestantism
became identified with the cause of the oppressor, just as for
England Romanism was the cause of the enemy-in-chief.
Race and national character had nothing whatever to do
with the course of events, and doctrinal enlightenment
had just a little.2 In the words of a distinguished clerical
historian : " no truth is more certain than this, that the
real motives of religious action do not work on men in
masses; and that the enthusiasm which creates Crusaders,
Inquisitors, Hussites, Puritans, is not the result of con-

1 Cp. Burnet, as cited, pref. p. xl, and p. 3.

- I lie subject is treated at some length in The Dynamics of Religion, by
•' M. \V. Wiseman " (J. M. R), 1897, pp. 3-46.

THE REFORMATION. 253

viction, but of passion provoked by oppression or resist-
ance, maintained by self-will, or stimulated by the mere
desire of victory".1 To this it need only be added that
the anti-Papal movement succeeded where the balance of
political forces could be turned against the clerical interest,
and failed where the latter predominated.

Prof. Gebhart (Orig. de la Renais. en Italie, p. 68) writes that
" Italy has known no great national heresies: one sees there
no uprising of minds which resembles the profound popular
movements provoked by Waldo, Wiclif, John Huss or Luther".
The decisive answer to this is soon given by the author himself
(p. 74): — " If the Order of Franciscans has had in the peninsula
an astonishing popularity ; if it has, so to speak, formed a
Church within the Church, it is that it responded to the
profound aspirations of an entire people ". (Cp. p. 77.) Yet
again, after telling how the Franciscan heresy of the Eternal
Gospel so long prevailed, M. Gebhart speaks (p. 78) of the Italians
as a people whom " formal heresy has never seduced ". These
inconsistencies derive from the old fallacy of attributing the
course of the Reformation to national character. The simple
truth is that in Italy reform could not for a moment be dreamt of
save as within the Church. It was a relatively easy matter in
German)' and England to renounce the Pope's control and
make the churches national or autonomous. To attempt that
in Italy would have meant creating a state of permanent and
insoluble strife. Apart from that, the Italians were as much
bent on Reformation as any other people in mass ; there was a
strong " Protestant " movement among them in the time of
Luther (see McCrie's Reformation in Italy) ; and the earlier
Franciscan movement was obviously more disinterested than
either the later German or the English, in both of which
plunder was the inducement to the leading adherents, as it
was also in Switzerland. There the wholesale bestowal of
church livings on Italians was the strongest motive to eccle-
siastical revolution ; and in Zurich, the first canton which
adopted the Reformation, the process was made easy by the
State guaranteeing posts and pensions for life to the whole
twenty-four canons of the chapter. (Vieusseux, History of
Switzerland, 1840, pp. 120, 128; cp. Zschokke, Schwcizcrland's
Geschichte, gte Ausg. c. 32.) The Protestants had further the
support of the unbelieving soldiery, made auti-religious in the

1 Bishop Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, 3d. ed., iii, 638. Cp. Bishop
Creighton, The Age of Elizabeth, p. 6; Hallam, Lit. Hist., i, 366.

254 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Italian wars, who rejoiced in the process of priest-baiting and
plunder (Vieusseux, p. 130). That the Reformation was a
product of "Teutonic conscience" is an inveterate fallacy.
The country in which Protestantism was most intellectually
disinterested and most morally active was France. "The main
battle of erudition and doctrine against the Catholic Church,"
justly contends M. Guizot, "was sustained by the French
reformers : it was in France and Holland, and always in
French, that most of the philosophic, historical, and polemic
works on that side were written ; neither Germany nor England,
certainly, employed in the cause at that epoch more intelligence
and science." (Hist, de la Civ. en France, i$e edit., i, 18). Nor
was there in France any such license on the Protestant side as
arose in Germany, though the French Protestants were as
violently intolerant as any. Their ultimate decline, after long
and desperate wars ending in a political compromise, was due
to the play of socio-economic causes under the wise and
tolerant administration of Richelieu. The French character
had proved as unsubduable in Protestantism as any other; and
the generation which in large part gradually reverted to Pro-
testantism did but show that it had learned the lesson of the
strifes which had followed on the Reformation — that Pro-
testantism was no solution of either the moral or the intellectual
problems of religion and politics.

§2.

In the circumstances, the Reformation could thus
stand for only the minimum of freethought needed to
secure political action. Coming as it did within one or
two generations of the invention of printing, it stood not
for new ideas but for the spread of old. That invention
had for a time positively checked the production of new
books, the multiplication of the old having for the time
turned attention to the past j1 and the diffusion of the
15ible in particular determined the mental attitude of the
movement in mass. The thinking of its most disinterested
promoters began and ended in Bibliolatry: Luther and
Calvin alike did but set up an infallible book and a local
tyranny against an infallible Pope and a tyranny centring

1 Hishop Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, iii, 627. The bishop, how-
ever, holds that in the time of Lollard prosperity the ability to read was
widely difiiised in England (p. 628).

THE REFORMATION. 255

at Rome. Neither dreamt of toleration ; and Calvin, the
more competent mind of the two, did but weld the
detached irrationalities of the current theology into a
system which insulted reason and stultified the morality
in the name of which he ruled Geneva with a rod of iron.1
It is remarkable that both men reverted to the narrowest
orthodoxies of the early Church, in defiance of whatever
spirit of reasonable enquiry had been on the side of their
movement. After once breaking away from Rome, they
become typical Anti-Freethinkers. The more rational
Zwingli, who tried to put an intelligible aspect on one or
two of the mysteries of the faith, was scouted by both,
as they scouted each other.

Luther, though he would probably have been ready
enough to punish Copernicus2 as a heretic, was saved the
evil chance which befel Calvin, of being put in a place of
authority where he could commit judicial murder. Such
an act it is that most directly connects Calvin's name
with the history of Freethought. Servetus was a reformer
who went further than the others, grounding his rejection
of the doctrine of the Trinity on the Bible itself, some-
what in the modern Unitarian manner, but with the
difference that he accepted a modal Trinity — or three
God aspects — while rejecting that of three persons.3 The
whole Protestant world was of one opinion in desiring to
suppress his anti-Trinitarian books ; Luther calling the
first horribly wicked ; Melanchthon writing to the Venetian
Senate to warn them against letting it be sold.4 It is
significant of the random character of Protestant as of
Catholic thought that Servetus, like Melanchthon, was a
convinced believer in astrology,5 while Luther on Biblical

1 Cp. Willis, Servetus and Calvin, 1877, B. ii, ch. 1 ; Audin, IIist<'t;
Calvin, ed. abreg. ch. xxiv-xxvii; and art. Mr. Morley on Machiavelli, in
University Magazine, Sept. 1897.

2 See his derision of Copernicus, on Scriptural grounds, in the Table-
Talk, c. 69, Of Astronomy and Astrology. The passage is deliberately
omitted from the English translation in the Bohn Library, p 341; and
the whole chapter is dropped from the German abridgement published by
Reclam.

3 Willis, Servetus and Calvin, 1877, pp. 50, 61, 309, etc.
*■ Id., pp. 44, 49. 0 Id., p. 117.

256 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

grounds rejected astrology and the Copernican astronomy-
alike, and held devoutly by the belief in witchcraft.
The superiority of Servetus consists in his real scientific
work — he having in part given out the true doctrine
of the circulation of the blood — and his objection to all
persecution of heresy.1

Calvin's guilt in the matter begins with his devices to
have Servetus seized by the Catholic authorities at
Lyons2 — to set misbelievers, as he regarded them, to slay
the misbeliever — and his use of Servetus' confidential
letters against him.a The later trial at Geneva is a classic
document in the records of the cruelties committed in
honour of chimeras : and Calvin's part is the sufficient
proof that the Protestant could hold his own with the
Catholic Inquisitor in the spirit of hate.4 All the
Protestant leaders, broadly speaking, grew more in-
tolerant as they grew in years — a fair test as between the
spirit of dogma and the spirit of freethought. Calvin had
begun by pleading for tolerance and clemency ; Luther
came to be capable of hounding on the German nobility
against the unhappy peasants; Melanchthon, tolerant in
his earlier days, applauded the burning of Servetus;5 Beza
laboriously defended the act. Erasmus stood for tolerance ;
and Luther accordingly called him godless, an enemy
of true religion, a slanderer of Christ, a Lucian, an
Epicurean, and the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced
the earth.6

The burning of Servetus in 1553, however, marked a
turning point in Protestant history on the Continent.
He was not the first victim ; but he was nearly the last.
In 1550 Calvin had secured the execution of Jacques

1 Id., p. 53. - Id., ch. xix. 3 Id., ch. xx. Cp. pp. 457, 503.

4 Ten years after the death of Servetus, Calvin calls him a "dog and
wicked scoundrel " (Willis, p. 530) ; and in bis Commentary on Genesis
(i, 3; ed. 1838, p. 9) he says of him : " Latrat hie obscoaius canis." And
Servetus had asked his pardon at the end.

6 Willis, pp. 47, 511.

e Table Talk, c. 43. Cp. Michelet's Life of 'Luther, Eng. tr", 1846.
pp. 195-6; and Hallam, Lit. Hist, of Europe, i, 360-5.

THE REFORMATION. 257

Gruet, of the " Libertine " faction in Geneva, who on
being arrested for issuing placards against the clerical
junto in power, was found to have among his papers some
revealing his disbelief in the Christian religion.1 On the
strength of this and other cases the Libertines have been
sometimes supposed to be generally unbelievers ; but there
is no more evidence for this than for the general ascription
to them of licentious conduct. The presumption is
that they included the more honest and courageous men of
liberal and tolerant tendencies. The really antinomian
Libert ini of the period were, as before noted,2 the sect
so called, otherwise known as Spirituals, who held a
species of pantheism, and who seem to have been a branch
of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. These Calvin de-
nounced in his manner ; but in 1544 he had forced into
exile Sebastian Castalio, master of the public school at
Geneva, for simply rejecting his doctrine of absolute pre-
destination ; and in 1551 he had caused to be imprisoned
a physician and ex-Carmelite monk, Jerome Bolsec, for
publicly denying the same dogma, whereupon Bolsec
returned to Catholicism.3 The later treatment of Ber-
nardino Ochino, who had turned Protestant after being
vicar-general of the Capuchin order, shows the slackening
of ferocity after the end of Servetus. Ochino ventured to
suggest certain relaxations of the law of monogamy — a
point on which some Lutherans went much further than
he — and was further heretical about the Trinity. He was
in consequence expelled with his family from the canton
of Zurich, at the age of seventy-six. Finding Switzerland
wholly inhospitable, and being excluded bv the Catholics
from Poland, where he had sought to join the Socinians,
he went to die in Moravia.4 This was no worse treatment
than Lutherans5 and Calvinists normally meted out to
each other. Finally, when the Italian Valentinus Gentilis,

1 Audin, Histoire it Calvin, as cited, pp. 279-2 ' \1- \e, p 1.

Mosheim, Cent. XIV, Sect. Ill, I't. ii, c. ii, ^38-41 ; Audin, Histoirt
dc Calvin, ch. xxix, xxx.

4 McCrie, Hist, oj the Ref. in Italy, 1NJ7, pp 391-6; Audin, ch xxxv.
6 Cp. Pusey, Histor. Eng. into Ger. Rationalism, [828, p [4, it.

258 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the anti-Trinitarian, variously described as Tritheist,
Deist, and Arian, uttered his heresies at Geneva, he was
allowed to go thence with his life, but was duly burned at
Berne, in 1566. *

The Protestant Bibliolatry, in short, was as truly the
practical negation of freethought and tolerance as was
Catholicism itself; and it was only their general remote-
ness from each other that kept the different reformed
communities from absolute war. As it was, they had
their full share in the responsibility for the desperate civil
wars which so long convulsed France, and for those
which ultimately reduced Germany to the verge of
destruction, arresting her civilisation for a hundred years.

§3-

Freethought gained as little in England as elsewhere
in the process of substituting local tyranny for that of
Rome. Under Henry, anti- Romanist heretics were put
to death on the old Romanist principles. Under the
Protectorate which followed, such new heresy as there
was stood equally with orthodoxy on Biblical grounds ;
and the punishment was the same.2 The Elizabethan
Archbishops and the Puritans were equally intolerant ;
and the idea of free enquiry was undreamt of. The
Reformation in fact had over-clouded with fanaticism
what new light of Freethought had been glimmering
before ; turning into Bibliolators those who had rationally
doubted some of the Catholic mysteries, and forcing back
into Catholic bigotry those more refined spirits who, like
Sir Thomas More, were really in advance of their age
intellectually and morally, and desired a transmutation of
the old system rather than its overthrow. Nothing so
essentially rational as the Utopia appeared again in

1 Mosbeim, Cent. XVI, Sec iii. ]'t. ii, c. iv, [ G; Aiulin, pp. 311;
Axetius, Short Hist oj Vol Gentilis, Eng.tr. 1696,

In [532 was burnt Jami Ba nham, who :-.( >t only rejected the specially
Catholic dogmas, but affirmed the possible salvation of unbelievers.

THE REFORMATION. 259

English literature for a century : it is indeed, in some
respects, a lead to social science in our own day.

It is in the wake of the overthrow, in the second
generation, that a real Freethought begins to be heard of
in England ; and this clearly comes by way of new con-
tinental and literary contact, which would have occurred
in at least as great a degree under Catholicism, save in so
far as unbelief was facilitated by the state of indifference
which among the upper classes was the natural sequel of
the policy of plunder and the oscillation between Pro-
testant and Catholic forms. And it was finally in this
negative way only that Protestantism .furthered Free-
thought anywhere. In Bohemia, where in the fifteenth
century the movement of Huss led to an actual political
outbreak, the practical sequel was mere furious civil war
and exacerbated fanaticism. Led up to by the rather
more radical teaching of Wiclif, many of whose works
had been carried to Bohemia, the Protestantism of Huss
and Jerome of Prague in turn stimulated the later move-
ment of Luther ; but it did no more. Huss and Jerome
were nationalists of a narrow type, and were the means of
making the university of Prague a merely Bohemian
instead of a universal German one.1 The Hussite war
which followed on their deaths was one of the most
ferocious in modern history, and the Hussite sect known
as Taborites were fanatics of the wildest type.2

In Germany, Protestantism failed alike as a moral
and as an intellectual reform. The lack of any general
moral motive in the ecclesiastical revolution is sufficiently
proved by the general dissolution of conduct which, on
the express admission of Luther, followed upon it. This
was quite apart from the special disorders of the Anabaptist
movement, which, on the other hand, contained elements
of moral and religious rationalism, as against Bibliolatry,
that have been little recognised.3 The test of the n< w

1 K. von Raumer, Contrib. to the H.
York, 1859, p. i 1

: Mush. -mi, Cent XV, Pt II, c iii. :
:; See Beard, I iibbert Lect. on 1

S 2

260 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

regimen lay, if anywhere, in the University of Wittenberg ;-
and there matters were no better than anywhere else.1
German university life in general went from bad to worse
till a new life began slowly to germinate after the Thirty
Years' War2; and the germs came mainly from the neigh-
bouring nations.

Hardly more fortunate was the course of things intel-
lectual after the Reformation in the Netherlands, where
by the fifteenth century remarkable progress had been
made alike in science and the arts, and where Erasmus
acquired his culture and did his service to culture's cause.
The fact that Protestantism had to fight for its life against
Philip was of course not the fault of Protestantism ; and
to that ruinous struggle is to be attributed the arrest of the
civilisation of Flanders. But it lay in the nature of the
Protestant impulse that it should turn all intellectual life
for generations into vain controversy. The struggle
between reform and Popery was followed by the struggle
between Calvinism and Arminianism ; and the second was-
no less bitter if less bloody than the first,3 the religious
strife passing into civil feud. Grotius, the most distin-
guished Dutch scholar and the chief apologist of
Christianity in his day, had to seek refuge, on his escape
from prison, in Catholic France, whose king granted him
a pension. The circumstance which in Holland chiefly
favored freethought, the freedom of the press, was, like
the great florescence of the arts in the seventeenth century,
a result of the whole social and political conditions, not of
any Protestant belief in free discussion. That there were
freethinkers in Holland in and before Grotius' time is
implied in the pains he took to defend Christianity; but
that they existed in despite of the ruling Protestantism is
proved by the fact that they did not venture to publish
their opinions. In the end, Grotius and Casaubon alike
n roiled from the narrow Protestantism around them,.

1 K von Raumer, a i ited, pp 32-37.
1 Id., pp 42-52 ; Pusey, as cited, p. 112.
'I i.e. Grattan, The Netherlands, 1830, pp jji-243.

THE REFORMATION. 26l

-which had wholly failed to realise their hopes.1 Just
before the Protestant period (151 1) Herman van
RYSTWICH was burnt alive at the Hague for persisting
(after imprisonment and recantation), in denying hell and
the immortality of the soul, and for affirming the eternity
of matter. Such views were no safer under the Protestant
regimen.

Of Dirk (or Theodore) Koornhert (1522-1590) it is
recorded that he agreed with neither Protestant nor
Catholic, but wrote strongly against persecution in reply
to Beza and Calvin, and opposed the dogma of pre-
destination, giving a lead to Arminius. He made the
interesting proposal that the clergy should not be allowed
to utter anything save the actual words of the Scriptures ;
and that all works of theology should be sequestrated.
For these and other heteroclite suggestions he was expelled
from Delft by the magistrates.2 It may be inferred what
would have been the fate of any rationalist who went
further. A History of the Netherlands, by Liewe van
Aitzema, a nobleman of Friesland, was suppressed between
1621 and 1628 on the score of his or its atheism. The
charge of atheism was brought against the Exccrcitationes
Philosophicae of Gorlseus, published in 1620 ; but the book
being posthumous, conclusions could not be tried. In the
generation after Grotius, one Koerbagh, a doctor, for
publishing (1668) a dictionary of definitions containing
advanced ideas, had to fly from Amsterdam. At Culenberg
he translated a Unitarian work and began another, but
was betrayed, tried for blasphemy and sentenced to ten
years' imprisonment, to be followed by ten years' banish-
ment. He compromised by dying in prison within the
year. Even as late as 1678, Hadrian Beverland, nephew
of Isaac Vossius, was imprisoned and struck off the rolls
of Leyden University for his Pcccatuni Originate, in which
he speculated oddly as to the nature of the sin of Adam
and Eve. The book was publicly burned.

1 Hallam, Lit. Hist, of Europe, ii, 406-4 16

2 Bayle, Dictionnaire, s.v. Koornhert. Cp Piinjer, p. 269.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT.

Si.

The negative bearing of the Reformation on Freethought
is made clear by the historic fact that the new currents of
thought which broadly mark the beginning of the "modern
spirit " arose outside of its sphere. It is to Italy, where
the political and social conditions always tended to frus-
trate the Inquisition, that we trace the rise alike of modern
Deism, modern Unitarianism, modern Pantheism, modern
physics, and the tendency to rational Atheism. The first
mention of Deism noted by Bayle is in the epistle dedica-
tory to the second and expanded edition of the Instruction
Chrcticnne of the Swiss Protestant Viret (1563), where
professed Deists are spoken of as a new species bearing a
new name. On the admission of Viret, who was the
friend and bitter disciple of Calvin, they rejected all
revealed religion, but called themselves Deists by way of
repudiating Atheism ; some having a belief in immortality,
some rejecting it. In the theological manner he goes on
to call them all execrable Atheists, and to say that he has
added to his treatise on their account an exposition of
natural religion grounded on the " Book of Nature " ;
stultifying himself by going on to say that he has also
dealt with the professed Atheists.1 Of the Deists he
admits that among thcni were men of the highest repute
for science and learning. Thus within ten years of the
burning of Servetus we find privately avowed Deism and
Atheism in the area oi French-speaking Protestantism.

,1c, DicHonnaire, art. Viret, note D.
( 262 )

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 263

Doubtless the spectacle of Protestant feuds would go
far to foster such unbelief; but though Martin Cellarius
avowed Unitarianism in 1522, having been converted by
German Anabaptists, thereafter there is reason to look to
Italy as the source of the propaganda. Thence came the
two Sozzini, the founders of Socinianism, of whom
Laelio, the uncle of Faustus, travelled much in northern
Europe (including England) between 1546 and 1552. l
Before Socinianism had taken form, it was led up to in
the writings of the ex-monk Bernardo Ochino (1487-1564),
who combined mystical and Unitarian tendencies with a
leaning to polygamy and freedom of divorce.2 His in-
fluence was considerable among the Swiss Protestants,,
though they expelled him for his heresies. It was about
the year 1563, again, that Roger Ascham wrote his
Scholemaster, wherein are angrily described, as a species
new in England, men who " where they dare ", scorn
both Protestant and Papist, rejecting scripture, and
counting the Christian mysteries as fables. He describes
them as " a8eoi in doctrine"; adding, "this last word is
no more unknowne now to plaine Englishe men than the
Person was unknown somtyme in England, untill some
Englishe man took peines to fetch that develish opinion
out of Italie".3 The whole tendency he connects in a
general way with the issue of many new translations
from the Italian, mentioning in particular Petrarch and
Boccaccio. Alongside of the old unbelief in Italy there
now sprang up a crop of religious Unitarianism. Giorgio
Biandrata (b. 15 15 ; assass. in Poland, 1591) was seized
by the Inquisition at Pavia for such opinion. In 1562,
Giulio Guirlando of Treviso, and in 1566 Francesco Saga
of Rovigo, were burned at Venice for anti-Trinitarianism.
Giacomo Aconzio, who dedicated his Stratagems of Satan

1 Calvin, scenting his heresy, menaced him in 1552. Bayle, art.
Marianus Sooin, the first, note B.

- Cp. Bayle, art. Ochin ; Miss M E. Lowndes. Michel </<• Montaigne,
p. 2611; Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, p. 58

8 The Scholemaster, Arber's reprint, p 82.

264 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

(1565) to Queen Elizabeth, was a decided latitudinarian ; l
and Aonio Paleario, poet and professor of rhetoric at
Milan, hanged in 1570 (in his seventieth year) for
denouncing the Inquisition, seems to have been no less so.
It is remarkable that all this occurs in the period of
the Catholic Reaction, the Council of Trent, and the
subjection of Italy. It would seem that in the compulsory
peace which had now fallen on Italian life, men's thoughts
turned more than ever to mental problems, as had hap-
pened in Greece after the rise of Alexander's empire. The
authority of the Church was outwardly supreme ; the
Jesuits had already begun to do great things for educa-
tion ; 2 the Inquisition was everywhere in Italy ; Pius V
and the hierarchy everywhere sought to enforce decorum
in life ; the " pagan " academies were dissolved ; and
classic culture rapidly decayed with the arts, while clerical
learning flourished,3 and a new religious music began with
Palestrina. Nevertheless, whatever outward restoration
of religion took place, and despite commercial decadence
and misrule, freethought privately held its ground ; and
under an exterior conformity has prevailed more or less
among the educated classes down to our own time, when
it may be said to be normal. Open heresy was crushed
by Pius V ; the Protestant Carnesecchi was burnt ; but
under a forced dissimulation the deeper unbelief was
ineradicable ; and in that age (1548) was born Giordano
Bruno, one of the types of modern freethought.

§2.

In the other countries influenced by Italian culture in
the sixteenth century the rationalist spirit had various
fortune. The true renascence of letters in France had
begun before and gone on during the Reformation period ;
and all along it showed a tincture of freethought. Along-

1 Art Acontius, in Diet, of Nat. Biog. Cp. Tayler, Retrospect of the
1 land, 2nd ed., pp. 205-0.

Bacon, Advancement oj Learning, B. i iHohned. p. 38).
• p Zeller, Hist, del' Italie,pp 400-412; Green, Short Hist., ch. viii, { 2.

THE RISE OF MODERN EREETHOUGHT. 265

side of Luther, we have the enormous raillery of Rabelais,
who, whatever be the truth as to his personal beliefs, was
visibly the most unclerical of priests, and counted wholly
for audacity and intellectual adventure. So careful was
he to elude the bigots that it remains impossible to say
with confidence whether or not he believed in a future
state.1 In his concern to keep himself safe with the Sor-
bonne he made a rather unworthy attack (1542) on his
former friend Etienne Dolet for the mere oversight of
reprinting one of his books without deleting passages
which Rabelais had expunged ; 2 but no expurgation could
make his evangile, as he called it, a Christian treatise,
or keep for him an orthodox reputation. Dolet was at
least no more of an unbeliever than he ; but where
Rabelais could with impunity convey vast inuendos by
way of jests about the people of Ruach (the Spirit), who
lived solely on wind,3 and narratives about the Papefigucs
and Papimancs,4, Dolet was done to death in priestly
revenge 5 for his youthful attack on the religion of in-
quisitorial Toulouse, where gross pagan superstition and
gross orthodoxy went hand in hand.6 Of the freethought
of such an age there could be no adequate record. Its
tempestuous energy, however, implies not a little of
private unbelief; and there are some memorable traces.

The most articulate French freethinker of that age,
though even he had to wear the veil of allegory, is
Bonaventure des Periers, author of the Cymbalum
Mundi (1537). Early associated with Calvin and Olivetan
in revising the French translation of the Bible by Le
Fevre d'Etaples (rev. 1535), Bonaventure turned away
from the Protestant movement, as did Rabelais and

1 Prof. Stapfer, Rabelais, sa personne, son genie, sou ceuvre, 1889, pp. 365-8.
Cp. the Notice of Bibliophile Jacob, ed. 1841 of Rabelais, pp. Ivii-lviii.

* R. Christie, Etienne Dolet, pp. 369-372. This point and the persistent
Catholic calumnies against Dolet, are examined by the author in art " The
Truth about Etienne Dolet ", in National Reformer, J tm«_- z and 9, 1889,

3 Liv. iv, ch. 43.

4 Liv. iv, ch. 45-48.

5 Cp. author's art. above cited.

6 Christie, Etienne Doltt, pp. 105-6.

266 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Dolet, caring as little for the new presbyter as for the
old priest ; and all three were duly accused by Calvin of
atheism and libcrtinagc.1 In the same year Bonaventure
published his much-praised Commentarii linguae latinae ;
and within two years he had produced his satire, Cym-
balum Mundi? wherein, by way of Pagan dialogues,
are allegorically ridiculed the Christian scheme, its
miracles, Bible contradictions, and the spirit of per-
secution, then in full fire in France against the Protestants.
The allegory is not always clear to modern eyes ;
but there was no question then about its general
bearing ; and Bonaventure, though groom of the chamber
(after Clement Marot) to Marguerite of Navarre, had to
fly for his life as Marot did before him. From that
time he disappears, probably dying, whether or not by
suicide is doubtful, before 1544, when his miscellaneous
works were published. The age was too inclement for
such literature ; and it was much that it spared Gringoire
(d. 1544), who, without touching doctrine, satirised in his
verse both priests and Protestants. Other men had
worse fates; for instance, Louis de Berquin, the friend of
Erasmus, burnt for his anti-clericalism at Paris in 1529 ;
and Jean de la Garde, bookseller, who met the same fate
in 1537 for selling four " blasphemous " tractates, which
were burned with him.

Among the eminent ones then surmised to lean to
rationalism was the sister of King Francis, Marguerite of
Navarre, whom we have noted as a protectress of the
pantheistic Libertini, denounced by Calvin. She is held
to have been substantially sceptical until her forty-fifth
year;1 though her final religiousness seems also beyond

1 N"lnc of Bonaventure des Periers, by Bibliophile Jacob, in 1841 ed.of
Cymbalum Mundi, etc.

• For a solution of the enigma of the title, see the Cleft t Eloi Jobanneau,

1 ted, p, 83. Ill'- book 1 ited b) Thomas Du Clevier «i son ami

1 rre Tyroi an, whi< h is found to be, with one letter altered, an anagram f»>r

Incredule dson ami Pitm Croyant, " Unbelieving Thomas to his friend

Believii ' Clef cited, pp, 80-85.

1 Ch. Nodier, quoted by Bibliophile Jacob in ed. of Cymbalum Alioidi, as
cited, p xviii.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 267

doubt.1 In her youth she bravely protected the Pro-
testants from the first persecution of 1523 onwards ; and
the strongly Protestant drift of her Miroir de I'dme
pccheressc exasperated the Catholic theologians ; but after
the Protestant violences of 1546 she seems to have sided
with her brother against the Reform.2 The strange taste
of the Heptameron, of which again her authorship seems
certain,3 constitutes a moral paradox not to be solved
save by recognising in her a woman of genius, whose
alternate mysticism and bohemianism expressed a very
ancient duality in human nature.

A similar mixture will explain the intellectual life of
the poet Ronsard. A persecutor of the Huguenots,4 he
was denounced as an Atheist by two of their ministers ; '
and the pagan fashion in which he handled Christian
things scandalised his own side. But though the spirit
of the French Renaissance, so eagerly expressed in the
Defense et Illustration de la langnc francoise of Joachim du
Bellay (1549), is at its outset as emancipated as that of
the Italian, we find Ronsard in his latter years edifying
the pious.6 Any ripe and consistent rationalism, indeed,
was then impossible. One of the most powerful minds of
the age was Bodin (1530-96) whose Rcpubliquc is perhaps
the most scientific treatise on government between
Aristotle and our own age, and whose Colloquium Hcptaplo-
mcres1 is reputed no less original an outline of a Naturalist8
philosophy. He was repeatedly and emphatically
accused of unbelief by friends and foes ; <J and his rational-
ism on some heads is beyond doubt ; yet he not only held

1 Cp. Brantome, Des dames illustres. CEuvres, ed. 1838, ii, 1S6.

2 Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Marguerite de Navarre (the first), notes F
and G. '

Bayle, note N. But cp Nodier, as cited.
4 Bayle, art. Ronsard, note D.

6 Garasse, La Doctrine Cm-it use des Beaux F.sfi ts de ce Temps, 1623, pp.
126-7. Ronsard replied to the charge in his poem Des mi.iies du temps.

6 Bayle, art. Ronsard, note O.

7 MS. 1588. First printed in [857 by L. Noack.

8 As before noted, he seems to have coined the word. Cp. Lechler,
Gcschichte des englischen Detsmus. S. 31. 455, notes.

9Bayle, art. Bodin, note O.

268 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

by the belief in witchcraft, but wrote a furious treatise in
support of it.1 But he also stood for religious toleration :
the new principle that was to change the face of intellectual
life. A few liberal Catholics shared it with him to some
extent 2 long before St. Bartholomew's Day ; eminent
among them being L'Hopital,3 whose humanity, tolerance,
and concern for practical morality and the reform of the
Church brought upon him the charge of Atheism. He
was, however, a believing Catholic.4 Deprived of power,
his edict of tolerance repealed, he saw the long and
ferocious struggle of Catholics and Huguenots renewed,
and crowned by the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day
(1572). Broken-hearted, and haunted by that monstrous
memory, he died six months later.

A generation of insane civil war for religion's sake
must have gone far to build up unbelief; and already
in 1564 we find an Atheomachie published by one De Bour-
geville ; but the Massacre must have consummated the
work. In 1581 appears another Atheomachie, on refutation
des erreurs et impictes des Athcistes, Libertins, etc., issued at
Geneva, but bearing much on French life. In the greatest
French writer of that age, a professed Catholic, but averse
alike to Catholic and to Protestant bigotry, the shock can
be seen disintegrating once for all the spirit of faith.
Montaigne typifies the pure scepticism produced in an
unscientific age by the practical demonstration that
religion can avail immeasurably more for evil than for
good.'' A few years before the Massacre he had translated

1 ("p. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ed. 1887, i, 66, 87-91. In the
Republique, too, he has a chapter on astrology.

- Cp Villemain, Vie de L'Hopital, in Etudes de I'histoire moderne, 1846,
PP \2S.

3 Buckle (3-vol. ed. ii, io) errs in representing L'Hopital as the only
Statesman oi the time who dreamt of toleration. It is to be noted on the
othei band that the Huguenots themselves protested against any toleration
of Atheists or Anabaptists; and even the reputed freethinker Gabriel
Naude, writing in 16 \g, defended the massacre on political grounds (Owen,
S/tcptus 0/ the French Renaissance, p. 470, note).
■ illemain, p, 429

"Our religion," he writes, "is made to extirpate vices : it protects,
nourishes, and incites tli«-m " (Essais, B. ii, c. 12: ed. Firmin-Didot, ii,
" 1 here is no enmity so extreme as the Christian "

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 269

for his dying father x the old Theologia Naturalis of Ray-
mond of Sebonde ; and we know from the later Apology
in the Essays that freethinking contemporaries declared
the argument of Raymond to be wholly insufficient.3 It is
clear from the same essay that Montaigne felt as much ;
though the gist of his polemic is a vehement attack upon
all forms of confident opinion, religious and anti-religious
alike. " In replying to arguments of so opposite a
tenor, Montaigne leaves Christianity, as well as Raimond
Sebonde, without a leg to stand upon. He demolishes
the arguments of Sebonde with the rest of human pre-
sumption, and allows Christianity, neither held by faith
nor provable by reason, to fall between the two stools." 3
It was the Massacre that above all made Montaigne recoil
from public life i : it must have affected likewise his work-
ing philosophy.

That philosophy was not, indeed, an original con-
struction ; he found it to his hand partly in the Deism of
his favorite Seneca ; partly in the Hypoty poses of Sextus
Empiricus, of which the Latin translation is known to
have been among his books; from which he took several
of the mottoes inscribed on his library ceiling,5 and from
which he frequently quotes towards the end of his Apology.
The body of ideas compacted on these bases cannot be
called a system : it was not in Montaigne's nature to
frame a logical scheme of thought ; and he was far from
being the philosophic sceptic he set out to be 6 by way of
confounding at once the bigots and the Atheists. But on

1 Mr. Owen was mistaken {Skeptics of the French Renaissance, 1893, p. 414)
in supposing that Montaigne spent several years over this translation. It
was done rapidly. Cp. Miss M. E. Lowndes' excellent monograph, Michel
it Montaigne, 1898, pp. 103, 106.

- Ed. Firmin-Didot, ii, 469.

1 Miss Lowndes, as cited, p. 145.

4 Cp. the Essais, B. iii, c. 1 (Ed. Firmin-Didot, ii, 20S). Mr. Owen
gives a somewhat misleading idea of the passage (French Skeptics, p, 4

Miss Lowndes, Michel it Montaigne, p. 131. Cp. Mr. Owen, Skeptics oj
the French Renaissance, p. 444.

,; He was consistent enough to doubt the new cosmology of Copernicus
[Essais, as cited, i, C15) ; but he was a keen and convinced critic of the
prevailing abuses in law and education. Mr. Owen's discussion of his
opinions is illuminating.

27O HISTORY OF FKEETHOUGHT.

the other hand his whole habit of mind is perfectly fatal
to orthodox religion ; and it is clear that despite his pro-
fessions of conformity he did not hold the ordinary Chris-
tian beliefs.1 Above all, he rejected the great superstition
of the age, the belief in witchcraft. His function in litera-
ture was thus to set up a certain mental atmosphere ; 2
and this the extraordinary vitality of his utterance enabled
him to do to an incalculable extent. He had the gift to
disarm or at least to baffle3 hostility, to charm kings,
to stand free between warring factions. No book ever
written conveys more absolutely the sensation of a living
voice ; and after three hundred years he has as friendly
an audience as ever.

The momentum of such an influence is seen in the
work of Charron (1541-1603), Montaigne's friend and
disciple. The Essais had first appeared in 1580 ; the
expanded and revised issue in 1588 ; and in 1601 there
appeared Charron's De la Sagesse, which gives methodic
form and as far as was permissible a direct application to
Montaigne's naturalistic principles. Charron's is a curious
case of mental evolution. First a lawyer, then a priest,
he became a highly successful popular preacher and
champion of the Catholic League ; and as such was
favored by the notorious Marguerite (the second4) of
Navarre. Becoming the friend of Montaigne in 1586, he
shows already in 1593, in his Three Truths, the influence of
the essayist's scepticism,5 though Charron's book was
expressly framed to refute, first, the Atheists ; second, the

p. the clerical protests of Sterling (Loin! and Westnt. Review, July,
183 6) and Dean Church (Oxford Essays, p. 279)

- Cp. citations in Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 18, note 42 ; and Lecky, Rationalism,

Mr. Owen notes (French Skeptics, p 446) that though the Papal curia
requested him to alter certain passages in the I ays, "it cannot be shown
thai be erased or modified a single one of the points". Sainte Beuve,
however, has noted many safeguarding clauses added to the later versions
of the essay on I

1 Not, as Mr. < i 9) the sister of Francis 1,

who dud when Charron was ei^ht years old, but the daughter oi Henri II,
.:• 'i Henri ol Navarre, afterwards Henri IV.
• Cp. Sainte-Beuve, as cited by Owtn, p. 571, note, and Owen's own
,72

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 271

pagans, Jews, Mahommedans ; and third, the Christian
heretics and schismatics. The Wisdom, published only
eight years later, is a work of a very different cast, proving
a mental change. Even in the first work, " the growing
teeth of the sceptic are discernible beneath the well-worn
stumps of the believer" ;* but the second almost testifies
to a new birth. Professedly orthodox, it was yet recog-
nised at once by the devout asa" seminary of impiety ",2
and brought on its author a persecution that lasted till his
sudden death from apoplexy, which his critics pronounced
to be a divine dispensation. In the second and re-
arranged edition, published a year after his death, there
are some modifications ; but they are so far from essential3
that Buckle found the book as it stands a kind of pioneer
manual of rationalism.4 Its way of putting all religions
on one level, as being alike grounded on bad evidence
and held on prejudice, is only the formal statement of an
old idea, found, like so many others of Charron's, in
Montaigne ; but the didactic purpose and method turn
the sceptic's shrug into a resolute propaganda. So with
the formal and earnest insistence that true morality cannot
be built on religious hopes and fears, — a principle which
Charron was the first to bring directly home to the modern
intelligence,5 as he did the principle of development in
religious systems.* Attempting as it does to construct a
systematic practical philosophy of life, it puts aside so
positively the claims of the theologians,7 and so emphatic-
ally subordinates religion to the rule of natural reason,8

1 Owen, p. 571. Cp. pp. 573. 574.

2 Bayle, art. Charron. " A brutal atheism " is the account of Charron ^
doctrine given by the Jesuit Garasse.

3 Mr. Owen (p. 570) comes to this conclusion after carefully collating
the editions. Cp. p. 587, note. The whole of the alterations. Including
those proposed by President Jeannin, will be found set forth in th

of 1607, and the reprints of that.

4 "The first . . . attempt made in a modern 1 -to cons:ruct 1
system of morals without the aid of theology" (In trod, to Hist, of I
England, 3-vol. ed. ii, 19).

0 Cp. Owen, pp. 5S0-5.

" Buckle, ii, 21.

: E.g., the preface to the first e lition. a I intt.

- E^. Liv ii, ch. 2>> of revised ed. (ed. 1009, p. 399).

272 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

that it constitutes a virtual revolution in public doctrine
for Christendom. As Montaigne is the true beginner
of modern literature, so is Charron the beginner of modern
secular teaching. He is a Naturalist, professing theism.

It was only powerful protection that could save such a
book from proscription ; but Charron and his book had
the support at once of Henri IV and the President
Jeannin— the former a proved indifferentist to religious
forms ; the latter the author of the remark that a peace
with two religions was better than a war which had none.
After the assassination of the king in 1610, the last of the
bloody deeds which had kept France on the rack of un-
certainty in religion's name for three generations, the
spirit of rationalism naturally did not wane. In the Paris
of the early seventeenth century, doubtless, the new
emancipation came to be associated, as "libertinism",
with license as well as with freethinking. In the nature
of the case there could be no serious and free literary
discussion of the new problems either of life or belief,
save in so far as they had been handled by Montaigne and
Charron ; and inasmuch as the accounts preserved of the
freethought of the age are almost invariably those of its
worst enemies, it is chiefly their side of the case that has
been presented. Thus in 1623 the Jesuit Father Francois
Garasse published a thick quarto of over a thousand pages
entitled La Doctrine Curieuse des Beaux Esprits de ce temps,
ou pretendu tels, in which he assails the " libertins" of the
day with an infuriated industry. The eight books into
which he divides his treatise proceed upon eight alleged
maxims of the freethinkers, which run as follows : —

I. There are very few good wits [bons Esprits'] in the world; and the
Is, that is to say, the common run of men, are not capable of our

doctrine ; therefore it will not do to speak freely, but in secret, and among

trusting and cabalistic souls.

I I < ..oil wits [beau 1 / iprits] believe in God only by way of form, and

I • 1 of public policy (par Maxim t d'Etat).

III \ it is free in his belief, and is not readily to be taken in by
the quantity oi nonsense that is propounded to the simple populace.

IV All things are conducted and governed by Destiny, which is-

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 273

irrevocable, infallible, immovable, necessary, eternal and inevitable to all
men whomsoever.

V. It is true that the book called the Bible, or the Holy Scripture, is a
good book (un gentil livre), and contains a lot of good things ; but that a
bon esprit should be obliged to believe under pain of damnation all that is
therein, down to the tail of Tobit's dog, does not follow.

VI. There is no other divinity or sovereign power in the world but
Nature, which must be satisfied in all things, without refusing anything
to our body or senses that they desire of us in the exercise of their natural
powers and faculties.

VII. Supposing there be a God, as it is decorous to admit, so as not to
be always at odds with the superstitious, it does not follow that there are
creatures which are purely intellectual and separated from matter. All
that is in Nature is composite, and therefore there are neither angels nor
devils in the world, and it is not certain that the soul of man is immortal.

VIII. It is true that to live happily it is necessary to extinguish and drown
all scruples ; but all the same it does not do to appear impious and abandoned,
for fear of offending the simple or losing the support of the superstitious.

This is obviously neither candid nor competent writing ;
and as it happens there remains proof in the case of the
life of La Mothe le Vayer, that " earnest free-thought
in the beginning of the seventeenth century afforded a
point d'appui for serious-minded men, which neither the
corrupt Romanism nor the narrow Protestantism of the
period could furnish 'V Garasse's own doctrine was
that " the true liberty of the mind consists in a simple
and docile (sage) belief in all that the Church propounds,
indifferently and without distinction ".2 The later social
history of Catholic France is the sufficient comment on
the efficacy of such teaching to regulate life. In any case,
the new ideas steadily gained ground ; and on the heels
of the treatise of Garasse appeared that of Marin
Mersenne, Uimpiete des Deistes, Athees et Libert ins de
ce temps combattue, avec la refutation des opinions de
Charron, de Cardan, de Jordan Brun, et des quatraines du
Deiste (1624). Such were the signs of the times when
Pascal was in his cradle.

1 Owen, French Skeptics, p. 659. Cp. Lecky, Rationalism, i, 97, citing
Maury, as to the resistance of libcrtins to the superstition about witchcraft.

2 La Doctrine des Beaux Esprits, as cited, p. 208. This is one of the
passages which fully explain the opinion of the orthodox of that a.^e that
Garasse "helped rather than hindered Atheism " (Reimmann, Hist. Atheisnn,
1725, p. 40S).

274 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

§ 3-
While France was thus passing from general fanaticism
to a large measure of freethought, England was passing
by a less tempestuous path to a less advanced stage of
opinion. The comparative bloodlessness of the strife
between Protestant and Catholic under Mary and Eliza-
beth, the treatment of the Jesuit propaganda under the
latter queen as a political rather than a doctrinal ques-
tion, prevented any such vehemence of recoil from
religious ideals as took place in France. Unbelief, as we
have seen, there certainly was ; and it is recorded that
Walter, Earl of Essex, on his deathbed at Dublin in
1576, murmured that among his countrymen neither
Popery nor Protestantism prevailed : " there was nothing
but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity ; atheism, atheism ; no
religion, no religion1." But seventeen years later, and
over thirty years after the outburst of Ascham before
cited, we find only a sporadic and secret unbelief, going
in fear of its life. Open rationalism could go no further
than such a protest against superstition as Reginald Scot's
Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), which, however, is a suffi-
ciently remarkable expression of reason in an age in which
a Bodin held angrily by the superstition.2 Elizabeth
was herself substantially irreligious,3 and preferred to keep
the clergy few in number and subordinate in influence4;
but her Ministers regarded the Church as part of the
State system, and punished all open heresy in the manner
of the Inquisition. One Matthew Hamond, a plough-
wright, was burned at Norwich in 1579 f°r declaring the
New Testament " a fable, Christ a mere sinful man,
erected into an abominable idol, the Holy Ghost a
nonentity, and the sacraments useless"5; one Peter Cole,

1 Froude, History of England, ed. 1875, xi, 199, citing MSS. Ireland.

2 Lecky, Rationalism, i, 103-4. Scot's book had practically no influence
in his own day.

3 " No woman ever lived who was so totally destitute of the sentiment
of religion " (Green, Short History, c. vii, Sec. 3, p. 369).

1 Soame, Elizabethan Religious History, 1839, p. 225.
* Soame, as cited, p. 234.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 275

an Ipswich tanner, was burned in 1587 (again at
Norwich) for similar doctrine ; and Francis Kett, a young
clergyman, ex-fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cam-
bridge, was burnt at the same place in 1589 for heresy of
the Unitarian order. Hamond and Cole seem, how-
ever, to have been religious men,1 and Kett a devout
mystic, with ideas of a Second Advent3. All founded on the
Bible._

In 1593, finally, we find atheism charged against two
famous men, Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter
Raleigh, of whom the former is documentarily connected
with Kett, and Raleigh in turn with Marlowe. An official
document3, preserved by some chance, reveals that
Marlowe was given to singularly audacious derision of
the received beliefs ; and so explicit is the evidence that
it is almost certain he would have been executed for
blasphemy had he not been privately killed (1593) while
the proceedings were pending. The " atheism " imputed
to him is not made out in any detail ; but many of the
other utterances are notably in keeping with Marlowe's
daring temper ; and they amount to unbelief of the most
stringent kind.

Concerning Raleigh, again, there is no shadow of
proof of atheism ; but it is matter of literary history that
he, like Montaigne, had been influenced by the Hypotyposes
of Sextus Empiricu^ ; his short essay The Sceptick being a
naif exposition of the thesis that " the sceptick doth neither
affirm neither deny any position ; but doubteth of it, and
applyeth his Reason against that whicli is affirmed, or
denied, to justifie his non-consenting "*i. But the essay
itself proceeds upon a set of wildly false propositions in

1 Art. Matthew Hamond, in Diet, of Nat. Biog.
- Art. Francis Kett, in Diet, of Nat. Biog.

3 MS. Harl. 6853, fol. 320. It is given in full in the appendix to the
first issue of the selected plays of Marlowe in the Mermaid Series, edited
by Mr. Havelock Ellis; and, with omissions, in the editions of Cunning-
ham, Dyce, and Bullen.
" 4 Translated into Latin by Henri Etienne in 1562. — »
6 Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh, ed. 1657, p. 123. ■

T 2

276 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

natural history, concerning which the adventurous reasoner
has no doubts whatever ; and altogether we may be sure
that his artificial scepticism did not carry him far. The
evidence goes to show only that he was ready to read a
Unitarian essay, supposed to be Rett's ; and that he had
intercourse with Marlowe and others, in particular his
secretary, Harriott or Heriots, known to be free-
thinkers. A prosecution begun against him on this score,
at the time of the enquiry concerning Marlowe (when
Raleigh was in disgrace with the Queen), came to nothing.
It had been led up to by a Catholic pamphlet, which
affirmed that his private group was known as " Sir Walter
Rawley's school of Atheisme ", and that therein " both
Moyses and our Savior, the Old and the New Testaments,
are jested at, and the scholars taught among other things
to spell God backwards".1 This seems to have been idle
gossip, though it tells of unbelief somewhere; and Raleigh's
own writings always indicate belief in the Bible2 ; though
his dying speech and epitaph are noticeably deistic. That
he was a deist, given to free discussion, seems the probable
truth.3

The latest documentary evidence as to the case of Marlowe
is produced by Mr. F. C. Boas in his article " New Light on
Marlowe and Kyd " in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1899.
In addition to the formerly known data as to Marlowe's
"atheism", it is now established that Thomas Kyd, his fellow-
dramatist, was arrested on the same charge, and that there wa3
found among his papers one containing " vile hereticall con-
ceiptes denyinge the divinity of Jhesus Christe our Saviour ".
This Kyd declared he had had from Marlowe, denying all
sympathy with its views. The paper however proves to be a
vehement Unitarian argument on Scriptural grounds, and is
more likely to have been written by Francis Kett than by
Marlowe. In the MSS. now brought to light, one Cholmeley,
who " confessed that he was persuaded by Marlowe's reasons

1 Art. Ralegh, in Diet. 0/ Nat. Biog., xlvii, 192. 2 Id., pp. 200-1.

* It is asserted by Francis Osborn, who had known Raleigh, that he got
his title of Atheist from (,)ueen Elizabeth. See the preface (Author to

ilt) ) to Osborn's Miscellany of Sundry Essays, etc., in 7th ed. of his Works,
1673. As to atheism at Elizabeth's court, see Tayler, Retrospect of Rtlig.
Life of England, 2nd ed., p. 198, and ref.

THE RISE OF MODERN 1- REETHOUGHT. 277

"to become an Athieste ", is represented by a spy as speaking
* "" all evil of the Counsell, saying that they are all Athiestes
■and Machiavillians, especially my Lord Admirall". The same
*" Atheist ", who imputes atheism to others as a vice, is described
-as regretting he had not killed the Lord Treasurer, " sayenge
that he could never have done God better service ".

For the rest, the same spy tells that Cholmeley believed

Marlowe was " able to shewe more sound reasons for Atheisme

than any devine in Englande is able to geve to prove devinitie,

and that Marloe told him that he hath read the Atheist lecture

to Sir Walter Raleigh and others ". On the last point there is

no further evidence, save that Sir Walter, with his dependant

Harriott and Mr. Carewe Rawley, were on March 21, 1593-4,

•charged upon sworn testimonies with holding "impious opinions

concerning God and Providence". Harriott had published

in 1588 a work on his travels in Virginia, at the close of which

is a passage in the devoutest vein telling of his missionary

labors (quoted by Mr. Boas, art. cited, p. 225). Yet by

1592 he had, with his master, a reputation for Atheism ; and

that it was not wholly on the strength of his great scientific

knowledge is suggested by the statement of Anthony Wood that

he " made a philosophical theology, wherein he cast off the

Old Testament ". Of this no trace remains ; but it is established

that he was a highly accomplished mathematician, much

admired by Kepler; and that he "applied the telescope to

celestial purposes almost simultaneously with Galileo" (art.

Harriott in Did. of Nat. Biog.).

But there remains the great illustration of the rational-
istic spirit of the English literary renascence of the six-
teenth century — the drama of Sharspere. Of that it
may confidently be said that every attempt to find for it a
religious foundation has failed.1 A clerical historian sums
up concerning Shakspere that "the religious phrases which
are thinly scattered over his work are little more than
expressions of a distant and imaginative reverence. And
on the deeper grounds of religious faith his silence is
significant. . . . The riddle of life and death . . . he
leaves ... a riddle to the last, without heeding the com-
mon theological solutions around him."2 There is good

a Some typical attempts of the kind are discussed in the author's two
lectures on The Religion 0/ Shakspere, 1887 (South Place Institute).
2 Green, Short History, ch. vii, sec. vii, end.

278 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

reason to think that he was much influenced by Mon-
taigne's Essays, read by him in Florio's translation, which
was issued when he was recasting the old Hamlet; and
his whole treatment of life in the great tragedies and
serious comedies produced by him from that time forward
is even more definitely untheological than Montaigne's
own doctrine.1

A serious misconception has been set up as to Shakspere's-
cast of mind by the persistence of editors in including among
his works plays which are certainly not his, as the Henry VI
group, and in particular the First Part. It is on the assumption
that that play is Shakspere's work that Mr. Lecky (Rationalism
in Europe, ed. 1887, i, 105-6) speaks of "that melancholy picture
of Joan of Arc which is, perhaps, the darkest blot upon his
genius ". Now, whatever passages Shakspere may have con-
tributed to the Second and Third Parts, it is certain that he
has barely a scene in the First, and that there is not a line
from his hand in the La Pucelle scenes. Most students will
probably agree that Dr. Furnivall has even gone too far in
saying that "the only part of it to be put down to Shakspere is
the Temple Garden scene of the red and white roses" (Introd.
to Leopold Shakspere, p. xxxviii) ; so little is there to suggest
even the juvenile Shakspere there. But that any critical and
qualified reader can still hold him to have written the rest of
the play is to me inconceivable. The whole work would be a
" blot on his genius " in respect of its literary worthlessness.
The doubt was raised long before Mr. Lecky wrote, and was
made good more than twenty years ago. When Mr. Lecky
further proceeds, with reference to the witches in Macbeth, to
say (id., note) that it is " probable that Shakspere ....
believed with an unfaltering faith in the reality of witchcraft,"
he strangely misreads that play. Nothing is clearer than that
it grounds Macbeth's action from the first in Macbeth's own
character and his wife's, employing the witch machinery
(already used by Middleton) to meet the popular taste, but
never once making them really causal forces. An " unfalter-
ing" believer in witchcraft who wrote for the stage would
surely have turned it to serious account in other tragedies. This.
Shakspere never does. On Mr. Lecky's view, he is to be
held as having believed in the fairy magic of the Midsummer
Night's Dream and the Tempest. But who for a moment

1 Cp. the author's Montaigne and Shakspere, 1897, pp. 136-155.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 279

supposes him to have held any such belief ? It is probable
that the entire undertaking of Macbeth (1605?) and later
of the Tempest (1610 ?) was due to a wish on the part of
the theatre management to please King James (ace. 1603),
whose belief in witchcraft and magic was notorious. Even the
use of the Ghost in Hamlet is an old stage expedient, common
to the pre-Shaksperean play and to others of Kyd's. Shakspere
significantly altered the dying words of Hamlet from the
" heaven receive my soul " of the old version to " the rest
is silence ". The bequest of his soul to the Deity in his
will is merely the regulation testamentary formula of the time.
In his sonnets, which hint his personal cast if anything does,
there is no trace of religious creed.

Nor is Shakspere in this aspect abnormal among his
colleagues. To say nothing of the weak Greene, who
had professed a loose Atheism, and published his deathbed
repentance in A Groatsworth of Wit, the bulk of his
dramatic rivals are similarly unconcerned with religion.
Hence, in fact, the bitter hostility of the Puritans to the
stage. Some of the Elizabethans do indeed take up
matters of creed in their plays ; for instance, Peele,
whose David and Bethsabe (1599) is the first regular drama
on a Biblical subject, mishandles Mohammedanism in his
Battle of Alcazar; and it is clearly Fletcher's hand that
penned the part of Henry VIII in which occurs the Pro-
testant tag " In her [Elizabeth's] days . . . God shall be truly
known 'V But the prevailing color of the whole drama
of the Shaksperean period is pre-Puritan and semi-Pagan ;
and the theological spirit of the next generation, intensi-
fied by King James, was recognised by cultured foreigners
like Casaubon and Grotius as a change for the worse.2

Not that rationalism became extinct. The " Italianate"
incredulity as to a future state, which Sir John Davieshad
sought to repel by his poem Nosce Tcipsum (1599) can
hardly have been overthrown even by that remarkable
production ; and there were other forms of doubt. Careful
as was Bacon to distinguish between religion and philo-

1 As to the expert analysis of this play, which shows it to be in large
part Fletcher's, see Furnivall, as cited, pp. xciii-xevi.

2 Hallam, Lit. Hist. 0/ Europe, ed. 1872, ii, 371, 376, and notes.

280 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

sophy — as to which he fully adopts the equivogue of a
"twofold truth"1 — he could not divest his work of a
rationalistic influence, or escape the charge of atheism.3
Practically he wrote as a Deist, and by putting aside
"final causes" he made his deism tolerably impersonal.3
On the other hand, the critical spirit was secretly at
work on the text of the Scriptures. Bishop Fotherby's
posthumous folio Atheomastix, published in 1622, affirms
that as a result of constant disputing " the Scrip-
tures (with many) have lost their authority, and are
thought onely fit for the ignorant, and idiote ".4 There
was thus already a basis for the Deistic propaganda which
began immediately afterwards, in Latin, with the first
work of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. But for more than a
generation there was no propaganda in English ; and
save for the remarkable outbreak of manifold free speech
at the time of the Civil War, to be considered later, there
was no overt expression of freethought on religion among
the mass of the people. The authority of the now
dominating Church on the one hand, and on the other
the new spirit of Bibliolatry among the lay population,
whose chief culture was Bible-reading and sermon-hearing,
overlaid what rationalism there was.

§4-

Of Freethought in the rest of Europe, there is little
chronicle for a hundred and fifty years after the to
Reformation. The epoch-making work of Copernicus,
published in 1543, had little or no immediate effect in Ger-

1 See the Advancement of Learning, B. i ; B. ii, c. 11 ; B. iv, c. 3 ; B. ix ;
Novum Organum, B. i, passim (Bohn ed. pp. 31, 68, 173, 368-374, 392,
400-2, etc.).

* Cp. Francis Osborn's pref. (Author to Reader) to bis Miscellany in Works,
as cited.

3 Lechler (Gesch. des tnglischen Dcismus, S. 23-25) notes that Bacon
involuntarily made for Deism. Dean Church (Bacon, in " Men of Letters "
series, pp. 174, 205) insists that Bacon held by revelation and immortality
but the whole tendency of his writings is to put these beliefs aside.

* Atheomastix, 1622, preface.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 281

many, where physical and verbal strifes had begun with
the ecclesiastical revolution, and were to continue to
waste the nation's energy for a century. The Peasants'
Revolt had been crushed by massacre in 1525, a hundred
thousand men being destroyed.1 Another multitude of
Anabaptists perished in 1535, thair leaders dying by
public torture. In 1546, all attempts at ecclesiastical
reconciliation having failed, the emperor, Charles V, in
whom Melanchthon had seen a model monarch,1' decided
to put down the Protestant heresy by war. Luther had
just died, ill at ease for his cause. Civil war now raged
till the peace of Augsburg in 1555; whereafter Charles
abdicated in favor of his son Philip. Here were in part
the conditions which in France and elsewhere had been
followed by a growth of rational unbelief. But in Ger-
many the balance of forces amounted only to a deadlock
between the ecclesiastical parties. Protestantism on the
intellectual side, as already noted, had sunk into a bitter
and barren polemic3 among the reformers themselves ;
and many who had joined the movement reverted to
Catholicism.4 Melanchthon died in 1560, glad to be "set
free from the monstrous and implacable hatreds of the theo-
logians ". Meanwhile the teaching and preaching Jesuits
were zealously at work, turning the dissensions of the
enemy to account, and contrasting its schism upon
schism with the unity of the Church. But Protestantism
was well welded to the financial interest of the many
princes and others who had acquired the Church lands
confiscated at the Reformation ; since a return to
Catholicism would mean the surrender of these.5 Thus
there wrought on the one side the organised spirit of
anti-heresy and on the other the organised spirit of
Bibliolatry, neither gaining ground ; and between the

1 Kohlrausch, Hist, of Germany, Eng. tr. p. 377.

2 Id., p. 385-

s Cp. Gardiner, The Thirty Years' War, 8th ed., pp. 12-13 ; Kohlrausch,
p. 438; Pusey, Histor. Enq. into German Nationalism, pp. 9-25.
4 Kohlrausch, p. 439.
6 Cp. Gardiner, Thirty Years' War, pp. 16, 18, 21 ; Kohlrausch, p. 370.

282 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

two, intellectual life was paralysed. Protestantism saw
no way of advance ; and the prevailing temper began to
be that of the Dark Ages, expectant of the end of the
world.1 Superstition abounded, especially the belief in
witchcraft, now acted on with frightful cruelty throughout
the whole Christian world2 ; and in the nature of the
case Catholicism counted for nothing on the opposite
side. The only element of rationalism that one historian of
culture can detect, is the tendency of the German moralists
of the time to turn the Devil into an abstraction by
identifying him with the different aspects of human folly
and vice3 ! There was, as a matter of fact, a somewhat
higher manifestation of the spirit of reason, in the shape
of John Wier's treatise on witchcraft, a work4 which,
though fully adhering to the belief in the devil and
things demoniac, argued against the notion that witches
were conscious workers of evil. Wier was a physician
and saw the problem partly as one in pathology. Other
laymen, and even priests, had reacted more strongly
against the prevailing insanity ; but it had the authority
of Luther on its side, and the protests counted for little.
At length, after a generation of gloomy suspense, came
the explosion of the hostile ecclesiastical interests, and
the long-drawn horror of the Thirty Years' War, which
left Germany mangled, devastated, drained of blood and
treasure, decivilised, and well-nigh destitute of the
machinery of culture. What intellectual life was left
had been affected in the usual way by the spectacle of
evil wrought for religion ; and in 1662 there duly
appeared at Erfurt a Prcservatio wider die Pest des heutigen
Atheistcn, by one Theophilus Grosgebauer, to be followed
within the next fifteen years by six other treatises of the

1 Freytag, Bilder aus dcr deutschen Vcrgangenheit, Bd. II, Abth. II, 1883,
S. 381 ; Bd. Ill, ad init.

2 Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, small ed. i, 53-83.
Freytag, Bilder, Bd. II, Abth. II, s. 378.

* lJ( Praestigiii Daemonum, 1563. See it described by Lecky, Rationalism,
i, 85-7; Hallam, Lit. Hist., ii, 76.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 283

same order.1 This polemic activity was specially forced
on by a positive and aggressive development of Atheism
such as no other country had yet seen. A wandering
scholar, Matthias Knutzen (b. 1645) who had studied
philosophy at Konigsberg, went about teaching, as far as
can be gathered, a hardy Religion of Humanity, rejecting
alike immortality, God and Devil, churches and priests,
and insisting that conscience could perfectly well take the
place of the Bible as a guide to conduct. His followers,
as holding by conscience, were called Gewissener; and it is
said that at Jena alone, about 1674, there were seven
hundred of them.2 Yet he and the whole movement
passed rapidly out of sight — hardly by reason of the
orthodox refutations, however. Germany was in no
state to sustain such a party ; and even the manifold
argumentation of Leibnitz at the end of the century was
addressed rather to the rest of Europe than to his own
countrymen, who paid him small heed. Not till the
eighteenth century could Germany come abreast of
European culture.

It was the fate of Spain, meanwhile, to illustrate
once for all the power of a dogmatic religious system to
extirpate the spirit of reason from an entire nation for a
whole era. There and there only was the Inquisition all-
powerful ; and it wrought for the evisceration of the intel-
lectual and material life of Spain with a demented zeal to
which there is no parallel in later history. In the reign
of Ferdinand and Isabella, after several random massacres
and much persecution, the unconverted Jews of Spain
were in 1489 penned into Ghettos, and were in 1492
expelled bodily from the country, so far as Church and
State could compass their plans. By this measure, at

1 J. Miiller, Atheismus devictus (in German), 1672, Hamburg. J. Lassen,
Avcana-Politko-Atheistica (in German), 1672 ; Besngtc Atheisterey, 1673. Val.
Greissing, Corona Transylvani, Exerc. 2, de Atheismo, contra Cartesium et
Math. Knutzen, Wittemberg, 1677. Tobias Wagner, Examen .... atheismi
speculativi, Tubingen, 1677. Rudrauf, Theol. Giessensis Dissertatio de A theismo,
1677. In 1689 there appears yet another polemic, the Narrischer Atheist
of Th. Undereyck (Bremen).

2 Cp. Trinius, Freydenfter Lexicon, s.v. Knutzen ; Piinjer, i, 437-S.

284 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

least 160,000 subjects a of more than average value were
lost to the State. Portugal and other Christian countries
took the same cruel step a few years later ; but Spain
carried the policy much further. From the year of its
establishment, the Inquisition was hotly at work destroy-
ing heresy of every kind ; and the renowned Torquemada,
the confessor of Isabella, is credited with having burnt
over ten thousand persons in his eighteen years of office
as Grand Inquisitor. Close upon a hundred thousand
more were terrified into submission ; and a further six
thousand burned in effigy in their absence or after death.2
The destruction of books was proportionally thorough 3 ;
and when Lutheran Protestantism arose, it was per-
sistently killed out ; thousands leaving the country in view
of the hoplessness of the cause.4 At this rate, every vestige
of independent thought must soon have disappeared from
any nation in the world. If she is to be judged by the
number of her slain and exiled heretics, Spain must have
been nearly as fecund in reformative and innovating
thought as any state in northern Europe ; but the fatal
conjunction of the royal and the clerical authority sufficed
to denude her of every variety of the freethinking species.5
A century after the expulsion of the Jews came the
turn of the Moors, whose last hold in Spain, Granada, had
been overthrown in 1492. Within a generation they had
been deprived of all exterior practice of their religion6;
but that did not suffice; and the Inquisition never left
them alone. Harried, persecuted, compulsorily baptised,
deprived of their Arabic books, they repeatedly revolted,
only to be beaten down. At length, in the opening years

1 The number has been put as high as 800,000. Cp. E. La Rigaudiere,
Hist, dis Persic, h'elig. en Espagne, i860, pp. 112-114; Prescott, Hist, of
Ferdinand and Isabella, Kirk's eel., 1889, p. 323.

1 Llorente, Hist. Crit. de I'Inquis. en Espagne, ed. 1818, i, 280. As to
Llorente's other estimates, which are of doubtful value, cp. Prescott's
note, ed. cited, p. 746.

1 Llorente, i, 281.

4 McCrie, Reformation in Spain, ch. viii.

p. La Rigaudiere, pp. 309-314; Buckle, ii, 478-597.

'■ Buckle, ii, 4S4, and references.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 285

of the seventeenth century, under Philip III, on the
score that the great Armada had failed because heretics
were tolerated at home, it was decided to expel the whole
race ; and now a million Moriscoes, among the most
industrious inhabitants of Spain, were driven the way of
the Jews. It is needless here to recall the ruinous effect
upon the material life of Spain1 : the aspect of the matter
which specially concerns us is the consummation of the
policy of killing out all intellectual variation. The
Moriscoes may have counted for little in positive culture ;
but they were one of the last and most important factors
of variation in the country ; and when Spain was thus
successively denuded of precisely the most original and
energetic types among the Jewish, the Spanish, and the
Moorish stocks, her mental ruin was complete.

To modern Freethought, accordingly, she has till our
own age contributed practically nothing. The brilliant
dramatic literature of the reigns of the four Philips, which
influenced the rising drama alike of France and England,
is notably unintellectual", dealing endlessly in plot and
adventure, but yielding no great study of character, and
certainly doing nothing to further ethics. Calderon was
a thorough fanatic, and became a priest3; Lope de Vega
found solace under bereavement in the duties of an
Inquisitor. The humorous and kindly spirit of Cervantes,
so incongruously neighboured, must have counted for
much in keeping life sweet in Spain in the succeeding
centuries of bigotry and ignorance. But from the seven-
teenth century till the other day the brains were out, in
the sense that genius was lacking ; though last century,
under the Bourbons, French enlightenment set up a new
life until reaction set in with the French Revolution.4

1 Cp. Buckle, ii, 497-9; La Rigaudiere, pp. 220-6.

1 Cp. Lewes, Spanish Drama, passim.

8 " He inspires me only with horror for the faith which he professes.
No one ever so far disfigured Christianity, no one ever assigned to it
passions so ferocious, or morals so corrupt " (Sismondi, Lit. of South of
Europe, Bohn tr. ii, 379).

4 Cp. Buckle, ii, 521-571.

286 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Then came the opportunity of the party of superstition,
never really superseded. Nor is the work of the age of
devout destruction yet undone.

§5-

It remains to trace briefly the movement of scientific
and speculative thought which constituted the transition
between the Scholastic and the modern philosophy. It
may be compendiously noted under the names of Coper-
nicus, Bruno, Vanini, Sanchez, Galileo, Ramus, Gassendi,
Bacon and Descartes.

The great performance of Copernicus, given to the
world with an editor's treacherous preface as he lay on his
deathbed in 1543, did not become a general possession for
nearly a hundred years.1 One of the first to bring the
new cosmological conception to bear on philosophic
thought was Giordano Bruno (1548 — 1600), whose life
and death of lonely chivalry have won him his place
as the typical martyr of modern Freethought.2 He may
be conceived as a blending of the pantheistic and natural-
istic lore of ancient Greece 3 with the spirit of modern
science (itself a revival of the Greek) as it first takes firm
form in Copernicus, whose doctrine Bruno promptly and

1 The doctrine of the earth's two-fold motion had actually been taught
in the fifteenth century by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64), who, instead of
being prosecuted, was made a cardinal, so little was the question then
considered (Ueberweg, ii, 23-24). Only slowly did the work even of
Copernicus make its impression. Mr. Green {Short History, ed. 1881,
p. 297) makes first the blunder of stating that it influenced thought in the
fifteenth century, and then the further mistake of saying that it was brought
home to the general intelligence by Galileo and Kepler in the later years of
the sixteenth century (Id., p. 412). Galileo's European notoriety dates from
1616; his Dialogues of the Two Systems of the World appeared only in 1632 ;
and his Dialogues of the New Sciences in 1638. Kepler's indecisive Mysterium
Cosmograplucum appeared only in 1597; his treatise on the motions of the
planet Mars not till 1609.

2 A good study of Bruno — preferable to Mrs. Frith's Life — is supplied
by Mr. Owen, in his Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance. For a hostile view
see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, as cited, ii, 105-111. The biography of
M. Hartholmess, Jordano Bruno, 1846, is extremely full and sympathetic,
but loose as to dates and translations. For other authorities see Mr.

•n's list.

3 Cp. Bartholmess, i, 49-53 ; Lange, Hist, of Materialism, Eng. tr. i, 232.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 287

ardently embraced.1 Of all men of his time he had per-
haps the least affinity with the Christian creed, which was
repellent to him alike in the Catholic and the Protestant
versions. A philosophic poet rather than a philosopher
or man of science, he yet set abroad for the modern world
that conception of the physical infinity of the universe
which, once psychologically assimilated, makes an end of
the medieval theory of things. On this head he was eagerly
affirmative ; and the merely Pyrrhonic sceptics he assailed
as he did the "asinine" orthodox,2 though he insisted
on doubt as the beginning of wisdom. Fate placed him
as a boy among the Dominicans, punningly named the
"hounds of the Lord" (domini canes) for their work as
the corps of the Inquisition ; and in his thirteen years of
cloister life he was twice arraigned for heresy. Quite
early he seems to have become Unitarian.3 A well-
grounded fear made him at length take to flight ; and he
wandered eagerly through Europe, teaching and writing
wherever he lingered, till at last the " hounds ", always on
the scent, caught their prey. Between 1583 and 1585 he
was in England, where he met Sidney and Spenser ; and
debated at Oxford, maintaining the Copernican theory
against the Ptolemaic. His picture of " Oxford ignorance,
and English ill-manners " 4 is not lenient ; and there is no
reason to suppose that his doctrine was then assimilated
by many.5 Teaching successively as he did, however, at
Toulouse, Paris, Oxford, and Wittemberg, he sowed the
seeds of his thought all over Europe, and his numerous
books had an increasing number of readers.

Nothing was more natural that, when in 1592 he
ventured within the sphere of the Inquisition at Venice,
he should be seized, albeit by treachery. Charged on the

1 Owen, as cited, p. 249; Ueberweg, ii, 27 ; Piinjer, i, 93-101.

* Owen, pp. 296, 299.
3 Owen, p. 265.

* Owen, p. 275 ; Cp. Bartholmess, Jordano Bruno, i, 1368.

5 Cp. Hallam, Lit. 0) Europe, ii, III, note. As to Bruno's supposed
influence on Bacon and Shakspere, cp. Bartholmess, i, 134-5 '• Mrs. Frith's
Life, pp. 104-8; and the author's Montaigne and Shakspere, pp. S2-7.

288 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

traitor's testimony with many blasphemies, he warmly-
denied them all, but stood to his published writings,1 and
professed in the usual manner to believe in conformity
with the Church's teachings, whatever he might write on
philosophy. It is impossible to trust the Inquisition
records as to his words of self-humiliation ; 3 though on
the other hand no blame can rationally attach to anyone
who, in his place, should try to deceive such enemies,
morally on a level with hostile savages seeking one's life.
It is certain that the Inquisitors frequently wrung recanta-
tions by torture.3

What is historically certain is that Bruno was not
released, but sent on to Rome, and was kept there in
prison for seven years. He was not the sort of heretic
likely to be released. Certainly not an Atheist (he called
himself in his book-titles Philotheus ; and his quasi-pan-
theism always lapses into theistic modes), he yet was from
first to last essentially though not professedly anti-Chris-
tian in his view of the universe. If the Church had cause
to fear any philosophic teaching, it was his. He had,
moreover, finally refused to make any fresh recantation ;
and the only detailed document extant concerning his
final trial describes him as saying to his judges: "With
more fear, perchance, do you pass sentence on me than I
receive it ". According to all accessible records, he was
burned alive at Rome in February, 1600, in the Field of
Flowers, near where his statue now stands.

An attempt has been made by Professor Desdouits in a
pamphlet (La Legende Tragiquc de Jordano Bruno : Paris, 1885),
to show that there is no evidence that Bruno was burned ; and
an anonymous writer in the Scottish Review (October, 1888,
Art. II), rabidly hostile to Bruno, has maintained the same
proposition. Doubt on the subject dates from Bayle. Its main
ground is the fewness of the documentary records, of which,

1 See the document in Mrs. Frith's Life, pp. 270-279.

2 See Owen, pp. 285-6; Mrs. Frith, pp. 282-3.

1 The controversy as to whether Galileo was tortured leaves it clear
that torture was common. See Dr. Parchappe, Galilee, so, vie, etc., 1866,
Ptie. ii, ch. 7.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 289

further, the genuineness is now called in question. But no
good reason is shown for doubting them. They are three in
number, i. The Latin letter of Caspar Schopp (Scioppius),
dated 17 February, 1600, is an eye-witness' account of the
sentencing and burning of Bruno at that date. (See it in full,
in the original Latin, in App. V to Mrs. Frith's Life of Bruno.)
It was not printed till 1621, but the grounds urged for its
rejection are totally inadequate, and involve assumptions, which
are themselves entirely unproved, as to what Scoppius was likely
to do. Finally, no intelligible reason is suggested for the
forging of such a document. The remarks of Professor Des-
douits on this head have no force whatever. The writer in the
Scottish Revieii' (p. 263, and note) suggests as "at least as
possible an hypothesis as any other, that he [Bruno] was the
author of the forged accounts of his own death ". Such are
the conceptions offered as substitutes for the existing view.
2. There are preserved two extracts from a Roman newsletter
(Avvisa) of the time; one, dated February 12, 1600, comment-
ing on the case ; the other, dated February 19, relating the
execution on the 17th. {See both in 5. R.,pp. 264-5.) Against
these testimonies the sole plea is that they misstate Bruno's
opinions and the duration of his imprisonment ! The writer
in the Scottish Revieic makes the suicidal suggestion that,
inasmuch as the errors as to dates occur in Schopp's letter, " the
so-called Schopp was fabricated from these notices, or they
from Schopp " — thus admitting that one ranked as a historical
document. 3. There has been found, by a Catholic investigator,
a double entry in the books of the Lay Brotherhood of San
Giovanni Dccollato, whose function was to minister to prisoners
under capital sentence, giving a circumstantial account of
Bruno's execution. (See it in S. R., pp. 266, 269, 270.) In
this case, the main entry being dated " 1600. Thursday.
February 16," the anonymous writer argues that "the whole
thing resolves itself into a make-up", because February 16 was
the Wednesday. The entry refers to the procedure of the
Wednesday night and the Thursday morning; and such an
error could easily occur in any case. Whatever may be one
day proved, the cavils thus far count for nothing. All the
while, the records as to Bruno remain in the hands of the
Catholic authorities; but despite the discredit constantly cast
on the Church on the score of Bruno's execution, they offer
no official denial of the common statement ; while they do
officially admit (S. A'., p. 232) that on February S Bruno was
sentenced as an "obstinate heretic", and "given over to the
Secular Court". On the other hand, the episode is well

20.0 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

vouched ; and the argument from the silence of ambassadors'
letters is so far void. No pretence is made of tracing Bruno
anywhere after February, 1600.

Bruno has been zealously blackened by Catholic
writers for the obscenity of some of his writing and the
alleged freedom of his life — piquant charges, when we
remember the life of the Papal Italy in which he was
born. Lucilio Vanini (otherwise Julius Caesar Vanini)
the next martyr of Freethought, is open to the more
relevant charges of an inordinate vanity and some
duplicity. Figuring as a Carmelite friar, which he was
not, he came to England (1612) and professed to abjure
Catholicism,1 gaining however nothing by the step. His
treatise Amphithcatvum Mtcmce. Providentice (Lyons, 1615)
is professedly directed against "Atheists, Epicureans,
Peripatetics, and Stoics," and is ostensibly quite ortho-
dox." The later Dialogues, while discussing many
questions of creed and science in a free fashion, no less
profess orthodoxy ; and while one passage is pantheistic,3
they also denounce atheism, and profess faith in im-
mortality.4 Other passages imply doubt ; 5 but it is to be
remembered that the Dialogues were penned not by
Vanini but by his disciples at Paris, he only tardily giving
his consent to their publication.6 And whereas one
passage does avow that the author in his Amphitheatre
had said many things he did not believe, the context
clearly suggests that the reference was not to the main
argument but to some of its dubious facts.1 In any case,
Vanini cannot be shown to be an Atheist ; and the
attacks upon him as an immoral writer are not any better
supported.8 The publication of the work was in fact

1 Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 357.

1 See it analysed by Owen, pp. 361-8.

3 See Kousselot's French trans., 1842, p. 227.

1 Id., pp. 219-221. » E.g. pp. 347-8.

'• Owen, pp. 369 370. It is thus possible that the passages on the score
of which Vanini is charged with wild conceit were not written by him at all.

7 ('.p. the passages cited by llallam, Lit. Hist, ii, 461, with Mr. Owen's
defence, p. 308, note.

B See Mr. Owen's vindication, pp. 371-4.

THE RISE OF MODERN EREETHOUGHT. 291

formally authorised by the Sorbonne, and it does not
even appear that when he was charged with Atheism and
blasphemy at Toulouse that work was at all founded on.1
The charges rested on the testimony of a treacherous
associate as to his private conversation ; and if true, it
only amounted to proving his pantheism, expressed in his
use of the word Nature. At his trial he expressly avowed
and argued for theism. Yet he was convicted2 and burned
alive (February 9, 1619) on the day of his sentence. Drawn
on a hurdle, in his shirt, with a placard on his shoulders
inscribed " Atheist and Blasphemer of the Name of God",
he went to his death with a high heart, rejoicing, as he
cried in Italian, to die like a philosopher.3 A Catholic
historian,4 who was present, says he hardily declared that
"Jesus facing death sweated with fear: I die undaunted".
But before burning him they tore out his tongue by the
roots; and the Christian historian is humorous over the
victim's long cry of agony.5 No martyr ever faced death
with a more dauntless courage than this

" Lonely antagonist of Destiny
That went down scornful before many spears; " 6

and if the man had all the faults falsely imputed to him T
his death might shame his accusers.

Contemporary with Bruno and Vanini was Sanchez,
a physician of Portuguese-Jewish descent, settled as a
Professor at Toulouse, who contrived to publish a treatise
(written 1576; printed 1581) affirming " That Nothing is
Known " (Quod Nihil Scitur) without suffering any

1 Owen, p. 395.

3 Personal enmity on the part of the prosecuting official was commonly
held to explain the trial. Owen, p. 393.

:t M enure Frangais, 1619, torn, v, p. 64.

4 Gramond (Barthclemi de Grammont), Historia Gallicc ab excessu
Henri IV, 1643, p. 209.

5 Id., p. 210. Of Vanini, as of Bruno, it is recorded that at the stake he
repelled the proffered crucifix. Mr. Owen and other writers, who justly
remark that he well might, overlook the once received belief that it was the
official practice, with obstinate heretics, to proffer a red-hot crucifix, so that
the victim should be sure to spurn it with open anger.

6 Stephen I'hillips, Marpessa.

7 Cp. Owen, pp. 389, 391, as to the worst calumnies. It is significant
that Vanini was tried solely for blasphemy and atheism.

U 2

292 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

molestation. It is a formal putting of the Pyrrhonist
scepticism of Montaigne, which is thus seen to have been
to some extent current before he wrote ; but there is no
sign that Sanchez' formal statement had any philosophic
influence. His most important aspect is as a thinker on
natural science ; and here he is really corrective and
constructive rather than Pyrrhonist ; his poem on the
comet of 1577 being one of the earliest rational utter-
ances on the subject in the Christian period.1

But it is with Galileo that the practical application
of the Copernican theory to life begins. The fashion in
which Galileo's sidereal discoveries were met is typical
of the whole history of freethought : the clergy pointed
to the story of Joshua stopping the sun and moon ; the
schoolmen insisted that there was no authority in
Aristotle for the new assertions, and refused to look
through the telescope2 : with such minds the man of
science had to argue,3 and in deference to such he had to
affect to doubt his own demonstrations.4 The Catholic
Reaction had built up as complete a spirit of hostility to
free science in the Church as existed among the
Protestants. Condemned for heresy but not punished
in 1616,5 he lived under the menace of the Jesuists until
1632, when he was again sent to Rome, tried, and sen-
tenced to formal imprisonment (1633) for teaching the
"absurd" and "false doctrine" of the motion of the
earth and the non-motion of the sun from east to west.
In both cases the Popes, while agreeing to the verdict,
abstained from officially ratifying it,8 so that in proceeding
to force Galileo to abjure his doctrine, the Inquisition
technically exceeded its powers — a circumstance in which
some Catholics appear to find comfort.7 The stories of

1 Cp. Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, pp. 631-G — a fairer and
more careful estimate than that of Hall.im, Lit. Hist, of Europe, ii, m-113.

2 Karl von Gehler, Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia, Eng. tr. 1879, p. 25.

, p. 54 and passim. ' Id., p. 129, etc. * Id., p. 88.

'• Id . p.

1 Id., p. 241. For an exposure of the many perversions of the facts as
ti Galileo by Catholic writers, see Parchappe, Galilee, sa vie, etc., 2e I'artie.

THE RISE OF MODERN E REETHOUGHT. 293

his being tortured and blinded, and saying " still it
moves ", are myths.1 The broken-spirited old man was
in no mood so to speak : he was, moreover, in all respects
save his science, an orthodox Catholic2 : and as such not
likely to defy the Church to its face. Yet he speedily got
his condemned Dialogues published in Latin by the
Elzevirs ; soon they appeared in English ; and in 1638
appeared his new " Dialogues of the New Sciences ",
the "foundation of mechanical physics". Thenceforth
he suffered no outward constraint, dying, after five years
of blindness, in 1642, the year of Newton's birth. Not
till 1757 did the Papacy permit other books teaching his
system ; not until 1820 was permission given to treat it
as true ; and not until 1835 was it withdrawn from the
Index Expurgatorius.3

While modern science was thus being placed on its
special basis, a continuous resistance was being made in
the schools to the dogmatism which made the mutilated
lore of Aristotle the sum of human wisdom. Like the
ecclesiastical revolution, this had been protracted through
centuries. Often in the Italian Renaissance — e.g., in the
case of the Greek Platonist Gemistos Plethon at Florence
in the fifteenth century4 — had the Aristotelianism of the
schools been impugned ; sometimes in the spirit of
religious orthodoxy,5 sometimes not ; and in the sixteenth
century the attacks became numerous and vehement.

1 Gebler, pp. 249-263. The "e pur si muove" story is first heard of in
1774. As to the torture, it is to be remembered that Galileo recanted under
threat oi it. Gp. Prof. Lodge, Pioneers of Science, 1893, pp. 128-131

- Gebler, p. 281. 3 Id., pp 312-315.

4 Gemistos appears to have been non-Ghristian in his Platonism. Burck-
hardt, pp. 524, 541, notes. As he came from Constantinople, his case affords
a presumption that there were other Pagan freethinkers there in the Middle
Ages.

5 Ueberweg, ii, 12. Several leading Aristotelians in the sixteenth
century were accused of atheism (Hallam, Lit. Hist, ii, 101-2), the old
charge against the Peripatetic school. Hallam (p. 102) complains that
Cesalpini of Pisa " substitutes the barren unity of pantheism for religion
Cp. Ueberweg, ii, 14. An Averroist on some points, he believed in separate
immortality. Cremonini of Padua was one of the reputed atheists. Vet
he is one ot those said to have refused to look through a telescope (Lange
Hist, oj Materialism, i, 220).

2g4 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Luther was a furious anti-Aristotelian.1 Telesio influenced
Bruno in that direction.2 Ludovicus Vives urged progress
beyond Aristotle in the spirit of naturalist science.3 But
the typical anti- Aristotelian of the century was Ramus
(Pierre de la Ramee, 1515-72), whose long and strenuous
battle against the ruling school at Paris brought him to
his death in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.4 There
was thus no special originality in the anti-scholastic
attitude of Bacon,5 whose name is in modern times
chiefly associated with the recoil from the verbalist to the
rational method in philosophy and science. As we have
seen, though presumably a Deist, he held by the com-
promise of " two-fold truth " ; in science he confidently
rejected the doctrine of Copernicus ; 6 and despite some
striking anticipations of the scientific thought of the
present century, he laid down a nearly useless method for
discovering truth.1 There has consequently been much
dispute as to whether he in any way promoted the
scientific movement." The truth seems to be that he did
notably influence some men towards rational science — in
particular Boyle0 — and that, despite his fallacies, by his
thousand scattered sagacities he did more; than any other
writer of his time to make popular the new spirit.10 It
seems to have been the praise of his work from the
Continent11 that first overbore the English disposition to
denounce him as an Atheist.

1 Ueberweg, ii, 17.

- Bartholmess, Jordano Bruno, i, 49.

:) Lange, Hist, uf Materialism, i, 228.

I Mr. ( >wen has a good account of him in his French Skeptics.

5 In the Advancement of Learning, B. i (Bohn ed., p. 43) he notes how,
long before his time, the new learning had discredited the schoolmen.

• Advancement, B. iv, c. i, p. 151. Whewell [Hist, of Induct. Sciences,
3d. ed., i, 296, 38S) ignores this passage in discussing Bacon's view.

Cp Elli , (".en Pref to his and Spedding'sed. of Bacon's Works, i, 38.

B Cp. J •'•an Chun h, Bacon, pp. 186-201 ; Lange, Hist, of Materialism, i,

23C 7, and (it trom Liebig ; Brewster's Life of Newton, 1855, ii, 4004;

I >raper, Intel. Development of Europe, ed. 1875, ii, 258-260; Prof. Lodge,

Pi ne, 1 • oj Snencc, pp. 145-151 ; T. Martin, Character of Bacon, pp. 210-23S.

i iriin, as cited, pp. 216, 227.

1 p Martin, pp. 222-3 ; Church, pp. 201-4.

II ( ) iborn, a 1 before cited, ;<■ Raleigh. Martin, p. 230, citing Rawley's
Lift of Bacon ; Lange, i, 238, note.

THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT. 295

Like fallacies to Bacon's may be found in Descartes ;
but he in turn unquestionably laid a good part of the
foundation of modern materialist philosophy and science,1
Gassendi largely aiding. All through his life Descartes
anxiously sought to propitiate the Church ;a Gassendi was a
priest ; and both were unmenaced in France under Richelieu
and Mazarin ; but the unusual rationalism of Descartes'
method, avowedly aiming at the uprooting of all his own
prejudices3 as a first step to truth, could not escape the
hostile attention of the Protestant theologians of Holland,
where Descartes passed so many years of his life ; and
despite his constant theism he had at length to withdraw.1
France was for the time, in fact, the most freethinking
part of Europe ; 5 and Descartes, though not so unsparing
with his prejudices as he set out to be, was the greatest
innovator in philosophy that had arisen in the Christian
era. He made real scientific discoveries where Bacon only
schemed an impossible road to them ; and though his
timorous conformities deprive him of any heroic status, it
is perhaps not too much to pronounce him " the great
reformer and liberator of the European intellect ".6 From
Descartes, then, as regards philosophy, more than from
any professed thinker of his day ; but also from the other
thinkers we have noted, and from the practical free-
thinking of the more open-minded in general, derives the
great rationalistic movement which, taking clear literary
form first in the seventeenth century, has with some
fluctuations broadened and deepened down to our own day.

1 Buckle, ii, 77-85- Cp. Lange, i, 24S, note.

- Cp. Lange, i, 248-9, note; Bartholmess, Jordano Bruno, i, 354-5;
Memoir in Gamier ed. of (Envies Choisies, p. v, also pp. 6, 17, 19, 21

' Discours de la Methods, Pts. i, ii, iii, iv (CEuvres Clioisies, pp. 8, io, n,
22, 24) ; Meditation I (id. pp. 73-74).

1 Full details in Kuno Fischer's Descartes and his School. Eng tr. 1S90.
B. i, ch. 6.

A Cp. Buckle, ii, 97.

" Buckle, ii, 82,

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ENGLISH UEISTIC MOVEMENT.
§1-

The propagandist literature of Deism begins with an
English diplomatist, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the
friend of Bacon, who stood in the full stream of the
current freethought of England and France1 in the first
quarter of the seventeenth century. We have seen
the state of upper-class and middle-class opinion in France
about 1624. It was in Paris in that year that he pub-
lished his Dc Veritate, after acting for many years as the
English ambassador at the French court. Hitherto Deism
had been represented by published answers to unpublished
arguments : henceforth there slowly grows up a Deistic
literature. Herbert was a powerful and audacious noble-
man, with a weak king ; and he could venture on a publica-
tion which would have cost an ordinary man dear. Yet
even he saw fit to publish in Latin ; and he avowed hesi-
tations. His argument3 is, in brief, that no professed
revelation can have a decisive claim to rational acceptance;
that none escapes sectarian dispute in its own field ; that
as each one misses most of the human race none seems
to be divine ; and that human reason can do for morals all
that any one of them does. The negative generalities of
Montaigne here pass into a positive anti-Christian argu-
ment ; for Herbert goes on to pronounce the doctrine of
forgiveness for faith immoral. Like all pioneers, Herbert

1 Jenkin Thomasius in his Historia Atheismi (1709) joins Herbert with
I Iodic as having five points in common with him.

' Fi id analysis see Piinjer, Hist oj the Christ. Philos. of Religion,

l. in', tr. 0-7, pp ilso Noack, Die Freidenker in der Religion, Hern,

1855, i, 17-40; Lechler, Gi \chichtt des englisehen Deismus, S. 36-54.

( 296 )

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 297

falls into some inconsistency on his own part; the most
flagrant being his claim to have had a sign from heaven—
that is, a revelation — encouraging him to publish his
book1. But his criticism is none the less telling and
persuasive so far as it goes, and remains valid to this
da)-. Nor do his later and posthumous works3 add to it
in essentials.

The next great freethinking figure in England is
Hobbes (1588 — 1679), the most important thinker of his
age, after Descartes, and hardly less influential. But the
purpose of Hobbes being always substantially political
and regulative, his unfaith in the current religion is only
incidentally revealed in the writings in which he seeks to
show7 the need for keeping it under monarchic control.3
Hobbes is in fact the anti-Presbyterian or anti- Puritan
philosopher ; and to discredit anarchic religion in the eyes
of the majority he is obliged to speak as a judicial church-
man. Yet nothing is more certain than that he was no
orthodox Christian ; and even his professed Theism
resolves itself somewhat easily into virtual agnosticism
on logical pressure. Of atheism he was repeatedly
accused4 by both royalists and rebels ; and his answer was
forensic rather than fervent, alike as to his scripturalism,
his Christianity, and his impersonal conception of Deity*.
He expressly contends, it is true, for the principle of a
Providence ; but it is hard to believe that he laid any
store by prayer, public or private ; and it would appear
that whatever thoughtful atheism there was in England
in the latter part of the century, looked to him as its

1 See his Autobiography, Murray's reprint, p. 03.

2 De causis errorum (1645) ; /'. religion laid; Dc religione gentilium (161
The two former are short appendices to the Dc Veritate.

;i It is to be remembered that the doctrine of the supremacj of the civil
power in religious matters (Erastianism) was maintained b) some ol the
ablest men on the Parliamentary side, in particular, Selden.

4 Reviving as he did the ancient rationalistic doctrine of the eternity t
the world (Dc Corpore, Pt. II, c. viii, 0 20), he gave a clear footing
Atheism as against the Judaeo-Christian view.

5 Cp. his letter to an opponent, - rations upon the Reputation, c:

I :;.>mus Hobbes, 1680, with cc. \i and \ii of Leviathan, an I I>. Corpore Potit
Pt, ii, c. 6.

2<jN HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

philosopher1, in so far as it did not derive from Spinoza.
Nor could the Naturalist school desire a better scientific
definition of religion than Hobbes gave them: " Fear of
power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from
tales publicly allowed, Religion ; not allowed, Supersti-
tion'. 2" With him too begins the public criticism of the
Bible on literary or documentary grounds3 ; though, as
we have seen, this had already gone far in private'4; and
he gave a new lead, partly as against Descartes, to a
materialistic philosophy5. He was, in fact, in a special
and peculiar degree for his age, a Freethinker; and so
deep was his intellectual hostility to the clergy of all
species that he could not forego enraging those of his
own political side by his sarcasms6. Here he is in marked
contrast with Descartes, who dissembled his opinion about
Copernicus and Galileo for peace' sake7 ; and was always
the close friend of the orthodox champion Mersenne down
to his death. With the partial exception of the more
refined and graceful Pecock, Hobbes has of all English
thinkers down to his period the clearest and hardest head
for all purposes of reasoning : and against the theologians
of his time his argumentation is as a two-edged sword.
That such a man should have been resolutely on the side
of the king in the Civil War is one of the proofs of the
-ential fanaticism and arbitrariness of the orthodox
Puritans, who plotted more harm to the heresies they
disliked than was ever wreaked on themselves. Hobbes
came near enough being clerically ostracised among the
Royalists; but among the Puritans he would have stood a
fair chance of execution. His hostility to such fanaticism
shaped his whole literary career, which began in 1628
with a translation of Thucydides, undertaken by way of

1 Cp Bentley's litter to Bernard, 1692, cited in the author's Dynamic '
Relt°ion, pp. .S2-j.

• Leviathan, I't. i, c. 6. Morley'sed. p. 14.

It viathan, I't. iii, c 33.
1 Above, p. 280.

H : ••< Materialism, Sec. iii, c. ii.
' E.g., Leviathan, I't. Lv, c. 47.
Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his Scli<">l, pp 232-5.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 299

showing the dangers of democracy. Next came the Dc
Cive (Paris, 1642), written when he was already an
elderly man ; and thenceforth the Civil War tinges his
whole temper.

§ 2.

When we turn from the higher literary propaganda to
the verbal and other transitory debates of the period of
the Rebellion, we realise how much partial rationalism
had hitherto subsisted without notice. In that immense
ferment some very advanced opinions, such as quasi -
Anarchism in politics1 and anti-Scripturalism in religion,
were more or less directly professed. In 1645-6 the
authorities of the City of London, alarmed at the unheard-
of amount of discussion, petitioned Parliament to put
down all private meetings2; and a solemn fast was pro-
claimed on the score of the increase of heresies and
blasphemies. Notable among the new parties were
the Levellers, who insisted that the State should leave
religion entirely alone, tolerating all creeds, including
even atheism. The presbyterian Thomas Edwards,
writing about the same time, speaks of "monsters"
unheard-of theretofore, " now common among us — as
denying the Scriptures, pleading for a toleration of all
religions and worships, yea, for blasphemy, and denying
there is a God "3. Among the 180 sects named by him4
there were "Libertines", " Antiscripturists," "Sceptics
and Questionists,"5 who held nothing save the doctrine
of free speech and liberty of conscience:1' as well as

1 Cp. Overton's pamphlet An Arrow against all Tyrants and Tyranny (164G)
cited in the History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation, 1689, i, 59;
Part II of Thomas Edwards' Gangrana, 1G4G, p. 179; and Part III, pp. 14-17.

: Lords Journals, Jan. 16, 1645-6; cp. Gardiner, Hist, of the Civil War,
ed. 1S93, iii, 11.

3 Gangrana, 1645 (or 1G46), ep. ded. (p. 5). Cp. Second Part of Gangrana,
1646, pp. 178-9, and Bailie's Letters, ed. 184 1, ii, 234-7 '• '•'■ 393-

4 Gangrana, pp. 1S-36.

5 Id., p. 15. As to other sects mentioned by him, cp. Tayler, p 104.

6 On the intense aversion of most of the Presbyterians to toleration, see
Tayler, Retrospect of Relig. Life of Eng., p. 136. They insisted, rightly
enough, that the principle was never recognised in the Bible.

3<X) HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Socinians, Arians, and Anti-trinitarians : and he speaks
of serious men who had not only abandoned their religious
beliefs but sought to persuade others to do the same.1
I'nder the rule of Cromwell, tolerant as he was of
Christian sectarianism, and even of Unitarianism as
represented by Biddle, the more advanced heresies would
get small liberty. It was only privately that such men as
Henry Marten and Thomas Chaloner, the regicides, could
avow themselves to be of " the natural religion ".2

But between the advance in speculation forced on by
the disputes themselves, and the usual revolt against the
theological spirit after a long and ferocious display of it,
there arose even under the Commonwealth a new temper
of secularity. On the one hand the temperamental
distaste for theology took form in the private associations
for scientific research which were the antecedents of the
Royal Society. On the other hand the spirit of religious
doubt spread widely in the middle and upper classes. A
work entitled Dispute betwixt an Atheist and a Christian
(1646), shows the existence not indeed of Atheists but of
Deists, though the Deist in the dialogue is a Fleming.
The discourse on Atheism in the posthumous works of
John Smith of Cambridge (d. 1652) is entirely retro-
spective ; but soon another note is sounded. As
earl\- as 1652 the prolific Walter Charleton, who had
been physician to the king, issued a book entitled
The Darkness of Atheism expelled b) the light of Mature,
wherein he asserted that England " hath of late pro-
duced and doth .... foster more swarms of
Atheistieall monsters .... then any Age, then any
Nation hath been infested withall". In the following
year, Henry More, the Cambridge l'latonist, published
his Antidote against Atheism, which assumes that the
atheistic way of thinking had lately become rather

1 1 itations in I tu< kle, i. 347.
1 p Carly] I romwell, in, 194; and articles in Nat. Put of Biog.
ghan [Hist. of England, 1840, ii, 477, note) speaks of Walwyn and Overt* >n
among the freethinkers ol the times oi the Commonwealth ". They
were, however, Riblicists, not unbelievers.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 3OI

fashionable. In 1654, again> there is noted1 a treatise in
Latin, Atheismus Vapulans, by William Towers, whose
contents can in part be inferred from its title.2 After the
Restoration, naturally, all the new tendencies were
greatly reinforced, a alike by the attitude of the king and
his companions, all influenced by French culture, and by
the general reaction against Puritanism. Whatever ways
of thought had been characteristic of the Puritans were
now in more or less complete disfavor ; the belief in
witchcraft was scouted as much on this ground as on any
other4 ; and the Deistic doctrines found a ready audience
among royalists5 whose enemies had been above all
things Bibliolators.

We gather this, however, still from the apologetic
treatises ; not from new Deistic literature ; for Herbert
was thus far the only professed Deistic writer in the field,
and Hobbes the only other of similar influence. Baxter,
writing in 1655 on The Unreasonableness of Infidelity,
handles chiefly Anabaptists ; but in his Reasons of the
Christian Religion, issued in 1667, he thinks fit to prove
the existence of God and a future state, and the truth and
the supernatural character of the Christian religion. Any
Deist or Atheist who took the trouble to read through it
would have been rewarded by the discovery that the
learned author has annihilated his own case. In his first
part he affirms: " If there were no life of Retribution
after this, Obedience to God would be finally men's loss
and mine : But Obedience to God shall not be finally
men's loss and ruine : Ergo, there is another life.61 In
the second part he writes that "Man's personal interest
is an unfit rule and measure of God's goodness " ; 7

1 Fabricius, Delectus Argumentorum et Syllabus Scriptorum, 1725, p. 341.

2 No copy in British Museum.

■"> Cp. Glanvil, pref. Address to his Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed., 1SS5.
pp. lv-lvii ; and Henry More's Divine Dial g I >ial. i, c. $2.

1 Cp. Lecky, Rationalism, i, 109.

5 There is evidence that Charles II was himself at heart a Deist. See
Burnet's History of his Own Time, ed. 1838, pp. 61, 175, and notes.

' Work cited, ed. 1667, p. 136. The proposition is reiterated.

1 Id., p. 38S.

302 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

and, going on to meet the new argument against Chris-
tianity based on the inference that an infinity of stars
are inhabited, he writes : —

" Ask any man who knoweth these things whether all this earth be any-
more in comparison of the whole creation, than one Prison is to a Kingdom
or Empire, or the paring of one nail .... in comparison of the whole
body. And if God should cast off all this earth, and use all the shiners in it
as they deserve, it is no more sign of a want of benignity or mercy in him
than it is for a King to cast one subject of ^.million into a jail .... or than it
is to pare a man's nails, or cut off a wart, or a hair, or to pull out a rotten
aking tooth." '

Thus the second part absolutely destroys one of the
fundamental positions of the first. No semblance of
levity on the part of the freethinkers could compare with
the profound intellectual insincerity of such a propaganda
as this ; and Deism and Atheism continued to gain
ground. A " Person of Honour"' produced in 1669 an
essay on The Unreasonableness of Atheism made Manifest,
which, without supplying any valid arguments, gives some
explanation of the growth of unbelief in terms of the
political and other antecedents". Baxter in 16714 com-
plains that " infidels are grown so numerous and so
audacious, and look so big and talk so loud"; and still
the process continues. In 1672 appeared The Atheist
Silenced, by one J. M. ; in 1677 Bishop Stillingfieet's
Letter to a Deist ; and in 1678 the massive work of Cud-
worth on The True Intellectual System of the Universe,
attacking Atheism (not Deism) on philosophic lines which
sadly compromised the learned author.' All the while,
the censorship of the press, which was one of the means
by which the clerical party under Charles combated
heresy, prevented any new and outspoken writing on the
Deistic side The Humane Reason (1674) of Martin
Clifford, a scholarly man-about-tow 11 who was made

1 W..P1

2 Said 10 he Sir Charles W'olseley.

P Dynamics oj Religion, pp. 86-7, 89-90.
4 Replying to II In Veritate, which he seems not to have read

before.

' ( p Dynami vf Religion, pp 87,94-98, m, m.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 303

Mister of the Charterhouse, was guarded enough to allow
of his putting his name to the second edition. But the
tendency of such claims was obvious enough to inspire
Boyle's Discourse of Things above Reason (1681), an attempt
which anticipates Berkeley's argument against free-
thinking mathematicians.1

At length, during an accidental lapse of the press laws,
the Deist Charles Blount2 produced his Anima Mundi
(1679), m which there is set forth a measure of cautious
unbelief: following it up (1680) by his much more pro-
nounced essay, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, a keen
attack on the principle of revelation and clericalism in
general, and his translation of Philostratus' Life of Apollo-
nius of Tyana, so annotated as to be an ingenious counter-
blast to the Christian claims. The book was condemned
to be burnt ; and only the influence of Blount's family5,
probably, prevented his being prosecuted. The propa-
ganda, however, was resumed by Blount and his friends
in small tracts, and after his suicide4 in 1692 these were
collected as the Oracles of Reason (1693), his collected
works (without the Apollonins) appearing in 1695. By
this time the political tension of the Revolution of 1688
was over: the Boyle Lecture had been established for
the confutation of unbelievers ; and henceforth it rains
refutations. A partial list will suffice to show the rate
of increase of the ferment from 1692 onwards : —

16S3. Dr. Rust, Discourse on the Use of Reason in . . . Religion, against
Enthusiasts and Deists.

1 Work cited, pp. 10, 14, 30, 55.
Concerning whom see Macaulay's History, ch. xix, ed. 1877, ii, 411-
412— a grossly prejudiced account. Blount is there spoken of as " one of
the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived" and as having " stolen "
from Milton, because he issued a pamphlet "By Philopatris ", largely
made up from the Areopagitica. Compare Macaulay's treatment of Locke,
who adopted Dudley North's currency scheme (ch. xxi, vol. ii, p. 547).

3 As to these, see the Diet, of Nat. Biog. The statements of Anthony
a Wood as to the writings of Blount's father, relied on in the author's
Dynamics of Religion, appear to be erroneous.

1 All that is known of this tragedy is that Blount loved his deceased
wife's sister and wished to marry her ; but she held it unlawful, and he w.is
in despair. An overstrung nervous system may be diagnosed from much
of his writing.

304 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

1685. The Atheist Unmask' d. By a Person of Honour.

1692. Bentley's Sermons on Atheism. (First Boyle Lecture.)

1693. A Conference between an Atheist and his Friend.

1694. J. Goodman, A Winter Evening Conference between Neighbours.

1694. Bishop Kidder, A Demonstration of the Mcssias. (Boyle Lect.).

1695. John Edwards, D.D., Some Thoughts concerning the Several Causes and

occasions of Atheism.

1695. John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity.

1696. An Account of the Growth of Deism in England.
1696. Reflections on a Pamphlet, etc. (the last named).

1696. Sir Charles Wolseley, The Unreasonableness of Atheism Demonstrated.
(Reprint.)

1696. Dr. Nichols' Conference with a Theist. Pt. I. (Answer to Blount).
1 6< 17. Stephen Nye, A Discourse concerning Natural and Revealed Religion.

1 1 11 q. Bishop Gastrell, The Certainty and Necessity of Religion. (Boyle Lect.).

[697. H. Prideaux, Discourse' vindicating Christianity, etc.

1697. C. Leslie, A Sliort and Easy Method with the Deists.

1698. Dr. J. Harris, A Refutation of Atheistical Objections. (Boyle Lect.)

1699. J. Bradley, An Impartial View of the Truth of Christianity. (Answer

to Blount.)

1700. Bishop Bradford. The Credibility of the Christian Revelation. (Boyle

Lect.)

1701. W. Scot, Discourses concerning the wisdom and goodness of God.
[702. A Confutation of Atheism.

1702. Dr. Stanhope, The Truth and Excellency of the Christian Religion _

(Boyle Lect.)

1704. An Antidote of Atheism (? Reprint of More).

1705. Ed. Pelling, Discourse concerning the existence of God.

1705. Dr. Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God,

etc. (Boyle Lect.)

1706. A Preservative against Atheism and Infidelity.

1707. Dr. John Hancock, Arguments to prove the Being of a God. (Boyle

Lect.)

Still there was no new deistic literature. Blount's
famous stratagem1 had led to the dropping of the official
'1 nsorship of the press (1695: last Act, 1693); but the
ii.w Blasphemy Law of 1696 served sufficiently to
terrorise writers and printers for the time being. Free-
thinking ideas were still mainly for private circulation.
The anonymous pamphlet entitled The Natural History of
Superstition, by the Deist John Trenchard, M.P. (1709),
dot 5 nol venture on overt heresy.

1 Macaulay, as cited.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 305

§3-
Alongside of the more popular and native influences,
there were at work others, foreign and more academic ;
and even in professedly orthodox writers there arc signs
of the influence of Deistic thought. Thus even Sir
Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (written about 1634 ;
published 1642) has been repeatedly characterised1 as
tending to promote Deism by its tone and method ; and
his later treatise on Vulgar Errors (1645) shows much of
the practical play of the new scepticism. Again, a clergy-
man, Joseph Glanvill, is found publishing a treatise on
The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661 : amended in 1665
under the title Scepsis Scicntifica), wherein, with careful
reservation of religion, the spirit of critical science is
applied to the ordinary processes of opinion with much
energy,2 and the " mechanical philosophy" of Descartes is
embraced with zeal. At the university of Cambridge, the
Cartesian philosophy was already naturalised'; and the
influence of Glanvill, who was an active member of the
Royal Society, must have carried it further. The
remarkable treatise of the great anatomist Glisson, De
natura substantia cnergctica (1672), suggests the influence
of either Descartes or Gassendi.

It is stated by Mr. Leslie Stephen (English Thought in the
Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed., i, 32) that in England the philo-
sophy of Descartes made no distinguished disciples ; and that
John Norris " seems to be the only exception to the general
indifference ". This overlooks Glanvill, who constantly cites
and applauds Descartes (Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed., pp. 20,
28, 30, 38, 43, 46, 64, 70, etc.). In Henry More's Divine Dialogues,
again, (166S) one of the disputants is made to speak (Dial, i,
c. 24) of " that admired wit Descartes ". More had been one
of the admirers in his youth; but changed his view ; and his
Enchiridion Metaphysician (1671) is an attack on the Cartesian
system as tending to atheism. The continual criticisms of
Descartes on the same score throughout Cudworth's True

1 Trinius, Frcydcnkcr-Lexicon, 1759. S. 120: Piinjer, i, 291, 300-1.

2 Glanvill, however, held stoutly by the belief in witch, rait.

3 Owen, pref. to ed. of Scepsis Scientifica, p. be.

306 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Intellectual System, further, imply anything but " general in-
difference". See again Clarke's Answer to Butler's Fifth
Letter (1718) as to the " universal prevalence " of Descartes'
notions in natural philosophy. Cp. Berkeley, Siris, §331.
Of Berkeley himself, Prof. Adamson writes (Encyc. Brit., iii, 589)
that " Descartes and Locke .... are his real masters in specu-
lation". The Cartesian view of the eternity and infinity of matter
had further become an accepted ground for "philosophical
atheists" in England before the end of the century (Molyneux,
in Familiar Letters of Locke and his Friends, 1708, p. 46). As to
the many writers who charged Descartes with promoting
Atheism, see Mosheim's notes in Harrison's ed. of Cudworth's
Intellectual System, i, 275-6.

At the same time there was growing up not a little
Socinian Unitarianism. Church measures had been
taken against the importation of Socinian books as early
as 1640. ' The famous Lord Falkland, slain in the Civil
War, is supposed to have leant to that opinion2; and
Chillingworth, whose Religion of Protestants (1637) was
already a remarkable application of rational tests to
ecclesiastical questions in defiance of patristic authority,3
seems in his old age to have turned Socinian.4 Violent
attacks on the Trinity are noted among the heresies of
1646.5 Colonel John Fry, one of the regicides, pro-
nounced the doctrine of the Trinity " chafrie and absurd",
in a book which was condemned to be burnt. In 1652
the Parliament ordered the destruction of a certain
Socinian Catechism ; and by 1655 the heresy seems to
have become common/' It is now certain that Milton
was substantially a Unitarian;7 and that Locke and
Newton were at heart no less so.8 Rationalism of this
tint, in fact, seems to have spread in all directions.

1 Two men, Legate and Wightman, for avowing Socinian views, were
burnt in 1O12. Cp. J. J. Tayler, Retrospect of the Religious Life of England,
Martincau's ed., pp. 219-220.

2 Id., p. 204. 3 Cp. Buckle, ii, 347-351.

4 Tayler, Retrospect, pp. 204-5. * Gangrana, l't i, p. 38.

J a pier, p. 221. As to Biddle, the chief propagandist of the sect, see

!'!' -2I 4«

■ Macau lay, Essay on Milton.
p Dynamics of Religion, ch. 5.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 307

William Penn, the Quaker, held a Unitarian attitude;1
and in the Church itself, sad confusion arose on the
attempt being made to define the orthodox view" in oppo-
sition to a widely-circulated anti-Trinitarian treatise.'
Archbishop Tillotson (d. 1694) was often accused of
Socinianism ; and in the next generation jwas smilingly
spoken of by Anthony Collins as a leading Freethinker.
The so-called Latitudinarians/ all the while aiming as
they did at a non-dogmatic Christianity, served as a con-
necting medium for the different forms of liberal thought ;
and a new element of critical disintegration was intro-
duced by a speculative treatment of the Creation story in
the ArchcEologia (1692) of Dr. T. Burnet, a professedly
orthodox scholar. Its ideas were partly popularised through
Blount's Oracles of Reason. Much more remarkable, but
outside of popular discussion, were the Evangelium medici
(1697) of Dr. B. Connor, wherein the Gospel miracles
were explained away, on lines later associated with
German rationalism, as natural phenomena ; and the
curious treatise of John Craig, Theologian Christiana
principia mathcmatica (1699), wherein it is argued that all
evidence grows progressively less valid in course of time ;
and that accordingly the Christian religion will cease to
be believed about the year 3144, when probably will occur
the Second Coming. Connor, when attacked, protested
his orthodoxy ; Craig held successively two prebends
of the Church of England ;5 and both died unmolested,
probably because they had the prudence to write in Latin.

§4-
There was thus an abundant soil already 'prepared
for critical Deism when the posthumously collected works
of Blount (1695) were followed by John Toland's

1 Tayler, Retrospect, p. 226.

2 Tayler, p. 227 ; Dynamics, pp. 113-115.

;i This was by William Freeke, who was prosecuted and tin 2d /500
The book was burnt by the common hangman (1693).

4 As to whom see Tayler, ch. v, Sec. 4.

5 See arts, in Did. of Nat. Biog.

X 2

308 HISTORY OF FKEETHOUGHT.

Christianity not Mysterious in 1696. This adroit treatise
professedly founded on Locke's anonymous Reasonableness
of Christianity, its young author being on terms of
acquaintance with the philosopher.1 Toland, however,
lacked alike the timidity and the prudence which so
safely guided Locke in his latter years ; and though his
argument was only a logical and outspoken extension of
Locke's position, to the end of showing that there was
nothing supernatural in Christianity of Locke's type, it
separated him from " respectable " society in England
and Ireland for the rest of his life. The book was
" presented " by the Grand Juries of Middlesex and
Dublin;2 half-a-dozen answers appeared immediately;
and when in 1698 he produced another, entitled Amyntor,
showing the infirm foundation of the Christian canon,
there was again a speedy crop of replies. Despite the
oversights inevitable to such pioneer work, it opens the
era of documentary criticism of the New Testament ; and
in some of his later freethinking books, as the Nazarenus
(1718), and the Pantheisticon (1720), he continues to show
himself in advance of his time in " opening new windows "
for his mind3; the latter work representing in particular
the influence of Spinoza. He lacked, however, the
strength of character that in his day was peculiarly
needed to sustain a freethinker. Much of his later life
was spent abroad; and his Letters to Serena show him
permitted to discourse to the Queen of Prussia; but his
life \v;ts largely passed in poverty, cheerfully endured,
with chronic help from well-to-do sympathisers.

A certain amount of evasion was forced upon Toland
by the Blasphemy Law of 1695; inferentially, however,
he was a thorough Deist; and the discussion over his
books showed that views essentially deistic were held

namics of Religion, p. 129.
- As late .is 1 7< » 1 , a vote for its prosecution was passed in the Lower
11 - < m on vocation, Farrar, Crit. Hist. 0) Freethought, p. 180.

redit for ihi a in Mr. Leslie Stephen's notice of Toland in

mth ( entury, i, 101-112. Compare the estimate
■ I I ry oj Materialism, i, 324-3,30.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 309

even among his antagonists. One, an Irish bishop, got
into trouble by setting forth a view of Deity which
squared with that of Hobbes.1 The whole of our present
subject, indeed, is much complicated by the distribution of
heretical views among the nominally orthodox, and of
orthodox views among heretics.3 Thus the school of Cud-
worth, zealous against Atheism, was less truly theistic than
that of Blount* who, following Hobbes, pointed out that to
deny to God a continual personal and providential control of
human affairs was to hold to Atheism under the name of
Theism.4 Over the same crux, in Ireland, Bishop Browne
and Bishop Berkeley accused each other of promoting
Atheism ; and Archbishop King was embroiled in the
dispute.5 Locke's ideal of a practical and undogmatic
Christianity, again, was practically that of Hobbes6 and
of the Rev. Arthur Bury, whose Naked Gospel (1690) was
burned as heretical. On the other hand, the theistic
Descartes had laid down a " mechanical" theory of the
universe which perfectly comported with Atheism, and
partly promoted that way of thinking ; and the Church
included Cartesians and Cudworthians, Socinians and
Deists. Each group, further, had inner differences as to
free-will1 and Providence ; and the theistic schools of
Newton, Clarke, and Leibnitz rejected each other's
philosophies as well as that of Descartes. It can hardly
be doubted that if educated England could have been

1 Cp. Mr. Stephen, as cited, p. 115.

- " The Christianity of many writers consisted simply in expressing
deia opinions in the old-fashioned phraseology " (Stephen, i, 91).

3 Cp. Punjer, Christ. Plulos. of Religion, pp. 289-290; and Dynamics
Religion, pp. 94-98. Mr. Morley's reference to " the godle>s 1 >eism of the
English school" (Voltaire, 4th ed., p. 69) is a serious misrepresentation
of the case. .

4 Macaulay's description of Blount as an atheist is thus doubly dis-
honest.

6 Stephen, English Thought, i, 114-11S.

8 Cp. Dynamics 0/ Religion, p. 122.

' Mr. Stephen (i, $3) makes the surprising statement that a " dogmatic
assertion of Free-will became a mark of tin- whole deist ami semi-deist
school". On the contrary, Hobbes and Anthony Collins wrote with
uncommon power against 'the conception of Free-Will ; and had many
disciples on that head.

3io

HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT

polled in 17 jo, under no restraints from economic, social,
and legal pressure, some form of rationalism inconsistent
with Christianity would have been found to be fully as
common as orthodoxy. It was, in fact, the various
pressures under notice that determined the outward
fortunes of belief and unbelief, and have substantially
determined them since. When the devout Whiston was
deposed from his professorship for his Arianism, and the
unbelieving Saunderson was put in his place, the lesson
was learned that outward conformity was the sufficient
way to income.1

Hard as it was, however, to kick against the pricks
of law and prejudice, it is clear that many in the upper
and middle classes privately did so. The clerical and the
new popular literature of the time prove this abundantly.
In the Tatler and its successors,'- the decorous Addison
and the indecorous Steele, neither of them a competent
thinker, frigidly or furiously asperse the new tribe of
Freethinkers ; the evangelically pious Berkeley and the
extremely unevangelical Swift rival each other in the
malice of their attacks on those who rejected their creed.
Berkeley, a man of philosophic genius but intense pre-
possessions, maintained Christianity on grounds which
are the negation of philosophy.3 Swift, the genius of
1. mode misanthropy, fought venomously for the creed
of salvation. And still the Deists multiplied. In the
Earl of SHAFTESBURY4 they had a satirist with a finer
and keener weapon than was wielded by either Steele
or Addison, and a much better temper than was owned
by Swift or Berkeley. He did not venture to parade his

the pamphlet by "A Presbyter of the Church of England",
attribi. 1, Hare, cited in Dynamics of Religu n, pp. 177-8.

r, Nos 12, 111, 135; Spectator, Nos. 234, 381, 389, 599; Guardian,
-7. 35. 39, 55. '-■ 7". 77, 83. 88, 126, 130, 169. Most of the
Berkeley. They are extremely virulent ; but
i iin them hard

ind (•! : Defence of Freethinhing in Mathematics, §{ 5,

PP H '--■
j s in the Characteristics appeared □ 1708 and 1711,1 eing

i in the latter year, at Shaftesbury's death.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 311

unbelief: to do so was positively dangerous; but his
thrusts at faith left little doubt as to his theory.

§5-
Deism had been thus made in a manner fashionable
when, in 1713, Anthony Collins began a new con-
troversial era by his Discourse of Freethinking. He had
previously published an Essay Concerning the Use of Reason
(1707) ; carried on a discussion with Clarke on the ques-
tion of the immateriality of the soul ; and issued treatises
entitled Priestcraft in Perfection (1709, dealing with the
history of the Thirty-nine Articles) and A Vindication of
the Divine Attributes (1710), exposing the Hobbesian
Theism of Archbishop King on lines followed twenty
years later by Berkeley in his Minute Philosopher. But
none of these works aroused such a tumult as the Discourse
of Freethinking. To the reader of to-day, it is no very
aggressive performance : the writer was a man of im-
perturbable amenity and genuine kindliness of nature; and
his style is the completest possible contrast to that of the
furious replies it elicited. It was to Collins that Locke
wrote, in 1703 : " Believe it, my good friend, to love
truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human
perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other
virtues ; and if I mistake not, you have as much of it as I
ever met with in anybody ". The Discourse does no
discredit to this uncommon encomium, being a plea for
the conditions under which alone truth can be prosper-
ously studied, and the habits of mind which alone can
attain it. Of the many replies, the most notorious is that
of Bentley writing as Phil 'cleutli cms Lipsicusis, a perform-
ance which, on the strength of its author's reputation for
scholarship, has been uncritically applauded by not a few-
professed critics. It is in reality pre-eminent only for
insolence and bad faith, the latter quality being sometimes
complicated by lapses of scholarship hardly credible on
its author's part.1 It was Bentley's cue to represent

1 See the details in Dynamics of Religion, ch. vii.

312 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Collins as an Atheist, though he was a very pronounced
Deist ; and in the first uproar Collins had to fly to Holland
to avoid arrest. But Deism was too general to permit
of such a representative being exiled ; and he returned to
study quietly, leaving Bentley's vituperation and pre-
varication unanswered, with the other attacks made upon
him. In 1715 he published his brief but masterly
Inquiry concerning Human Liberty — anonymous like all
his works — which remains unsurpassed in its essentials
as a statement of the case for Determinism.

Not till 1723 did he publish his next work, A Discourse
of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, a
weight}- attack on the argument from prophecy, to which
the replies numbered thirty-five ; on which followed in
1727 his Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered, a reply to
criticisms. The movement was now in full flood, the
acute Mandeville having issued in 1720 his Free Thoughts
on Religion, and in 1723 a freshly expanded edition of his
Fable of the Bees; while the half-deranged ex-clergyman,
Thomas Woolston, contributed in 1726-28 his rather
ribald Discourses on Miracles, of which Voltaire, who was in
England in 1728, tells that thirty thousand copies were
sold, while sixty pamphlets were written in opposition.
With Matthew Tindal's Christianity as old as Creation
(1730) the excitement seems to have reached high-water
mark, that work eliciting over a hundred-and-fifty replies.
Tindal, like Collins, wrote anonymously, and so escaped
prosecution, dying in 1733, when the second part of his
book, left ready for publication, was deliberately destroyed
1 by Bishop Gibson, into whose hands it came. Woolston,
who put his name to his books, paid the penalty of
imprisonment for the rest of his life (d. 1733), being
unable to pay a line of £100. The punishment was the
measure of the anger felt at the continuous advance of
deistic opinions. Berkeley, in 1721, had complained
bitterly1 of the general indifference to religion, which his

1 JiiSiiy towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 313

writings had done nothing to alter; and in 1736 he
angrily demanded that blasphemy should be punished
like high treason.1

In point of fact there was little overt Atheism,
whether bv reason of the special odium attaching to that
way of thinking, or of a real production of theistic belief
by the concurrence of the deisiic propaganda on this head
with that of the clergy, themselves in so many cases
Deists.3 Collins observed that nobody had doubted the
existence of God until the Boyle lecturers began to
prove it ; but though they probably promoted Deism,
and roused much discussion on the theistic issue, the
stress of the apologetic literature passed from the theme
of Atheism to that of Deism. There was, in fact, an
arrest of the higher philosophic thought under the stress
of the concrete disputes over ethics, miracles, prophecy,
and politics ; and a habit of taking Deity for granted
became normal, with the result that when the weak point
was pressed upon by Law and Butler there was a sense
of blankness on both sides. But among men theistically
inclined, the argument of Tindal against revelationism
was extremely telling, and it had more literary im-
pressiveness than any writing on the orthodox side
before Butler. By this time the philosophic influence of
Spinoza had spread among the studious class, greatly
reinforcing the Deistic movement; so that in 1732
Berkeley, who ranked him among " weak and wicked
writers", described him as "the great leader of our
modern infidels ".3 Among the Deists of the upper

1 Id. Cp. Discourse to Magistrates. Berkeley's account of a blasphemous
secret society calling; themselves " blasters" remains unsupported.

2 Complaint to this effect was made by orthodox writers. Eg., the
Scotch Professor Halyburton complains that in many sermons in his day
" Heathen Morality has'been substituted in the room of Gospel Holiness. Ami
Ethicks by some have been preached instead of the Gospel of Christ."
Natural Religion Insufficient (Edinburgh), 1714, p. 25. Cp. pp. 23, 26-27,
59, etc.

:i Minute Philosopher, $29. Mr. Stephen's opinion ii, 33) that "few of
the deists, probably," read Spinoza, is thus outweighed. Cp. I [alyburton,
Natural Religion Insufficient, Edinburgh. 1714. p. 31, as to the " great vogue
amongst our young Gentry and Students" of Hobbes, Spinoza, and others.

314 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

classes was the young William Pitt, afterwards Lord
Chatham, if, as has been alleged, it was he who in 1733,
two years before he entered Parliament, contributed to the
London Journal a " Letter on Superstition ", the work of a
pronounced freethinker.1 On the other hand such Deistic
writing as that of Thomas Chubb, an energetic tallow-
chandler of Salisbury (d. 1747), brought an ethical " Chris-
tian rationalism " within the range of the unscholarly
many; while Thomas Morgan (d. 1741), a physician, began
to sketch a rationalistic theory of Christian origins,
besides putting the critical case with new completeness.
The main line of Deistic propaganda, as apart from the
essays and treatises of Hume and the posthumous works
of Bolingbroke, ends with Dodwell's ironical essay,
Christianity not Founded on Argument (1743), of which the
thesis might have been seriously supported by reference
to the intellectual history of the preceding thirty years,
wherein much argument had certainly failed to establish
the reigning creed or to discredit the unbelievers.

Currency has been given to a misconception of intellectual
history by the authoritative statement that in the deistic con-
troversy " all that was intellectually venerable in England "
appeared " on the side of Christianity " (Stephen, English
Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 86). In the first place, all
the writing on the other side was done under peril of Blasphemy
Laws, and under menace of all the calumny and ostracism
that in Christian society follow on advanced heresy; while
the orthodox side could draw on the entire clerical profession,
over ten thousand strong, and trained for and pledged to
defence of the faith. Yet when all is said, the ordinary list of
Deists amply suffices to disprove Mr. Stephen's phrase. His
" intellectually venerable " list runs : Bentley, Locke, Berkeley,
Clarke, Butler, Waterland, YVarburton, Sherlock, Gibson,
Conybeare, Smalbroke, Leslie, Law, Leland, Lardner, Foster,
Doddridge, Lyttelton, Harrington, Addison, Pope, Swift. He
might have added Newton and Boyle. Sykes,^ Balguy, Stebbing,

1 The question remains obscure. Cp. the Letter cited, reprinted at end
of Carver's 1830 til. ol Paine's Works (New York) ; F. Thackeray's Lijc of
Chatham, ii, 405; and Chatham's " scalping-kniie " speech.

: Really an abler man than half of the others in Mr. Stephen's list.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 315

and a " host of others" he declares to be " now for the most
part as much forgotten as their victims " ; Young and Black-
more he admits to be in similar case. All told, the list includes
only three or four men of any permanent interest as thinkers,
apart from Newton ; and only three or four more important as
writers. To speak of Waterland,1 Warburton,2 Smalbroke,3
Sherlock, Leslie, and half-a-dozen more as " intellectually
venerable " seems grotesque : even Bentley is a strange subject
for veneration.

On the other hand the list of "the despised Deists", who
"make but a poor show when compared with this imposing
list", runs thus: — Herbert, Hobbes, Blount, Halley (well
known to be an unbeliever, though he did not write on the
subject), Toland, Shaftesbury, Collins, Mandeville, Tindal,
Chubb, Morgan, Dodwell, Middleton, Hume, Bolingbroke,
Gibbon. It would be interesting to know on what principles
this group is excluded from the intellectual veneration so
liberally allotted to the other. It is nothing to the purpose
that Shaftesbury and Mandeville wrote "covertly" and "in-
directly ". The law and the conditions compelled them to do
so. It is still more beside the case to say that " Hume can
scarcely be reckoned among the deists. He is already [when ?]
emerging into a higher atmosphere." Hume wrote emphati-
cally as a Deist ; and only in his posthumous Dialogues did he
pass on to the atheistic position. At no time, moreover, was
he " on the side of Christianity ". On the other hand, Locke
and Clarke and Pope were clearly " emerging into a higher
atmosphere" than Christianity; since Locke is commonly
reckoned by the culture-historians, and even by Mr. Stephen,
as making for Deism ; Pope was the pupil of Bolingbroke, and
wrote as such ; and Clarke was shunned as an Arian. Newton,
again, was a Unitarian, and Leibnitz accused his system of
making for irreligion. It would be interesting to know,
further, who are the "forgotten victims" of Balguy and tin-
rest. The main line of Deists is pretty well remembered.
And if we pair off Hume against Berkeley, Hobbes against
Locke, Middleton (as historical critic) against Bentley, Shaftes-
bury against Addison, Mandeville against Swift, Bolingbroke
against Butler, Collins against Clarke, Herbert against Lyttel-
ton, Tindal against Waterland, and Gibbon against — shall we

1 Whose doctrine Mr. Stephen elsewhere (p. 25S) pronounces a " brutal
theology which gloried in trampling on the best instincts oi its opponents ",
and a " most unlovely product of eighteenth-century Speculation ".

- Of Warburton Air. Stephen writes elsewhere (p. 353) that " this
colossus was built up of rubbish". See p. .352 for samples.

3 As to whose "senile incompetence" see same vol , p. -U-

3l6 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

say ? — Warburton, it hardly appears that the overplus of
merit goes so overwhelmingly as Mr. Stephen alleges, even if
we leave Newton, with brain unhinged, standing against
Halley. The statement that the deists " are but a ragged
regiment " and that " in speculative ability most of them were
children by the side of their ablest antagonists", is simply
unintelligible unless the names of all the ablest deists are left
out. Locke, be it remembered, did not live to meet the main
deistic attack on Christianity ; and Mr. Stephen admits the
weakness of his pro-Christian performance.

The bases of Mr. Stephen's verdict may be tested by his
remarks that "Collins, a respectable country gentleman, showed
considerable acuteness ; Toland, a poor denizen of Grub Street,
and Tindal, a Fellow of All Souls, made a certain display of
learning, and succeeded in planting some effective arguments ".
To write thus is surely to concede too much to the standards of
the religious press. Elsewhere (pp. 217-227) Mr. Stephen
admits that Collins had the best of the argument against his
"venerable" opponents on Prophecy; and Professor Huxley
credits him with equal success in the argument with Clarke.
The work of Collins on Human Liberty, praised by a whole
series of students and experts, is philosophically ac durable as
any portion of Locke, whose chosen friend and trustee he was,
and who did not live to meet his anti-Biblical arguments;
Tindal, who had also won Locke's high praise by his political
essays, profoundly influenced such a student as Laukhard
(Lechler, S. 451) ; and Toland, whom even Mr. Farrar
(Bampton Lectures, p. 179) admitted to possess "much
originality and learning ", has struck Lange as a notable
thinker, though he was a poor man. Leibnitz, who answered
him, praises his acuteness, as does Pusey, who further admits
the uncommon ability of Morgan and Collins (Historical Enquiry
into German Rationalism, 1828, p. 126). It is time that the con-
ventional English standards in these matters should be rectified.

§6.

It is commonly assumed that after Chubb and Morgan
the Deistic movement in England " decayed ", or " passed
into scepticism" with Hume; and that the decay was
mainly owing to the persuasive effect of Bishop Butler's
Analogy (1736).' This appears to be a complete mis-
conception, arising out of the habit of looking to the

1 Sir James Ste; hen, Hora Sabbatic*, ii, 2^1 ; Lechler, S. 451.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. ; I 7

succession of books without considering the accompanying
social conditions. Butler's book had very little influence
till long after his death1 ; being indeed very ill-fitted to
turn contemporary deists to Christianity. Its main
argument being that Natural Religion is open to the
same objections as Revealed, on the score of the in-
consistency of Nature with Divine Benevolence, and that
we must be guided in opinion as in conduct by Probability,
a Mohammedan could as well use the theorem for the
Koran as could a Christian for the Bible ; and the
argument against the Justice of Nature tended logically
to Atheism. But the deists had left to them the resource
of our modern theists — that of surmising a Beneficence
above human comprehension ; and it is clear that if
Butler made any converts they must have been of a very
unenthusiastic kind. On the other hand, even deists
who were affected by the plea that the Bible need not be
more consistent and satisfactory than Nature, could find
refuge in Unitarianism, a creed which, as industriously
propounded by Priestley- in the latter half of the century,
made a numerical progress out of all proportion to that of
orthodoxy. The argument of William Law,3 again, which
insisted on the irreconcilability of the course of things
with human reason, and called for an abject submission to
revelation, could only appeal to minds already thus
prostrate. Both his and Butler's methods, in fact,
prepared the way for Hume.

Yet it is not to be supposed that Hume's philosophy,
in so far as it was strictly sceptical — that is, suspensory
— drew away Deists from their former attitude of con-
fidence to one of absolute doubt. Nor did Hume ever
aim at such a result. What he did was to countermine
the mines of Berkeley and others, who, finding their
supra-rational dogmas set aside by rationalism, deistic

1 Cp. Dynamics 0/ Religion, ch. viii.

2 In criticising whom, Mr. Stephen barely notices his scientific work,
but dwells much on his religious fallacies, a course which would make
short work of the fame of Newton.

3 See it set forth by Mr. Stephen, i, 15S-1G3.

318 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

or atheistic, sought to discredit at once deistic and
atheistic philosophies based on study of the external
world, and to establish their creed anew on the basis of
their subjective consciousness. As against that method,
Hume showed the futility of all apriorism alike ; but,
knowing that mere scepticism is practically null in life,
he counted on leaving the ground cleared for experiential
rationalism.

And he did, in so far as he was read. His essay, Of
Miracles (with the rest of the Inquiries of 1748-51, which
recast his early Treatise of Human Nature, 1739),
posits a principle valid against all supernaturalism
whatever; while his Natural History of Religion (1757)
though affirming Deism, rejected the theory of a primordial
monotheism, and laid the basis of the science of Com-
parative Hierology.1 Finally, his posthumous Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion (1779) admit, though in-
directly, the untenableness of Deism, and fall back
decisively upon the atheistic or agnostic position. Like
Descartes, he lacked the heroic fibre ; but like him he
recast philosophy for modern Europe ; and its subsequent
course is but a development of or a reaction against his
work. It is remarkable that this development of opinion
took place in that part of the British Islands where
religious fanaticism had gone furthest, and speech and
thought were socially least free. Freethought in Scot-
land before the latter part of the eighteenth century
existed only as a thing furtive and accursed. Even in
1697 the clergy had actually succeeded in getting a lad of
eighteen, Thomas Aikenhead, hanged for professing
Deism in general, and in particular for calling the
Old Testament "Ezra's Fables", and denying the
divinity of Jesus, though lie broke down and pleaded

1 The general reader should take note that in A. Murray's issue of

Humi l ays (now or lately published by Ward, Lock and Co.), which

omits altogether the essays on Miracles and a Tuture State, tlie Natural

II : n. i Religion is much mutilated, though the book professes to be a

aim reprint.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. ; I fj

penitence.1 At this date the clergy were hounding on the
Privy Council to new activity in trying witches ; and all
works of supposed heretical tendency imported from
England were confiscated in the Edinburgh shops,
among them being Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of
the Earth? Scottish intellectual development had in
fact been arrested by the Reformation, so that save
for Napier's Logarithms (1614) and such a political
treatise as Rutherford's Lex Rex (1644), the nation
of Dunbar and Lyndsay produced for two centuries
no secular literature of the least value, and not even a
theology of any enduring interest. Deism, accordingly,
seems in the latter part of the seventeenth and the early
part of the eighteenth century to have made fully as
much progress in Scotland as in England3 ; and the
bigoted clergy could offer little intellectual resistance.
The very aridity of the Presbyterian life4 intensified the
recoil among the educated classes to philosophical and
historical interests, leading to the performances of Hume,
Smith, Robertson, Ferguson and yet others, all ration-
alists in method and sociologists in their interests.

While, however, this interest in ideas grew up in
Scotland, so recently hide-bound in theology, there went

1 Macaulay, History, ch. xxii ; student's ed. ii, 620-1 ; Burton, History of
Scotland, viii, 76-77. Aikenhead seems to have been a boy of unusual
capacity, even by the bullying account of Macaulay. See his arguments
on the bases of ethics, set forth in his "dying speech", as cited by
Halyburton, Natural Religion Insufficient, 1714, pp. 119-123, 131.

- Macaulay, as cited.

3 See in the posthumous work of Professor Halyburton of St. Andrews,
Natural Religion Insufficient, Edinburgh, 1714, Epist. of Recom. ; pref., pp.
25, 27, and pp. 8, 15, 19, 23, 31, etc. Halyburton's treatise is interesting as
showing the psychological state of argumentative Scotch orthodoxy in his
day. He professes to repel the Deistical argument throughout by reason ;
he follows Huet and concurs with Berkeley in contending that mathematics
involve anti-rational assumptions ; and he takes entire satisfaction in the
execution of the lad Aikenhead for Deism. Yet in a second treatise, An
Essay Concerning the Nature of Faith, he contends, as against Locke and the
" Rationalists", that the power to believe in the word of God is " expressly
deny'd to man in his natural estate " and is a supernatural gift Thus the
Ca'vinists, like Baxter, were at bottom absolutely insincere in their pro-
fession to act upon reason, while insolently charging insincerity on others

4 This all the while was rent by barren theological controversy. See
A Sober Enquiry intj the Grounds of the Present Differences in the ^Church of
Scotland, 1723.

320 . HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

on in England a contrary diversion of interest from ideas
as such to political and mercantile interests. At the
same time, the pillory and the jail were used against any
new deistic writers who spoke out plainly. Jacob Ilive,
for denying in a pamphlet (1753) the truth of revelation,
was pilloried thrice, and sent to hard labor for three
years ; and Peter Annet, aged 70, and of unbalanced
mind, was pilloried twice and set to a year's hard labor
for ridiculing the Pentateuch. That there should be a
dearth of new deistic treatises under these circumstances
was not surprising. Yet other freethinking treatises did
appear at intervals1 ; and in 1756 the Arian Bishop Clayton
proposed in the Irish House of Lords to drop the Nicene
and Athanasian creeds. He in turn was about to be
prosecuted for the heresies of his Vindication of the Old and
New Testaments (1757) when he died. There was at the same
time, however, a change in the prevailing mental life. The
middle and latter part of the eighteenth century is the period
of the rise of (1) the new machine industries, and (2) the
new imperialistic policy of Chatham.2 Both alike with-
drew men from problems of mere belief, whether theo-

1 The following (save Evanson) are overlooked in Mr. Stephen's survey : —
1736. Henry Coventry. Philemon to Hydaspcs (on False Religion).
1739 — 1746- Parvish, Samuel. An Inquiry into the Jewish and Christian

Revelation.
1746. Essay on Natural Religion. Attributed to Dryden.
1746. Deism fairly stated and fully vindicated, etc. Anon.

1749. Cooper, J. G. Life of Soerates.

1750. Dove, John. A Creed founded on Truth and Common Sense.

1765. Dudgeon, W. Philosophical Works. Privately printed — Pat Edinburgh.
176S. The I illars of Priestcraft and orthodoxy shaken. Four vols, of free-
(isted. thinking pamphlets, collected (and some written) by Thomas
1752). Gordon, formerly secretary to Trenchard. Edited by R. Barron.
1772. Evanson, E. The Doctrines of a Trinity and the Incantation.
1777. ,, ,, Letter to Bishop 1 1 in d.

1781. Nicholson, W. The Doubts of the Infidels. Re-published by Carlile.

1782. Turner, W. Ans. to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever
1785. Toulmin, Dr. Joshua.* The Antiquity and Duration of the World.
1789. ,, >, The Eternity of the Universe.

1789. Cooper, Dr. T. Tracts, Ethical, Theological ami Political.
1792. Evanson, E. The Dissonance of the Four Evangelists.
1795. O'Keefe, Dr. J. A. On the Progress of the Human Understanding.
1797. Davies, J.C. The Scripturian's Creed. Prosecuted and imprisoned.
2 Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 175-6.
• Unitarian, biographer of Socinus. Much molested in 1791.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 321

logical or scientific. That the reaction was not one of
mere fatigue over Deism is proved by the flagrant
decadence of mathematical and astronomical science
after Newton, the primacy in these branches being trans-
ferred to France.1 It was a general diversion of energy,
analogous to what had previously taken place in France
in the reign of Louis XIV. As the poet Gray, himself
orthodox, put the case in 1754, "the mode of freethinking
has given place to the mode of not thinking at all ".2 In
Hume's opinion the general pitch of national intelligence
south of the Tweed was lowered. This state of things
of course was favorable to religious revival ; but what
took place was rather a new growth of emotional pietism
in the new industrial masses (the population being now
on a rapid increase), under the ministry of the Wesleys
and Whitfield, and a further growth of similar religion in
the new provincial middle-class that grew up on the
industrial basis. The universities all the while were
at the lowest ebb of culture, but officially rabid against
philosophic freethinking.3 Instead of being destroyed
by the clerical defence, the Deistic movement had
really penetrated the Church, which was become as
rationalistic in its methods as its function would permit,
aud the educated classes, which had arrived at a state of
compromise. In short, the Deistic movement had done
what it lay in it to do. The old evangelical or pietistic
view of life was discredited among instructed people, and
in this sense it was Christianity that had " decayed ".

The next intellectual step in natural course would
have been a revision of the deistic assumptions, in so far,
that is, as certain positive assumptions were common to
the Deists. But, as we have seen, certain fresh issues
were raised as among the Deists themselves. In addition
to those above noted, there was the profoundly important

1 Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, 1S55, vol. i, ch. xiii.

'-' Letter xxxi, in Mason's Memoir.

3 Compare the verdicts of Gibbon in his Autobiography ; and of Adam
Smith, Wealth of Nations, B. v, ch. i, art. 2 ; and see the memoirs ol Smith
in 1831 ed. and McCulloch's ed., and Rae's Life of Adam Smith, 1895, p. 24.

322 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

one as to ethics. Shaftesbury, who rejected the religious
basis, held a creed of optimism ; and this optimism was
assailed by Mandeville, who in consequence was opposed
as warmly by the deist Hutcheson and others as by Law
and Berkeley. To grapple with this problem, and with
the underlying cosmic problem, there was needed at least
as much general mental activity as went to the antecedent
discussion ; and in the terms of the case the activity of
the nation was otherwise directed, and was further affected
by persecuting laws. The negative process, the impeach-
ment of Christian supernaturalism, had been accomplished
so far as the current arguments went. Toland and
Collins had fought the battle of free discussion, forcing
ratiocination on the Church ; Collins had shaken the
creed of prophecy; Shaftesbury had impugned the religious
conception of morals ; and Mandeville had done so
more profoundly, laying the foundations of scientific
utilitarianism.1 Woolston, following up Collins, had
shaken the faith in New Testament miracles; and Hume
had laid down the philosophic principle which rebuts all
attempts to prove miracles as such.2 Tindal had clinched
the case for " natural " theism as against revelationism ;
and the later Deists, notably Morgan, had to some
extent combined these results.3 This literature was
generally distributed ; and so far the case had been
thrashed out.

For the rest, though the due philosophic progress
was arrested, deistic opinion was far from dying out.4 It
simply remained in the background of current discussion,
the more concrete interests and the new imaginative

1 Cp. essay on The Fable of the Bees in the author's Essays towards a
Critical Method, 1889.

'-' As against the objections of Mr. Lang, see the author's art. in Reformer,
Jan. and Feb., 1899.

1 Cp. the summary of Farrar, Critical History of Freethought, 1862, pp.
177-8, which is founded on that of Fusey's early Historical Enquiry con-
cerning the causes of German Rationalism, pp. 124, 126.

1 The German Dr.G. W. Alberti, writing in 1752 (Brief betreffend*. . .
Religion . ... in Grots -Brittanien, Hannover, S. 440) cites the British
ine as stating in 1749 that half the educated people in England were
then Deists ; and he, after full enquiry, agrees.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. 323

literature occupying the foreground. The literary status
of Deism after 1750 was really higher than ever. It was now
represented by Hume ; by Adam Smith (Moral Sentiments,
I759); by the scholarship of Conyers Middleton,
whose Letter from Rome (1729) and Free Inquiry into the
miracles of post-apostolic Christianity (1749) laid fresh
basis for the comparative method, and certainly made
for unbelief1; by the posthumous works (1754) of Boling-
broke, who, though more of a debater than a thinker,
debated with masterly power, in a style unmatched for
harmony and energetic grace, which had already won
him a great literary prestige ;3 and last but not least, by
the new writings of Voltaire, who had assimilated the
whole propaganda of English Deism, and gave it out
anew with a wit and brilliancy hitherto unknown in
argumentative and critical literature. The freethinking
of the third quarter of the century, though kept secondary
to more pressing questions, was thus at least as deeply
rooted and as convinced as that of the first quarter.

On this state of things supervened the massive per-
formance of the greatest historical writer England had
et produced. Gibbon, educated not by Oxford but by
the recent scholarly literature of France, had as a mere
boy seen, on reading Bossuet, the theoretic weakness of
Protestantism, and had straightway professed Romanism.
Shaken as to that by a skilled Swiss Protestant, he
speedily became a rationalist pure and simple, with as
little of the dregs of Deism in him as any writer of his
age ; and his great work begins or rather signalises (since
Hume and Robertson preceded him) a new era of historical
writing, not merely by its sociological treatment of the
rise of Christianity, but by its absolutely anti-theological
handling of all things.

1 See Mr. Stephen's account, i, 253-272, and Dynamics 0/ Religi H, p. 179,
as to Middleton's work and his treatment at the hands ol the theologians.

- His influence, commonly belittled, was probably much greater than
writers like Johnson would admit ; and it went deep. Voltaire tells [1
les Homines, ch. 39) that he had known someyountf pupils of Bolingbroke
who altogether denied the historic actuality of the Gospel Jc^us.

Y 2

324 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

In a world which was eagerly reading Gibbon1 and
Voltaire, there was a peculiar absurdity in Burke's
famous question (17 ) as to " Who now reads Bolingbroke "
and the rest of the older Deists. The fashionable world
was actually reading Bolingbroke even then2 ; and the
work of the older Deists was being done with new
incisiveness and massiveness by their successors.3 Beside
Burke in Parliament was the Prime Minister, William
Pitt the younger, a high agnostic Deist. One of the
most popular writers of the day was Erasmus Darwin, a
Deist, whose Zoonomia (1794) brought on him the charge
of atheism. Even in rural Scotland, the vogue of the
poetry of Burns, who was substantially a Deist, told of
germinal doubt. A seeming justice was given to Burke's
phrase by the undoubted reaction which took place
immediately afterwards. In the vast panic which
followed on the French Revolution, the multitude of
mediocre minds in the middle and upper classes, for-
merly deistic or indifferent, took fright at unbelief as
something now visibly connected with democracy and
regicide ; and orthodoxy became fashionable on political
grounds just as scepticism had become fashionable at
the Restoration. Class interest and political prejudice
wrought in both cases alike ; only in opposite directions.
Democracy was no longer Bibliolatrous, so aristocracy
was fain to become so. But even in the height of the
revolutionary tumult, and while Burke was blustering
about the disappearance of unbelief, Thomas Paine was
laying deep and wide the English foundations of a new
democratic Freethought ; and the upper-class reaction in

1 Cp. Bishop Watson's Apology for Christianity (1776) as to the vogue of
unbelief at that date. (Two Apologies, ed. 1806, p. 121. Cp. pp. 179, 399)

2 See Hannah More's letter of April, 1777, in her Life, abridged i6mo.
ed., p. 36.

:t The essays of Hume, including the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion
(1779) were now circulated in repeated editions. Mr. Rae, in his valuable
Life of Adam Smith, p. 311, cites a German observer, Wendeborn.as writing
in 1785 that the Dialogues, though a K""d deal discussed in Germany, had
made no sensation in England, and were at that date entirely forgotten.
I -lit a second edition had been called for in 1779, and they were added to a
fresh edition of the essays in 1788.

THE ENGLISH DEISTIC MOVEMENT. j^5

the nature of the case was doomed to impermanency,
though it was to arrest English intellectual progress for
over a generation. The French Revolution had re-
introduced Freethought as a vital issue, even in causing it
to be banned as a danger.1

Whether or not the elder Pitt was a Deist, the younger gave
very plain signs of being at least no more. Mr. Gladstone
(Studies subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, ed. 1896, pp. 30-33)
has sought to discredit the recorded testimony of Wilberforce
(Life of Wilberforce, 1838, i, 98) that Pitt told him " Bishop
Butler's work raised in his mind more doubts than it had
answered ". Mr. Gladstone points to another passage in
Wilberforce's diary which states that Pitt "commended Butler's
Analogy" (Life, i, 90). But the context shows that Pitt had
commended the book for the express purpose of turning
Wilberforce's mind from its evangelical bias. Wilberforce was
never a Deist, and the purpose accordingly could not have been
to make him orthodox. The two testimonies are thus perfectly
consistent ; especially when we note the further statement
credibly reported to have been made by Wilberforce (Life, i,
95), that Pitt later " tried to reason me out of my convictions ". We
have further the emphatic declaration of Pitt's niece, Lady
Hester Stanhope, that he "never went to church in his life . . .
never even talked about religion " (Memoirs of Lady Hester
Stanhope, 1845, iii, 166-7). This was said in emphatic denial of
the genuineness of the unctuous death-bed speech put in Pitt's
mouth by Gifford. Lady Hester's high veracity is accredited
by her physician (Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, 1846, i, pref.
p. 11). No such character can be given to the conventional
English biography of the period.

1 That Freethought at the end of the century was rather driven inwards
and downwards than expelled is made clear by the multitude of fresh
treatises on Christian evidences. Growing numerous after 1790, they
positively swarm for a generation after Paley (1794)- Cp. I n the

Evidence and Influence 0/ Christianity, Bath, 1790, pref. ; Andrew Fuller,
The Gospel its own Witness, 1799, pref. and concluding address to 1 'cists ;
Watson's sermon of 1795, in Two Apologies, ed. 1806, p $99; Prie I
Memoirs (written in 1795), 1806, pp. 127-S ; Wilberforce's Practical 1
1797, passim (e.g. pp. 366-9, 8th ed. 1841) ; Rev. D. Simpson, A >'■■
Religion . . . addressed to the Disciples of Thomas Paine, 1797. The latter
writer states (2d. ed., p. 126) that " infidelity is at this moment running like
wildfire among the common people " ; and Fuller (2d ed. p. 128) spe.iks of
the Monthly Magazine as "pretty evidently devoted to the cause oi infidelity".

CHAPTER XIV.

EUROPEAN FREETHOUGHT, FROM DESCARTES TO THE

FRENCH REVOLUTION.

§ I. France and Holland.

I. We have seen France, in the first quarter of the
seventeenth century, pervaded in its upper classes by a
Freethought partly born of the knowledge that religion
counted for little but harm in public affairs, partly the
result of such argumentation as had been thrown out by
Montaigne and codified by Charron. That it was not the
freethinking of mere idle men of the world is clear when
we note the names and writings of La Mothe le Vayer,
Gui Patin, and Gabriel Naude, all scholars, all
heretics of the sceptical and rationalistic order. The
first, one of the early members of the new Academy
founded by Richelieu, is an interesting figure1 in the
history of culture, being a skeptic of the school of Sextus
Empiricus, but practically a great friend of tolerance.
Standing in favor with Richelieu, he wrote at that
statesman's suggestion a treatise On the Virtue of the
Heathen, justifying toleration by Pagan example — a
course which raises the question whether Richelieu
himself was not strongly touched by the rationalism of
his age. Le Vayer's Dialogues of Orasius Tubero (1633)
is philosophically his most important work ; but its
Pyrrhonism was not calculated to affect greatly the
current thought of his day ; and he ranked rather as a
man of all-round learning2 than as a polemist, being

1 See the notices of him in Owen's Skeptics of the French Renaissance ;
and in Sainte Beuve, Port Royal, iii, 180, etc.

- "On le regarde comme le Plutarque de notre siecle " (Perrault, Les
' Hotnmes Illustres du XV lie Slide, ed. 1701, ii. 131).

( 326 )

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 327

reputed " a little contradictory, but in no way bigoted or
obstinate, all opinions being to him nearly indifferent,
excepting those of which faith does not permit us to
doubt 'V

2. Between this negative development of the doctrine

of Montaigne and the vogue of upper-class Deism, the

philosophy of Descartes, with its careful profession of

submission to the Church, had an easy reception ; and on

the appearance of the Discours de la Methode (1637) i*

speedily affected the whole thought of France, the women

of the leisured class, now much given to literature, being

among its students.2 From the first, the Jansenists, who

were the most serious religious thinkers of the time,

accepted the Cartesian system as in the main soundlv

Christian ; and its founder's authority had some such

influence in keeping up the prestige of orthodoxy as had

that of Locke later in England. Boileau is named among

those whom he so influenced.3 But a merely external

influence of this kind could not counteract the whole

social and intellectual tendency towards a secular view of

life, a tendency revealed on the one hand by the series of

treatises from eminent Churchmen, defending the faith

against unpublished attacks, and on the other hand bv

the prevailing tone in belles lettres. Malherbe, the literary

dictator of the first part of the century, had died in 1628

with the character of a scoffer ; and the fashion lasted

till the latter half of the reign of Louis XIV. The case

of the poet Theophile de Viau, who about 1623 suffered

persecution on a charge of impiety,4 appears to be the

only one of the kind for over a generation. It was in

1665, some years after the death of Mazarin, who had

maintained Richelieu's policy of tolerance, that Claude

Petit was burnt at Paris for " impious pieces " ; and even

1 Id., p. 232.

- Lanson, Hist, de la litt. frangaise, $e edit. p. 396 ; Brunetiere, Etudes
Critiques, 3e serie, p. 2 ; Buckle, ii, 95.

3 Lanson, p. 397.

4 See Condorcet, Vie dc Voltaire, ch. i, and note 1. The charge see
to h we been false.

328 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

then there was no general reversion to orthodoxy, the
upper-class tone remaining, as in the age of Richelieu
and Mazarin, unbelieving. When Corneille had intro-
duced a touch of Christian zeal into his Polycucie (1643)
he had given general offence to the dilettants of both
sexes.1 Moliere, again, the genius of character comedy,
was unquestionably an unbeliever, as was his brilliant
predecessor Cyrano de Bergerac."

3. Even in the apologetic reasoning of the greatest
French prose writer of that age, Pascal, we have the
most pregnant testimony to the prevalence of unbelief;
for not only were the fragments preserved as Pemees
(1670) part of a planned defence of religion against con-
temporary rationalism,3 but they themselves show their
author profoundly unable to believe, save by a desperate
abnegation of reason. The case of Pascal is that of
Berkeley with a difference : the latter suffered from
hypochondria, but reacted with nervous energy ; Pascal,
a physical degenerate, prematurely profound, was pre-
maturely old ; and his pietism in its final form is the
expression of the physical collapse.4 The man who
advised doubters to make a habit of causing masses to be
said and practising religious habits, on the score that
cela vous fcra croirc et vons abetira — " that will make you
believe and will stupefy you "5 — was a pathological
case ; and though the whole Jansenist movement
stood for a reaction against freethinking, it may be

1 Guizot, Corneille et son temps, ed. 1880, p. 200. The circle of the Hotel
Rambouillet were especially hostile. Cp. Palissot's note to Polyeucte, end.

- Cp. Lanson, p. 520; Fournier, Etudes sur Moliere, 1885, pp. 122-.3;
Soury, Briv. de I hist, du math., p. 384 ; pref. by "Jacob" to ed. of Cyrano.

3 It is to be remembered that the work as published contained matter
not Pascal's. Cp. Brunetiere, Etudes, iii, 46-47 ; and the editions of the
Pensics by Faugere and Havet.

1 This is disputed by M. Lanson, an always weighty authority. He
writes (p. 464) that Pascal was "neither mad nor ill " when he gave himself
up wholly to religion. But Pascal had chronically suffered from intense
pains in the head from his eighteenth year; and M. Lanson admits
,'p. 451) that the Pensees were written in intervals of acute suflering. Cp.
Pascals I'n, 1 1 four demander a Dtcu Ie ion usage des maladies; and Owen,

uh Skeptics, pp. 74'', 784.

6 Pensees, ed. Faugere, ii, r68 g The "abetira " comes from Montaigne.

FRANCF. AND HOLLAND. 329

doubted whether the Pensccs did not generally act as a
solvent rather than as a sustainer of religious beliefs.'
The same question arises concerning the Lettres Pro-
vinciates (1656). It is strange that those who charge
upon the satire of the later philosophers the downfall of
Catholicism in France should not realise the plain
tendency of these brilliant satires to discredit the entire
authority of the Church, and further, by their own dog-
matic weaknesses, to put all dogma alike under suspicion."
It was in fact the eternal strifes of the religious factions
that more than any other single cause fostered unbelief15;
and Pascal's writings only deepened the trouble. Even
Bossuet, in his History of the Variations of the Protestant
Churches, did but throw a new light on the hollowness of
the grounds of religion ; and for thoughtful readers gave a
lead rather to atheism than to Catholicism. The con-
verts it would make to the Catholic Church would be
precisely those whose adherence was of least value, since
they had not even the temperamental basis which, rather
than argument, kept Bossuet a believer, and were but
Catholics for lack of courage to put all religion aside. A
similar fatality attended the labors of the learned Huet,
bishop of Avranches, whose Demonstratio Evangelica (1679)
is remarkable as anticipating Berkeley in the argument
from the arbitrariness of mathematical assumptions. He,
too, by that and by his later works, made for sheer
philosophical scepticism,4 always a dangerous basis for
orthodoxy.

4. Meanwhile a new rationalising influence was at
work in the doctrine of Gassendi, who, living his life as
a Canon of the Church, reverted in his doctrine to the
philosophy of Epicurus, alike in physics and ethics.

1 Thus Mr. Owen treats him as a sceptic, which philosophically he was
'-' Cp. the Eloge de Pascal by Bordas Demoulin in Didot ed ol the
Lettres, 1854, pp. xxii-xxiii, and cit. from Sainte-Iieuve.

3 Cp. Voltaire's letter of 1768, cited by Mr. Morley, Voltaire, 4th ed .

P- 159-

1 Cp. Owen, French Skeptics, pp. 762-3, 767.

s This was expressly urged against Huet by Arnauld, See the '
Jourdain's ed. of the Logique de Port R yal, 1854, p. xi.

33° HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Professing like Descartes a strict submission to the
Church, he yet set forth a theory of things which had
in all ages been recognised as fundamentally irreconcilable
with the Christian creed; and his substantial exemption
from penalties is one of the proofs of the permeation of
the Church at the time by the new spirit. The corre-
spondent of Galileo and Kepler, he was the friend of La
Mothe le Vayer and Naude ; and Gui Patin was his
physician and intimate.1 Strong as a physicist and
astronomer where Descartes was weak, he divides with
him the credit of practically renewing natural philosophy;
Newton following Gassendi rather than Descartes." Indeed.
Gassendi's youthful attack on the Aristotelian physics
(1624) makes him the predecessor of Descartes ; and he
expressly opposed his contemporary on points of physics
and metaphysics on which he thought him chimerical,
and so promoted unbelief where Descartes made for
orthodoxy.3 Yet the works of Descartes were placed on
the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and later even vetoed
at Paris university, and those of Gassendi were not.'
Himself one of the most abstemious of men,3 like his
master Epicurus (of whom he wrote a Life), he attracted
disciples of another temperamental cast as well as many
of his own ; and as usual his system is associated with
the former, who are duly vilified on the orthodox side,
although certainly no worse than the average adherents
of that.

5. Of the new Epicureans, the most famous in his
day was SAINT-EVREMOND,6 who, exiled from France for

1 For a good account of Gassendi and his group (founded on Lange,
Sec. iii, ch. 1) see Soury, Breviaire de I'hist. de materialisms, Pt. iii, ch. 2.

- Voltaire, Elements de plains, de Newton, ch. ii ; Lange, i, 267, and note,
and p. 2G0.

3 Bayle, art. Pomponace, Notes F and G. The complaint was made by
Arnauld, who with the rest oi the Jansenists was substantially a Cartesian.

1 Apparently just because the Jansenists adopted Descartes and opposed

I idi. But Gassendi is extremely guarded in all his statements.

Sec S in \ . pp. ,'ij-H, as to a water-drinking " debauch " of G-assendi
and his fi iends.

' B 1613 ; d. 1703. A man who lived to ninety can have been no great
debauchee.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 33I

his politics, maintained both in London and in Paris, by
his writings, a leadership in polite letters. In England
he greatly influenced young men like Bolingbroke ; and a
translation (attributed to Dryden) of one of his writings
seems to have given Bishop Butler the provocation to the
first and weakest chapter of his Analogy.1 Regnard, the
dramatist, had a similar private repute as an "Epicurean".
And even among the nominally orthodox writers of the
time in France a subtle scepticism touches nearly all
opinion. Fontenelle (1657-1757), whose Conversations
on the plurality of Worlds (1686) popularised for the elegant
world the new cosmology, cannot but have undermined
dogmatic faith in some directions ; above all by his
graceful and skilful Hisioire des Oracles (also 1686), where
" the argumentation passes beyond the thesis advanced.
All that he says of oracles could be said of miracles."3
The Jesuits found the book essentially " impious " ; and a
French culture-historian sees in it " the first attack which
directs the scientific spirit against the foundations of
Christianity. All the purely philosophic arguments with
which religion has been assailed are in principle in the
work of Fontenelle."2 Living to his hundredth year, he
could join hands with the Freethought of Gassendi and
Voltaire, Descartes and Diderot.

6. Yet another new departure was made in the France
of Louis XIV by the scholarly performance of Richard
Simon (1638 — 1712), who was as regards the Scriptural
texts what .Spencer of Cambridge was as regards the
culture-history of the Hebrews, the founder of modern
methodical criticism. The congregation of the Oratory,
where he laid the foundations of his learning, was 50
little inclined to his critical views that he decided to
leave it, and though persuaded to stay, and to become

1 Dynamics oj Religion, p. 172.

- Lanson, Hist, de la litt. Francaise, p. 627.

3 Id. ib. Cp. Demogeot, p. 46S. Fontenelle was also credited with a
heretical letter on the doctrine of Resurrection, an essay on the Infinite,
and a Traiti sur la Liberie, all pointing to unbelief. As the Histom des Oi
was itself anonymous, the question remains open.

332 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

for a time a professor of philosophy at Julli, he at length
broke with the Order. Then, from his native town of
Dieppe, came his strenuous series of critical works,
Uhistoire critique du vieux Testament (1678), which among
other things decisively impugned the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch ; the Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau
Testament (Rotterdam, 1689) ; numerous other volumes of
critical studies on texts, versions, and commentators ; and
finally a French translation of the New Testament with
notes. His Bibliotheque Critique (4 vols, under the name
of Saint-Jarre) was suppressed by an order in council ;
the translation was condemned by Bossuet and the
Archbishop of Paris ; and the two first-named works
were suppressed by the Parliament of Paris and attacked
by a host of orthodox scholars ; but they were translated
promptly into Latin and English ; and they gave a new
breadth of footing to the deistic argument, though Simon
always wrote as an avowed believer. Before Simon, the
Protestant Peyrere, the friend of La Mothe le Vayer and
Gassendi, had fired a somewhat wild shot at the Penta-
teuch in his Systcma Theologica ex Pra-adamitarum
Hypothcsi (1654), for which he was imprisoned at Brussels,
with the result that he recanted and joined the Church of
Rome. But Simon laid a scholarly foundation where
Peyrere framed a guess, and had a corresponding influence.
7. Such an evolution could not occur in France
without affecting the neighbouring civilisation of Holland.
We have seen Dutch life at the beginning of the seven-
teenth century full of Protestant fanaticism and sectarian
strife ; and in the time of Descartes these elements,
especially on the Calvinist side, were strong enough
virtually to drive him out of Holland (1647) after nineteen
years' residence.' He had, however, made disciples ; and
his doctrine bore fruit, finding doubtless some old soil
ready. At Amsterdam the young Spinoza (1632 — 1677)
was first led to rationalise by his friend and teacher,
Van den Ende, a scientific materialist, hostile to all

1 Kimo Fischer, Descartes and Ins School, pp. 254-2G8.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 333

religion1 ; and it was while under that influence that he
was excommunicated by his father's synagogue. Be-
coming deeply influenced later by Descartes, partly also
by Bacon- and further by Hobbes,3 Spinoza produced a
philosophic system which thenceforth affected all European
thought. The Tractatus Thcologico-Politicus (1670) was
promptly condemned by a clerical synod, along with
Hobbes's Leviathan, which it followed in the matter of
criticism of the scriptural text. Deism and Atheism could
alike found on its pantheistic positions, and did, in the
ensuing generations. Its effect in Holland was at least
as great as elsewhere ; and there seems to have gone on
from this time a rapid modification of the old orthodoxy.
Frans Cuper, who in 1676 published an Arcana Atheismi
Revelata professedly refuting Spinoza, was charged with
writing in bad faith and with being on Spinoza's side.
The appearance in 1678 of a Dutch treatise "against all
sorts of Atheists"4; and in 1681, at Amsterdam, of an
attack in French on Spinoza's Scriptural criticism,5 points
to a movement outside of the clerical and scholarly class.
Already in 1685, Locke's friend Le Clerc had taken up
the position of Hobbes and Spinoza and Simon on the
Pentateuch in his Sentimens de quelques thcologiens de
Hollandc. In the time of the English Civil War, the fear
of the opponents of the new multitude of sects was that
England should become " another Amsterdam ".6 This
very multiplicity tended to promote doubt: and in 1713
we find Anthony Collins7 pointing to Holland as a
country where freedom to think has undermined super-
stition to a remarkable degree. During his stay, in the
previous generation, Locke had found a measure 1 >f

1 Martineau, Study of Spinoza, 1882, pp. 20-22 ; Color, Vie. de Spinoza, in
Gfrorer's ed. of Opera, p. xxv ; Willis, Spinoza, 1S70, pp. 39, 79.

2 Martineau, p. 46. 3 Id., p. 57.

* Theologisch, Philosopliiseh, en Historisch process voor God, tegen all.:
Atheisten. By Francis Kidder, Rotterdam, 1678.

5 L' Impiete Convaincu, par Pierre Yvon, Amsterdam, 1681.
f' Edwards, Gangrana, as before cited.
' Discourse of Freethinking, p. 28.

334 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

liberal theology, in harmony with his own ; but in those
days downright heresy was still dangerous. Deurhoff
(d. 1717), who translated Descartes and was accused of
Spinozism, had at one time to fly Holland, though by his
writings he founded a pantheistic sect known as Deur-
hovians ; and Balthasar Bekkar, persecuted first for
Socinianism, incurred so much odium by publishing in
1691 a treatise denying the reality of witchcraft1 that he
had to give up his office as preacher.'- In 1708 there
was published at Amsterdam a more startling work,
under the pseudonym of "Juan di Posos ", wherein, by
way of a relation of imaginary travels, something like
atheism was said to be taught ; but the pastor Leenhof
had in 1703 been accused of Atheism for his treatise,
Heaven on Earth, which was at most Spinozistic.3 Even
as late as 1714, a Spinozist shoemaker, Booms, was
banished for his writings ; but henceforth liberal influ-
ences, largely traceable to the works of Bayle, begin to
predominate.

8. No greater service was rendered in that age to the
spread of rational views than that embodied in the great
Dictionnaire of Pierre Bayle (1647- 1706), who, born in
France, but driven out by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, spent the best part of his life and did his main
work at Rotterdam. Persecuted there to the extent of
having to give up his professorship, he yet produced a
virtual encyclopedia for Freethinkers in his incomparable
Dictionary, baffling hostility by the Pyrrhonian im-
partiality with which he handled all religious questions.
He had read everything and followed every controversy ;
and was thereby the better able to seem to have no
convictions of his own. But even apart from the
occasional defences of the character of Atheists dropped
by him in the main body of the work and in the
Eclaircissements in which he defended it, it is sufficiently

1 The Enchanted World, translated into English in 1695.

- Art. in Biographie Umverselle.

3 Cp. Trinius, Ereydcnket -Lexicon, S. 336-7.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 3J5

evident that he was an unbeliever. The only alternative
view is that he was strictly a sceptic, reaching no con-
clusions for himself; but this is excluded by the whole
management of his expositions.1 His ostensible scepticism
was simply the tactic forced on him by his conditions ;
and it was the positive unbelievers who specially delighted
in his volumes. He laid down no doctrines, but he
illuminated all ; and his air of repudiating such views as
Spinoza's had the effect rather of forcing Spinozists to
leave neutral ground than of rehabilitating orthodoxv.
Welcomed by students everywhere, he must have made
powerfully for tolerance and rationalism in his adopted
country, which after his time became a centre of culture
for the States of northern Europe rather than a source of
original works. Holland in the eighteenth century was
receptive alike of French and English thought and
literature, especially the former ; and besides reprinting
many of the French Deists' works and translating some
of the English, the Dutch cities harbored such heretics
as the Italian Count Passerani, who, dying at Rotter-
dam in 1736, left a collection of deistic treatises of a
Voltairean cast to be posthumously published. The
deistic influence was strong throughout the century ; and
in the latter half was represented by Dr. John Ber-
kenhout, a Voltairean and cosmopolite, who produced a
biographical history of English literature. But the social
and political conditions were not favorable to such
general literary activity as prevailed in the larger States,
though good work was done in medicine and the natural
sciences. Not till the nineteenth century did Dutch
scholars again give an original lead to Europe in religious
thought.

9. Meantime, Spinoza had reinforced the critical
movement in France," where the later policy of Louis XIV

1 Cp. the essay on The Scepticism of Bayle in Sir J. F. Stephen's Hora
Sabbatica, vol iii.

* The Traclatus Theohoico-PoUHcus h.ul been translated into French in

1678 by Saint-Glain, a Protestant, who gave it no fewer than three other
titles in succession, to evade prosecution.

336 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

sought as far as possible to extinguish freedom of
thought. The crowning Catholic blunder and crime
of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, forcing out of
France some eight hundred thousand industrious and
educated inhabitants for the offence of Protestantism,
wrought above all things for the ascendancy of rationalism.
For a time there was a falling away in French intellectual
prestige,1 the result, not of the mere "protective spirit"
in literature, but of the immense diversion of national
energy under Louis XIV to militarism.'- But during the
period of exhaustion there was no real building up of
belief. The king himself, so long morally discredited,
could only discredit pietism by his adoption of it ; the
Jansenists and the Molinists fought incessantly ; even on
the side of authority there was dissension between
Bossuet and Fenelon ;:i and the movement of mvsticism
associated with the latter came to nothing ; though he
had the rare credit of converting, albeit to a doubtful
orthodoxy, the emotional young Scotch deist, Chevalier
Ramsay.4 When the old king died (1715) even the
fashion of conformity passed away ;5 and France, left to
recuperate in peace, was free to assimilate and apply the
new lore of the English deists, the philosophies of the
past century, and the treasure of knowledge amassed by
Bayle.

10. With the ground thus prepared, Freethought was
sure to progress fast and far in France after the age of
Louis XIV ; but it chanced that the lead fell into the
hands of the most brilliant and fecund of all the writers of

1 Cp. Huet, I Indiana, § 1.

- The question is discussed in the author's Buckle and his Critics, pp.
324-342. Buckle's view, however, was held by Huet, Iluctiana, § 73.

3 For a brief view of the facts, usually misconceived, see Lanson,
pp. 610-G11.

4 Now remembered chiefly through the account of his intercourse with
Fenelon (repr. in Didot ed. of Fenelon's misc. works), and Hume's long
extract from his l'hilosophical l'l im iples of Natural and Revealed Religion in the
concluding note to the Essays. C]> M Matter, Lc Mysticismc en France au
tempi de Fenelon, 1865, pp. 352-4.

4 Cp. Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 3J7

the century. Voltaire1 (1694-1778) was already some-
thing of a freethinker when a mere child. So common
was Deism already become in France at the end of the
seventeenth century that his godfather, an abbe, is said
to have taught him, at the age of three, a poem by
J. B. Rousseau,2 then privately circulated, in which Moses
in particular and religious revelations in general are
derided as fraudulent.3 Knowing this poem by heart in
his childhood, the boy was well on the way to his life's
work. It is on record that many of his school-fellows
were, like himself, already deists, though his brother, a
juvenile Jansenist, made vows to propitiate the Deity on
the small unbeliever's behalf.4 Voltaire was already a
distinguished young poet and dramatist when, in 1726,
after enduring the affronts of an assault by a nobleman's
lacqueys, and of imprisonment in the Bastile for seeking
revenge by duel, he came to England. Four years
previously, in the powerful poem, For and Against,* he
had put his early deistic conviction in a vehement
impeachment of the immoral creed of salvation and
damnation. Thus what he had to learn in England was
not Deism but the details of the Deist campaign against
revelationism ; and these he mastered. Not only was he
directly and powerfully influenced by Bolingbroke, who
became his intimate friend, but he read widely in the
philosophic, scientific, and deistic English literature of
the day, and went back to France, after three years' stay,
not only equipped for his battle with tyrannous religi< n,
but deeply impressed by the moral wholesomeness of

1 Name assumed for literary purposes, and probably composed by
anagram from the real name Arouet, with " le jeune " (junior) added,
thus: A. R. O. V. E. T. L (e). I (eune).

- Not to be confounded with the greater and later Jean Jacques Rousseau.

3 See the poem in note 4 to ch. ii of Condorcet's Vit aire.

4 Condorcet, ch. ii. The free-hearted Ninon de l'Enclos, bright
of old ladies, is to be numbered among the pre-Voltairean freethinl
and as leaving young Voltaire a legacy to buy books. She refused to

her soul" by turning devote on the invitation of her old friend Madame
de Maintenon. Madame du Deffand and Madame Geoffrin were air
the later freethinking qrandes dames of the Voltairean period.

5 Pour et Centre, ou Epitre a U runic.

33$ HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

free discussion.1 The rest of his long life was a sleepless
and dexterous warfare, by all manner of literary stratagem,2
facilitated by vast literary fame and ample acquired wealth,
against what he called "the Infamous" — the Church and
the Creed which he found still swift to slay for mere
variation of belief, and slow to let any good thing be
wrought for the bettering of men's lives. Of his prodigious
literary performance it is probably safe to say that in
respect of sheer influence on the general intelligence of
the world it has never been equalled by any one man's
writing ; and that whatever its measure of error and of
personal misdirection, its broader influence was invariably
for peace on earth, for tolerance among men, and for
reason in all things. His faults were many, and some
were serious ; but to no other man of his age can be
attributed so much beneficent accomplishment. If in a
literary way he hated his personal foes, much more did he
hate cruelty and bigotry ; and it was his work more than
any that made impossible a repetition in Europe of such
clerical crimes as the hanging of the Protestant pastor,
La Rochette ; the execution of the Protestant, Calas, on
an unproved charge ; the torture of his widow and
children ; the beheading of the lad La Barre for ill-proved
blasphemy;' As against his many humanities, there is
not to be charged on him one act of public malevolence.
In his relations with his fickle admirer, Frederick the
Great, and with others of his fellow-thinkers, he and
they painfully brought home to freethinkers the lesson
that for them as for all men there is a personal art of life
that has to be learned, over and above the rectification of
opinion. But he and they wrought much towards that

1 Mr. Morley (Voltaire, 4th ed., p. 40) speaks patriotically of the English
people as having then won " a full liberty of thought and speech and
person". This ignores the case of Woolston, who died in prison for
denying the Gospel miracles, in the year in which Voltaire left England.
I Jut discussion was nevertheless much more nearly free than in France.

2 It has been counted that he used no fewer than a hundred and thirty
different pseudonyms

' See details in Mr. Morley's Voltaire, 4th ed., pp 1C5-170: 257-8.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 339

liberation alike from unreason and from bondage that
must precede any great improvement of human things.
It is notable that most of the humanitarian ideas of the
latter half of the century — the demand for the reform of
criminal treatment, the denunciation of war and slavery,
the insistence on good government and toleration of all
creeds — are more definitely associated with the free-
thinking than with any religious party, excepting perhaps
the laudable but uninfluential sect of Quakers.

ii. From Voltaire onwards, the rationalistic move-
ment in eighteenth-century France so rapidly widens and
deepens that it is impossible in the present survey to do
more than note its main features. The number of ration-
alistic writers, despite the Press laws which in that age
inflicted the indignity of imprisonment on half the men of
letters,1 multiplied from decade to decade, especially after
1750 ; the audacious example of Voltaire, and the rising
prestige of the philosophcs in connection with the Encyclo-
pedic (1751-72) giving new courage to writers and printers.
In the earlier part of the century, freethought was
disseminated largely by way of manuscripts2 and reprints
of foreign books in translation ; but from the middle
onwards, despite denunciations and prohibitions, new books
multiply. The reputation of Voltaire has overshadowed
even that of his leading contemporaries ; and theirs and
his have further obscured that of the lesser men ; but a
partial list of miscellaneous freethinking works by minor
French writers during the century, up to the Revolution,
will serve to show how general was the activity : —

1700. Gilbert (Claude). HistoiredeCalejava, oude V isle des homines raisonndbles,
avec le paralllie de leur Morale et du Christianisme. (Dijon.) Sup-
pressed : only one copy known to have escaped.

1704. Dialogues de M. le Baton de la Houtan et dun sauvage dans I'Amerique.
By Gueudeville, Amsterdam.

1710. Tissot de Patot. Voyages et Avantures de Jaques Masse. (Bourdeaux )

1737. D'Argens, Marquis. La Philosophic du Bon Sens. (Berlin.)

1738. , Lettres Juives, 6 torn. (Berlin.)

1741. Deslandes, A. F. B. Pygmalion, ou la Statue animie. Condemned to
be burnt at Dijon, 1742.

1 Cp. Buckle, ii, 230-242.

- Cp. pref. (La Vie de Salvian) to Fr. trans, of Salvian, 1734, p Ixix

Z Z

34° HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

1742. Deslandes, A. F. B. Pygmalion. (Dijon.) Book condemned to be

burnt by Parliament of Dijon.

1743. Nouvcllcs liberies de penser (Amsterdam.)

1745. De la Serre (Lieut.). Examen de la Religion. Appeared under other
titles. Condemned to be burnt by Parlt. of Paris.

1747. Deslandes, A. F. B. De la Certitude des connaissanccs humaines.

1748. Esteve, P. L'Originc de VUnivevs expliquee par un principe de mature.
1751. Mirabaud, J. B. de. Le Monde, son origine et son antiquite.

1751. De Prades. Sorbonne Thesis. (Cp. Morley, Diderot, ch. v.)

1752. Maubert de Gouvest. Lettres Iroquoises.

1752. Genard, F. L'Ecole de Vhomme, on Par allele des Portraits du siicle et

des tableaux de Vecriture sainte. Author imprisoned.

1753. Baume-Desdossat, Canon of Avignon. La Christiade. Book

suppressed. Author fined.

1754. Premontval, A. I. le Guay de. Le Diogene de d'Alembert, on Pensees

Hires sur Vhomme. (Berlin.)
1754. Burigny, J. L. Theologie payenne.

1754. Beausobre, L. de (the Younger). Pyrrhonisme du Sage. (Berlin.)

Burnt by Paris Parliament.

1755. Les Trois Tmposteurs. Attributed to Boulainvilliers.

1755 Analyse de Bayle. Begun by Marsy, continued by Robinet.

1757. Premontval. Vues Philosophiques. (Amsterdam.)

1762. Meister, J. H. De i'origine des principles religieux.

1765. Castillon, J. L. Essai Je philosophic morale.

1766. Boulanger, N. A. L' Antiquite devoilee. Recast by d'Holbach.
1766. De Prades. Abrege de I'histoire ecclesiastique de Fleury. (Berlin.)

Pref. by Frederick the Great.
1766. L'Evangiledela Raison. par M . . . . y, M.D. [ed. by Abbe Dulaurens.]

1766. Burigny, J. L. Examen critique des Apologistes de la religion chreticnne.

Published by Naigeon under the name of Freret.

1767. Castillon, J. L. Almanack Philosophique.

1767. Doutes sur la religion. Attributed to Boulainvilliers and others.

1767. Dulaurens, Abbe Ff. J. L'Antipapismc revile.

1768. D'Argens. CEitvres completes. 24 torn. (Berlin.)
1768. Naigeon, J. A. Le militaire philosophe.

1768. Freret, N. Lettre de Thiasybule a Leucippe.

1769-1780. L'Evangile du jour. 18 torn. Scores of pieces, chiefly by
Voltaire, but with some by others.

1769. Castillon, J. L. Histoire generate des dogmes et opinions philosophiques.

1769. Isoard-Delisle (otherwise Delisle de Sales). La Philosophic de la

Nature. Author imprisoned.

1770. Recueil Philosophique. Edited by Naigeon.

[In this year appeared the Systeme de la Nature of d'Holbach,
which checked Deism, and turned discussion on Atheism. In
1776 appeared Condorcet's Lettres d'un Theologue, also atheistic ]

1773. Carra, J. L. Systeme de la Raison, ou le prophete philosophe.

1777. Carra, J. L. Esprit de la morale et de la philosophic.

1777. Examen critique du nouveau Testament.

Attrib. to J. B. de Mirabaud. Appd. in 1769 as Reflexions
impartiales sur Vevangile.

1778. Barthez, P. J. Nouvcaux Elements de la Science de V Homme.
1780. Duvernet, Abbe Th. J. L' Intolerance veligieuse.

17S1. Marcchal, Sylvain. Le nouveau Lucrl,

1783. Brissot de Warville. Lettres philosophiques sur S. Paul.

1784. Doray de Longrais. Faustin, ou le siicle philosophique.
1784. Pougens, M. C. J. de. Recreations de philosophic et de morale.

1787. Pastoret, Marquis. Zoroastre, Confucius, et Mahomet.

1788. Meister, J. H. De la Morale Naturelle.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 341

1788. Pastoret, Marquis. Moise considere comme legislateur ct commc moralistc.

1788. Marechal. Almanack des honnetes gens.

1789. Duvernet, Abbe. Les Devotions de Madame de Betzamooth,

1789. Cerutti (Jesuit Father). Breviaire Philosophique, oil Histoire die

Judaisme, du Christianisme, ct du Dcisme.
I79I"93- Naigeon. Dictionnaire de la philosophic ancienne ct moderne.

Though the bibliographers claim to have traced the
authorship in most cases, such works were in the first
instance nearly always published anonymously, as were
those of Voltaire, d'Holbach and the leading freethinkers;
and the clerical policy of suppression had the result of
leaving them all unanswered when they nevertheless
got into private circulation. It was impolitic that an
official answer should appear to a book which was
officially held not to exist ; so that the orthodox defence
was mainly confined to the classic performances of Pascal,
Bossuet, Huet, Fenelon, and some outsiders such as the
exiled Protestant Abbadie, settled in Germany. These
having been written to meet the mostly unpublished
objections of previous generations, the Church through
its chosen policy had the air of utter inability to confute
the newer propaganda, though some apologetic treatises
of fair power did appear, in particular those of the Abbe
Bergier, which, however, all appear to date from 1770
onwards.1 After the expulsion of the Jesuits (1762)2 the
Press grew practically more and more free ; and when,
after the accession of Pope Clement XIV (1769), the
freethinking books circulated with less and less restraint,
Bergier opened fire on deism, and deists and clerics
joined in answering the atheistic Systhnc dc la Nature of
d'Holbach. But by this time the deistic books were
legion, Voltaire's alone forming a small library ; and the
political battle over the taxation of Church property had

1 1773, La certitude des preuves du christianisme; 1770, Apologiede la
ckretienne; 1771, Lc DHsme refute par lui-mime. There were also two journals,
Jesuit and Jansenist, which fought the philosophes (Lanson. p. 721); and
sometimes even a manuscript was answered, c ^., the A du Cclse

moderne of the Abbe Gautier (1752), a reply to Mirabaud's unpublished
Examen critique.

- The Jesuits were expelled from Bohemia and Denmark in [766; from
Spain, Genoa, and Venice in 1767 ; and trom Naples, Malta, and Parma in
1768. In 1773 the Society was suppressed by papal bull.

342 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

become the more pressing problem, especially seeing that
the mass of the people remained conforming.

The English view that French orthodox}' made a "bad"
defence to the Freethinking attack (Sir J. F. Stephen, Horce
Sabbaticcz, 2d. Ser. p. 281) proceeds on some misconception of
the circumstances, which as we have seen were substantially
different in the two countries. Could the English clergy have
resorted to official suppression of deistic literature, they too
would doubtless have done so. But the view that the English
defence was relatively " good ", and that Butler's in particular
was decisive, is also, as we have seen, fallacious. In Mr.
Leslie Stephen's analysis, as apart from his preamble, the
orthodox defence is exhibited as generally weak, and often
absurd. In France, the defence began sooner and was more
comprehensive and even more methodical. Pascal at least
went deeper and Bossuet (in his Discours sur I'Histoire Uni-
verselle) more widely into certain inward and outward problems
of the controversy than did any of the English apologists ;
Huet produced, in his Dcmonstratio Evangelica, one of the most
methodical of all the defensive treatises of the time ; and
Fenelon, though his Trait'e de VExistence et des Attributs dc Dicu
(1712) and Lettvcs sur la Religion (1716) are not very powerful
processes of reasoning, contributed through his reproduced
conversations (1710) with Ramsay a set of arguments at least
as plausible as anything on the English side ; and, what is
more notable, marked by an amenity which no English apolo-
gist attained. The ground had been thus very fully covered by
the defence in France before the main battle in England
began; and when a new French campaign began with Voltaire,
the defence against that incomparable attack, so far as the
system allowed of any, was probably as good as it could have
been made in England. The sceptical line of argument had
been already employed by Huet and Pascal and Fenelon, with
visibly small success; and Butler had no such effect in his day
in England as to induce French Catholics to use him. (He
does not appear to have been translated in French till 1821.)
On the other hand, Voltaire circulated widely in England, and
was no better answered there than in France. His attack was, in
truth, at many points peculiarly baffling, were it only by its inimit-
able wit. The English replies to Spinoza, again, were as entirely
inefficient or deficient as the French ; and the only intelligent
English answers to Hume on Miracles (the replies on other
issues were of no account) made use of the French investiga-
tions of the Jansenist miracles. Finally, though the deeper

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 343

reasonings of Diderot were over the heads alike of the French
and the English clergy, the Systeme de la Nature of d'Holbach
was met skilfully enough at many points by G. J. Holland
(1772) who, though not a Frenchman, wrote excellent French,
and supplied for French readers a very respectable rejoinder;
whereas in England there was practically none. In this case,
of course, the defence was deistic ; as was that of Voltaire,
who criticised d'Holbach as Bolingbroke attacked Spinoza and
Hobbes. But the Examen du Materialisms of the Abbe Bergier
(1771), who was a member of the Academy of Sciences, was at
least as good as anything that could then have been done in
the Church of England. Broadly speaking, as we have said,
much more of French than of English intelligence had been
turned to the dispute in the third quarter of the century. In
England, political and industrial discussion relieved the
pressure on creed ; in France, before the Revolution, the
whole habit of absolutism tended to restrict discussion to
questions of creed : and the attack would in any case have had
the best of it, because it embodied all the critical forces hitherto
available. The controversy thus went much further than the
pre-Humian issues raised in England ; and the English ortho-
doxy of the end of the century was, in comparison, intellectually
as weak as politically and socially it was strong.

Above the scattered band of minor combatants rise a
group of writers of special power, several of whom, with-
out equalling Voltaire in ubiquity of influence, rivalled
him in intellectual energy and industry. The names of
Diderot, d'HoLBACH, D'Alembert, Helvetius, and
Condorcet are among the first in literary France of the
generation before the Revolution ; after them come
Volney and Dupuis ; and in touch with the whole
series stands the line of great mathematicians and
physicists (to which also belongs D'Alembert) Laplace,
Lagrange, Lalande, Delambre. When to these we
add the names of Montesquieu, Buffon, Chamfort,
VAUVENARGUES : of the materialists La Miiikii; and
Cabanis ; of the philosophers Condillac and Di STUTT
de Tracy; of the historian Raynal; of the poet Andre
Chenier; of the politicians Turgot, Mirabeau, Dan-
ton, Desmoulins, Robespierre - all deists or else
pantheists or atheists — it becomes clear that the intelli-

344 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

gence of France was predominantly rationalistic before
the Revolution. No list of orthodox names remotely
comparable with these can be drawn from the literature
of France, or indeed of any other country of that time.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 — 1778), the one other
pre-eminent figure, though not an anti-Christian propa-
gandist, is distinctly on the side of Deism. In the
C out rat Social,1 writing with express approbation of
Hobbes, he declares that " the Christian law is at bottom
more injurious than useful to the sound constitution of
the State " ; and even the famous Confession of Faith of
a Savoyard Vicar in the Emilc is anti - revelationist,
and practically anti - clerical. He was accordingly
anathematised ; and although his temperamental way
of regarding things has a clear affinity with some later
religious philosophy of a more systematic sort, he
undoubtedly made for Freethought as well as for the
revolutionary spirit in general. Thus the cause of Chris-
tianity stood almost denuded of intellectually eminent
adherents in the France of 1789 ; for even among the
writers who had dealt with public questions without
discussing religion, or who had criticised Rousseau and
the philosophcs — as the Abbes Mably, Morellet, Millot —
the tone was essentially rationalistic.

12. A certain broad development may be traced
throughout the century. Montesquieu, who in his
early Persian Letters (1721) had revealed himself as
" fundamentally irreligious ",'* proceeded in his masterly
book on the Greatness and Decadence of the Romans (1734) and
his famous Spirit of Laws (1748) to treat the problems of
human history in an absolutely secular and scientific
spirit, making only a few such polite allusions to religion3
as were advisable in an age when all heretical works
were suppressible. Even as it was, Jesuits and Jansenists
combined to attack the Spirit of Laws, which was

1 Liv. iv, ch. 8.
' Lanson, p. 702.

'"An point de vue religieux, Montesquieu tirait puliment son coup de
chapeau au christianisme." Lanson, p. 714.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 345

denounced at an assembly of the clergy, put on the
Roman Index, and prohibited by the censure until
Malesherbes came into office in 1750. l By this time the
attack of Voltaire and others had made aggressive un-
belief familiar, the authorities zealously advertising him
by causing many of his freethinking books to be publicly
burnt by the hangman, and putting others under the
censure.2 Voltaire's constant burden was that religion
was not only untrue but pernicious, and when he was not
showing this directly of Christianity, as in his poem
La Ligue (1723), he was saying it by implication in such
plays as Zaire (1732) and Mahomet (1742), dealing with the
fanaticism of Islam; while in the Essaisur les mceurs (1756),
really a broad survey of general history, and in the
Sieclc de Louis XIV, he applied the method of Montesquieu,
with direct and pungent criticism added. Later, he
added to his output direct criticisms of the Christian
books, as in the Exanten important de milord Bolingbroke
(1767), and the Recherchcs historiques sur le Christianismc
(? 1769), continuing all his former lines of activity. Mean-
while, with the aid of his friend the Marchioness du
Chatelet, an accomplished mathematician, he had done
much to popularise the physics of Newton and discredit
the fallacies of the system of Descartes ; all the while
preaching a Newtonian but rather agnostic Deism. This
is the purport of his Philosophe Ignorant, his longesl
philosophical essay .:i The destruction of Lisbon by the
earthquake of 1755 seems to have shaken him in his
deistic faith, since the upshot of his poem on that subject
is to leave the moral government of the universe an

1 Id., p. 714, note.

-The Lettres Philosophiques (otherwise the Lettres anglaises) were so
treated on their appearance in 1734, and the bookseller put in the Bastille .
the Voix du Sage et du Peuple was omcially and clerically condemned In 1751 .
the poem on Natural Religion was burned in 175S, and Candidi in 175') . and
many of his minor pseudonymous performances hail the same advertise
ment. But even the tienriade, the Charles XII, and the first chapters oi
the Steele de Louis XIV were prohibited.

3 M. Lanson seems to overlook it when he writes (p. 747) that "the
affirmation of God, the denial of Providence and miracles, is the whole
metaphysic of Voltaire ".

34^ HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

absolute enigma; and in the later Candidc (1759) he
attacks theistic optimism with his matchless ridicule.
But he never accepted the atheistic view : on the
contrary we find him arguing absurdly enough, in his
Homily on Atheism (1765), that atheism had been the
destruction of morality in Rome1; and the tale of Jcnni,
or, the Sage and the Atheist (1775), is a polemic against the
atheism of d'Holbach. By this time, the inconsistent
Deism of Voltaire's vouth had itself been discredited

among the more thorough-going freethinkers ; and for
years it had been said in society that Voltaire after all
" is a bigot : he is a Deist ! "2

13. Though it was Diderot and d'Holbach who more
than any other popular writers had thus carried forward
the process of criticism, the philosopher La Mettrie
had given a powerful initial push in the same direction by
his materialistic philosophy ; and others after him had
continued the impulse. La Mettrie produced his Natural
History of the Mind in 1745 ; and in 1746 appeared the
Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge of the Abbe
Condill\c, both essentially rationalistic and anti-theo-
logical works, though differing in their psychological
positions, Condillac being a non-materialist, though a
strong upholder of " sensism ". The impulse towards
physical science was further reinforced by Buffon, who
like the others was a freethinker, though like them he
avoided religious issues. La Mettrie followed up his
system with the works L' Homme Plante and U Homme
Machine (1748); and though he professed to think the
" balance of probability " was in favor of the existence of
a personal God,3 his writings gave small support to the
hypothesis. It is notable that he, the typical materialist
of his age, seems to have been one of its kindliest men, by

1 Mr. Morley writes (p. 209): "We do not know how far he ever
seriously approached the question ... whether a society can exist
without a religion ". This overlooks the Hotnelit sur I'Atheisme, where it is
<iis( usscil seriously and explicitly

J Horace Walpole, Letter to (iray, Nov i<>, 1765.

3 Soury, Breviaire <A I'liist. du materialisme, p. 689.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 347

the common consent of all who knew him.1 Immediately
after him came Maupertuis, now chiefly remembered
as one of the victims of the mockery of Voltaire, but
realty an energetic man of science, who had preceded
Voltaire in setting up in France the Newtonian against the
Cartesian physics. In his System of Nature (not to be
confused with the later work of d'Holbach under the
same title) he in 1751 propounded a new version of the
hylozoisms of ancient Greece, and at the same time
anticipated some of the special philosophic positions of
Kant.2 Next in the materialistic series came J. B.
Robinet, whose Nature (1761) is a remarkable attempt
to reach a strictly naturalistic conception of things.3 He
founds at once on Descartes and Leibnitz, but in his
Philosophical Considerations on the natural gradation of
living forms (1768) he definitely sets aside theism as
illusory, and puts ethics on a strictly scientific and
human footing,4 extending the arguments of Hume and
Hutcheson somewhat on the lines of Mandeville. On
another line of reasoning a similar application of Man-
deville's thesis had already been made by Helvetius in
his Traite de V Esprit5 (1758), a work which excited a
hostility now difficult to understand, but still reflected
in censures no less surprising.6 Its faults are lack of

1 Lange, Hist, of Materialism, ii, 78-80 ; Soury, pp. 663,666-668 ; Voltaire,
Homelie stir Vatheisme, end. The conventional vilification of La Mettrie
(endorsed by Mr. Morley, Voltaire, p. 122) proceeds upon those of his
writings in which he discussed sexual questions with absolute scientific
freedom. He, however, insisted that his theoretic discussion had nothing
whatever to do with his practice ; and there is no evidence that he live 1
otherwise than as nine men out often did in his age, and ours.

- Soury, p. 579. The later speculations of Maupertuis by their extrava-
gance discredited the earlier.

3 Lange, ii, 27, 29 ; Soury, pp. 603-644.

4 Soury, pp. 594-600 ; Lange, ii, 27.

5 This may best be translated Treatise on Intelligent

6 One of the worst misrepresentations in theological literature is the
account of Helvetius by the late Principal Cairns [Unbelief in the Eight*
Century, 1881, p. 158) as appealing to government " to promote luxury, and,
through luxury, public good, by abolishing all those laws thai 1 nerisb a
false modesty and restrain libertinage ". Helvrtius simply pressed tin-
consequences of the existing theory of luxury, which for his own part In-
disclaimed. De VEsprit, Disc, ii, ch. 15. Dr. Piinjer (i, 462) falls so far
below his usual standard as to speak of Helvetius in a similar fashion.

34§ HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

system, undue straining after popularity, some hasty
generalisation, and a greater concern for paradox than
for persuasion ; but it abounds in acuteness and critical
wisdom, and it definitely and seriously founds public
ethics on utility.1 Its most serious error, the assumption
that all men are born with equal faculties, and that
education is the sole differentiating force, was repeated in
our own age by John Stuart M ill ; and in Helvetius the
error is balanced by the thoroughly sound and profoundly
important thesis that the general superiorities of nations
are the result of their culture-conditions and politics.2
The over-balance of his stress on self-interest3 is an error
easily soluble. On the other hand, we have the memorable
testimony of Beccaria that it was the work of Helvetius
that inspired him to his great effort for the humanising of
penal laws and policy.4 It may be doubted whether any
such fruits can be claimed for the teachings of the whole
of the orthodox moralists of the age.

14. Over all these men, and even over Voltaire,
Diderot stands pre-eminent, on retrospect, for variety
of power and depth and subtlety of thought ; though for
these very reasons, as well as because some of his most
masterly works were never printed in his lifetime, he was
less of a recognised popular force than many of his friends.
In his own mental history he reproduces the course of
the French thought of his time. Beginning as a Deist,
he assailed the contemporary materialists; in the end,
with whatever of inconsistency, he was substantially an
atheist and a materialist.5 His earl)- Philosophic Thoughts

1 As Mr. Morley notes, Bentham acknowledged Helvetius as his teacher
and inspirer. Diderot, ed. 1884, p. 329.

- Jh VEsprit, Disc, iii, ch. 30.

3 Cp Mr Morley's criticism, Diderot, pp. 331-2.

1 I leccaria's Letter to Morellet, cited in ch. i of Mr. J. A. Farrer's ed. of
the Crimes and Punishments, p. <>. It is noteworthy that the partial reiorm
effected earlier in England by Oglethorpe, on behalf ol imprisoned debtors
(1730-2), belongs to the time of propagandist Deism there.

-1 Cp Soury's contention (p. 577) that we shall never make an atheist
and a materialist out of •'this enthusiastic artist, this poet pantheist"
(citing Rosenkranz in support/ with his own admissions, pp. 5.S9. 590, and
with Mr. Morley's remarks, pp. ^^, 401, 418. See also Lange, ii. 32, 256.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 349

(1746), which were duly condemned to be burnt by the
hangman, show him a keen freethinker at the age of 33,
but a satisfied Deist. Like Voltaire and so many
other Frenchmen of his century, he read English and
was much influenced by the English thinkers and
writers of the previous and of his own generation ;
but ere long he passed above their plane of thought.
It is his peculiar excellence to be an original and
innovating thinker not only in philosophy but in psycho-
logy, in aesthetics, in ethics, in dramatic art ; and
his endless and miscellaneous labors in the Encyclopedic,
of which he was the most loyal and devoted producer,
represent an extraordinary range of interests. He suffered
from his position as a hack writer and as a forced dis-
sembler in his articles on religious matters, and^there is
probably a very real connection between his compulsory
insincerities in the Encyclopedic — to say nothing of the
official prosecution of that and of others of his works —
and his misdeeds in the way of indecent fiction. When
organised society is made to figure as the heartless enemy
of thinking men, it is no great wonder if they are careless
at times about the effect of their writings on society.
But it stands to his lasting honor that his sufferings at
the hands of priests, printers, and parliaments, never
soured his natural goodness of heart. He was, in his
way, as beneficent as Voltaire, without Voltaire's faults
of private malice ; and his life's work was a great ministry
of light. It was Goethe who said of him in the next
generation that " whoever holds him or his doings
cheaply is a Philistine". His large humanity reaches
from the plane of expert thought to that of popular
feeling; and while by his Letter on the Blind (1749)
he could advance speculative psychology and pure
philosophy, he could by his tale The Nun (La Religeuse,
written about 1760, published 1796) enlist the sympathies
of the people against the rule of the Church.

15. With Diderot were specially associated, in different
ways, D'Alembert, the mathematician, for some years

35« HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

his special colleague on the Encyclopedic, and Baron
cTHolbach. The former counted for practical Free-
thought by his miscellaneous articles, his little book on
the Jesuits (1765) his Pensees Philosophiqucs, his physics,
and the general rationalism of his Preliminary Discourse
to the Encyclopedic. D'Holbach, a naturalised German
of large fortune, was on the other hand one of the most
strenuous propagandists of Freethought in his age.
Imitating the tactic of Voltaire, he produced, with some
assistance from Diderot, Naigeon, and others, a whole
series of anti-Christian treatises under a variety of
pseudonyms1 ; and his principal work, the famous System
of Nature (1770), was put out under the name of Mirabaud,
an actual person, then dead. Summing up as it does
with stringent force the whole anti-theological propaganda
of the age, it has been described as a " thundering engine
of revolt and destruction ".3 It was the first atheistic3
treatise of a systematic kind ; and it significantly marks
the era of modern Freethought by its stern impeachment
of the sins of monarchy. Rather a practical argument
than a dispassionate philosophic research, its polemic
against human folly laid it open to the retort that on its
own necessarian principles no such polemic was ad-
missible. If, however, it be termed " shallow "4 on the
score of its censorious treatment of the past, the term
will have to be applied to the Hebrew books, to the
Gospel Jesus, to Pascal, Milton, Carlyle, Raskin, and a

1 See a full list of his works, compiled by Julian Hibbert, prefixed to
Watson's ed. (1834 and later) of the English translation of the System of
Nature. The principal freethinking books apart from that work, ascribed
in whole or in part to d'Holbach, are :— Le Christiantsme Devote, 1756, and
later; La Contagion Sacree, 1768, and later; Theologie Portative, 1768, and
later ; Ilistoire critique de Jesus Christ, about 1770 ; Essai sur les prejujes, 1770;
Le Bons Sens, 1772, and later; La politique naturelle, 1774; Systeme Social,
1774; La morale universelle, 1776; Ethocratie, 177G.

2 Morley, Diderot, p. 341. The chapter gives a good account of the
book. Cp. Lange, ii, 26, ff , as to its materialism.

:' It is to be noted that the English translation (3 vols., 1820) deliberately
tampers with the language of the original to the extent of making it deisiic.
This perversion has been by oversight preserved in all the reprints.

1 So Mr. Morley, p. 347. It does not occur to Mr. Morley, and to the
Comtists who take a similar tone, that in thus disparaging past thinkers
they arc doing exactly the thing they blame.

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 35I

good many other prophets, ancient and modern. The
synthesis of the book is really emotional rather than
philosophic, and hortatory rather than scientific.

16. The death of d'Holbach (1789) brings us to the
French Revolution. By that time all the great free-
thinking propagandists and non-combatant Deists of the
Voltairean group were gone, save Condorcet. Voltaire
and Rousseau had died in 1778, Helvetius in 1771,
Turgot in 1781, D'Alembert in 1783, Diderot in 1784.
After all their labors, only the educated minority,
broadly speaking, had been made freethinkers ; and of
these, despite the vogue of the System of Nature, only a
minority were atheists. Deism prevailed, as we have
seen, among the foremost revolutionists ; but atheism
was rare ; and after 1789 the new freethinking works run
to critical and ethical attack on the Christian system
rather than on theism. Volney combined both lines of
attack in his famous Ruins of Empires (1791) ; and the
learned Dupuis in his voluminous Origin of all Cults
(1795) took an important step, not yet fully reckoned
with by later mythologists, towards the mythological
analysis of the Gospel narrative. After these vigorous
performances, the popular progress of French freethought
was for long practically suspended1 by the tumult of the
Revolution and the reaction which followed it, though
Laplace went on his way with his epoch-making theory
of the origin of the solar system, for which, as he told
Napoleon, he had " no need of the hypothesis" of a God.
The admirable Condorcet had died, perhaps by his own
hand, in 1794, when in hiding from the Terrorists, leaving
behind him his Esquissc d'un Tableau historique des Progres
de I' Esprit humain, in which the most sanguine convictions
of the rationalistic school are reformulated without a trace
of bitterness or of despair.

17. No part of the history of Freethought has been
more distorted than that at which it is embroiled in the

1 Yet in 1797 we have Marcchal's Code d'une SocietS d'hommti sans Dieu,
and in 179S his Pensees libres sur lespretres.

352 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

French Revolution. The conventional view in England
still is that the Revolution was the work of Deists and
Atheists, but chiefly of the latter ; that they suppressed
Christianity and set up a worship of a Goddess of
Reason, represented by a woman of the town ; and
that the bloodshed of the Terror represented the
application of their principles to government, or at
least the political result of the withdrawal of religious
checks.1 Those who remember in the briefest summary
the records of massacre connected with the affirma-
tion of religious beliefs — the furious strifes of Christian
sects under the Roman Empire ; the story of the
Crusades, in which nine millions of human beings are
estimated to have been destroyed ; the generation of
wholesale murder of the heretics of Languedoc by the
Papacy ; the savageries of the Hussite War ; the early
slaughter of Protestant heretics in France ; the massacres
of German peasants and Anabaptists ; the reciprocal
persecutions in England ; the ferocious wars of the French
Huguenots and the League ; the long-drawn agony of
the war of thirty years in Germany — those who rccal
these things need spend no time over the proposition that
rationalism stands for a removal of restraints on blood-
shed. But it is necessary to put concisely the facts as
against the legend in the case of the French Revolution.

(a.) That main- of the leading men among the revolu-
tionists were Deists is true; and the fact goes to prove that
it was chiefly the men of ability in France who rejected
Christianity. But the majority of the Constituent
Assemblv was never even deistic ; it professed itself cor-
dially Catholic ; 2 and the Atheists there might be counted

1 Thus Dr. Cairns (Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 165) gravely
argues that the French Revolution proves the inefficacy of theism without
a Trinity to control conduct.

- Cp. Aulard, Le Cultc de In Raison et le Cultc ele I'Etve Sufi, 'me, 1892,
pp. 17-iM. M. Gazier (Etudes sur I'histoire religieuse tie la revolution franqaise,
1S77, pp. 48, 173, 189, if) speaks somewhat loosely of a prevailing anti-
Christian feeling when actually citing only isolated instances, and giving
proofs of a general orthodoxy. He points out the complete misconception
of Thiers on the subject (p. 202).

FRANCE AND HOLLAND. 353

on the fingers of one hand.1 Nor were there lacking
vigorous representatives of orthodoxy : the powerful Abbe
Gregoire, in particular, was a convinced Jansenist Chris-
tian, and at the same time an ardent democrat and anti-
royalist.2 He saw the immense importance to the Church
of a good understanding with the Revolution, and he
accepted the constitution of 1790. Many of the clergy,
however, being refractory, the Assembly pressed its point,
and the breach widened. It was solely through this
political hostility on the part of the Church to the new
constitution that any civic interference with public worship
ever took place. Gregoire was extremely popular with
the advanced types,3 though his piety was conspicuous4;
and there were not a few priests of his type.5 On the
flight of the king, he and they went with the democracy ;
and it was the obstinate refusal of the others to accept the
constitution that provoked the new Legislative Assembly
to coerce them. Though the new body was more
anti-clerical than the old, however, it was simply doing
what successive Protestant monarchs had done in England
and Ireland ; and probably no Government in the world
would then have acted otherwise in a similar case.6
Patience might perhaps have won the day ; but the
Revolution was fighting for its life ; and the conservative
Church, as all men knew, was eager to strangle it. Had
the clergy left politics alone, or simply accepted the con-
stitutional action of the State, there would have been no
religious question. To speak of such a body of priests
who had at all times been eager to put men to death for
heresy, as vindicating " liberty of conscience " when th< y
refused fealty to the constitution,7 is somewhat to strain

1 The Abbe Bergier, in answering d'Holbach (Exatnen du Materialisms,
ii. ch. i, $ 1) denies that there has been any wide spread of atheistic opirion.

* Gazier, Etudes sur I' hist, relig. it la revol., pp. 2, 4. 12, [9-21, 71, etc.

3 Gazier, L. ii, ch. i. ' Id., p. 67. i Id., p. 6g

h The authority of Turgot himself could be cited for the demand that
the State clergy should accept the constitution of the State Cp. Aulard,
L: Cultt- dc la Raison ct le Cultc dc I'Etre Sufi inn-, p. 12, Tissot, Etude suit
Turgot, 1878, p. 160.

7 Gazier, p. 113.

A A

354 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the terms. The expulsion of the Jesuits under the Old
Regime had been a more coercive measure than the
demand of the Assembly on the allegiance of the State
clergy. And all the while the reactionary priesthood was
known to be in active conspiracy with the royalists abroad.
It was only when, in 1793, the clergy were seen to be the
great obstacle to the levy of an army of defence, that the
more radical spirits began to think of interfering with
their functions.1

(b) For the rest, the legend falsifies what took place.
The facts are now established by exact documentary
research.2 The Government never substituted any species
of religion for the Catholic.3 The Festival of Reason at
Notre Dame was not an act of the Convention, but of the
Commune of Paris and the Department ; the Convention
had no part in promoting it ; half the members stayed
away when invited to attend ; and there was no Goddess
of Reason in the ceremony, but only a Goddess of Liberty,
represented by an actress who cannot even be identified.4
Throughout, the devoutly theistic Rousseau was the chief
literary hero of the movement. The two executive Com-
mittees in no way countenanced the dechristianisation
of the churches, but on the contrary imprisoned persons
who removed Church properties ; and these in turn pro-
tested that they had no thought of abolishing religion.
The acts of irresponsible violence did not amount to a
tithe of the "sacrilege" wrought in Protestant countries
at the Reformation, and does not compare with the acts
charged on Cromwell's troopers. The policy of inviting
priests and bishops to abdicate their functions was strictly
political; and the Archbishop Gobel did not abjure
Catholicism, but only surrendered his office. That a
number of priests did gratuitously abjure their religion is

1 Aulard, pp. 19-20.

1 See the whole details in the definitive work of M. Aulard.

■* The grave misstatement of Michelet on this head is exposed by M.
Aulard, p. 60.

* Vet it is customary among Christians to speak of this lady in the most
opprobrious terms.

GERMANY.

355

only a proof of what was well known — that many priests
were simple Deists. In the provinces, where the move-
ment went on with various degrees of activity, it had the
same general character. " Reason " itself was often
identified with deity, or declared to be an emanation
thereof. Hebert, commonly described as an Atheist for
his share in the movement, expressly denied the charge,
and claimed to have exhorted the people to read the
Gospels and obey Christ.1 Even Chaumette was not an
Atheist ; 2 and the Prussian Clootz, who probably was,
had certainly no doctrinary influence ; while the two or
three other professed Atheists of the Assembly had no
part in the public action.

(c.) Finally, Robespierre was all along thoroughly
hostile to the movement : in his character of Rousseauist
and Deist he argued that Atheism was " aristocratic " ; he
put to death the leaders ; and he set up the Worship of the
Supreme Being as a counter-move. Thus the bloodshed
of the Reign of Terror, if it is to be charged on any species
of philosophic doctrine rather than on the unscrupulous
policy of the enemies of the Revolution in and out of
France, stands to the credit of the belief in a God, the
creed of Frederick, Turgot, Pitt, and Washington. The
one convinced and reasoning Atheist among the publicists
of the time, the journalist Salaville,3 opposed the Cult of
Reason with sound and serious and persuasive argument,
and strongly blamed all forcible interference with worship,
while at the same time calmly maintaining Atheism as
against Theism. The age of Atheism had not come ; any
more than the triumph of Reason.

§ II. Germany.

i. After the spontaneous growth of irreligion following
on the Thirty Years of religious war had culminated in the
popular movement of Matthias Knutzen, the clerical class

1 See the speech in Aulard, p. 240 ; and cp. pp. 79-S5.

2 Id , pp. Si-82.

3 Concerning whom see Aulard, pp 86-96.

356 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

were able so far to take matters in hand as to drive ration-
alism once more below the surface. The existing culture
was divided among them and the other professional classes,
who naturally made common cause with them ; besides,
there was now germinating a philosophic unbelief1 under
the influence of Spinoza. Nowhere were there more
prompt and numerous answers to Spinoza than in
Germany,2 whence it may be inferred that within the
educated class he soon had a good many adherents.
Professor Rappolt of Leipzig attacked him as an atheist,,
in an Oratio contra naturalistas in 1670 ; Musasus assailed
him in 1674; and the Chancellor Kortholt grouped
him with Herbert and Hobbes as The Three Great
Impostors in 1680.3 After the appearance of the Ethica
the replies multipled. On the other hand Cuffelaer
vindicated Spinoza in 1684 ; and in 1691 F. W. Stosch
published a stringent attack on revelationism, entitled
Concordia rationis ct fidei, partly on Spinozistic lines,
which created much commotion and was forcibly
suppressed.4

2. For a community in which the reading class was
mainly clerical and scholastic, the seeds of rationalism
were thus already in part sown ; but the ground was not
yet propitious. Leibnitz (1646 — 1716), the chief thinker
produced by Germany before Kant, lived in a state of
singular intellectual isolation 5 ; and showed his sense of it
by writing his philosophic treatises chiefly in French.
One of the most widely learned men of his age, he was
wont from his boyhood to grapple critically with every
system of thought that came in his way; and while
claiming to be always eager to learn/' he was as a rule
strongly concerned to affirm his own powerful bias.

1 Rven Knutzen seems to have been influenced by Spinoza. Piinjer,
Christ. Philos. of Religion, p. 437. Dr. Piinjer, however, seems to have
exaggerated the connection.
• p Lange, ii, 35.

; I'unjer, Christ. Philos. 0/ Religion, Eng. tr. i, 434-6.

1 Piinjer, p. 439; Lange. ii, 35.

s Cp. Buckle unci his Critics, pp. 171-2 ; Piinjer, i, 515.

,; Letter cited by Dr. Latta, Leibniz, 1898, p 2, note.

GERMANY. 357

Against Spinoza he reacted instantly and violently,
pronouncing the first Tract at us an " unbearably bold
(Licentiosiun) book", and resenting the Hobbesian criticism
which it " dared to apply to sacred Scripture ". To the
last he called Spinoza a mere developer of Descartes,1
whom he also resisted. This was not hopeful ; and
Leibnitz, with all his power and originality, really wrought
little for the direct rationalisation of religious thought."
His philosophy, with all its ingenuity, has the common
stamp of the determination of the theist to find reasons
for the God in whom he believed beforehand ; and his
principle that all is for the best is the fatal rounding of
his argumentative circle. Nominally he adhered to the
entire Christian system ; and he always discussed the
Bible as a believer; yet he rarely went to church3; and
the Low German nickname Lovenix (—Glaubct nichts,
*' believes nothing") expressed his local reputation. No
clergyman attended his funeral ; but indeed no one else
went, save his secretary.4

3. It is indeed difficult to doubt that his indirect
influence not only in Germany but elsewhere had been
for Atheism.5 He and Newton were the most distinguished
mathematicians and theists of the age ; and Leibnitz
busied himself to show that the philosophy of Newton6
tended to atheism, and that that of their theistic pre-
decessor Descartes would not stand criticism.7 Spinoza
being, according to him, in still worse case, and Locke

1 Latta, p. 24; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 75; Philos. Schriften
Leibnitz, ed. Gerhardt, i, 34 ; ii, 563. Cp. Refutation of Spinoza by Leibnitz,
ed. by Foucher de Careil, Eng. tr. 1855.

J His notable surmise as to gradation of species (see Latta, pp
was taken up among the French materialists, but did not then m
current science.

3 Gp. Punjer, i, 509, as to his attitude on ritual.

4 Latta, as cited, p. 16 ; VieJe Leibnitz, par De Jaucourt, ined. 1747 of the
Essais de Theodicee, i, 235-9.

s As to his virtual Deism, see Punjer, i, 513-5.
'• Letties entre Leibnitz et Clarke,

7 Discours de Li conformity de la foi avec Li raison, §{ 08-70; Lss.m ski la
ionic de Dieu, etc., $$ 50, 61, 164, 180, 292-3.

358 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

hardly any sounder,1 there remains for theists only his
cosmology of monads and his ethic of optimism — all for
the best in the best of all possible worlds — which seems
at least as well fitted as any other theism to make
thoughtful men give up the principle. Other culture-
conditions concurred to set up a spirit of rationalism in
German)-. After the Thirty Years' War there arose a
religious movement, called Pietism by its theological
opponents, which aimed at an emotional inwardness of
religious life as against what its adherents held to be an
irreligious orthodoxy around them.2 Though its first
leaders grew embittered with their unsuccess and the
attacks of their religious enemies,3 their impulse went
far, and greatly influenced the clergy through the uni-
versity of Halle, which turned out 6,000 clergymen in
one generation.4 Against the Pietists were furiously
arrayed the Lutherans of the old school, who even
contrived in many places to suppress their schools.5
Religion was thus represented by a school of extremely
unattractive and frequently absurd formalists on the
one hand, and on the other by a school tending alter-
nately to fanaticism and cant.0 Thus "the rationalist
tendencies of the age were promoted by this treble
exhibition of the aberrations of belief ".7

4. The thin end of the new wedge was the adaptation
of the Leibnitzian system made by Wolff, who first came
into prominence by a rectorial address at Halle (1722) in
which he warmly praised the ethics of Confucius. This
was naturally held to imply disparagement of Christianity ;
and as a result of the pietist outcry Wolff was condemned

1 The Nouvcaux Essais stir VEntendement humain, refuting Locke, appeared
posthumously in 1765. Locke in his turn had treated his theistic critic with
contempt (I.atta, p. 13.)

2 Amand Saintes, Hist. crit. du Rationalisme en Allemagne, 1841, ch. vi.
:t Hagenbach, German Rationalism, Eng. tr. 1865, p. g

1 Id., )>. y)\ I'usey, Ilistor. Enquiry into the causes 0/ Gentian Rationalism,
1828, pp. 88, 97.

I 11 1 y, pp. 86, 87, 98. *

• Cp Pusey, pp. 37-38, 45, 48, 49, 53-4, 79, 101-9; Saintes, pp. 28,
7<j-So ; I [agenbai h, pp, 41, 72, 105 ;

1 Pusey, p. no. Cp. Saintes, ch. vi.

GERMANY. 359

by the king to exile from Prussia, under penalty of de;ith,1
all "atheistical" writings being at the same time for-
bidden. Wolff's system, however, prevailed, though he
refused to return on any invitation till the accession (1740)
of Frederick the Great ; and his teaching, which for the
first time popularised philosophy in the German language,2
in turn helped to promote the rationalistic temper,3
though orthodox enough from the modern point of view.
Under the new reign, however, pietism and Wolfism
alike lost prestige,4 and the age of anti-Christian and
Christian rationalism began.

5. The initiative force5 was the literature of English
Deism, which began to be translated after 1740,6 and was
widely circulated till, in the last third of the century, it
was superseded by the French. The English answers
to the Deists were frequently translated likewise, and
notoriously helped to promote Deism7 — another proof that
it was not their influence that had changed the balance of
activity in England. Under a freethinking king, even
clergymen began guardedly to accept the Deistic methods;
and the optimism of Shaftesbury began to overlay
the optimism of Leibnitz ;s while a French scientific

1 Hagenbach, pp. 35-36 ; Saintes, p. 61.

2 Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) had first delivered German lectures.

3 Cairns, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, 1881, p. 173 ; Pusey, pp. 115-
119 ; Piinjer, p. 529 ; Lechler, S. 448-9.

4 Hagenbach, pp. 37-39.

5 Conrad Dippel (1643 — 1747), " the Christian Democritus," partly pre-
pared the way by his mystic theism, which set the inner light al
Scripture, and scouted theology. Noack, Die Freidenker in der Rel

Th. hi, Kap. 1.

G Lechler, Gesch. des englischen Deismus, S. 447-452. The translations
began with that of Tiniial (1741), which made a great sensation.

7 Pusey, pp. 125, 127, citing Twesten. Thorschmid' sFreidenh thek,
issued in '1765-67, collected both translations and refutations. Lechler,

S. 451.

8 Lange, Hist, of Materialism, ii, 146-7. Mr. Morley pronounces
(Voltaire, 4th ed , p, 123) that French Deism " never made any impre

on Germany", and that " the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolfl stood like a
fortified wall against the French invasion". This is contradicted by much
German testimony. I lagenbach shows great ignorance of English Prism,
but he must have known something ol German . and he writes (p. 57) that
"the imported deism soon swept through the rifts of the church, and
gained supreme control of literature ". Cp. pp "7-8.

3^0 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

influence began with La Mettrie,1 Maupertuis, and
Robinet. Even the Leibnitzian school, proceeding on
the principle of immortal monads, developed a doctrine of
the immortality of the souls of animals2 — a position not
helpful to orthodoxy. On the other hand, it is interesting
to note, the mathematician Euler published a defence of
the faith in Letters to a German Princess (1769) of which
the argument curiously coincides with part of that of
Berkeley against the freethinking mathematicians ; while
Von Haller the naturalist likewise wrote Letters on the prin-
cipal truths of Revelation (1772) and other apologetic works.
All alike failed to turn the tide of opinion, now socially
favored by the known deism of the king.

6. Frederick, though a Voltairean freethinker from his
youth, showed himself at first disposed to act on the old
maxim that freethought is bad for the common people.
In 1743 he caused to be suppressed two German books
by one Gebhardi, attacking the Biblical miracles; and in
1748 he sent a young man named Riidiger to Spandau for
six months' confinement for a similar offence.3 But as he
#rew more confident in his own methods he extended to
men of his own way of thinking the toleration he allowed
to all religionists; and he himself, chiefly by way of
French verses, added to the literature of Deism. Bayle
was his favorite study ; and as the then crude German
literature had no attraction for him, he drew to his court
many distinguished Frenchmen, including La Mettrie,
Maupertuis, D'Alembert, D'Argens, and above all Voltaire,
between whom and him there was an incurable incom-
patibility of temper and character, which left them
admiring without respecting each other, and unable to
abstain from mutual vituperation. Under Frederick's
vigorous rule all speech was free save such as he con-
sidered personally offensive — as Voltaire's attack on
Maupertuis — and after a stormy reign he could say, when
asked by Prince William of Brunswick whether he did not

1 Lange, ii, 76, 137. * Id. ii, 134-5. '' Hagenbach, p. 66.

GERMANY. 361

think religion one of the best supports of a king's
authority, "I find order and the laws sufficient. . . . Depend
upon it, countries have been admirably governed when
your religion had no existence."1

As the first modern freethinking king, Frederick is something
of a test case. Son of a man of narrow mind and odious
character, he was himself no admirable type, being neither
benevolent nor considerate, neither truthful nor generous ; and
n international politics he played the old game of unscrupulous
aggression. Yet he was not only the most competent, but as
regards home administration, the most conscientious king of his
time. To find a rival, we must go back to the pagan Antonines
and Julian, or at least to St. Louis of France, who, however, was
rather worsened than bettered by his creed (Cp. the argument
of Faure, Hist, de Saint Louis, 1866, i, 242-3 ; ii, 597). Th^
effect of Frederick's training is seen in his final attitude to the
advanced criticism of the school of d'Holbach, which assailed
governments and creeds with the same unsparing severity of
logic and moral reprobation. Stung by the uncompromising
attack, Frederick retorts by attacking the rashness which would
plunge nations into civil strife because kings miscarry where
no human wisdom could avoid miscarriage. He who had
wantonly plunged all Germany into a hell of war for his sole
ambition, bringing myriads to misery, thousands to violent death,
and hundreds of his own soldiers to suicide, could be virtuously
indignant at the irresponsible audacity of writers who indicted
the whole existing system for its imbecility and injustice. But
he did reason on the criticism ; he did ponder it ; he did feel
bound to meet argument with argument ; and he gave his
arguments to the world. The advance on previous regal
practice is enormous: the whole problem of politics is at once
brought to the test of judgment and persuasion. Beside the
Christian Georges and the Louis' of his century, and beside
his Christian father, his superiority in judgment and even in
character is signal. Such was the great Deist king of the Deist
age ; a Deist of the least religious temper, and of no very
fine moral material to begin with. The one contemporary
monarch who in any way compares with him in enlightenment,
Joseph II of Austria, belonged to the same school. The main
charge against Frederick as a ruler is that he did not act up to

1 Thiebault, Mis Souvenirs de Vingt Ans de Sejom d. Berlin, 1S04, i, 77-70.
Seeii, 78-80, as to the baselessness ut the stories (e g. Pusey, Histor. Enquiry

into German Rationalism, p. 123) as to Frederick having changed his views in
old age.

362 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the ideals of the school of Voltaire. In reply to the rhetorical
demand of d'Holbach for an abolition of all superstitious teach-
ing, he observed that among the 16,000,000 inhabitants of
France at most 200,000 were capable of philosophic views, and
that the remaining 15,800,000 were held to their opinions by
" insurmountable obstacles ". Such an answer meant that he
had no idea of so spreading instruction that all men should
have a chance of reaching rational beliefs. (Examen de I'Essai
sur les prejujes, 1769. See the passage in Levy-Bruhl,
L'Allemagnc depnis Leibniz, p. 89.) This attitude was his in-
heritance from the past. Yet it was under him that Germany
began to figure as a first-rate culture-force in Europe.

7. The most systematic propaganda of the new ideas
was that carried on in the periodical published by F.
Nicolai under the title of " The General German
Library" (founded 1765), which began with fifty contribu-
tors, and at the height of its power had a hundred and thirty,
among them being Lessing, Eberhardt, and Moses
Mendelssohn. Its many translations from the English
and French freethinkers, older and newer, concurred
with native work to spread rationalism, now known as
Aufklarung, or enlightenment, through the whole middle
class of Germany.1 Native writers in independent works
added to the propaganda. Andreas Riem. a Berlin
preacher, wrote vehemently against priestcraft ; and
Georg Schade, in a work on Natural Religion (1760)
on the lines of Tindal, was no less pronounced in his
hostility to revelationism.2 Edelmann (1698 — 1767) sought
in his Divinity of Reason (? 1742) to fuse Christianity in
pantheism'1; the Deist C. F. Bahrdt, an erratic scholar,
professor, translator of the New Testament, and D.D., of
wandering and bohemian1 life (1741 — 1792), put not a little

1 Hagenbach, pp. 103-4 '• Cairns, p. 177 ;

• Punjer, i, 54

3 Noack, Die Freidenker in der Religion, Th. iii, Kap. ?. ; Saintes, pp. 85-6.

1 " Tlic wretched Bahrdt" is Dr. l'usey's Christian view of him.
HaRenbach, with < haracteristic judgment, calls him " the Theodore Parker
ofGermany". Bahrdt was a great admirer of the Gospel Jesus; so
Cairns (p, 178) takes a lenient view of his life. On that and his doctrine
cp. Hagenbach, pp. 107-110; 1'iinjer, i, 540-550; Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 5.
' roethi ! him in a youthful Prolog but speaks of him not unkindly

in the Dichtung unJ Wain hat.

GERMANY. 363

wayward genius in his System of Moral Religion for the
final tranquillising of doubters and thinkers (1787), a scheme
of rational utilitarianism.1 More socially successful was
Basedow (1723 — 1790), who as a vigorous reformer of
education was stimulated by the influence of Rousseau, and
as a Deist by the French and English rationalistic schools.2
Eberhardt, author of a New Apology of Sokrates ; or,
the final Salvation of the Heathen (1772), a vigorous Deist,
completed the conversion of Bahrdt.3 Substantially
of the same school was the less pronouncedly deistic
cleric Steinbart,4 author of a utilitarian System of Pure
Philosophy or Christian doctrine of Happiness, now forgotten,
who had been variously influenced by Locke and Voltaire.5^
Among other cautiously freethinking clergymen are named
the two Tellers, and Spalding.6

8. Alongside of these propagators of popular ration-
alism stood a group of Deists usually considered
apart — Lessixg, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, and
Moses Mendelssohn. The last was chiefly active
as a constructive theist ; the first, rather nervously
rejecting alike the popular freethought7, represented
by his friend Mylius, and the attempts of the ration-
alising clergy to put religion on a common-sense basis,
framed (or perhaps adapted s) a theory of the Edm ■-
tion of the Human Race (1780) which has served the
rationalising clergy of our own day in good stead; and
adapted Rousseau's doctrine that the true test of religion
lies in feeling and not in argument.'' Neither doctrine
has a whit more philosophical value than the other
"popular philosophy" of the time; and neither was

1 Cp. Saintes, pp. 86-89. as to his other works ; and p. go as to his
disciple Venturing a young freethinking clergyman.

2 Hagenbach, pp. 100-3; Saintes, pp. 91-92; Piinjer, p. ; ] ick,
Th. iii, Kap. 7.

3 Hagenbach, p. 109. 4 Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 8.

5 Saintes, pp. 92-3 ; Pusey, p. 148.

6 Saintes, pp. 93-4 ; Pusey, pp. 150-1, n

7 See his rather crude comedy, eist, and Sime's Lift . i. |

8 As to the authorship, see Saintes, pp [01-2 ; and Sime'
i, 261-2, where the counter-claim is rejected

9 Pusey, p. 51, >i.

364 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

fitted to have much immediate influence ; but both
pointed a way to the more philosophic apologists of
religion, while baulking the orthodox.1 It was by him, too,
that there were published the " Anonymous Fragments"
known as the " Wolfenbuttel Fragments " (1774 —
1778), wherein the methods of the English and French
Deists are applied with a new severity to both the Old
and the New Testament narratives. They appear, though
the point is still in some doubt, to be the work of
Reimarus,3 who had in 1755 published a defence of
" Natural Religion ", that is of the theory of a Providence,
against La Mettrie, Maupertuis, and older materialists.
The Fragments appeared only after his death, and con-
stituted the most serious attack yet made in Germany on
the current creed, though its theory of the true manner of
the Gospel history of course smacks of the pre-scientific
period.3 Though Lessing professed to combat the
positions of the Fragments, he was led into a fierce con-
troversy over them, and the series was finally stopped by
authority. Thereafter, as a final check to his opponents,
he produced his famous drama Nathan the Wise, which
embodies Boccaccio's story of The Three Rings, and has
ever since served as a popular lesson of tolerance in
Germany.4 In the end, he seems to have become a
pantheist5; but he never expounded any coherent and
comprehensive set of opinions, preferring, as he put it in
an oft-quoted sentence, the state of search for truth to any
consciousness of possessing it.

9. The spirit of rational ism was now so prevalent that
it began to dominate the work of the more intelligent

1 Compare the regrets of Pusey (pp. 51, 155), Cairns (p. 195), Hagenbach
{pp. 89-97), and Saintes (p. 100).

- Lessing said the report to this effect was a lie; but this appears to
have been by way of fulfilling his promise of secrecy to the Reimarus
family. Cairns, pp. 203. 209. Cp. Farrar, Crii. Hist, of Freetkougkt, Note 29.
See the sketch in Cairns, p. 107, 11., which indicates the portions pro-
duced later by Strauss. Cp. Piinjer i, 550-7 ; Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 4.

* Cp. Introd. to Willis's trans, of Nathan.

s See Cairns, Appendix, Note I, and Willis, Spinoza, pp. 149-162, giving
the testimony of Jacobi. Cp. Piinjer, i, 564-585.

GERMAX V. 365

theologians, to whose consequent attempts to strain out
by the most dubious means the supernatural elements
from the Bible narratives ' the name of " rationalism "
came to be specially applied, that being the kind of
criticism naturally most discussed among the clergy.
Taking rise broadly in the work of Semler2 (1725-91),
Professor at Halle, the method led stage by stage to the
scientific performance of Strauss, Baur, and the recent
" higher criticism " of the Old Testament. Noteworthy
at its outset as exhibiting the tendency of official believers
to make men, in the words of Lessing, irrational philo-
sophers by way of making them rational Christians,3 this
order of " rationalism " in its intermediate stages belongs
rather to the history of Biblical scholarship than to that
of Freethought, since more radical work was being done
by unprofessional writers outside, and deeper problems
were raised by the new systems of philosophy. In
Germany, however, the whole development of opinion
after the French Revolution remained largely in the
hands of the official university class. In Prussia, the
brother of Frederick, who succeeded in 1786, declared
himself the champion of religion and the enemy of free-
thinking.4 As late as 1787 there appeared a strongly anti-
Christian and anti-clerical work, The only true system of
the Christian religion, attributed to Mauvillon 5 ; but the
new regimen, aided by the reaction against the Revolution,
seems for a time to have prevented any such open
propaganda, leaving the leaven of anti-supernaturalism
and critical philosophy to work all the more effectively
among the increasing university-going population.

10. Meanwhile the effect of the age of Aufklarung was
apparent in the practically freethinking attitude of the
two foremost men of letters in the new Germany —

1 The method was at least as old as the Evangelium medici of Connor.
See above, p. 307.

- On whom see Farrar, Crit. Hist, of Freethought, pp. 311-316; Sair.tes,
liv. ii, ch. 3 ; Hagenbach, pp. 77-81.

:' Cited by Cairns, p. 205. * Hagenbach, p. 125.

•'Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 9.

366 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Goethe and Schiller. Of the former, despite the
bluster of Carlyle, and despite the aesthetic favor shown
to Christianity in Wilhclm Meister, no religious ingenuity
can make more than a pantheist,1 who, in so far as he
touched on Biblical questions, copied the half- grown
rationalism of the school of Semler.3 He has told how,
when Lavater insisted that he must choose between
orthodox Christianity and Atheism, he answered that if
he were not free to be a Christian in his own way (wie ich
es bisher gehegt hdtte), he would as soon turn Atheist as
Christian, the more so as he saw that nobody knew very
well what either signified.3 Nor did he ever yield to the
Christian creed more than a Platonic amity.

One passage in Goethe's essay on the Pentateuch, appended
to the West-Oestlicher Divan, is worth noting here as illustrating
the ahility of genius to cherish and propagate historical falla-
cies. It runs: "The peculiar, unique, and deepest theme of
the history of the world and man, to which all others are
subordinate, is always the conflict of belief and unbelief. All
epochs in which belief rules, under whatever form, are
illustrious, inspiriting and fruitful for that time and the future.
All epochs on the other hand in which unbelief, in whatever
form, secures a miserable victory, even though for a moment
they may flaunt it proudly, disappear for posterity, because no
man willingly troubles himself with knowledge of the unfruitful"
( First ed., S. 424-5). Goethe goes on to speak of the four
latter books of Moses as occupied with the theme of unbelief,
and of the first as occupied with belief. Thus his formula was
based, to begin with, on purely fabulous history, into the nature
of which his poetic faculty gave him no true insight whatever.
Applied to real history, his formula has no validity save on
a definition which implies either an equivoque or an argument
in a circle. If it refer, in, the natural sense, to epochs in which
any given religion is widely rejected and assailed, it is palpably

1 The chief sample passages in his works are the poem Das Gottliche
and the speech of Faust in reply to Gretchen in the garden scene. It was
the surmised pantheism of Goethe's poem Prometheus that, according to

iacobi, drew from Lessing his avowal of a pantheistic leaning. The poem
. even an atheistic ring ; but we have Goethe's own account of the
inn Ipino a on him from his youth onwards (Dichtung und Wahrheit,

[II, B. >.iv , Th. [V, B. xvi).
* Sec the .Hi- 1, liiiiiiiit.i Ins Appendix to the Wcst-Oestlicher Divan.
Dichtung und Wahrheit, Th. Ill, 13. xiv, par. 20.

GERMANY. 367

false. The Renaissance and Goethe's own century were ages
of such unbelief; and they remain much more deeply interest-
ing than the Ages of Faith. St. Peter's at Rome is the work
of a reputedly unbelieving Pope. If on the other hand his
formula is meant to apply to belief in the sense of energy and
enthusiasm, it is still fallacious. The crusades were manifesta-
tions of energy and enthusiasm ; but they were profoundly
"unfruitful", and they are not deeply interesting. The only
sense in which Goethe's formula could stand would be one in
which it is recognised that all vigorous intellectual life stands
for " belief" — that is to say, that Lucretius and Voltaire, Paine
and d'Holbach, stand for "belief" when confidently attacking
beliefs. The formula is thus true only in a strained and non-
natural sense ; whereas it is sure to be read and to be believed,
by thoughtless admirers, in its natural and false sense, though
the whole history of Byzantium and modern Islam is a history
of stagnant and unfruitful belief, and that of modern Europe
a history of fruitful doubt, disbelief, and denial, involving new
affirmations. Goethe's own mind on the subject was in a
state of verbalising confusion, the result or expression of his
aversion to clear analytical thought and his habit of poetic
allegory and apriorism. Where he himself doubted and denied
current creeds, as in his work in natural science, he was most
fruitful (though he was not always right — e.g., his polemic
against Newton's theory of light) ; and the permanently in-
teresting part of his Faust is precisely that which artistically
utters the doubt through which he passed to a pantheistic
Naturalism.

11. No less certain is the unbelief of Schiller (1759 —
1805), whom Hagenbach even takes as "the representative
of the rationalism of his age". In his juvenile Robbers,
indeed, he makes his worst villains freethinkers; and in
the preface he stoutly champions religion against all
assailants; bat hardly ever after that piece does he give
a favorable portrait of a priest.1 He himself soon joined
the Aufkliirung ; and all his aesthetic appreciation of
Christianity never carried him beyond the positions that
it virtually had the tendency (Anlage) to the highest and
noblest, though that was in general tastelessly ami re-
pulsively represented by Christians; and further that in
a certain sense it is the only aesthetic religion, whence it

1 Remarked by Hagenbach, p. 23^.

368 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

is that it gives such pleasure to the feminine nature, and
that only among women is it to be met with in a tolerable
form.1 Like Goethe, he sought to reduce the Biblical
supernatural to the plane of possibility,2 in the manner of
the liberal theologians of the period ; and like him he often
writes like a Deist,3 though professedly for a time a
Kantist. On the other hand, he does not hesitate to say
that a healthy nature (which Goethe had said needed no
Morality, no Natur-recht* and no political metaphysic),
needed neither Deity nor Immortality to sustain it.5

12. The critical philosophy of Kant may be said to
represent most comprehensively the outcome in German
intelligence of the higher Freethought of the age. In its
most truly critical part, the analytic treatment of previous
theistic systems in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he is
definitely anti-religious6 ; and the rest of his treatment of
religion is an almost avowedly unscientific attempt to
restore the reign of theism on a basis of a mere emotional
and ethical necessity assumed to exist in human nature —
a necessity which he never even attempts to demonstrate.
It is tolerably clear that Kant's motive at this stage was
mere unphilosophic fear that Naturalism would work
moral harm7 — a fear shared by him with the mass of the
average minds of his age.

In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason (1787) he writes that "only through criticism can the
roots be cut of Materialism, Fatalism, Atheism, freethinking
unbelief (freigeisterischen Unghuiben), Fanaticism and Super-
stition, which may become universally injurious ; also of

1 Letter to Goethe, 17 Aug., 1795 (Briefwechsel, No. 87). The passage is
given in Carlyle's essay on Schiller.
- I n Die Sendung Moses.

-M-e the Philosophische Bri
1 Carlyle translates, "No Rights of Man," which was probably the
implication.

• Letter to Goethe, 9 Julv, 17')'' [Briefwechsel, No. 188).
For an able argument vindicating the unity of Kant's system, however,
ee Prof. Adamson, The Philosophy oj Kant, 1879,0. 21 fif., as against Lange.
With the verdict in the text compare that of Heine, Zur Gesch. der Relig. U.
Philos iu Deutsehland, B. iii [Wcrke, Ausg. in 12 Bn., iii, 81-82).
7 Cp. Uagenbach, p. 223.

GERMANY. 369

Idealism and Scepticism, which are dangerous rather to the
Schools, and can hardly reach the general public ". (Meiklejohn
mistranslates: "which are universally injurious" — Bohn ed.
p. xxxvii.) This passage virtually puts the popular religion
and all philosophies save Kant's own on one level of moral
dubiety. It is however distinctly uncandid as regards the
" freethinking unbelief ", for Kant himself was certainly an
unbeliever in Christian miracles and dogmas. His want of
philosophic candor, or at least his readiness to make an
appeal to prejudice, again appears when he asks, "Whence
does the Freethinker derive his knowledge that there is, for
instance, no Supreme Being ? " (Kritik der reinen Vernunft,
Transc. Methodenlehre, 1 H. 2 Absch., ed. Kirchmann, 1879, S. 587 ;
Bohn tr. p. 458.) He had just before professed to be dealing
with denial of the " existence of God " — a proposition of no
significance whatever unless " God " be defined. He now
without warning substitutes the undefined expression " Supreme
Being " for " God ", thus imputing a proposition probably never
sustained by any human being. Either, then, Kant's own
proposition was the entirely vacuous one that nobody can
demonstrate the impossibility of an alleged undefined existence,
or he was virtually asserting that no one can disprove any
alleged supernatural existence — witch, demon, Moloch, Krishna,
Bel, Siva, Aphrodite, or Isis and Osiris. In the latter case he
would be absolutely stultifying his own claim to cut the roots
of " Superstition " and " Fanaticism " as well as of freethinking
and materialism ; for if the Freethinker cannot disprove
Jehovah, neither can the Kantist disprove Allah and Satan.
From this dilemma Kant's argument cannot be delivered. And
as he finally introduces Deity as a psychologically and morally
necessary regulative idea, howbeit indemonstrable, he leaves
every species of superstition exactly where it stood before—
every superstition being practically held, as against "iree-
thinking unbelief", on just such a tenure. It should be noted
that Kant's doctrine of theism as a need of the emotional and
moral nature was popularly put before him by Lessing, ai d
had been put in circulation by Rousseau. Cp. Haym's Htrdtr
nach seinem Leben . . . dargestellt, 1877, i, 33, 48.

For the rest, Kant's attempt to adapt the Christian system
to the needs of reason is avowedly an extension of tactics
already in vogue, and ethically amounts to saying that truth is
to be grafted on falsity because the common people must have,
in Middleton's phrase, " some religion or other" — this while he
repudiates Christian ethics as immoral, and elsewhere protests
against telling a falsehood even to a would-be murderer*

!'. B

370 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

(Compare his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Bios sen Verhunft
(1793) B. iii, Apotome i, Sect. 6 ; B. iv, Apot. ii, preamble and
Sect, i, 3, and 4 ; with the essay in reply to Constant in App.
to Rosenkranz's ed. of Werke, vii, 295 — given by T. K. Abbott
in his trans, of the Critique of Judgment.

The Kantian philosophy had thus the effect of an
assurance to the religious world that though all previous
arguments for theism were philosophically worthless,
theism was safe on the fluid basis of feeling. Naturally
the deeper Theists of his day — as Fichte and Schelling —
when they realised his position, reacted against it, and
sought to restore their faith to a basis of demonstrative
argument. The general result seems to have been the
production of nearly equal quantities of reassurance and
scepticism ; and at the universities the effect of Kant's
system was notably to discredit Christian orthodoxy.1
Staudlin begins the preface to his History and Spirit of
Scepticism (1794) with the remark that " Scepticism begins
to be a disease of the age " ; and Kant closes his list of
sceptics. Thus, though the French Revolution intensified
the official hostility to Freethought in Germany2 there
seems to have been at bottom less religious reaction there
than in either England or France, the anti-supernaturalist
handling of the Scriptures going on continuously, and the
educated class remaining remarkably "emancipated". In
Austria, probably, French ideas were only less freely
current than in Prussia ; but there is thus far no Austrian
name in freethought literature that can stand beside that
of Beethoven,3 the supreme musician of his age.

§ III. — The remaining European States.

1. Traces of new rationalistic life are to be seen in
Scandinavia at least as early as the time of Descartes.

1 Stuckenberg, Life of Kant, 1882, p. 386. Fichte, who was falsely
accused of Atheism, was one of the anti-Christian enthusiasts. Cp.
lla^enbach, pp. 228-9 as to the results noted by Herder.

2 Kant himself was restricted by the censorship in 1792, and afterwards.
At first he was indignant, but h< bmitted tcrthe king's commands, and
undertook to write no more on religious matters. Stuckenberg, pp. 360-4.

to whose free-thinking see art. On him by Macfarren in Diet, of
Univ. Biug., and Grove's art. in Diet, of Music and Musicians.

THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES. 371

There, as elsewhere, the Reformation had been sub-
stantially a fiscal or economic revolution, proceeding on
various lines. In Denmark the movement began among
the people ; the nobility rapidly following, to their own
great profit1; in Sweden the king took the initiative,
having sore need of funds, and a thoroughly anti-eccle-
siastical temper.2 Towards the middle of the seventeenth
century there are increasing traces of rationalism at the
court of the famous Christina, who already in her youth
is found much interested in the objections of " Jews,
heathens, and philosophers, against Christian doctrine ";3
and her invitation of Descartes to her court (1649)
suggests that Sweden had been not a little affected by
the revulsion of popular thought which followed on the
Thirty Years' War in Germany. In the course of a few
years, the new spirit had gone so far as to make church-
going matter for open scoffing at the Swedish court4 ;
and the Queen's adoption of Romanism soon after her
abdication appears to have been by way of revulsion
from a state of mind approaching atheism, to which she
had been led by her freethinking French physician,
Bourdelot, after Descartes's death.5 No literary results,
however, could follow in the then state of Swedish
culture, when the studies at even the new colleges were
mainly confined to Latin and theology6 ; and Scandinavia
in general, though affected like Russia by the French
freethinking influence in the eighteenth century, has
only in our own age begun to contribute weightily to the
serious thought of Europe.

2. In Poland, where Socinianism had flourished from
the first, positive Atheism is heard of in 16S8-9, when
Count Liszinski, among whose papers, it was said, had
been found the written statement that man had made God
out of nothing, was denounced by the bishops of Wilna

1 Otte, Scandinavian History, 1874, pp. 2J2-4.

'■ Id., pp. 232-6.

3 Geijer, History of the Swedes, Eng. tr., i, 324.

* Id., p. 343. 5M, p. 342. 6 Id., ib.

B D J

372 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

and Posnovia, tried, beheaded, and burnt, his ashes being
scattered from a cannon.1 But even had a less murderous
treatment been meted out to such heresy, anarchic Poland
was in no state to develop a rationalistic literature. In
Russia, again, literature and culture, as distinguished
from folklore and monastic writing, only begin in the
sixteenth century ; when we find the usual symptom of
criticism of the lives of the monks.' But the culture was
almost wholly ecclesiastical, and in the seventeenth century
the effort of the Patriarch Nicon to correct the sacred
texts was furiously resisted.3 Gradually there arose
a new secular fiction, under western influence; and
Peter the Great, who promoted printing and literature
as he did every other new activity, took the singular step
of actually withdrawing writing materials from the monks,
whose influence he held to be wholly reactionary. Now
began the era of translations from the French ; and in
the day of the great Catherine the ideas of the philosopher
were the ruling ones at her court,4 till the outbreak of the
Revolution put the whole school in disgrace with her.
This did not alter the tone of thought of the educated
classes; but in Russia as in Scandinavia it was not till the
nineteenth century that original serious literature began.

3. Returning to Italy, no longer the leader of European
thought, but still full of veiled freethinking, we find in the
seventeenth century the proof that no amount of such
predisposition can countervail thoroughly bad political
conditions. Ground down by the matchless misrule of
Spain, from which the conspiracy of the monk Campanella
vainly sought to free her, and by the kindred tyranny of
the Papacy, Italy could produce in its educated class only

1 He claimed that certain remarks penned by him in an atheistic work,
challenging its argument, represented not unbelief but the demand for a
better proof, which he undertook to produce. Art. in Biographie Universale.

• I. Sichler, Hist, it la lilt. Russe, 1887, pp. 88-89, 139. Cp. Rambaud,
History oi Russia, Eng, tr. 1879, i, 309, 321, 328.

;> Rambaud, i. 414-417, The struggle (1654) elicited old forms of heresy,
going hack to Manicheism and Gnosticism.

• She bought the library of Diderot when he was in need, constituted
its salaried keeper, and actually had him for a time at her court.

THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES. 373

triflers, whose unbelief was of a piece with their cynicism.
While Naples and the south decayed, mental energy had
for a time flourished in Tuscany, where, under the grand
dukes from Ferdinando I onwards, industry and commerce
had revived ; and even after a time of retrogression,
Ferdinando II encouraged science, now made newly
glorious by the names of Galileo and Torricelli. But
again there was a relapse ; and at the end of the century,
under a bigoted duke, Florence was priest-ridden and, at
least in outward seeming, gloomily superstitious; while
the rest of Italy was cynically corrupt and intellectually
superficial.1 Yet it only needed the breathing time and
the improved conditions under the Bourbon rule in the
eighteenth century to set up a wonderful intellectual
revival. Then came the great work of Vico, the Principles
of a New Science (1722), whereof the originality and the
depth, qualities in which it on the whole excels Montes-
quieu's Spirit of Laics, place him among the great free-
thinkers in philosophy. It was significant of much that
Yico's book, without professing any hostility to faith,
grappled with the science of human development in an
essentially secular and scientific spirit. This is the note
of the whole eighteenth century in Italy. Yico posits
Deity and Providence, but proceeds nevertheless to study
the laws of civilisation inductively from its phenonii
In the same age Muratori and Giannone amassed their
unequalled historical learning; and a whole series of
Italian writers broke new ground on the field of social
science, Italy having led the way in this as formerly in
philosophy and physics.''

4. Between 1737 and 1798 may be counted twenty-
eight Italian writers on political economy; and among
them was one, Cesare Beccakia, who on another theme
produced perhaps the most practically influential single

1 Zeller, Hist, d'ltalie, pp. 426-432, 450; Procter, Hist, of Italy, 2nd 1
pp. 240, 268.

: See the Storia delta economia pubblica in Italia of G Pecchii

p. 61, ff., as to the claim of Antonio Serra (b>; etc., 101 3) to bo

the pioneer of modern political economy.

374 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

book of the eighteenth century,1 the treatise on Crimes and
Punishments (1764), which affected penal methods for the
better throughout the whole of Europe. Even were he
not known to be a Deist, his strictly secular and ration-
alist method would have brought upon him priestly
suspicion ; and he had in fact to defend himself against
pertinacious and unscrupulous attacks,2 though he had
sought in his book to guard himself by occasionally
" veiling the truth in clouds".3 As we have seen, Beccaria
owed his intellectual awakening first to Montesquieu and
above all to Helvetius — another testimony to the reforma-
tive virtue of all freethought.

5. Of the aforesaid eight-and-twenty writers on
economics, probably the majority were freethinkers.
Among them, at all events, were Algarotti, the dis-
tinguished assthetician, one of the group round Frederick
at Berlin ; Filangieri, whose work on legislation (put on
the Index by the Papacy) won the high praise of Franklin ;
Galiani, one of the brightest and soundest wits in the
circle of the French philosophcs ; Genovesi, the "re-
deemer of the Italian mind "/ and the chief establisher of
economic science for modern Italy. To these names may
be added those of Alfieri, one of the strongest anti-
clericalists of his age ; Bettinelli, the correspondent of
Voltaire and author of The Resurrection of Italy (1775) ;
Count Dandolo, author of a French work on The
New Men (1799) ; and the learned Giannone, author
of the great anti-papal History of the Kingdom of Naples
(1723), who, after more than one narrow escape, was
thrown in prison by the King of Sardinia, and died
there (1748) after twelve years' confinement. Italy
had done her full share, considering her heritage of

1 The Dei delitti e delle pene was translated into twenty-two languages.
Pecchio, p. 144.

2 See in the 6th ed. of the Dei Delitti (Harlem, 1766) the appended
Risposta ad uno Scritto, etc., Parte prima. Accuse d'cnipicta.

3 See his letter to the Abbe Morellet, cited by Mr. Farrer in ch. i of his
ed. of Crimes and Punishments, 1880, p. 5. It describes the Milanese as
deeply sunk in prejudices.

* Pecchio, p. 123.

THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES. 375

burdens and hindrances, in the intellectual work of
the century ; and in the names of Galvani and Volta
stands the record of one more of her great contribu-
tions to human enlightenment. Under Duke Leopold
of Tuscany, the Papacy was so far defied that books put
on the Index were produced for him under the imprint of
London ; l and the Papacy itself at length gave way to
the spirit of reform, Clement XIV consenting among
other things to abolish the Order of Jesuits (1773), after
his predecessor had died of grief over his proved impotence
to resist the secular policy of the States around him.*
Such was the dawn of the new Italian day that has since
slowly but steadily broadened, albeit under many a cloud.
6. For the rest of Europe during the eighteenth
century, we have to note only traces of receptive thought.
Spain under Bourbon rule, as already noted, experienced
an administrative renascence. Such men as Count Aranda
(1718-99) and Aszo y del Rio (1742 — 1814) wrought to cut
the claws of the Inquisition and to put down the Jesuits ;
but not yet, after the long work of destruction accomplished
by the Church in the past, could Spain produce a fresh
literature of any far-reaching power. Switzerland, which
owed much of new intellectual life to the influx of French
Protestants at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
contributed to the European movement some names, of
which by far the most famous is Rousseau ; and the potent
presence of Voltaire cannot have failed to affect Swiss
culture. The chief native service to intellectual progress
thus far, however, was rendered in the field of the natural
sciences, Swiss religious opinion being only passively
liberalised, mainlv in a Unitarian direction.

7 J

J Zeller, p. 473. J Id., pp. 47S-9.

CHAPTER XV.

EARLY FREETHOUGHT IN THE UNITED STATES.

i. Perhaps the most signal of all the proofs of the
change wrought in the opinion of the civilised world in the
eighteenth century is the fact that at the time of the War
of Independence the leading statesmen of the American
colonies were Deists. Such were Benjamin Franklin,
the diplomatist of the Revolution; Thomas Paine, its
prophet and inspirer : Washington, its commander ;
and Jefferson, its typical legislator. But for these four
men, the American Revolution certainly could not have
been accomplished in that age ; and they thus represent
in a peculiar degree the power of new ideas, in fit
conditions, to transform societies, at least politically. On
the other hand, the fashion in which their relation to the
creeds of their time has been garbled, alike in American
and English histories, proves how completely they were
in advance of the average thought of their day : and also
how effectively the mere institutional influence of creeds
can arrest a nation's mental development. It is still one
of the stock doctrines of religious sociology in England
and America that Deism, miscalled Atheism, wrought
the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution ; when as
a matter of fact the same Deism was at the head of
affairs in the American.

2. The rise of rationalism in the colonies must be
traced in the main to the imported English literature of
the eighteenth century ; for the first Puritan settlements
had contained at most only a fraction of Freethought ;
and the conditions, so deadly for all manner even of
devout heresy,1 made avowed unbelief impossible. The

1 See Mr. Brooks Adams's Emancipation "of Massachusetts (1887) for a
vivid account of the clerical tyranny.

( 376 )

EARLY FREETHOUGHT IN UNITED STATES. 377

superstitions and cruelties of the Puritan clergy, however,
must have bred a silent reaction which prepared a soil for
deism of the next age. " The perusal of Shaftesbury and
Collins," writes Franklin with reference to his early
youth, " had made me a sceptic," after being " previously
so as to many doctrines of Christianity".1 This was
in his seventeenth or eighteenth year, about 1720, so
that the importation of deism had been prompt. *
Throughout life he held to the same opinion, conforming
sufficiently to keep on fair terms with his neighbours,3
and avoiding anything like critical propaganda ; though
on challenge, in the last year of his life, he avowed his
negatively deistic position.4

3. Similarly prudent was Jefferson, who, like
Franklin and Paine, extolled the Gospel Jesus and his
teachings, but rejected the notion of supernatural revela-
tion.5 In a letter written so late as 1822 to a Unitarian
correspondent, while refusing to publish another of similar
tone, on the score that he was too old for strife, he
declared that he " should as soon undertake to bring the
crazy skulls of Bedlam to sound understanding as to
inculcate reason into that of an Athanasian ".6 His ex-
perience of the New England clergy is expressed in
allusions to Connecticut as having been " the last
retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and abhorrence of
those advances of the mind which had carried the other
States a century ahead of them " ; and in congratulations
with John Adams (who had written that "this would be

1 Such is the wording of the passage in the Autobiography in the Edin-
burgh edition of 1803, p. 25, which follows the French translation of the
original MS. In the edition of the Aui v and Letters in the Minerva

Library, edited by Mr. Bet t any (1891, p. 1 1), which follows Mr. Bigelow's
edition of 1879, it runs: "Being then, from reading Shaftesbury and
Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine. ..."

- Only in 17S4, however, appeared the first anti-Christi, m work published
in America, Ethan Allen's Rcas n the only Oracle of Man. As to its positions,
see Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 192-3.

3 Autobiography, Bettany's ed. pp. 56, 65, 74, 77, etc.

4 Letter of 9 March, 1790. Id., p. 636.

* Cp. J. T. Morse's Thomas Jefferson, in " American Statesmen" series,

PP- 339-34°'

6 MS. cited by Dr. Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 310-31 1.

37§ . HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion irr
it "), when "this den of the priesthood is at last broken
up".1 John Adams, whose letters with their " crowd of
scepticisms " kept even Jefferson from sleep,2 seems to
have figured as a member of a Congregationalist church,
while in reality a Unitarian.3 Still more prudent was
Washington, who seems to have ranked habitually as
a member of the episcopal church ; but concerning whom
Jefferson relates that, when the clergy, having noted his
constant abstention from any public mention of the
Christian religion, so penned an address to him on his
withdrawal from the Presidency as almost to force him to
some declaration, he answered every part of the address
but that, which he entirely ignored. It is further noted
that only in his valedictory letter to the governors of the
States, on resigning his commission, did he speak of the
"benign influence of the Christian religion"4 — the
common tone of the American Deists of that dav. It is
further established that Washington avoided the Com-
munion in church.5 For the rest, the broad fact that all
mention of Deity was excluded from the Constitution of
the United States must be historically taken to signify
a profound change in the convictions of the leading minds
among the people as compared with the beliefs of their
ancestors. At the same time, the fact that they as a rule
dissembled their unbelief is a proof that even where legal
penalties do not attach to an avowal of serious heresy,

1 Memoirs of Jefferson, 1829, iv, 300-1. The date is 1817. Theseand other
passages exhibiting Jefferson's deism are cited in Rayner's Sketches of the
Life, etc., of Jefferson, 1832, pp. 513-517.

2 Memoirs of Jefferson, iv, 331.

3 Dr. Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 310.

4 Extract from Jefferson's Journal under date Feb. 1, 1800, in the
Memoirs, iv, 512. Gouverneur Morris, whom Jefferson further cites as to
Washington's unbelief, is not a very good witness; but the main fact
cited is significant.

5 Compare the testimony given by the Rev. Dr. Wilson of Albany, in
1831, as cited by R. D. Owen in his Discussion on the Authenticity of the Bible
with O. Bacheler (London ed. 1840, p. 231), with the replies on the other
side (pp. 233-4). Washington's death-bed attitude was that of a Deist.
See all the available data for his supposed orthodoxy in Sparks' Life of
Washington, 1852, app. iv.

EARLY FREETHOUGHT IN UNITED STATES. 379

there inheres in the menace of mere social ostracism a
power sufficient to coerce the outward life of public and
professional men of all grades, in a democratic community
where faith maintains and is maintained by a competitive
multitude of priests. With this force the freethought
of our own age has to reckon, after Inquisitions and
blasphemy laws have become obsolete.

4. Nothing in American culture-history more clearly
proves the last proposition than the case of Thomas
Paine, the virtual founder of modern democratic free-
thought in Great Britain and the States.1 It does not
appear that Paine openly professed any heresy while he
lived in England, or in America before the French Revolu-
tion. Yet the first sentence of his Age of Reason, of which
the first part was written shortly before his imprisonment,
under sentence of death from the Robespierre Government,
in Paris (1793), shows that he had long held pronounced
deistic opinions.2 They were probably matured in the
States, where, as we have seen, such views were often
privately held, though there, as Franklin is said to have
jesuitically declared in his old age, by way of encouraging
immigration: " Atheism is unknown; infidelity rare and
secret, so that persons may live to a great age in this
country without having their piety shocked by meeting-
with either an atheist or an infidel ". Paine did an un-
equalled service to the American Revolution by his Com-
mon Sense and his series of pamphlets headed The Crisis :
there is in fact little question that but for the intense
stimulus thus given by him at critical moments the move-
ment might have collapsed at an early stage. Yet he
seems to have had no thought there and then of avowing
his Deism. It was in part for the express purpose of
resisting the ever-strengthening attack of atheism in

1 So far as is known, Paine was the first writer to use the expression
"The religion of Humanity". See Conway's Life of Paine, [892, ii, 206.
To Paine's influence, too, appears to be due the founding of the first
American Anti-Slavery Society. Id., i, 51-2, 6o, So, etc.

2 Cp. Dr. Conway's Life of Paine, ii, 205-7.

380 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

France on Deism itself that he undertook to save it by-
repudiating the Judseo-Christian revelation ; and it is not
even certain that he would have issued the Age of Reason
when it did appear, had he not supposed he was going to
his death when put under arrest, on which score he left
the manuscript for publication.1

5. Its immediate effect was much greater in Britain,
where his Rights of Man had already won him a vast
popularity in the teeth of the most furious reaction, than
in America. There, to his profound chagrin, he found
that his honest utterance of his heresy brought on him
hatred, calumny, ostracism, and even personal and
political molestation. In 1797 he had founded in Paris
the little "Church of Theo-philanthropy ", beginning his
inaugural discourse with the words : " Religion has two
principal enemies, Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which
is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by
reason and morality ; the other by natural philosophy." 2
These were his settled convictions ; and he lived to find
himself shunned and vilified, in the name of religion, in
the country whose freedom he had so puissantly wrought
to win.3 The Quakers, his father's sect, refused him a
burial-place. He has had sympathy and fair play, as a
rule, onlv from the atheists whom he distrusted and
opposed, or from thinkers who no longer hold by Deism.
There is reason to think that in his last years the deistic
optimism which survived the deep disappointments of the
French Revolution began to give way before deeper

1 A letter of Franklin to some one who had shown him a freethinking
manuscript, advising against its publication (Bettany's ed. p. 620) has been
conjecturally connected with Paine, but was clearly not addressed to him.
Franklin died in 1790, and Paine was out of America from 1787 onwards.
But the letter is in every way inapplicable to the Age of Reason. The
remark : " If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without
it," could not be made to a devout Deist like 1'aine.

"• Conway, Life of Paine, 1892, ii, 254-5.

■See Dr. Conway's chapter, "The American Inquisition," vol. ii,
c. 16; also pp. 361-2, 374, 379. The falsity of the ordinary charges against
Paine's character is finally made clear by Dr. Conway, ch. xix, and
PP- 371- 383. 419, 423. Cp. the author's pamphlet Thomas Paine i an
investigation (Bonner).

EARLY FREETHOUGHT IN UNITED STATES. 381

reflection on the cosmic problem,1 if not before the treat-
ment he had undergone at the hands of Unitarians and
Trinitarians alike. The Butlerian argument, that Nature
is as unsatisfactory as revelation, had been pressed upon
him by Bishop Watson in a reply to the Age of Reason ;
and though, like most Deists of his age, he regarded it as
a vain defence of orthodoxy, he was not the man to remain
long blind to its force against deistic assumptions. Like
Franklin, he had energetically absorbed and given out the
new ideals of physical science; his originality in the inven-
tion of a tubular iron bridge, and in the application of
steam to navigation,2 being nearly as notable as that of
Franklin's great discovery concerning electricity. Had
the two men drawn their philosophy from the France of
the latter part of the century instead of the England of
the first, they had doubtless gone deeper. As it was,
temperamental optimism had kept both satisfied with the
transitional formula ; and in the France of before and after
theRevolution they lived preoccupied with politics.
/o. The habit of reticence or dissimulation among
American public men was only too surely confirmed by
the treatment meted out to Paine. Few stood by him, -
and the deistic movement set up in his latter years_5y~
Elihu Palmer soon succumbed to the conditions.3^\ll the
while, such statesmen as Madison and Monroe, the latter
Paine's personal friend, seem to have been of his way of
thinking,4 though the evidence is scanty. The essential
evil is that the baseness of partisan politics is at all times
ready to turn a man's heresy to his political ruin ; such
being in part the explanation of the gross ingratitude
shown to Paine.^TThus it came about that, save for the
liberal movement of the Hicksite Quakers, s^the^ secret

1 Conway, ii, 371.

2 See the details in Conway's Life, ii, 280-1, and note. He had also a
scheme for a gunpowder motor (id. and i, 240), and various other
remarkable plans.

3 Conway, ii, 362-371.

4 Testimonies quoted by R. D. Owen, as cited, pp. 231-2.
6 Conway, ii, 422.

382 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

American Deism of Paine's day was decorously trans-
formed into the later Unitarianism, the extremely rapid
advance of which in the next generation is the best proof
of the commonness of private unbelief.

7. In the middle decades of the century the conditions
had been so little changed that after the death of President
Lincoln, who was certainly a non-Christian Deist, and
an agnostic Deist at that,1 it was sought to be established
that he was latterly orthodox. In his presidential
campaign of i860 he escaped attack on his opinions simply
because his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, was likewise
an unbeliever.2 The great negro orator, Frederick
Douglass, was as heterodox as Lincoln.3 It is even
alleged that President Grant4 was of the same cast of
opinion. Such is the general drift of intelligent thought
in the United States, from Washington onwards ; and
still the social conditions impose on public men the burden
of concealment, while popular history is garbled for the
same reasons.

1 Cp. Lamon's Life of Lincoln, and J. B. Remsburg's Abraham Lincoln
Was he a Christian ? (New York, 1893.)
- Remsburg, pp. 318-19.
* Personal information. * Remsburg, p. 324

CHAPTER XVI.

FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

As with the cause of democracy, so with the cause of
rationalism, the forward movement which was checked
for a generation by the reaction against the French
Revolution grew only the deeper and more powerful
through the check ; and the nineteenth century closes on
a record of freethinking progress which may be said to
outbulk that of all the previous centuries of the modern
era together. So great has been the activity of the
century in point of mere quantity that it becomes im-
possible, within the scheme of a "Short History", to
treat it on even such a reduced scale of narrative as has
been applied to the past. A detailed history from the
French Revolution onwards will require a separate
volume nearly as large as the present. It must here
suffice, therefore, to take one or two broad and general
views of the century's work, leaving adequate critical and
narrative treatment for a separate undertaking. The
most helpful method seems to be that of a conspectus of
(i) the main movements and forces that have affected in
varying degrees the thought of the civilised world, and
(2) of the advance made and the point reached in the
culture of the nations, separately considered. At the
same time, the forces of rationalism may be discriminated
into Particular and General. We may then roughly
represent the lines of movement, in loose chronological
order, as follows : —

I. — Forces of criticism and corrective thought bearing -expressly on religious h '
1. In Great Britain and America, the new movements of popular free-
thought deriving immediately from Paine, and lasting continuously
to the present day.

( 383 )

384 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

2. In France and elsewhere, the reverberation of the attack of Voltaire,

as against official orthodoxy after 1815.

3. German "Rationalism", culminating in the work of the schools of

Strauss and Baur, and all along affecting studious thought in other
countries.

4. In England, the neo-Christianity of the school of Coleridge, a dis-

integrating force, promoting the " Broad Church " tendency.

5. The utilitarianism of the school of Bentham, carried into moral and

social science.

6. Comtism, making little direct impression on the " constructive " lines

laid by the founder, but affecting critical thought in all directions.

7. German philosophy, Kantian and post-Kantian, in particular the

Hegelian, turned to anti-Christian account by Strauss, Baur, Bruno
Bauer, Feuerbach, and Marx.

8. German Atheism and Materialism — represented by Feuerbach and

Buchner.

9. Revived English Deism, involving destructive criticism of Christianity,

as in Hennell, F. W. Newman, W. R. Greg, and Theodore Parker.

10. American Transcendentalism or Pantheism— the school of Emerson.

11. The later or scientific "higher criticism" of the Old Testament —

represented by Kuenen and Wellhausen.

12. Colenso's preliminary attack on the Pentateuch, a systematised return

to Voltairean common-sense, rectifying the unscientific course of
the " higher criticism ".

13. New historical criticism of Christian origins, in particular the work of

Renan and Havet in France.

14. Exhibition of rationalism within the churches, as in Germany, Holland,

and Switzerland generally; in England in the Essays and Reviews,
and later in the documentary criticism of the Old Testament ; in
America in popular theology.

15 Association of rationalistic doctrine with the Socialist movements, new
and old, from Owen to Marx.

iG. Communication of doubt and questioning through poetry and belles-
lettres — as in Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Clough, Tennyson,
Arnold, Browning, Swinburne, Heine, Victor Hugo, Leconte de
Lisle, Leopardi, and some recent English novelists.

II. — Modem Seienee, physical, mental, and moral* sapping the bases of all

supernaturalist systems.

1. Astronomy, newly directed by Laplace.

2. Geology, gradually connected (as in Britain by Chambers) with

3. Biology, made definitely non-deistic by Darwin.

4. The comprehension of all science in the Evolution Theory, as by

Spencer, advancing on Comte.

5. Psychology, as regards localisation of brain functions.

6. Comparative mythology, as yet imperfectly applied to Christism.

7. Sociology, as outlined by Comte, Buckle, Spencer, and others, on

strictly naturalistic lines.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 3S5

8. Comparative Hierology : the methodical application of principles
insisted on by all the Deists.

On the other hand, we may group somewhat as follows
the general forces of retardation of freethought operating
throughout the century : —

1. Penal laws, still operative in Germany against popular freethought

propaganda.

2. Class interests, involving in the first half of the century a social

conspiracy against rationalism in England.

3. Commercial pressure thus set up, and always involved in the influence

of churches.

4. In England, identification of orthodox Dissent with political Liberalism

— a sedative.

5. Concessions by the clergy, especially in England and the United

States— to many, another sedative.

6. Above all, the production of new masses of popular ignorance in the

industrial nations, and continued lack of education in the others.

7. On this basis, business-like and in large part secular-minded organisation

of the endowed churches, as against a Freethought propaganda
hampered by the previously named causes, and in England by laws
which veto all endowment of anti-Christian heresy.

It remains to make, with forced brevity, the surveys thus
outlined.

Part I. — The Culture Forces.

§ 1. Popular Propaganda.

1. If anv one circumstance more than another differ-
entiates the life of to-day from that of older civilisations,
or from that of previous centuries of the modern era, it is
the diffusion of rationalistic views among the " common
people". In no other age is to be found the phenomenon
of widespread critical scepticism among the laboring
masses ; in all previous ages the constant and abject
ignorance of the mass of the people has been the sure
foothold of superstitious systems. And this vital change
in the distribution of knowledge is largely to be attributed
to the written [and spoken teaching of a line of men
who made popular enlightenment their great aim. Their
leading type is Thomas Paine, whom we haw seen
combining a gospel of democracy with a gospel of critical

c c

386 HISTORY OF EREETHOUGHT.

reason in the midst of the French") Revolution. Never
before had rationalism been made popular. The English
and French Deists had written for the middle and upper
classes. Peter Annet was practically the first who sought
to reach the multitude ; and his punishment [expressed
the special resentment aroused in the governing classes
by such a policy. Paine was to Annet as a cannon to a
musket, and through the democratic ferment of his day he
won an audience a hundredfold wider than Annet could
dream of reaching. The anger of the governing classes,,
in a time of anti-democratic panic, was proportional..
Paine would have been at least imprisoned for his Rights
of Man had he not fled from England in time; and the
sale of all his books was furiously prohibited and
systematically punished. Yet the)- circulated everywhere,
even in Protestant Ireland,1 hitherto affected [only under
the surface of upper-class life by Deism. The circulation
of Bishop Watson's Apology in reply only served to
spread the contagion, as it brought the issues before
multitudes who would not otherwise have heard of them."
As the years went on, the persecution in England grew
even fiercer ; but it was met with a stubborn hardihood
which wore out even the malice of piety. A name not to
be forgotten by those who value obscure service to human
freedom is that of Richard Carlile, who between 1819
and 1835 underwent nine years' imprisonment in his
unyielding struggle for the freedom of the Press, of
thought and of speech.3 On the basis of the propagandist
and publishing work done by him, and carried on diversely
by such free lances as Robert Taylor (ex-clergymanr
author of the Dicgesis, 1829, and The Devil's Pulpit,
1830), Charles Southwell (1814 — 1860), and William

' See Lecky, Hist, of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1892, iii, 382.

2 Cp. Conway's Lif<- of Paine, ii, 252-3.

3 See Harriet Mariineau's Mist^iy of the Peace, ed. 1877, ii, 87, as to the
treatment of those who acted as Carlile's shopmen. Women were
imprisoned as well as men, e.g., Susanna Wright and Matilda Roalfe,
as to whom see Wheeler's Dictionary, and last ref. Carlile's wife and sister
were likewise imprisoned with him ; and over twenty volunteer shopmen
in all went to jail.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 387

Hone,1 who ultimately became an independent preacher
— all three subjected to cruel imprisonments — at length
rose a systematic Secularist propaganda, the name having
relation to the term " Secularism ", invented by Mr.
George Jacob Holyoake.

2. Mr. Holyoake had been a missionary and martyr in
the movement of Socialism set up by Robert Owen,
whose teaching, essentially scientific on its psychological
or philosophical side, was the first effort to give system-
atic effect to democratic ideals by organising industry.
Owen was a Freethinker in all things ; and his whole
movement was so penetrated by an anti-theological spirit
that the clergy as a rule became its bitter enemies, though
such publicists as Macaulay and John Mill also combined
in scouting it on political and economic grounds. To a
considerable extent it was furthered by the popular deistic
philosophy of George and Andrew Combe, which then
had a great vogue2; and by the implications of phrenology,
then also in its most scientific and progressive stage.
When, for various reasons, Owen's movement dissolved,
the freethinking element seems to have been absorbed in
the Secular party, while the others appear to have gone in
part to build up the movement of Co-operation. The im-
prisonment of Mr. Holyoake (1842) for six months on a
trifling charge of blasphemy, is an illustration of the
brutal spirit of public orthodoxy at the time.3 Where
bigotry could thus only injure and oppress without
suppressing heresy, it stimulated resistance ; and the
result of the stimulus was the founding of a Secular
Society in 1852. Six years later there was elected to
the Presidency of the London Society of that name the
young Charles Bradlaugh, one of the greatest orators

1 Hone's most important service to popular culture was his issue of the
Apocryphal New Testament, which gave a fresh scientific basis to the popular
criticism of the Gospel history.

3 Of George Combe's Constitution of Man, a deistic work, over 50,000
copies were sold in Britain within twelve years, and 10,000 in America.
Advt. to 4th ed., 1839.

3 See the details in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England.

1 c _•

388 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

of his age, and one of the most powerful personalities
ever associated with a progressive movement. Thence-
forward the working masses in England were in large
part kept in touch with a Freethought which drew on
the results of the scientific and scholarly research of the
time, and wielded a dialectic of which trained opponents
confessed the power.1 When in the year 1880, on Brad-
laugh's election to Parliament as member for Northampton,
the Conservative Opposition began the historic proceedings
over the Oath question, they probably did more to
deepen and diffuse the popular Freethought movement
than Bradlaugh himself had done in the whole of his
previous career. The process was furthered by the policy
of prosecuting and imprisoning Mr. G. \V. Foote, editor
of the Freethinker, under the Blasphemy Laws — a course
not ventured on as against Bradlaugh. When Bradlaugh
took the oath and his seat in 18S5, under a ruling of the
Speaker which stultified the whole action of the Speaker
and majorities of the previous Parliament, and no less
that of the Law Courts, straightforward Freethought
stood fivefold stronger in England than in any previous
generation. Apart from their educative work, the
struggles and sufferings of the Secularist leaders had now
secured for Great Britain the abolition within one genera-
tion of the old burden of suretyship on newspapers, and
of the disabilities of non-theistic witnesses'- ; the freedom
of public meeting in the London parks ; the right of
avowed Atheists to sit in Parliament (Bradlaugh having
finally secured their title to make affirmation instead of
oath) ; and the virtual discredit of the Blasphemy Laws
as such. It is probable also that the treatment meted
out to Mrs. Besant marked the end of another form of
tyrannous outrage, already made historic in the case of
Shelley. Secured the custody of her children under a
marital deed of separation, she was deprived of it at

1 See Professor Flint's tribute to the reasoning power of I'.radlaugh
and Mr. Holyoake in his A nti-'l lit istic Theories, |th ed pp. 518-519.

2 See Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Charles Bradlaugh, i, i.yj, 288-9.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 389

law (1879) on her avowal of atheistic opinions, with the
result that her influence as a propagandist was immensely
increased.

3. Only in the United States has the public lecture
platform been made a means of propaganda to anything
like the extent seen in Britain : by far the greatest part
of the work in the States being done, however, by Colonel
Ingersoll, the leading American orator of the present
generation, and the most widely influential platform
propagandist of the century. No other single man, it is
believed, reaches such an audience by public speech. In
other countries, popular Freethought has been spread, as
apart from books, mainly by pamphlets and journalism,
and, in the Latin countries, by the organisation of
Freemasonry, which is there normally anti-clerical. In
France, the movement of Fourier (1772 — 1837), may
have counted for something as organising the secular
spirit among the workers in the period of the monarchic
and Catholic reaction ; but at no time were the proletariat
of Paris otherwise than largely Voltairean after the Revo-
lution, of which one of the great services (carried on by
Napoleon) was an improvement in popular education.
The new non-Christian systems of Saint Simon1 (1760 — ■
1823) and Auguste Comte (179S — 1857) never took any
practical hold among them ; but throughout the ccntury
they have been fully the most freethinking working-class
population in the world. In other countries the course
of popular culture in the first half of the century is some-
what difficult to trace ; but in the latter half, especially
in the last twenty years, freethinking journalism has
counted for much in various parts of Europe. The
influence of such journals is to be measured
by their circulation, which is never great, but by
their keeping up a habit of more or less instructed
freethinking among readers, to many of whom the

1 Saint-Simon, who proposed a "new Christianity ". expressly guarded
against direct appeals to the people. See Weil, Saint Simon et son CEuvre,
10J4, p. 193.

39° HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

instruction is not otherwise easily accessible. Probably
the least ambitious of them is an intellectual force
of a higher order than the highest grade of popular
religious journalism ; while some of the stronger, as De
Dageraad of Amsterdam, rank as high-class serious
reviews. In the more free and progressive countries,
however, freethought affects all periodical literature ; and
in France it partly permeates the ordinary newspapers.
In England, where a series of monthly or weekly publica-
tions of an emphatically freethinking sort has been nearly
continuous from about 1840,'' new ones rising in place of
those which succumbed to the commercial difficulties."
Such periodicals suffer an economic pinch in that they
cannot hope for much income from advertisements, which
are the chief sustenance of popular journals and magazines.
The same law holds elsewhere ; but in England and
America the high-priced reviews have been gradually
opened to rationalistic articles, the way being led by the
English Westminster Review and Fortnightly Review, both
founded with an eye to freer discussion.

4. It is a significant fact that Freethought propaganda
is often most active in countries where the Catholic
Church is most powerful. Thus in Belgium there are at
least three separate federations, standing for hundreds of
freethinking "groups"; in Spain there are freethought
societies in all the large towns, and at least half-a-dozen
freethought journals; in Portugal there have been a number

1 Before 1840 the popular freethought propaganda had been partly
carried on under cover of Radicalism, as, in Carlile's Republican and Lion,
and in the publications of William Hone. Cp. II 1 J. Wilson's article " The
National Church ", in Essays and Reviews, <»th ed. p. 152.

a Among the earlier may be noted The Atheist and Republican, 1841-2 ;
The Blasphemer, 1842 ; The Oracle oj Reason (conducted by Southwell), 1842,
etc. ; The Reasonet and Haald of Progress (largely conducted by Mr.
Holyoake), 1846-1861 ; Cooper's Journal ; or, unfitteted Thinker, etc., 1850,
etc. ; Freethinker's Magazine, 1N50, etc. ; London Investigator, 1854, etc. Mr.
Hradlaugh's Natit nal lu former, begun in i860, lasted till 1893. Mr. Foote's
Freethinker, begun in t88i, still subsists. Various freethinking monthlies
have risen and fallen since 1880 — e.g.. Our Comer, edited by Mrs. Besant,
1883-88; The Literal, and Progress, edited by Mr Foote, 1879-87; the Free
Review, transformed into the University Magazine, 1893-1898. The Reformer,
edited by Mrs. Hradlaugli Bonner, is the latest monthly venture.

EREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY.

-of societies, a weekly journal, 0 Scculo, of Lisbon ; and a
monthly review, 0 Livre Examc. In France and Italy,
where educated society is in large measure rationalistic,
the Masonic lodges do most of the personal and social
propaganda ; but there are federations of freethought
societies) in both countries. In Germany there is a
Frcidcnkcr Bund, with branches in many towns ; besides
a number of "free-religious" societies; neither form of
organisation, however, representing the main strength of
rationalism in either the working or the more educated
classes. The German police laws, further, put a rigid
check on all manner of platform and press propaganda
which could be indicted as hurting the feelings of religious
people ; so that a jest at the Holy Coat of Treves can
send a journalist to jail. Some index to the amount of
popular freethought that normally exists under the
surface in Germany is furnished by the strength of the
German freethought movement in the United States,
where, despite the tendency to the adoption of the
common] speech, there are many German societies, a
German federation of atheists, and a vigorous popular
organ, Dev Frcidcnkcr. In the South American republics
again, as in Italy and France, the Masonic Lodges are
predominantly freethinking ; and in Peru there is a Free-
thought League, with a weekly organ.

5. " Free-religious" societies, such as have been noted
in Germany, may be rated as forms of moderate free-
thought propaganda, and are to be found in all Protestant
countries, with all shades of development. A movement
of the kind has existed for a number of years back in
America, in the New England States and elsewhere, and
may be held to represent a theistic or agnostic thought
too advanced to adhere even to the Unitarianism which
during the two middle quarters of the century was
perhaps the predominant creed in new England. One of
the best types of such a gradual and peaceful evolution is
the South Place Institute (formerly "Chapel") of London,
where, under the famous orator W. J. Fox, nominally

39- HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

a Unitarian, there was preached between 1824 and 1852, a
theism tending to pantheism, perhaps traceable to elements
in the doctrine of Priestley, and passed on by Mr. Fox
to Robert Browning.1 In 1864 the charge passed to
Moncure D. Conway, under whom the congregation
quietly advanced during twenty years from Unitarianism
to a non-scriptural rationalism, embracing the shades of
philosophic theism, agnosticism, and anti-theism. The
Institute is now an open platform for rationalist and
anti-theological ethics. Part of such an evolution has
taken place among most of the Protestant Churches of
France, Switzerland, Hungary and Holland"; and the
orthodoxy of the chief churches in the latter country is
now very doubtful.

§ 2. Scholarly and Other Biblical Criticism.

I. While in France, under the restored monarchy,
intellectual activity was mainly headed into historical,
philosophical, and sociological study, and in England
orthodoxy predominated in theological discussion, the
German rationalistic movement went on among the
specialists, despite the liberal religious reaction of
Schleiermacher.a Beginning with the Old Testament,
criticism gradually saw more and more of mere myth
where of old men had seen miracle, and where the first
rationalists saw natural events misconceived. In time
the process reached the New Testament, every successive
step being resisted in the old fashion ; and after much
laborious work, now mostly forgotten, by a whole company
of scholars, among whom Paulus, Fichhorn, l)e Wette,

1 Cp Priestley, / aj on the first Principles of Government, 2nd ed. 1771,
pp. 257-261, and Conway's Centenary Hist* nth Place, pp. 63, 77, .So.

lC] / ■ Progress of Religious Thought as illustiated in the Protestant Church
of France, by I >r J R. Beard, 1861 ; Wilson's article in Essays and Re\
Pearson, Infidelity, its Aspects, etc., 1*53, pp. 560-4, 575-^4.

•' As to the absolute predominance of rationalistic unbelief in educated

Germany in the first third of the century, see the Memoirs of F. Perthes,

Eng. tr , 2nd ed., ii, -'40-5, 255, 26i»-^75. Despite the various reactions-

ted by Perth 1 lear that the tables have not since

been turned. Cp. Pearson, Infidelity, pp. 554'j, 569-574.

FREETHOUGHT IX NINETEENTH CENTURY. 3'j.J

G. L. Bauer. Bretschneider, and Gabler were prominent,1
the train as it were exploded on the world in the great
Life of Jesus by Strauss (1835). Before this time,
" German Rationalism " had become the terror of the
English orthodox; and henceforth a scholarly "infidelity"
had to be faced throughout the educated world. On other
lines as well as Strauss's, the German critical research
proceeded continuously till for the English-speaking world
the results were combined in the anonymous work Super-
natural Religion (1874-77), a performance too solid to be
disposed of by the episcopal and other attacks made upon
it. Similar work on a less extensive scale had been done
in England, France, and America before and after the
middle of the century by such writers as C. C. Hexnell
(whose Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity, 1838,
was translated into German by Strauss), Theodore
Parker, F. \Y. Newman, W. R. Greg, R. W. Mackay;
P. Larroque (Examen Critique des doctrines de la religion
chretienne, i860) ; Gustave d'Eichthal {Lcs Evangile
Ptie. I, 1863) : Alphoxse Peyrat (Histoire elementaire et
critique de Jesus, 1864) : Thomas Scott' (English Life of
Jesus, 1871) ; while in France in particular the rationalistic
view had been applied with singular literary charm, if
with imperfect consistency, by Rexax in his series ot
s :ven volumes on the origins of Christianity, and with
more scientific breadth of view by Ernest Havet in his
Chistianisme et ses Origines (1872, etc.). Renan's Vie de Jesus
especially has been read throughout the civilised world.

2. Old Testament Criticism, methodically begun by
scholars before that of the New Testament, has in the
last generation been carried to new lengths, alter having
long missed some of the first lines of advance. Mailing
from the clues given by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Sinn mi,

1 See a good account of the development in Strauss's Introduction. I [e
notes (§ 11, 1 it the most extended application of the mythical principle

to the Gospels before his time was in an anonymous work on , and

v published in 1 799.

■ Y. imphlet-propaganda onxleistic lines had so wide an influence

during many years.

394 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

and above all on the suggestion of Astruc (whose work
on the subject had appeared in 1753) as to the twofold
element implied in the God-names Jehovah and Elohim,
it had proceeded, for sheer lack of radical scepticism, on
the assumption that the Pentateuchal history was true.
Little sure progress had thus been made between the
issue of the Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures of
the Scotch Catholic priest Dr. Geddes in 1800 and the
publication of the first part of the work of Bishop
•Colenso on The Pentateuch (1862). This, by the ad-
mission of Kuenen, corrected the initial error of the
specialists, by applying to the narrative the common-
sense tests suggested long before by Voltaire. Thence-
forward the " higher criticism " proceeded with such
substantial certainty on the lines of Kuenen and Well-
hausen that whereas Professor Robertson Smith twenty
years ago had to leave the Free Church of Scotland for
propagating Kuenen's views, Canons of the English
Church are now doing the work with the acquiescence
of perhaps nine clergymen out of ten ; and American
preachers are found projecting an edition of the Bible
which shall exhibit the critical results to the general
reader. Heresy on this score is ''become merchandise".
The analytical treatment of the New Testament on the
same principles naturally lags behind ; though even that
is to some extent popularised for general readers in
England by such a work as that of Mr. J. E. Carpenter
on The First Three Gospels — a Unitarian publication.

3. The outcome of this criticism is worth noting, in
connection with the results of Assyrian research. Whereas
the defenders of the faith even a generation a^r<> habitually
stood to the "argument from prophecy", the conception
of prophecy as prediction has now become meaningless as
regards the so-called Mosaic books; and the constant
disclosure of interpolations and adaptations in the others
has discredited it as regards the "prophets" themselves.
At the same time, a comparison of Biblical with Assyrian
and Babylonian texts reduces the cosmology and anthro-

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 395

pology of Genesis once for all to the level of normal
mythology. The old argument for the compatibility of
the Genesaic creation story with geology is thus welcome
now only to those who are ignorant of the results of
Assyriology. That the clerical exponents of the higher
•criticism should in the face of their own results continue to
speak of the " inspiration " of their texts will not surprise
the reader who has noted the analogous phenomena in
the history of the religious systems of antiquity.

§ 3. The Natural Sciences.

1. The power of intellectual habit and tradition had
preserved among the majority of educated men, to the
end of the eighteenth century, a notion of deity either
slightly removed from that of the ancient Hebrews or
ethically modified without being philosophically trans-
formed, though the astronomy of Copernicus, Galileo, and
Newton had immensely modified the Hebraic conception
of the physical universe. We have seen that Newton did
not really hold by the Christian scheme — he wrote at
times, in fact, as a pantheist — but some later astronomers
seem to have done so. When, however, the great
Laplace developed the nebular hypothesis, previously
guessed at by Bruno and outlined by Kant, orthodox
psychological habit was rudely shaken as regards the
Biblical account of creation; and like every other previous
advance in physical science this was denounced as
atheistic1 — which, as we know, it was, Laplace having
declared in reply to Napoleon that he had no need of the
God hypothesis. Confirmed by ;ill subsequent science,
Laplace's system negates once for all the historic theism
of the Christian era ; and the subsequent concrete de-
velopments of astronomy, giving as they do such an
insistent and overwhelming impression of physical infinity,
has made the " Christian hypothesis "2 fantastic save for

1 See Prof. A. D. White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theot
1896, i, 17, 22.

2 The phrase is used by a French Protestant pastor. La veriti chrctienne
et la doute modernt (Conferences), 1879, pp. 24-25

396 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

minds capable of enduring any strain on the sense of
consistency. Paine brought the difficulty vividly home
to the common intelligence ; and though the history of
orthodoxy is a history of the success of institutions and
majorities in imposing incongruous conformities, the per-
ception of the incongruity on this side must have been a
force of disintegration. The freethinking of the French
astronomers of the Revolution period marks a decisive
change.

2. A more direct effect, however, was probably wrought
by the science of geology, which in a stable and tested
form belongs to the present century. Of its theoretic
founders in the eighteenth century, Werner and Dr. James
Hutton (1726 — 1797), the latter and more important1 is
known from his Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge
(1794) to have been consciously a freethinker on more
grounds than that of his naturalistic science ; and his
Theory of the World (1795) was duly denounced as
atheistic.- Whereas the physical infinity of the universe
almost forced the orthodox to concede a vast cosmic
process of some kind as preceding the shaping of the
earth and solar system, the formation of these within six
days was one of the plainest assertions in the sacred
books ; and every system of geology excluded such a con-
< eption. As the evidence accumulated, in the hands of
men mostly content to deprecate religious opposition
there: was duly evolved the quaint compromise of the
doctrine that Biblical six " days " meant six ages — a
fantasy still cherished in the pulpit. Of all the inductive
sciences, geology had been most retarded by the Christian

1 Cp. Whewell, Hist, of the Inductive ScietiCi . 3rd <■<! . iii, 505.

- White, as > ited, i, 222-3, gives a selei tion "! the language in general
11 e among theologians on the subject. One oi the most angry and most
absurd of the early opponents of geology was the poel Cowper. See his
Task, B in. 1 lor the prevailing religii

* The early policy oi the Geological Society of London (1807), which
professed to seek for facts and to disclaim theories as premature (cp.
Whewell, iii, 428; Buckle, iii, 392), was at least as much socially as
prudential.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 397

canonisation of error.1 Even the plain fact that what is
dry land had once been sea was obstinately distorted
through centuries, though Ovid2 had put the observations
of Pythagoras in the way of all scholars; and though
Leonardo da Vinci had insisted on the visible evidence ;
nay, deistic habit could keep even Voltaire preposterously
incredulous on the subject.3 When the scientific truth
began to force its way in the teeth of such authorities as
Cuvier, who stood for the " Mosaic " doctrine, the effect
was proportionately marked ; and whether or not the
suicide of the orthodox Hugh Miller (1856) was in any
way due to despair on perception of the collapse of his
reconciliation of geology with Genesis,4 the scientific
demonstration made an end of revelationism for many.

3. Still more rousing, however, was the effect of the
science of zoology, as placed upon a broad scientific
foundation by Charles Darwin. Here again steps had
been taken in previous generations on the right path,
without any general movement on the part of scientific
and educated men. Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus
Darwin, had in his Zoonomia (1794) anticipated many
of the positions of the French Lamarck, who in 1801
began developing the views he fully elaborated in 1815, as
to the descendance of all existing species from earlier
forms.5 As early as 1795 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had
begun to suspect that all species are variants on a
primordial form of life; and at the same time (1794-5)
Goethe in Germany had reached similar convictions.6
That views thus reached almost simultaneously in Ger-

1 Cp. the details given by Whewell, iii, 406-S, 411-13, 50G-7, as to early
theories of a sound order, all of which came to nothing. Steno, a Dane
resident in Italy in the 17th century, had reached non-scriptural and just
views on several points. Cp. White, i, 215.

- Metamorphoses, lib. xv.

a See his essay, Des Singularity de la Nature, ch. xii ; and his Diss:;!.;
sui' les changements arrives dans notre globe.

4 He had just completed a work on the subject at his death.

3 See Charles Darwin's Historical Sketch prefixed to the Origin of S/y

8 Meding, as cited by Darwin, 6th ed., i, p. xv Goethe seems to have
had his general impulse from Kielmeyer, wh" ' j caught Cuvier, Virchow,
Gdthc ah Naturforscher, 1SC1, Deilage v

39§ HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

many, England, and France, at the time of the French
Revolution, should have to wait for two generations
before even meeting the full stress of battle, must be put
down as one of the results of the general reaction. Saint-
Hilaire, publishing his views in 1828, was officially over-
borne by the Cuvier School in France.1

4. Other anticipations of Darwin's doctrine in England
and elsewhere came practically to nothing- as regarded
the general opinion, until Robert Chambers in 1844
published anonymously his Vestiges of the Natural History
of Creation, a work which found a wide audience, incurring
bitter hostility not only from the clergy but from some
specialists who, like Huxley, were later to take the
evolutionist view on Darwin's persuasion. Chambers it
was that brought the issue within general knowledge ;
and he improved his position in successive editions. It
was after all this preparation, popular and academic, and
after the theory of transmutation of species had been
definitely pronounced erroneous by the omniscient
Whewell,3 that Darwin produced (1859) his irresistible
arsenal of arguments and facts, the Origin of Species,
expounding systematically the principle of Natural Selec-
tion, suggested to him by the economic philosophy of
Malthus, and independently and contemporaneously
arrived at by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace. The outcry
was enormous; but the battle was practically won within
twenty vears. Thus the idea of a specific creation of all
forms of life by an originating Deity — the conception
which virtually united the Deists and Christians of last
century against the atheists — was finally and scientifically
exploded. The principle of personal divine rule or
providential intervention had now been philosophically

1 The prevailing spirit in England about the same time may be gathered
from the account, in the first of Lawrence's Lectures on Physiology, Zoology,
and the Natural History of Man ( 1 .S 1 7 ) . of the attacks made on him and the
French physiologists of the day by the orthodox Abernethy.

• See Darwin's Sketch, as cited.

; Hist. 0/ the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed., iii, 479-4^3 Whewell is said to
have refused to allow a copy of the Origin of Species to be placed in the
Trinity College Library. White, i, 84.

FREETHOUGHT IX NINETEENTH CENTURY. 399,

excluded successively (1) from astronomy by the system
of Newton; (2) from the science of earth-formation by
the system of Laplace and the new geology ; (3) from
the science of living organisms by the new zoology. It
only needed that the deistic conception should be further
excluded from the human sciences — from anthropology,
from the philosophy of history, and from ethics — to
complete, at least in outline, the rationalisation of
modern thought. Not that the process was complete
even as regarded zoology. Despite the plain implications
of the Origin of Species, the doctrine of the Descent of
Man (1 871) came on many as a shocking surprise ; and
evoked a new fury of protest. The lacunas in Darwin,
further, had to be supplemented ; and much speculative
power has been spent on the task by Haeckel, without
thus far establishing complete agreement. But the
Judseo-Christian doctrine of special creation and provi-
dential design appears, even in the imperfectly educated
and largely ill-placed society of our day, to be already a
lost cause.

§ 4. Abstract Philosophy and Ethics.

1. The philosophy of Kant, while giving the theo-
logical class a new apparatus of defence as against
common-sense freethinking, forced none the less on
theistic philosophy a great advance from the orthodox
positions. Thus his immediate successors Fichte and
Schelling produced systems of which one was loudly
denounced as atheistic, while the other is not easily
distinguishable from pantheism.1 Neither seems to have
had any influence on concrete religious opinion." Hegel
in turn, wnile adapting his philosophic system to
practical exigencies by formulating a philosophic Trinity
and hardily defining Christianity as " Absolute Religion '
in comparison with the various forms of " Natural

1 Such is Saintes's view of Schelling. HLt. ait. du rationalism m
Allemagnt, p. 323.
- Id., pp. 322-4.

400 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Religion ", counted in a great degree as a disintegrating
influence, and was in a very practical way anti-Christian.1
His abstractions lent themselves equally to all creeds,
and some of the most revolutionary of the succeeding
movements of German thought — as those of Strauss,'
Feuerbach, and Marx — professedly founded on him.
Schopenhauer and Hartmann in turn being even less
sustaining to orthodoxy, and later orthodox systems
failing to impress, there came in due course the cry of
"Back to Kant", where at least orthodoxy had some
formal semblance of sanction. On the whole, the effect
has probably been to make for the general discredit of
theistic philosophy, the surviving forms of Hegelianism
being little propitious to current religion. And though
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche can hardly be said to
carry on the task of philosophy either in spirit or in effect,
yet the rapid intensification of hostility to current religion
which their writings in particular manifest* must be
admitted to stand for a deep revolt against the Kantian
compromise.

2. From the collisions of philosophic systems in
Germany, there emerged two great practical freethinking
forces, the teachings of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-76)
and Ludwig Buechner. The former, a professed
Hegelian, in his Essence of Christianity (1841) and Essence
of Religion (185 1), supplied one of the first adequate
modern statements of the positively rationalistic position
as against Christianity and Theism, in terms of philoso-
phic as well as historical insight, a statement to which
there is no characteristically modern answer save in terms

1 Cp. Hagenbach, daman Rationalism, pp. 364-g ; Kenan, Etudes d'histoire
religieuse, 5e edit., p. 406.

- Bku.no Bauer at first opposed Strauss and afterwards went even
further than he, professing Hegelianism all the while. Cp. Hagenbach,
pp. 369 372 ; Farrar, Cnt. hist, of Freethought, pp. 387-8.

;| See Schopenhauer's dialogues on Religion and Immortality, and his
essay on The Christian System (Eng. trans in Schopenhauer Series by T B.
Saunders), ami Nietzsche's A nttchrist. The latter work is discussed by the
v. liter in the University Magazine, June, 1897.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 401

of the refined sentimentalism of Renan,1 fundamentally
averse alike to scientific precision and intellectual con-
sistency. On Feuerbach's Essence of Religion followed the
resounding explosion of Biichner's Force and Matter (1855),
which in large measure, but with much greater mastery
of scientific detail, does for the plain man of this century
what d'Holbach in his chief work sought to do for the
last. Constantly vilified, even in the name of philosophy,
in the exact tone and spirit of animal irritation which
marks the religious vituperation of all forms of rationalism
in previous ages ; and constantly misrepresented as pro-
fessing to explain an infinite universe when it does but
show the hollowness of all supernaturalist explanations,2
the book steadily holds its ground as a manual of anti-
mysticism.3 Between them, Feuerbach and Biichner may
be said to have framed for their age an atheistic " System
of Nature ", concrete and abstract, without falling into
the old error of substituting one apriorism for another.

3. In France, the course of thought had been hardly
less revolutionary. Philosophy, like everything else, had
been affected by the legitimist restoration ; and between
Victor Cousin and the other " classic philosophers " of
the first third of the century, orthodoxy was nominally
reinstated. But the one really energetic and characteristic
philosophy produced in the new France was that of
Auguste Comte, which as set forth in the Cours de
Philosophic Positive (1830-42) practically reaffirmed while
it recast and supplemented the essentials of the anti-
theological rationalism of the previous age, and in that
sense rebuilt French positivism, giving that new name to
the naturalistic principle. The later effort of Comte to
frame a politico - ecclesiastical system never succeeded

1 See his paper, M. Feuerbach et la nouvelle ecole hegelienne, in Etudes
d'histoire religieuse.

2 Biichner expressly rejects the term " materialism " because of its
misleading implications or connotations. Cp., in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's
Charles Bradlaugh, the discussion in Part II, ch. i, § 3 (by J. M. R.).

3 While the similar works of Carl Vogt and Moleschott have gone
out of print, Biichner's, recast again and again, continues to be republished.

D D

402 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

beyond the formation of a politically powerless sect ; but
both in France and England his philosophy tinged all the
new thought of his time, his leading" English adherents
in particular being among the most esteemed publicists of
the daw In France, the general effect of the rationalistic
movement had been such that when TAINE, under the
Third Empire, assailed the whole " classic " school in his
Philosophes Classiques (1857), his success was at once
generally recognised, and a non-Comtist positivism was
thenceforth the ruling philosophy. The same thing has
happened in Italy, where quite a number of university
professors are explicitly positivist in their philosophic
teaching.1

4. In Britain, where abstract philosophy after Berkeley
had been left to Hume and the Scotch thinkers who
opposed him, metaphysics were for a generation practically
overridden by the moral and social sciences; Hartley's
Christian Materialism making small headway as formu-
lated by him. The proof of the change wrought in the
direction of native thought is seen in the personalities of
the men who, in the teeth of the reaction, applied ration-
alistic method to ethics and psychology. Bentham and
James Mill were in their kindred fields among the most
convinced and active freethinkers of their day, the former
attacking both clericalism and orthodox}- :s while the
latter, no less pronounced in his private opinions, more
cautiously built up a rigorously naturalistic psychology
in his Analysis of the Human Mind (1839). Bentham 's
utilitarianism was so essentially anti-Christian that he
could hardly have been more disliked by discerning theists
if he had avowed his share in the authorship of tin-
atheistic Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion
which, elaborated from his manuscript by no less
a thinker than George Grote, was published in

1 Cp. Pr f Botta's chapter in Uelierweg's Hist, of Philcs., ii, 51 J-51G.
- In his Church of Englandism audits Catechism Examined (1818) and Not
Paul but Jesus (1S23), " by Gamaliel Smith."

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 403

1822 ;l but his ostensible restriction of his logic to practical
problems of law and morals secured him a wider
influence than was wielded by any of the higher publicists
of his day. The whole tendency of his school was in-
tensely rationalistic ; and it indirectly affected all thought
by its treatment of economics, which from Hume and
Smith onwards had been practically divorced from
theology. Even clerical economists, such as Malthus and
Chalmers, alike orthodox in religion, furthered naturalism
in philosophy in spite of themselves.

5. When English metaphysical philosophy revived
with Sir William Hamilton and Dean Mansel, they gave
the decisive proof that the orthodox cause had been
philosophically lost while being socially won, since their
theism emphasised in the strongest way the negative
criticism of Kant, leaving Deity void of all cognisable
qualities. Their metaphysic thus served as an open and
avowed basis for the naturalistic First Principles (1860-62)
of Herbert Spencer, wherein, with an unfortunate laxity
of metaphysic on the author's own part, and a no less
unfortunate lack of consistency as regards the criticism of
religious and anti-religious positions, the new cosmic
conceptions are unified in a masterly conception of evolu-
tion as a universal law. Strictly, the book is a " System
of Nature " rather than a philosophy in the sense of a
study of the grounds and limitations of knowledge : that
is to say, it is on the former ground alone that it is
coherent and original. But its very imperfections on the
other side have probably promoted its reception among
minds already shaken in theology by the progress <>t
concrete science ; while at the same time such imper-
fections give a hostile foothold to the revived forms ol
theism. Even these, however, in particular the ne<>-
Hegelian system associated with the name of the late

1 Under the pseudonym of l'hilip Beauchamp. See The M. I

George Grotc, edited by Frolessor Bain, 1873, p. r8 ; Atheiurum, Maj
I,S7J '. J- S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 69 ; and Three Essays on ;. .
This remarkable treatise, which greatly influenced Mill, is the most
stringent attack made on theism between d'Holbach ami Feuerbach

D D 2

404 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Professor T. H. Green, fail to give any shelter to Christian
orthodox)-. In England, as on the Continent, the bulk
of philosophical activity is now dissociated from the
Christian creed.

6. The effect of the ethical pressure of the deistic
attack on the intelligence of educated Christians was
fully seen even within the Anglican Church before the
middle of the century. The unstable Coleridge, who had
gone round the whole compass of opinion1 when he began
to wield an influence over the more sensitive of the
younger churchmen, was strenuous in a formal affirmation
of the doctrine of the Trinity, but no less anxious to modify
the doctrine of Atonement on which the conception of the
Trinity was historically founded. In the hands of Maurice,
the doctrine of sacrifice became one of example to the end
of subjective regeneration of the sinner. This view is
specially associated with the teaching of Coleridge ; but
it was quite independently held in England before him by
the Anglican Dr. Parr (1747 — 1825), who appears to have
been heterodox upon most points in the orthodox creed,-
and who, like Coleridge and Hegel, held by a modal as
against a "personal" Trinity. Such Unitarian accom-
modations presumably reconciled many to Christianity
and the Church who would otherwise have abandoned it ;
and the only orthodox rebuttal seems to have been the old
and dangerous resort to the Butlerian argument, to the
effect that the God of Nature shows no such benign
fatherliness as the anti-sacrificial school ascribe to him.3

7. The same pressure of moral argument was doubt-
less potent in the development of " Socinian " or other
rationalistic views in the Protestant churches of German)-,

1 As to his fluctuations, which lasted till his death, cp. the author's Nctv
Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897, pp. 144-7, I49_I54i iC8-y.

2 Field's Mom 'irs of Parr, 1828, ii, 363, 374-9.

3 See Pearson's Infidelity, its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies, 1853, p. 215, ff.
The position of Maurice dnd Parr (associated with other and later names)
is there treated as one of the prevailing forms of " infidelity,", and called
spiritualism. In (iermany, the orthodox made the same dangerous
answer to the theistic criticism. See the Memoirs 0/ !■'. Perthes, Eng. tr ,
2nd ed., ii, 242-3.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 405

Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, and France in the first
half of the century. Such development had gone so far
that by the middle of the century the churches in question
were, to the eye of an English evangelical champion, pre-
dominantly rationalistic, and in that sense "infidel".1
Reactions have been claimed before and since ; but in
our own age there is little to show for them. In the
United States, again, the ethical element probably pre-
dominated in the recoil of Emerson from Christian
orthodoxy even of the Unitarian stamp, as well as in the
heresy of Theodore Parker, whose aversion to the
theistic ethic of Jonathan Edwards was so strong as to
make him blind to the reasoning power of that stringent
Calvinist. At the same time, all such moral accom-
modations in Protestant churches, while indirectly coun-
tenancing freethought, have served to maintain Christian
organisations, with their inevitable accompaniments of
social intolerance, as against more open freethinking ;
and in themselves they represent a perversion of the ethics
■of the intellectual life.

§ 5. The Sociological Sciences.

1. A rationalistic treatment of human history had
been explicit or implicit in the whole literature of
Deism ; and had been attempted with various degrees of
success by Bodin, Vico, Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire,
and Condorcet, as well as by lesser men. So clear
had been the lead to naturalistic views of social growth
in the Politics of Aristotle, and so strong the influence of
the new naturalistic spirit, that it is seen even in the
work of Goguet (1769), who sets out as biblically as
Bossuet ; while in Germany Herder and Kant framed
really luminous generalisations; and a whole group <>l
sociological writers rose up in the Scotland of tin-
middle and latter parts of the century. Here again there
was reaction ; but in France the orthodox Guizot did much
to promote broader views than his own ; Eusi BE SAL-

1 Pearson, as cited, pp. 560-2, 56S-579, 5S3-4.

406 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

verte in his essay Dc la Civilisation (1813) made a highly

intelligent effort towards a general view ; and Charles

Comte in his Traitc dc Legislation (1826) made a marked

scientific advance on the suggestive work of Herder. At

length, in the great work of Auguste Comte, scientific

method was applied so effectively and concretely to the

general problem that, despite his serious fallacies, social

science again took rank as a solid study. In England

and America bv the works of Draper and Bucrle, in

the sixth and later decades of the century, the conception

of law in human history was at length widely popularised,

to the due indignation of the supernaturalists, who saw

the last great field of natural phenomena passing like

others into the realm of science. Mr. Spencer's Principles

of Sociology nevertheless clinched the scientific claim by

taking sociological law for granted ; and the new science has

continually progressed in acceptance. In the hands of

all its leading exponents in all countries — Lester Ward,

Giddings, Guyau, Letourneau, Tarde, Ferri, Durkheim,

Gumplowicz, Lilienfeld, Schaffle — it is entirely naturalistic,

though some Catholic professors continue to inject into it

theological assumptions. It cannot be said, however,

that a general doctrine of social evolution is even yet

fully established. The problem is complicated by the

profoundly contentious issues of practical politics ; and in

the resulting diffidence of official teachers there arises

a notable opening for obscurantism, which has been duly

forthcoming.

2. Two lines of scientific study, it would appear, must
be thoroughly followed up before the ground can be
pronounced clear for authoritative conclusions — those of
anthropological archaeology (including comparative myth-
ology and comparative hierology) and economic analysis.
On both lines, great progress has been made ; but on
both occurs a resistance of vested interests. Such
students asTYLOR, Wait/, and Spencer, have sifted and
classified our knowledge as to primitive social life; and a
whole lim- of comparative mythologists, from Dupuis and

FEEETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 407

Volney to Mannhardt and Frazer, have enlarged and
classified our knowledge of primitive religious norms and
tendencies. As regards economics, less work has been
done. Buckle applied the economic principle with force
and accuracy to the case of the great primary civilisations,
but only in a partial and biassed way to modern history ;
and the school of Marx incurs reaction by applying it
fanatically. Thus economic interests and clericalism join
hands to repel an economic theory of history ; and
clericalism itself represents a vast economic interest when
it wards off the full application of the principle of com-
parative mythology to Christian lore. The really great
performance of Dupuis was not scientifically improved
upon, Strauss failing to profit by it. In his hands the
influence of Pagan myth counts almost for nothing ; and
Renan practically waived the whole principle. Thus the
" higher criticism " of both the Old and New Testaments
remains radically imperfect ; and specialists in mythology
are found either working all round Gospel myth without
once touching it, or unscientifically claiming to put it, as
" religion ", on a plane above science. All scientific
thought, however, turns in the direction of a complete
law of historical evolution ; and such a law must neces-
sarily make an end of the supernaturalist conception as
regards every aspect of human life, ethical, social,
religious, and political. The struggle lies finally between
the scientific or veridical instinct and the sinister interests
founded on economic endowments, and buttressed by use
and wont.

3. Psychology, considered as a department of anthro-
pology, may perhaps as fitly be classed among the
sociological sciences as under philosophy ; though it
strictly overlaps on that as well as on biology. However
defined, it has counted for much in the dissolution of
supernaturalist beliefs, from the tentatives of Diderot
to the latest refinements of physiological experiment, It
was the perception of this tendency that, two generations
ago, secured the abandonment of phrenology to the.

408 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

disastrous devotion of amateurs, after men like George
and Andrew Combe, sincere theists, as were Gall and
Spurzheim before them, had made it a basis of a great
propaganda of social and educational reform. The
development of the principle of brain localisation, how-
ever, is only a question of time, there being between the
procedure of the early scientific phrenologists and those
of the later anatomists only a difference of method. All
the ethical implications of phrenology belong to the
science of brain in any of its developments, being indeed
implicit in the most general principles of biological
science ; and the abstention of later specialists from all
direct application of their knowledge to religious and
ethical issues is simply the condition of their economic
existence as members of university staffs. But the old
principle ubi tres medici, duo athci, is truer to-day than
ever, being countervailed only by the fact signified just as
truly in the other saw, ubi panis, ibi Dens. While the
priest's bread depends on his creed, the physician's must
be similarly implicated.

§ 6. Poetry and Fine Letters.

i. The whole imaginative literature of Europe, in the
generation after the French Revolution, reveals directly
or indirectly the transmutation that the eighteenth
century had worked in religious thought. In France, the
literary reaction is one of the first factors in the orthodox
revival. Its leader and type was Chateaubriand, in
whose typical work, the Genie du Christianismc (1802), lies
the proof that whatever might be the "shallowness" of
Voltairism, it was as profundity beside the sentimentalism
of the majority who repelled it. The book is essentially
the eloquent expression of a nervous recoil from every-
thing savoring of cool reason and clear thought, a recoil
partly initiated by the sheer stress of excitement of the
near past ; partly fostered by the belief that freethinking
in religion had virtually made the Revolution; partly
enhanced by the tendency of every warlike period to

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 409

develop emotional rather than reflective life. What was
really masterly in Chateaubriand was the style ; and senti-
mental pietism had now the prestige of fine writing, so
long the specialty of the other side. Yet a generation of
monarchism served to wear out the ill-based credit of the
literary reaction : and belles lettres began to be rationalistic
as soon as politics began again to be radical. The
prestige of the neo-Christian school was already spent
before the revolution of 1848; and the inordinate vanity
■of Chateaubriand, who died in that year, had undone his
special influence still earlier. For the rest, the belief
that he had brought back Christianity to a France
denuded of worship by atheists, is part of the mythology
of the Reformation. Already in February, 1795, on the
principle of a separation between Church and State,
public worship had been put on a perfectly free footing ;
and in 1796 the 36,000 parishes were served by 25,000
cures.1 Napoleon's arrangement with the Papacy had
merely restored the old political connections ; and
Chateaubriand had created merely a literary mode and
sentiment.

2. The literary history of France since his death
decides the question, so far as it can be thus decided.
From 1848 till our own day it has been predominantly
naturalistic and non-religious. After Guizot and the
Thierrys, the nearest approach to Christianity in a
leading French historian is perhaps in the case <>t
Michelet, who, however, was a mere heretic in the eyes
of the faithful. In poetry and fiction the predominance
of one or other shade of freethinking is signal. Even
Balzac, who grew up in the age of reaction, makes
essentiallv for rationalism by his intense analysis : and

1 See the details in the Appendice to the Etudes of M. Gazier, bel
cited. This writer's account is the more decisive seeing that his hi, is is
clerical, and that, writing before M. Aulard, he had to a considerable
extent retained the old illusion as to the "decreeing of atheism " by tin-
Convention (p. 313). See pp. 230-260 as to the readjustment effected by
Gregoire, while the conservative clergy were still striving to undo tlu>
Revolution.

410 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

after him the difficulty is to find a great French novelist
who is not frankly rationalistic. George Sand will
probably not be claimed by orthodoxy ; and Beyle,
Constant, Flaubert, Merimee, Zola, Daudet, Mau-
passant, and the De Goncourts, make a list against
which can be set only the names of the distinguished
decadent Huysmans, who has become a Trappist after
a life marked by a philosophy of an extremely different
complexion, and of M. Bourget, an artist of the second
order.

3. In French poetry the case is hardly otherwise.
Beranger was a Voltairean. Lamartine goes to the side
of Christianity ; but De Musset, the most inspired of
decadents, was no more Christian than Heine, save for
what a critic has called " la banale religiosite de VEspoir
en Dicu" ;' and the pessimist Baudelaire had not even that
to show. The grandiose theism of Victor Hugo, again,
is stamped only with his own image and superscription ;
and in his great contemporary Leconte de Lisle
we have one of the most convinced and aggressive
freethinkers of the century, a fine scholar and a self-
controlled pessimist, who felt it well worth his while
to write a little Popular History of Christianity (1871)
which would have delighted d'Holbach. It is significant,
on the other hand, that the exquisite religious verse of
Verlaine was the product of an incurable neuropath, like
the latter work of Huysmans, and stands for decadence
pure and simple. While French belles lettres thus in
general made for rationalism, criticism was naturally not
behindhand. Sainte-Beuve, the most widely appreciative
though not the most scientific of critics, had only a
literary sympathy with the religious types over whom he
spent so much effusive research ; Edmond Scherer was
an unbeliever almost against his will ; Taine, though
reactionary on political grounds in his latter years, was
the typical French rationalist of his time; and though
M. Brunct iere, whose preferences are all for Bossuet, makes
1 I.anson, Hist. (If hi litt. frangaise, p. 951.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 41I

" the bankruptey of science" the text of his somewhat facile
philosophy, the most scientific and philosophic head in
the whole line of French critics, the late Emile Henne-
QUIN, was wholly a rationalist ; and even the rather
reactionary Jules Lemaitre has not maintained his early
attitude of austerity towards Renan.

4. In England, it was due above all to Shelley that
the very age of reaction was confronted with unbelief in
lvric form. His immature Queen Mab was vital enough
with conviction to serve as an inspiration to a whole Ik >st
of unlettered freethinkers not only in its own generation but
in the next. Whether he would not in later life, had he
survived, have passed to a species of mystic Christianity,
reacting like Coleridge, but with a necessary difference, is
a question pressingly raised by parts of the Hellas. But
his work, as done, sufficed to keep for radicalism and
rationalism the crown of song as against all the orthodoxy
of the elderly Wordsworth and of Southey ; and Cole-
ridge's (amended) orthodoxy came upon him after his
hour of poetic transfiguration was past. On the other
side, Scott's honest but unintellectual romanticism, as we
know from Newman, certainly favored the Tractarian
reaction, to which it was aesthetically though hardly
emotionally akin ; but the far more potent influence of
BYRON, too wayward to hold a clear philosophy, but too
intensely alive to realities to be capable of Scott's feudal
orthodoxy, must have counted for heresy even in England,
and was one of the greatest forces of revolutionary revival
for the whole of Europe. Nor has the balance of English
poetry ever reverted to the side of faith. Even Tennyson,
who more than once struck at rationalism below the belt,
is in his own despite the poet of doubt as much as oi
credence, however he might wilfully attune himself to the
key of faith ; and the unparalleled optimism ^>( Browning
evolved a form of Christianity sufficiently alien t«> tin-
historic creed.1 In CLOUGH and Maiihlw A.RNOLD,

1 Cp. Mrs Sutherland Orr's article on The Religit ' • 0/ ■ as of K
Browning in the Cvntcmporary Review, Dec, 1891, p. 'S7S

412 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

again, we have the positive record of surrendered faith ;
and the whole literary influence of Arnold's later life,
with its curious gospel of church-going and Bible-reading
atheism, was inevitably destructive even of the con-
formities he preached. Alongside of him, Mr. Swinburne
put into his verse the freethinking temper that Leconte de
Lisle reserved for prose ; and the ill-starred but finely
gifted James Thomson (" B.V.") was no less definitely
though despairingly an unbeliever. Among our younger
poets, finally, the balance is pretty much the same; Mr.
Watson declaring in worthily noble diction for a high
agnosticism : and Mr. Davidson defying orthodox ethics
in the name of his very antimonian theology; while on
the side of the regulation religion — since Mr. Yeats is but
a stray Druid — can be cited at best the regimental
psalmody of Mr. Kipling, lyrist of trumpet and drum ; the
stained-glass Mariolatries of Mr. Francis Thompson ; and
the Godism of Mr. Henley, whereat the prosaic godly
look askance.

5. In English fiction, the beginning of the end of
genuine faith was apparent to the prophetic eyes of
\\ 'ilberforce and Robert Hall, of whom the former
lamented the total absence of Christian sentiment from
nearly all the successful fiction even of his day ;' while
the latter avowed the pain with which he noted that Miss
Edgeworth, whom he admired for her style and art, put
absolutely no religion in her books,2 while Hannah More,
whose principles were so excellent, had such a vicious
style. With Thackeray and Dickens, indeed, serious
fiction might seem to be on the side of faith ; both being
liberally orthodox, though neither ventured on religious

1 Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, Sth ed. p. 368. Wilber-
l.irce points with chagrin to the superiority of Mohammedan writers in
these matters.

- " In point of tendency I should class her books among the most

irreligious I ever read," [delineating good characters in every aspect]

and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only true

religion." Cited in O. Gregory's Brief Mem u 1 / Robert Hall, 1833, p. 2.4.:.

\'\w. context tells how Miss Edgeworth avowed that she had not thought

religion necessary in books meant for the upper classes.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 413

romance ; but with George Eliot the balance began to
lean the other way : her sympathetic treatment of
religious types counting for little as against her known
rationalism. At the present time, almost all of the
leading writers of the higher fiction are known to be
rationalists; and against the heavy metal of Mr. Mere-
dith, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Moore (whose sympathetic handling
of religious motives suggests the influence of Huysmans)
and the deistic Mrs. Humphrey Ward, orthodoxy can but
claim artists of the third or lower grades.

6. Of the imaginative literature of the United States,
the same generalisation broadly holds good. The incom-
parable Hawthorne, whatever his psychological sympathy
with the Puritan past, wrought inevitably by his art for
the loosening of its intellectual hold ; Poe, though he did
not venture till his days of downfall to write his Eureka,
thereby proves himself an entirely non-Christian theist ;
and Emerson's poetry constantly expresses his pantheism.
The economic conditions of American life have till
recently been peculiarly unfavorable to the higher litera-
ture, as apart from fiction ; but the unique figure of
Walt Whitman stands for a thoroughly naturalistic
view of life : Mr. Howells appears to be at most a
theist ; Mr. Henry James does not even exhibit the bias
of his gifted brother to the theism of their no less gifted
father ; and some of the most esteemed men of letters
since the Civil War, as Dr. Wendell Holmes and
Colonel Wtentyvorth Higginson, have been avowedly
on the side of rationalism, or, as the term goes in the
States, "liberalism ".

7. Of the vast modern output of belles lettres in
continental Europe, finally, a similar account is to be
given. The supreme poet of modern Italy, Leopardi, is
one of the most definitely rationalistic as well as one
of the greatest philosophic poets in literature ; and
despite all the claims of the Catholic socialists, there is
no modern Catholic literature in Italy of any European
value. In Germany we have seen Goethe and Schiller

414 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

distinctly counting for naturalism; and the line is found
to be continued in Heinrich vox Kleist, the unhappy
but masterly dramatist of Der Zerbrochene Krug, one of
the truest geniuses of his time ; and above all in Heine,
whose characteristic profession of reconciling himself on
his deathbed with the deity he had imaged as "the Aristo-
phanes of the universe" serves so scantily to console the
orthodox lovers of his matchless song. His criticism of
Kant is a sufficient clue to his serious convictions. Since
Heine, German belles lettres has hardly been a first rate
influence in Europe: but some of the leading novelists, as
Auerbach and Hevse, are well known to have partly
shared in the rational philosophy of their age.

8. But perhaps the most considerable evidence, in
lies Litres, of the predominance of rationalism in modern
Europe is to be found in the literary history of Scandinavia
and Russia. The Russian development indeed had gone
far ere the modern Scandinavian literature had well
begun. Already in the first quarter of the century, the
poet Poushkine was an avowed heretic ; and Gogol even
let his art suffer from his preoccupations with the new
humanitarian ideas; while the critic Bielinsky, classed
by Tourguenief as the Lessing of Russia,1 was pro-
nouncedly rationalistic, as was his contemporary the
critic Granovsky," reputed the finest Russian stylist of his
day. At this period, belles Litres stood for every form of
intellectual influence in Russia3; and all educated thought
was moulded by it. The most perfect artistic result is
the fiction of TOURGUENIEF, the Sophocles of the modern
novel. His two great contemporaries, Dostoyevsky and
Tolstoy, count indeed for supernaturalism ; but the truly
wonderful genius of the former is something apart from
his philosophy, which is merely childlike: and the latter,
the least masterly artist of the three, makes his religious
converts in Russia chiefly among the uneducated. It

! Tikhomirov, La Pussie, 2e edit., p. 343.
- Arnaudo, Le Nihilism et les Nihilistes, French trans., p. 30.
Tikhomirov, p. 34 j.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 415

does not appear that the younger writer, Potapenko, a
fine artist, is orthodox, despite his extremely sympathetic
presentment of a superior priest. In Scandinavia, again,
there are hardly any exceptions to the freethinking ten-
dency among the leading living men of letters. The
pre-eminent Ibsen, though his Brand was counted to
him for righteousness by the churches, has shown himself
a profound naturalist in all his later work ; Bjornson is
an active freethinker; the eminent Danish critic, Georg
Brandes, early avowed himself to the same effect ; and
his brother, the dramatist, Edward Brandes, was elected
to the Danish Parliament in 1S81 despite his declaration
that he believed in neither the Christian nor the Jewish
God. Most of the younger litterateurs of Norway and
Sweden seem to be of the same cast of thought.

Part II. — The State of Thought ix the Nations.

If it be a sound general principle that freethought is a
natural variation which prospers according to the environ-
ment, it will follow that where, culture -opportunities
being roughly equal, there are differences in the amount
of ostensible freethinking, the explanation lies in some of
the social conditions. We have seen rationalism, in the
sense of a free play of critical reason on traditional creeds,
flourish variously in various ages and civilisations accord-
ing to its opportunities; till in our own day, with a
maximum of political freedom, a minimum of priestly
power, a maximum of popular culture, and a maximum
development of science and special research, there has
occurred] by far the greatest diffusion and the most
thorough cultivation of anti-supernaturalist thought. Yet
in some of the most civilised countries countenance 1-
given by the greater part of the newspaper press, and by
the machinery of government in general, to the assump-
tion that the doctrine of the Christian churches is still
in full possession of the educated intelligence, and that
"unbelief" is a noxious weed. This phenomenon is to

416 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

be explained like any other, after a comparison of the
conditions.

§ I. — Britain and the United States.

In this country we have noted the natural collusion of
the clerical and propertied classes to put down free-
thought, as a dangerously democratic force, after the
French Revolution. Between the positive persecution of
the popular forms and the social ostracism of the others,
it had come about that up to the middle of the century
few writers ventured to avow even a guarded hostility to
the current creed. Though the stress of the attack was
chiefly on the popular propaganda, the spirit of tyranny
was so strong, and at the same time so unintelligent, that
in 1822 the protection of copyright was refused by the
Court of Chancery to Byron's publisher in the case of his
Cain, on the score that it contained blasphemous matter,
and to the Lectures of Dr. Lawrence on the score that
they discountenanced belief in immortality.1 Such pro-
ceedings had a very practical influence. Eminent authors
who are known to have rejected the Christian creed, as
Carlyle and John Mill, avoided any open breach, and
received much orthodox approbation. Privately they
would speak of the need for speaking out without
speaking out ;2 and Carlyle was so false to his own
doctrine of veracity as even to disparage all who
did.3 The prevailing note is struck in Macaulay's
description of Charles Blount as " an infidel, and the
head of a small school of infidels who were troubled
with a morbid desire to make converts".1 All the
while, Macaulay was himself privately "infidel"; but
he cleared his conscience by thus denouncing those who
had the courage of their opinions. In this simple fashion
some of the sanest writers in history were complacently

1 Harriet Martineau, History 0/ the Peace, ed. 1877, ii, 87. Cp. Lawrence's
opening lecture for his views.

- See Professor Bain's /. S. Mill, p. 86.

3 Cp. Fronde's Loudon Life of Carlyle, i, 458.

4 History, ch. xix. Student's ed. ii, 411.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 417

put below the level of the commonplace dissemblers who
aspersed them ; and the average educated man saw no
baseness in the procedure. It was assumed that a
sanhedrim of shufflers could make courage ridiculous by
calling themselves " the wise " ; and it became current
doctrine that " the wise man " conceals his opinions when
they are unpopular.

In this way, honest and narrow-minded believers were
trained to regard their views as really triumphant over all
attacks,1 and " infidelity" as a disease of an ill-informed
past ; and as the Church had really gained in conven-
tional culture as well as in wealth and prestige in the
period of reaction, the power of mere convention to over-
ride ideas had become enormous. Above all, social and
religious prejudices were aided by the vast leverage of
economic interest throughout a thoroughly commercialised
community. This holds good alongside of a clear balance
of literary power on the side of unbelief. The commercial
history of England and America throughout the century
has been broadly one of ever-increasing competition in all
classes; and to hold an " unpopular " view is in general
to stand at a serious disadvantage in business and pro-
fessional life. Even of the known rationalists among the
serious writers of the latter half of the century, many
have perforce confined themselves to pure science or
scholarly research ; and others have either held safe
official posts or enjoyed private means. In one or other
of these classes stand such names as those of Grote, the
two Mills, Professors Bain, Huxley, Tyndall and
Clifford, Darwin, Arnold, F. W. Newman, Lewi
and in a measure Spencer, who however long felt the
pinch of unpopularity severely enough. Detached men of
letters like Mr. Morley and Mr. Stephen, while taking up
freethinking positions, are perhaps not uninfluenced In

1 In 1830, for instance, we find a Scottish episcopal D 1 >. writing that
" Infidelity has had its day; it, depend upon it, will never be revived — no

MAN OF GENIUS WILL EVER WRITE ANOTHER WORD IN IIS SUPPORT".

Morehead, Dialogues on Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 21

E e

418 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

the hostile environment. In any case it is perfectly well
known to all freethinkers that there are many of their
way of thinking on all hands who dare not declare them-
selves. And whereas religious sects, if at all numerous,
can in large measure indemnify themselves against others
by holding together, rationalists are under the difficulty
that their special opinions do not call for institution-
making save of the most disinterested kind. Every
religionist is under some religious compulsion from his
own creed to worship ; and every priest preaches for the
institutions by which he lives. We have seen how
impossible it is to set up freethinking institutions in a
primitive society. The difficulty is still great, though
different, in a commercial community, where even among
freethinkers the disinterested concern for the diffusion of
truth is constantly dulled by the social struggle for exist-
ence ; while, moreover, the instructed man's dislike of
sectarianism is a further dissuasive from action that he
thinks might tend to farther it. And as regards the main
source of most religious endowments, bequest by will,
freethought is in this country absolutely interdicted from
any save circuitous provision. Various bequests for
specifically freethinking purposes have been quashed under
the Blasphemy Laws ; and all the while ingenuous
Christians taunt freethinkers with their lack of sectarian
institutions. Thus, educated reason standing aloof
or inhibited, while educated self-interest conspiiv-
with ignorance, an enormous revenue is annually devoted
to the maintenance of beliefs not held by multitudes
of the clergy themselves; and the propaganda of free-
thought rests wholly with the "quixotic'' few. Nearly
<very freethinking writer is advised by prudent friends t<>
give up such unprofitable work; and the very desire to
wield an influence for good, as in politics, makes many
rationalists conceal the opinions which they know would
restrict their audience. Only great orators, as Bradlaugli
and Ingersoll, can make a good income by platform
propaganda; and Bradlaugh was prematurely worn out

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 419

by the atrocious burdens laid upon him in his parlia-
mentary struggle, with the active connivance of many
Conservative partisans who believed no more than he.

It would thus appear that until the " social problem '
is solved in some fashion which shall make intellectual
honesty a much safer thing than at present, the profession
of supernaturalism and the vogue of real superstition
among the mass of the less intelligent of all classes is
likely to continue in many communities alongside of the
fullest scientific disproof of the beliefs in question. Any
creed whatever can subsist under the modern system of
endowments. Had a Church of Isis and Osiris by any
chance survived with good endowments through the ages
of Christian destruction and confiscation of other systems,
it could to-day find educated priests and adherents in
such a society as ours. The general faculty for consistent
thought is at best not great. Scientific rationalists,
finding excuses for their official conformities to the
current creeds, argue privately that all that is
needed is non-contentiously to put true doctrines in
circulation — that without argument they must needs
expel the false. All modern culture-history proves this
to be a fallacy. Even gifted brains can harbor childish
errors on the side on which they are undeveloped. We
need not go back to Faraday to find scientific men
clinging to the religion of their nurseries. An eminent
mathematician, entirely unqualified in other fields, pays
tribute to Paley ; and the average church-goer straightway
claims that "science" is with him. To say nothinj
the habitual employment of the Bible in the churches, the
vogue of such a book as the late Mr. Henry Drummond's
Natural Law in the Spiritual World is a sufficient proof of
the general capacity for digesting the grossest inconsis-
tencies in science. It was possible for multitudes of
people to suppose that Darwin, buried as he was in
Westminster Abbey, had died a Christian, until it was
shown by his letters that he had definitely abandoned
theism. On the other hand, it takes a rare combination

1 l j

420 HISTORY OF FEEETHOUGHT.

of intellectual power, moral courage, and official freedom,
to permit of such a directly rationalistic propaganda as
was carried on by the late Professor Clifford, or even
such as has been accomplished by President Andrew
White in America under the comparatively popular
profession of Deism. It was only in his leisured latter
vears that Professor Huxley carried on a general conflict
with orthodox)-. In middle age, he frequently covered
himself by attacks on professed freethinkers ; and he did
more than an}- other man of his time to conserve the
Bible as a school manual by his politic panegyric of it in
that aspect at a time when bolder rationalists were
striving to get it excluded from the State schools.1

The survival of theism itself, as well as the common
preference in England of such a term as " agnosticism "
to either "naturalism" or "atheism", is in part a
psychological result of social pressure. Mr. Spencer in
his earlier works used the language of Deism,2 at a time
when Comte had discarded it : and he and many other
rationalists have later made a serious stand for their
property in the word " religion ", though the reasons
urged are as applicable to the word " God ", and even in
part to "Christ". Draper and White in the Unit-< 1
States, again, and Buckle and the author of Supernatural
Religion in England, show how some elements of essen-
tially emotional and traditionary supernaturalism, in the
shape of theism, can be long clung to by able men
engaged in rationalistic and even in anti-theological
argument. The opposition still made by English Comtists
to straightforward freethinking propaganda illustrates the
same normal tendency. In the English-speaking countries
the coinage of the term "agnostic ", though objected to
by the Comtists, is largely on all fours with their own

1 I am informed on good authority that in later life Huxley changed
his views "ii the subject. He bad abundant i mse. As early as 1870 he is
fnun'l complaining (pref. to Eng. tr. of Haeckel's Freedom in Science and
Tern hing, p. xvii) oi the mass ot " falsities at present foisted upon the young
in the name of the Church ".

■ • the Education, small ed., pp. 41, 155

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. .121

practice. In France and Italy, freethinkers do not find it
necessary to refine on the term "atheist" and draw
paralogistic distinctions: the necessity, when felt, is the
psychological product of special social conditions.

From these there emerges the general result that in
the British Islands and the United States the avowal
of unbelief and the disinterested effort to enlighten
others are relatively more common among the workers,
whose incomes are not as a rule affected thereby, than
among the middle classes, where the economic motive is
strong, and the upper, where the social motive specially
operates. Wealthy Conservatives never publicly avow
unbelief; vet it is well known that many disbelieve. In
the House of Commons and the American Congress there
are probably scores of such on both sides. It is easy to
blame them ; as it is easy to blame the many clergymen
who hold office without conviction. But such insincerities,
in which laymen so abundantly share, are strictly on the
same ethical footing as the endless immoralities of
ordinary commerce; the clergy being under economic
pressure like other men. Of recent years, attempts have
been made in England and America by the societies for
" Ethical Culture " to carry on a non-theological teaching
that generally guards against being anti-theological. Such
a policy escapes a number of the ordinary social and
economic obstacles, while incurring the special difficulties
involved in the application of ethics to the social problem.
It does not operate, however, as a dissolvent of theology
save in so far as theology is incidentally criticised : at l<
the fact that the same view of ethics was proclaimed
nearly three hundred years ago by Charron, and nearly
two hundred years ago in some of the British churches,
makes it seem unlikely that its simple affirmation can
undermine the economic bases of supernaturalism.

In sum, other things being equal, open freethought is
least common where commercialism is most stringent,
and in communities where social pressure is most easily
felt. In Scotland, when the culture-movement of last

422 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

century was succeeded in this by a pietistic reaction and
a new ecclesiastical ferment and schism, the intellectual
life is less free than in England. It was so when the
clergy proposed to sit in judgment on Hume in 1756 : it
was emphatically so when Buckle summed up Scotch life
forty years ago ; it is so to-day, when the economic condi-
tions send to England and the colonies most of the
innovating elements, leaving the rival churches in un-
disturbed possession, with their numerous rationalistic
clergy afraid to declare themselves against the conserva-
tive mass. In the United States, sheer preoccupation
with business, and lack of leisure, counteract in a measure
the relative advantage of social freedom ; and while
culture is much more widely diffused than in England, it
remains on the whole less radical in the "educated'
classes so-called. So far as it is possible to make a
quantitative estimate, it may be said that in the more
densely populated parts of the States there is less of
studious freethinking because there is less leisure than in
England; but that in the Western States there is a
relative superiority, class for class, because of the special
freedom of the conditions and the independent character
of many of the immigrants who constitute the new popu-
lations.1

In the Australasian colonies, again, there is some such
relative superiority in freedom as is seen in the American
West, and for similar reasons. In New Zealand, pro-
minent statesmen, as Sir Robert Ballance and Mr.
John Stout, have held office despite their avowed free-
thinking; and in Australia a popular freethought journal
has subsisted for over fifteen years. But there too the
commercial environment and the ecclesiastical basis of
endowment tell adversely.

From the fact that in New England the supremacy
appears to be passing from Unitarianism to Episco-

1 This view is not inconsistent with the fact that popular forms of
dulity are also found specially flourishing in the West. Cp Bryce,.
The American Commonwealth, 3rd ed., ii, 832-3,

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 423

palianism, it may be inferred that the more religiously
biassed types in the former sect tend to gravitate to the
more emotional worship, and the more rationalistic to
withdraw; though the economic interest of the Unitarian
clergy conserves their institutions. In England is seen
the analogous phenomenon of the advance of Romanist
ritualism in the Church of England. While the more
emotional and unintellectual believers thus zealously
promote what may be termed the most religious form of
religion, there is a prospect that the many semi-rational
conformists will be in part driven to a more rationalist
attitude ; since, save for the certainly great power of the
purse — seen in the outward collapse of the Tractarian
movement on Newman's conversion — Anglican modera-
tion is as powerless against ritualism as is modern
Protestantism against Catholicism in general. For the
rest, all the forces of religious conservatism in commercial
communities are backed by the economic interest of the
general newspaper press, wherein multitudes of unbelieving
journalists perforce treat orthodoxy as being what it claims
to be, and at best describe their own opinions as " peculiar "
when openly avowed by public men. The determining
force is revenue, which depends on advertisements, which
depend on circulation. For lack of these bases free-
thinking journals, even when aiming at comparative
popularity, must be relatively expensive. In the United
States, the habitual freedom of the newspapers allows of
more fairplay to avowed freethought ; but the main
economic forces are similar. Thus on every ground the
organised forms of freethought are restricted and appa-
rently uninflnential in comparison with the known amount
of rationalism, which nevertheless quietly increases from
decade to decade; so that within a generation the in-
tellectual balance has shifted till the "sensations" of
serious literature are no longer produced by attacks on
t he popular creed, but by the few noteworthy attempts to
justify it.

This last phenomenon seems decisively significant as

424 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

to the real state of opinion among educated people, under
all the conformities of the commercial system. The
works of Mr. Drummond, Mr. Benjamin Kidd, and
Mr. A. J. Balfour, are the most prominent pleas for
Christianity put forth in England in the past twenty
years. The first was recognised even by many theologians
as a tissue of fallacy ; the second is a suicidal formula
of professed Irrationalism ; and the third is a more skilful
revival of the old resort to scepticism, so often and so
vainly employed by apologists in the past. Meanwhile
the few remaining Churchmen of high literary standing,
as Bisbop Stubbs and Bishop Creighton, rank as simple
historians, not as thinkers ; and the apologetic labors of
the churches in general range between respectable
reiterations of Paley and a popular traffic in " Christian
Evidences " that is beneath criticism. On the other
hand, under all the social stress set up by orthodoxy,
women are found in ever-increasing numbers giving up
the faith, and even doing effective rationalist propaganda.
Thus Harriet Martineau and George Eliot (Marian
Evans) are specially significant names in the history of
modern English Freethought. The popularisation of the
Positive Philosophy by the former, and the translations of
Strauss and Feuerbach by the latter, were services as
workmanlike as any done by their male contemporaries ;
and though tha reversion of Mrs. Besant to mysticism
in the form of Theosophy was a chagrin to many, it
could not undo the work she had done as a rationalist
teacher.1 Even in the time of persecution, in the first
half of the century, women did unflinching service-
to the ostracised cause. The second wife of Richard
Carlilc was his worthy helpmate ; and Frances
WRIGHT (Madame D'Arusmont) was in the front of

' The argument, sometimes heard, that such a reversion, and such
recunences of religious emotion as maybe noted in the later years of
George Eliot, point to a special and permanent unfitness for the rationalist
life among women, is worth notice only for the sake of punting to the
quite contrary conclusion deducible from the case of Miss Martineau.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 425

all the rational and ethical1 propaganda of her time (1795
—1852).

§ 2. — The Catholic Countries.

As already noted, there prevails in the Catholic-
countries a more general and a more direct division
between faith and rationalism than usually exists under
Protestantism, where the possibilities of gradation and
adjustment, as well as the admission of the laity to a
share in Church administration, moderate matters. In
these countries, too, commercialism has come later on
the scene and is much less developed than in England
and America ; so that social pressure tells only partially
on the side of the Church. The result is that as a rule
in France and Italy, and to a large extent also in Spain,
educated men are unbelievers ; and atheism is no bar to
political influence. For many years the Paris Municipal
Council has been a predominantly freethinking body. After
a period in which such teachers as Michelet and Renan
could suffer suspension, university teaching in all there
countries is substantially open, and professors can freely
indicate their opinions. On the other hand, the higher
life of all Catholic countries suffers from the common
assumption that a religion of prayer and penance is a
necessity for women. Women there are accordingly
found as a rule on the side of faith and churchgoing :
and it results that in all social and domestic matters in
which they are intimately concerned, the Church has still
a strong footing. Baptisms, marriages, and funerals an
in the great majority of cases religious functions, the men
shrugging their shoulders and making no general effort to
enlighten their wives and daughters.2 In this state of
things there is as constant an element of loss to progress
as takes place in our own society through the organised

1 " She bought 2,000 acres in Tennessee, and peopled them with slave
families she purchased and redeemed " (Wheeler, /.':.;.'. Dut ).

'The case of M. Littre, whose family pressed him to recant on hi
deathbed and destroyed his papers alter his death, is a painful illustrati
of the frequent outcome of such a policy.

426 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

activity of the churches ; a continual reproduction of
artificial ignorance, so to speak, going on in both cases.
A reform in the education and status of women is there-
fore as peculiarly necessary to the advance of Freethought
in the Catholic countries as is a correction of com-
mercialist conditions in ours. English and American
experience goes to show that women under fair conditions
can live the rationalist life as well as men, their relapses
to mysticism being no more frequent than those of men,
and much less frequent than their abandonment of super-
naturalist beliefs. Indeed there have been cases enough
of freethinking educated women in France and Italy to
show the error of the conventional assumption among the
other sex. It is so far satisfactory that the Socialist
movement, which gains ground among all the " Latin "
peoples, makes substantially for the more equal culture of
the sexes, as against the contrary policy of the Church.

§ 3. — Germany.

Alongside of the inveterate rationalism of modern
Germany, a no less inveterate bureaucratism preserves a
certain official conformity to religion. University freedom
does not extend to open criticism of the orthodox creed.1
Feuerbach was deprived of his chair at Erlangen for his
Thouglits upon Death and Immortality (1830) : Biichner lost
his chair of chemistry at Tubingen on publishing Force and
Matter; and Bruno Bauer's brother Edgar was imprisoned
four years for his work on The Strife of Criticism in Church
and State. On the other hand, the applause won by
Virchow in 1877 on his declaration against the doctrine
of evolution ; and the tactic resorted to by him in putting
upon that doctrine the responsibility of Socialist violene< .
are instances of the normal operation of the lower motives
against freedom in scientific teaching.2 The pressure

1 It is recorded by the friends of I 1 BERWEG, author of the fairest of
modern histories of philosophy, that he was an atheist and materialist
But this could only here and there be divined from his writing.

- See III-' kel's Freedom in Science and Teaching, Eng, tr., with pref. by
Huxley, 1879, pp. xix, xxv, xxvii, .s<i-qo.

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 427

operates in other spheres in Germany, especially under
such a regimen as the present. Men who never go to
church save on official occasions, and who have absolutely
no belief in the church's doctrine, nevertheless remain
nominally its adherents ;l and the Press laws make it
peculiarly difficult to reach the common people with
freethinking literature, save through Socialist channels.
Thus the Catholic Church is perhaps nowhere— save in
Ireland and the United States — more practically in-
fluential than in nominally "Protestant" Germany, where
it wields a compact vote of a hundred in the Reichstag,
and can generally count on well-tilled churches as beside
the half- empty temples of Protestantism.

Another circumstance partly favorable to reaction is
the simple maintenance of all the old theological chairs in
the universities. As the field of scientific work widens,
and increasing commerce raises the social standard of
comfort, men of original intellectual power grow less apt
to devote themselves to theological pursuits even un<l
the comparatively free conditions which so long kept
German Biblical scholarship far above that of other
countries. It can hardly be said that men of the mental
calibre of Strauss, Baur, Volkmar, and Wellhausen
continue to arise among the specialists in their studies.
Harnack. the most prominent German Biblical scholar of
our day, despite his great learning, creates no such im-
pression of originality and insight, and exhibits often a
very uncritical orthodoxy. Thus it is a priori possible
enough that the orthodox reactions so often claimed have
actually occurred, in the sense that the experts have
reverted to a prior type. A scientifically minded " theo-
logian *' in Germany has now little official scope for his
faculty save in the analysis of the Hebrew Sacred Books ;
and this has there been on the whole very well done; but
there is a limit to the attraction of such studies for minds

1 Professor Biichner, for straightforwardly renouncing his c innection
with the State Church, was blamed by many who held his phi] isophic
opinions.

428 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

of a modern cast. Thus there is always a chance that
chairs will be filled by men of another type.1

At the same time, a religious Government can do, and
has done, much to hamper the natural evolution. The
statistics of the theological faculties in the universities
show a series of ups and downs of a very significant kind.
Thus the numbers of Protestant and Catholic theological
students in all Germany have varied as follows : —
Protestant: 1831, 4,147; 1851, 1,631; i860, 2,520; 1876,
1,539; 1882-3,3,168. Catholic: 1831,1,801; 1840,866;
1850, 1,393 ; i860, 1,209 ; 1880, 619.2 Still, the main
movement is clear. In an increasing proportion, the
theological students come from the rural districts (69.4 in
1X61-70), the towns furnishing ever fewer;3 so that the
conservative measures do but outwardly and formally
affect the course of thought : the clergy themselves show -
ing less and less inclination to make clergymen of their
sons.4 Even among the Catholic population, though that
has increased from ten millions in 1830 to sixteen millions
in 1880, the number of theological students has fallen
from 11 to 4 per 100,000 inhabitants.5 Thus, after many
"reactions" and much Bismarckism, the Zeit-Geist in
Germany was still pronouncedly sceptical in all classes in
1881,6 when the church accommodation in Berlin provided
for only 2 per cent, of the population, and even that
provision outwent the demand.7 And though there have
been yet other alleged reactions since, and the imperial
influence is zealously used for orthodoxy, the mass of the
intelligent workers remain socialistic and freethinking ;
and the mass of the educated classes remain unorthodox

1 Cp. Zeller's pref. to his work on The Acts 0) the Apostles, Eng. tr., 1875,
i, 89, as to the tendency of German Protestantism to stagnate in "Byzantine
conditions".

2 Conrad, The Co man Universities for the last Fifty Years, Eng. tr., 1885,
p. 74. See p. 100 as to the financial measures taken ; and p. 105 as to the
essentially financial nature "I the " reaction ".

/ / , p 1. 4 Id., p I'M

/ / , p 112. See pp. 1 1S-1 Kj as to Austria.

'■ Id , pp. 97-98.

7 Prof A. 1). White, as above cited, i, 239

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 429-

in the teeth of the Socialist menace. Reactionary pro-
fessors can at most make an academic fashion : the great
body of instructed men remains tacitly naturalistic'

§ 4. Russia and Scandinavia.

Under the widely different political conditions in
Russia and the Scandinavian States, it is the more
significant that in all alike rationalism is in the ascendant
among the educated classes. In Scandinavia, especially
in Norway, the latter perhaps include more working
people than can be so classed even in Germany ; and
rationalism there is proportionally strong; though social
freedom is still far from perfect. In 1820 the eminent
Swedish historian Geijer was subjected to a prosecution
for an impeachment of the orthodox creed in his book
entitled Thorild ; but the jury acquitted him ; and not till
a freethinking journalist, V. E. Lennstrand, was prose-
cuted, fined, and imprisoned for denial of the Christian
religion in 1888, did the old temper again strongly assert
itself in Sweden. It is the old story of toleration for a
dangerously well-placed freethought, and intolerance for
that which reaches the common people. The Scandinavian
churches, however, though backward and bigoted, have no
such relative wealth and power as the English, or even
the American ; and the intellectual balance, as alrea<l\
noted, is distinctly on the freethought side. It would be
well if the rationalist temper could so far assert itself as
check the unhappy racial jealousies of the three Scan-
dinavian peoples, and discredit their irrationalist belief in
fundamental differences of "national character"' amon,i;
them. But that problem, like those of industry and social
structure, is still to solve.

In Russia, rationalism has before it the still hardei
task of transmuting a system of tyranny into one of self-

1 As against reactionary views of Christian origins, the German laity
has recently been supplied with an excellent conspectus of the Gospel
problem in the Vergleichende Uebtrsicht der vier Evangelim, by S G \
(Leipzig : Van Dyk, 1897), a work of the most laborious kind, issued at a
low price.

43° HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

government. In no European country, perhaps, is
rationalism more general among the educated classes;
and in none is there a greater mass of popular ignorance.
The popular icon-worship in Moscow can hardly be
paralleled outside of Asia. On the other hand, the
aristocracy became Voltairean last century, and has
remained incredulous since: while the democratic move-
ment, in its various phases of socialism, constitutionalism,
and Nihilism, has been markedly anti-religious since the
second quarter of the century.1 This state of things
subsists despite the readiness of the government to sup-
press the slightest sign of official heterodoxy in the
universities.2 The struggle is thus substantially between
the spirit of freedom and that of despotism ; and the
fortunes of freethought will go with the former. Were
Russia an isolated community, both alike might be
strangled by the superior brute force of the autocracy,
resting on the loyalty of the ignorant mass; but the
unavoidable contact of surrounding civilisations seems to
make such suppression impossible.

§ 5. The Oriental Civilisations.

We have already seen, in discussing the culture
histories of India, China, and Moslem Persia, how ancient

ments of rationalism continue to germinate more or
less obscurely in the unpropitious soils of Asiatic life.
Ignorance is too immensely preponderant to permit of
any other species of survival. But sociology, while recog-
nising the vast obstacles to the higher life presented by
conditions which with a fatal facility multiply the lower,

n et no limit to the possibilities of upward evolution.
Th< ca eofjapanisa umcienl rebuke to the thoughtless
iterators of the formula of the " unprogressiveness of the
East". While superstitious religion is there still normal
anion- the mass, the transformation of the political ideals

Cp I Lavigne, Introduction « I'histoire du nihilismt russe, 1880, pp. 149,
224 ; Arnaudo, Lt Nihilisme, French tr , pp. 37, 58, 61, 63, 77, 86, etc.
- Tikhomirov, La Russic, pp. 325-6, 33.S 9

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH I l NTURY. .JJ]

and practice of the nation under the influence of Europ
example is so great as to be unparalleled in human
history; and it has inevitably involved the substitution
of rationalism for supernaturalism among the greal
majority of the educated younger generation. That the)
should revert to Christian orthodoxy is as impossible a
such an evolution is seen to be in educated Hindostan,
where the higher orders of intelligence are certainly not
relatively more common than among the Japanese. The
final question, there as everywhere, is one of social
reconstruction and organisation ; and in the enormous
population of China, the problem, though very different
in degree, is the same in kind. Perhaps the most hopeful
consideration of all is that of the ever-increasing inter-
communication which makes European and American
progress tend in every succeeding generation to tell more

and more on Asiatic life.

As to Japan, Professor B. II. Chamberlain, a writer with
irrationalisi leanings, pronounces that the Japanese "now bow
down before the shrine of Herbert Spencer" {Things Japanese,
3rd ed., 1898, p. 321. Cp. Religions Systems of the World, 3rd
ed., p. 103), proceeding in another connection (p. [52) to des-
cribe them as essentially an undevotional people. Such a
judgment somewhat shakes trust. The Japanese people in
(lie past have exhibited the amount of superstition normal in
their culture stage (cp. the Voyages de C. P. Thunbtrg an J 'upon,
I rench dans., 179(1, iii, 206) ; and in our own day they differ
from Western peoples on this side merely in respect of their
greater general serenity of temperament. Profe 01 * hamber-
lain appears to construe "devotional" in the light of his
persona] conception of true devotion. Vet .1 Christian observer
testifies, of the revivalist sect of Nichirenites, " the Ranti
Buddhism ", that " the wildest 1 thai seek the mantle

of religion in ether land.; are \>\ them equalled if not exci ll< I "
(Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, [876, p. 163); and Prof<

Chamberlain admits that "the religi 1 the family b

them [the Japanese in general, including the "mosl materi
alistii ] down in truly sacred bonds"; while anothei writer,
who thinks Christianity desirable for Japan, though he

apparently ranks Japanese als above Christian, declares

that in his travels he was much reassured by the tition

432 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

of the innkeepers, feeling thankful that his hosts were " not
Agnostics or Secularists ", but devout believer? in future
punishments (Tracy, Rambles through Japan without a Guide,
1892, pp. 131, 276, etc.). A third authority with Japanese ex-
perience, Professor W. G. Dixon, while noting that " among
certain classes in Japan not only religious earnestness but
fanaticism and superstition still prevail ", decides that ' at the
same time it remains true that the Japanese are not in the
main a very religious people, and that at the present day
religion is in lower repute than probably it has ever been in
the country's history. Religious indifference is one of the
prominent features of new Japan" (The Land of the Morning,
18S2, p. 517). The reconciliation of these estimates lies in the
recognition of the fact that the Japanese populace is religious
in very much the same way as those of Italy and England,
while the more educated classes are rationalistic, not because
of any " essential " incapacity for " devotion ", but because of
enlightenment, and lack of countervailing social pressure. To
the eye of the devotional Protestant, the Catholics of Italy,
with their devotion to externals, seem "essentially" irreligious;
and vice versa. Buddhism triumphed over Shintoisni in Japan
both in ancient and modern times precisely because its lore
and ritual make so much more appeal to the " devotional "
sense. (Cp. Chamberlain, pp. 358-362 ; Dixon, ch. x ; Religious
Systems of the World, pp. 103, 111 ; Griffis, p. 166.)

So universal is sociological like other law, that we find in
Japan, among some freethinkers, the same disposition as among
some in Europe to decide that religion is necessary for the
people. Professor Chamberlain (p. 352) cites Mr. Fukuzawa,
"Japan's most representative thinker and educationist", as
openly declaring that " It goes without saying that the main-
tenance of peace and security in society requires a religion.
For this purpose any religion will do. I lack a religious nature,
and have never believed in any religion. I am thus open to
the charge that I am advising others to be religious while I am
not so. Yet my conscience does not permit me to clothe
myself with religion when I have it not at heart. ... Of
religions, there are several kinds — Buddhism, Christianity, and
what not. From my standpoint there is no more difference
between those than betsveen green tea and black. . . . See
that the stock is well-selected and the prices cheap. . . . '
(Japan Herald, <>th Sept., 1897). Further reflection, marked by
equal candor, may lead Mr. Fukuzawa to see that nations
cannot be led to adore any form of " tea " by the mere assur-
ance of its indispcnsableness from leaders who confess they

FREETHOUGHT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 433

never take any. His view is doubtless shared by those priests
concerning whom " it may be questioned whether in their
fundamental beliefs the more scholarly of the Shinshiu priests
differ very widely from the materialistic agnostics of Europe "
(Dixon, p. 516). In this state of things the Christian thinks he
sees his special opportunity. Professor Dixon writes (p. 518),
in the manner of the missionary, that " decaying shrines and
broken gods are to be seen everywhere. Not only is there

indifference, but there is a rapidly growing scepticism

The masses too are becoming affected by it Shintoism

and .... Buddhism are doomed. What is to take their place ?
.... It must be either Christianity or Atheism. We have
the brightest hopes that the former will triumph in the near
future. . . ." As against the assumption that the black "tea"
must needs replace the green, it seems rather more probable
that all forms of the psychological stimulant may in future be
found unnecessary.

And the same principle would appear to hold good
even in the case of Turkey. The notion that Turkish
civilisation in Europe is unimprovable, though partly
countenanced by despondent thinkers even among the
enlightened Turks,1 has no justification in social science;
and though Turkish freethinking has not in general
passed the theistic stage,2 and its spread is grievously
hindered by the national religiosity,3 which the age-
long hostility of the Christian States so much tends
to intensify, a gradual improvement in the educational
and political conditions would suffice to evolve it,
according to the observed laws of all civilisation. It
may be that a result of the rationalistic evolution
in the other European States will be to make them
intelligently friendly to such a process, where at present
they are either piously malevolent towards the rival creed
or merely self-seeking as against each other's influence on
Turkish destinies.

1 See article on "The Future of Turkey" in the Contemporary Rtvx
April, 1899, by " A Turkish Official ".

* Yet, as early as the date of the Crimean War, it was noted by an
observer that " young Turkey makes profession of atheism ". Ubicini,
La Turquie actuelle, 1855, p. 361.

3 Ubicini (p. 344), with most other observers, pronounces the Turks the
most religious people in Europe.

F F

434 HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

The general conclusion, then, is that the spirit of
Freethought, which has survived and modified the long
malaria of primeval superstition, the systematically
destructive aggression of the medieval Christian Church,
and even the forces of decivilisation in most of the more
backward communities, will be able to survive the
economic pressure which in some of the leading States is
now its most formidable obstacle. Perhaps a new
danger now lies in the tendency of many who recognise
this side of the case to concentrate their whole effort
on the problem of social justice and leave the cause of
disinterested truth to the future ; which is as if, in
indignation at the ill-distribution of the heritage of art
among the multitude, one should propose to suspend all
artistry till a new society be established. But it seems
incredible that those who are concerned to solve the
greatest of all human problems should ever be led in
mass to suppose that the solution can be hastened by
dropping from their hands one of the main instruments
of intellectual discipline and moral enlightenment.

INDEX.

Abailard, 202, 220-1, 22$.

Abbadie, 341.

Abdera, 108.

Aboul-ala el Marri, 185.

Abraham, 73.

Abraxas, 154.

Abubacer, igi.

Aconzio, 263-4.

Adams, John, 378.

Adamson, Prof. ; cited, 368.

Addison, 310.

Aerius, 195-6.

jEschylus, 96.

African tribes, religion of, 16.

unbelief in, 21.

Agni, 27.

" Agnostic," use of word, 420-1.

Agobard, 199-200.

Ahriman (Angra Mainyu) 42, 43, 83.

Ahura Mazda, 39-43.

Aikenhead, T. 318-9.

Akbar, 193.

Akkadian religion, 36, 39, 42, 53, 83.

Alberti, cited, 322, n.

Albertus Magnus, 227, n., 232, n.

Albigenses, 199, 209-215.

Alexander, 138.

Alexandria, religion at, 48-9.

Alfarabi, 189.

Alfonso the Wise, 223.

Algazel, 180, 11.

Algarotti, 374.

Ali Syed, 192, n.

Alkibiades, no.

Alkindi, 189.

Allaf, El, 1S0, n.

Allen, Ethan, 377, n.

Almoravides and Almohades, 191.

Alphabetic writing, age of, 77.

Amalrich (Amaury) of Bena, 217,

222, 249.
Ammianus Marcellinus, quoted, 205.
Ammonios Saccas, 151-2.
Amos, 75-78, 83.
Amun, 37, 45.
Anatomy, 183, ;;.
Anaxagoras, 99, 106-7, 10%> I09
Anaximandros, 98, joo-i, 105.
Anaximenes, 98, 101.

Andamanese, religion and ethics of,

65, 66.
Angels, belief in, 83.
Annet, P., 320, 386.
Anselm, 202, 219-220.
Antisthenes, 122.
Aphrodite, 93.
Apocalypse, 150, n.
Apostolici, 208.
Apotheosis, imperial, 138.
Apuleius, 49, 142.
Arabs, influence of, on Europe, 18 j,

196, 211-212, 217, 222, 224-5, 23 L.

civilisation of, 172-192, 194.

science of, 179-183, 191-2,211-2.

decadence of, 184-5, 190-2.

Himyarite, 84.

Aranda, ^yj.

Archelaos, 99, 108.

Aristarchos, 124.

Aristippos, 122.

Aristo, 123.

Aristophanes, 106, 112-113.

Aristotle, in, 113, 117-119, 405.

Aristotelianism, 202, 221, 222, 224,

228, 232, 293, 330.
Arius and Arianism, 4S, 155-7, 208.
Arkesilaos, 124.
Arminianism, 260, 261.
Arnauld, 329, »., 330, «.
Arnold of Brescia, 208.
Arnold, Matthew, 334, 411, 417.
Artemis, 53, 92.
Arts, effect of, on religion, 67, 93.

affected by religion, 129, 224.

Aryabhata, 32.
Aryans, 26-27, 66, 82, n.
Asceticism, 30.
Ascham, 263.
Ashari, Al, 183.
Ashtoreths, 50, 53.
Asmodeus, 83.
Asoka, 34.
Assassins, the, 188.
Assyria, religion of, 25, 31
Assyriology, 394"5-
Astrology, 37, 255.
Astronomy, Hindu, 32

Greek, ^2.

II J

4i6

INDEX.

Astronomy, Babylonian, 37, 67.

Arab 181, n.

Modern, 384.

Astruc, 394.

Aszo y del Rio, 375.

Athanasius, 48.

Atheism, use of word, 3, 420.

Buddhistic, 32-33.

among Sikhs, 35.

in Phoenicia, 51.

in Greece, no.

at Rome, 140, 141.

under Islam, 179, »., 180, ».

in England, 263, 300, 313, 388.

in post-Lutheran Germany,

2«3. 355. 384-
in the French Revolution,

352-5-
rise of modern, 262-3, 273, 297,

313. 333. 350-

in Turkey, 433.

in Japan, 433.

Athenagoras, 150, «., 156.

Athens, culture of, 108, 113, 1 19, 123

Atheos, early use of word, 94.

Atomic theory, 109.

Auerbach, 414.

Aufklartmg, 362-5.

Augustine, St. 157-9.

Augustus, 137-9.

Auspices, Roman, 130.

Australian aborigines, ethics and

religion of, 65, 66, 70.

freethought, 422.

Austria, freethought in, 370.
Avempace, 191.
Averroes, 192.
Averroism, 192, 228, 249.
Avicenna, 189.
Aztec religion, 59-62.

1 laals, 50.

I ;.ib sect, 192.

Babylon, religion of, 25, 36 39, 71.

freethought in, 37.

science in, 69, »., 82, 94, •

101, 109, 119.
I '.aeon, Francis, 279-2S0, 280, 294,

Roger, 234, 249.

Hahrdt, 362.
Kiin, 417.

I lainham, James. 25s.
Baker, Sir S., 21.
I '.alt ur A J., 424.
Ball, John, 237.
Ballance, J., 422.
II. 409.
I '.apt; in, 203.

Barmekides, the, 180-1.
Bartoli, cited, 228, 11.
Basedow, 363.
Bathenians, 178.
Baudelaire, 410.
Bauer, Bruno, 384, 400, «.

Edgar, 426.

G. L., 393.

Baur, F. C., 365, 384.

Baxter, 3, 237, «., 301-2.

Bayle, 262, 334-5, 360.

Beccaria, 348, 373-4-

Beethoven, 370.

Beguins and Beghards, 217, 242, 250-

Belgium, freethought in, 390.

Bellay, Joachim de, 267.

Bel Merodach, 25, 37.

Benn, A., cited, 99, »., 100, 109,.

118, 119.
Bentham, 348, «., 384, 402-3.
Bentley, 5, «., 311-312, 315.
Beranger, 410.
Berengar, 201.
Bergier, cited, 341, 343, 353.
Berkeley, 306, 310, 312-3, 317, 391*

»., 329, 360.
Berkenhout, 335.
Bernard, St., 220.
Bernard, Sylvester, 221.
Berquin, 266.
Besant, Mrs., 388, 424.
Bettinelli, 374.
Beverland, 261.
Beza, 256.

Bibliolatry, 254,258, 259,280-1. 324.
Bielinsky, 414.
Bigotry, Greek, 107.

Moslem, 178-183, 189-1

Papal, 209-216, 265, 292-3, 336.

Protestant, 254-261 , 299, 11 , 358-

Biology, 384.

Bion, 122.

Bjornson, 415.

Blasphemy La\vs,r304, 308,31 \, 3H8,

4i7-
Blount, Charles, 303, 309, 416.

Boas, F C, cited, 27'..
Boccaccio, 227-8, 240, 11.
Bodin, 267-8, 296, »., 405.
Bogomiliiins, 199.
Bohemia, Reformation in, 25<>
Boileau, 327.

ier, cited, 135, 136, 143
Bolingbroke, 514, 313, 323, 3-1
Bolsec, 257.

Bonaventure des Periers, 265-6.
Booms, 334.
Bossuet, 329, 336,^342

INDEX.

437

Bougrc, origin of word, 199.
Boyle, Robert, 3, 294, 303.
Bradke, von, cited, 17, 28.
Bradlaugh, 387-8, 418.
Brahmanism, 29, 30, 31-35.
Brahmo-Somaj movement, 36.
Brandes, G., 415.

E., 415.

Brethren of the Free Spirit, 1,2, 208, 248.

Sincere {of Purity), 179, n.

Bretschneider, 393.

" Broad Church," 384.

Browne, Sir Thomas, 305.

Browning, 384, 392, 411.

Brunetiere, 414.

Brunetto Latini, 236, 240, n.

Bruno, Giordano, 14, 264, 286-290,

395-
Biichner, 384, 400-1. 426, 427, ;;.
Buckle, cited, 243, 26S, »., 271, 384,

406, 407, 420.
Buddha, traditions of, 31, 54.
Buddhism, 29, 30, 31-35, 104.
Buffon, 343, 346.
Bulgarians, 199.

Burckhardt, cited, 228, n., 22c/. n
Buridan, 246.
Burke, 324.
Burnet, T., 307, 319.
Burns, 324.
Bury, A., 309.
Butler, 316-7, 342.
Byron, 384, 411, 416.
Byzantium, civilisation of, 183,

196-9.
freethought in, 196-7, 293, n.

Cabanis, 343.

Caesar, Julius, 135-7, l3%-

Cairns, 347, »., 352, n.

Calderon, 285.

Calvin, 2, 254-8, 265.

Calvinism, 257-8.

Cambyses, 48.

Campanella, xiv, 372.

Cantu, cited, 225, n.

Caputiati, 208.

Cardan, xiv, 227, «., 272.

Carlile, Richard, 3S6-7.

Carlyle, 416.

Carneades, 124.

Carpenter, J. E., 394.

Cartesianism, 305, 309, 327, 330.

Casaubon, 260-1, 279.

Cathari, 204, 208, 211.

Catherine the Great, 372.

Cavalcanti, 226.

Cecco d'Ascoli, 227.

Celsus, 161-3.

Cervantes, 285.

Cesalpini, 293, n.

Chairemon, 141.

Chaitanya, 35.

Chaloner, 300.

Chamberlain, B. H., cited, 421.

Chambers, R. 384, 398.

Chamfort, 343.

Chandragupta, 34.

Charlemagne, 206.

Charles II., 301, n.

Charleton, W., 300.

Charron, 270-2, 326.

Chateaubriand, 408-9.

Chatelet, Marquise du, 345

Chatham. See Pitt.

Chaucer, 234-5.

Chaumette, 355.

Chenier, A. 343.

Cheyne, Canon, cited, 78. 79.

Chillingworth, 306.

China, thought in, 53-9, 96, 431

Chivalry and religion, 243.

Christianity, theory of, 11.

rise of, 13, 143-4. MS^S0

strifes of, 159-160, 352.

Christina, Queen, 371.

Chrysostom, 165, 168, 169.

Chubb, 314.

Chuen-Aten, 47.

Church, hostility to, 204-7, 2I6, 231.

Church, Dean, cited, 280.

Cicero, 130, 131, 133-5. M2. 228-

Clarke, 306, 309, 315.

Claudius of Turin, 199-200, 209, n

Clayton, Bishop, 320.

Cleanthes, 123.

Clemens Alexandrinus, 152.

Romanus, 153.

Clergy, extortion by, 206,

vice among, 167-8, 206, _-

hostility to, 216, 229, 375

Clifford, M., 302-3.

Prof., 417, 420.

Clitomachos, 124.
Clootz, 355.
Clough, 3S4, 411.
Cole, P., 274
Colebrooke, cited, 29, n.
Colenso, 80, 384, 394,
Coleridge, 404, 411.
Collins, Anthony, 4, 5, »., 14, 307,
309, n , 3H-3i3.3i6, 322, 333. 377-
Combe, G. and A., 387, 40S.
Comines, 242-3.
Comparison of creeds, effect of,

23"26, i53. I71"2- "4-5. -7'. 29&-

43§

INDEX.

Comte, Auguste, 384, 3S9, 401-2, 4S6.

Charles, 406

Comtism, 420.

Condillac, 343, 346.

Condorcet, 343, 351.

Confucius, 53-58.

Connor, 307.

Conrad the Inquisitor, 215, n.

Conway, M. D , 3S0, «., 392.

Conybeare, F. C, quoted, 198, n.

Copernicus, 255, 280, 2S6.

Corneille, 327.

Cosmology, ancient, 51-2, 99.

Cousin, 401.

Cowell, Prof., cited, 186.

Cowper, 396, n.

Craig, 307.

Creighton, Bishop, 424.

Cremonini, 293, n.

Cromwell, 136, »., 300.

Cruelty, Christian, i6<j, 213-5.

Moslem, 181.

Crusades, 211.
Cudworth, 3, 302, 305, 309.
Cuffelaer, 356.
Cuper, Franz, ^^^.
Curtius, E., cited, 95, /;.
Cuvier, 397, »., 398.
Cyrano de Bergerac, 328
Cyril, 160, 164.
Cyrus, 25, 39, 40, S2.

D'Alembert, 343, 349-50, 351, 360.

Dandolo, 374.

Dante, 225-7, 227, "•> 229i " 1

240, n.
Danton, 343.
D'Argens, 339, 360.
Darius, 40, 41.
Darwin, C, 384, 397-9, 417. 419

E. 324, 397.

Darwinism, early, 109,

David, King, 72-3.

David of Dinant, 222, 24' 1.

Davids, Rhys, cited, ^s-

Davidson, J , 412.

I >uvies, Sir John, 279.

Deaf-mutes, beliefs of, 22.

Degeneration in religion, 33-35. 43,

47, 48, 63-67.
Deism, use of word, 3.

early Italian and French, 262.

English, 296-326.

French, 272-3, 3^-355-

■ German, 355-370.

V, introduction of word, 1
Delambre, 343.
Delphi, oracle of, 97.

Democracy and Freethought, 102,

106-8, 120, 242, 385.
Demokritos, 99, 108-9.
Descartes, 295, 298, 305-6, 327, 330,

332, 345. 357. 371-
Desmoulins, 343.
Desdouits, Prof., 288-9.
Destutt de Tracy, 343.
Deurhoff, 332.
Diagoras, 110-111, 122.
Dickens, 412.
Dickinson, cited, 71.
Diderot, 343, 346, 34S-9, 350, 351,

372, »., 407.
Dikaiarchos, 123.
Dionysius, the younger, 116, n.

the Areopagitc, 155, ;;.

Dippel, Conrad, 359.

Divination, 70.

Dissent, English, and Liberalism,

385-
Dixon, Prof., cited, 432-3.
Dodwell, 314.
Dolet, 14, 265-6.
Dominicans, 219, 287.
Dostoyevsky, 414.
Douglas, S. A., 382.
Douglass, Frederick, 382.
Drama, freethought in, 212.
Draper, 406, 420.
Driver, Canon, cited, 77, 84.
Drummond, H., 419, 424.
Dryden, 331.
Duns Scotus, 245, 246.
Dupuis, 343, 351, 407.
Durand, 246.

Earthquakes, 197.

Eberhardt, 362, 363.

Ebionites, 151

Ecclcsiastcs, 81. 84 6, 137.

Eckhart, 247-8.

Economic causation, 19, 114. [59,

204-7, 204-7, 2I3. 223- t'.v
Edelmann, 362.
Edgeworth, Miss, 412.
Edwards, T., cited, 2' 9.

Jonathan, 405.

Egypt, religion of, 25, 111s. 70-1,

82, 153-5-

freethought in, ^4

d'Eichlhal, G., 393.
Eleans, 102.

Eleusinian mysteries, cio.
Elijah and Elisha, 73.
E liot, George, 413, 4 2 1
Elizabeth, 274, 276, ».
Elohim, 69.

INDEX.

439

Emerson, 384, 405, 413.
Empedokles, 109.
Encyclopedic, 339, 349.
England, medieval freethought in,
236, »., 237, n.

— Elizabethan, freethought in,
263, 274-80.

Reformation in, 251-3, 258.

Deistic movement in, 296-325.

arrest of culture in, 321.

social conditions in, 416.

English influence on France, 337,

349-

Germany, 359, 362.

Ennius, 130.
Epicharmos, 106, 131.
Epictetus, 125-6, 142, 143.
Epicurus, 109, 120, 122.
Epicureanism, 120-5, 133-4, 225"6,

329-33I-
Erasmus, 256.
Erastianism, 297, n.
Eratosthenes, 124.
Erigena, 200, 219.
Esoteric religion, 45, 46, 47.
Esprit fort, use of term, 1.
Essays and Reviews, 384.
Essenes, 104.
Essex, Earl of, 274.
"Ethical Culture" movement, 421.
Ethics, progress in, 12, 19, 20, 29,

32, 36, 3S, 43, 45, 46, 47, 52, 64-65,

95, 102, 142-3, 148, 166, 271-2, 296,

321, 404-5.

of primitive peoples, 64-5, 70.

-of Hebrews, 74-6, 81, 87-8, 89, n.

Etruscan religion, 129, 130, 131.

Eucharist, 201, 203, 207.

Euchite heresy, 207.

Eudo, 208.

Euler, 360.

Eunomeans, 165.

Euripedes, no, 131, 132.

Evemeros, 51-2, 123.

Evemerism, among Semites, 51-2,

73-

among Romans, 120-1.

Evolution theory, 384.

Fabricius, 7, 18.
Falkland, 306.
Faraday, 419.
Farinata degli Uberti, 226.
Farrar, A. S., 7-8, n.
Farrer, J. A., 140, n.
Fear, in religion, 19-20.
Fenelon, 336, 342.
Fetichism, 16, 19.

Feuerbach, 384, 400-1, 426.

Fichte, 370, »., 599.

Filangieri, 374.

Finlay, quoted, 197, n.

Firdausi, 186.

Fischer, Dr. L., cited, 27.

Fitzgerald, 186-7.

Flanders, civilisation of, 260.

Fletcher, 279.

Flint, Prof., cited, 38S, n.

Florence, culture of, 251.

Fontenelle, 331.

Foote, G. W , 38S.

Fotherby, Bishop, 2S0.

Fourier, 389.

Fox, W. J., 391-2.

France, early freethought in, 240,

264.

Reformation in, 254, 266.

influence of, on Italy, 240, n.

culture-history of, 240-7, 264

Franciscans, 218-9, 222-3, 242, 253.
Franklin, B., 376-7, 379. 3S0, ;/.
Fraud in religion, 16-17, 51' 73- 80,

81, 107, 115, 126, 134, 147, 166.
Frederick II, emperor, 225-6.
Frederick the Great, 33S, 355, 359,

360-2.
Freeman, cited, 185.
Freemasonry, 244-5,389.
" Free religious " societies, 391-2.
Freeseekers, sect of, 4.
Freethinker, origin of word, 1-4.

meaning of word, 5-6.

Freethinker, early journal, 4.
Freethought, meaning of, 5.

continuity of, 6.

histories of, 6-8.

psychology of, 8-14.

resistance to, 10.

— in religion, 14.
primitive, 15-22.

— Greek, 90-127.
Roman, 12S-144.

— Christian, 145-9-

— theosophic, 151-5-

— Egyptian, 44-49-
Hindu, 26-311.

— Babylonian, 36-39.

— Hebrew, 76-88.

— under Islam, 171-194.

— early Arab, 171-2.

in mediaeval schools, 219. 223,

-45-

— in the Renaissan. (9-
in the French Revolution,

in Germany, 28^-3, Sb5-i~°-

3<)2.

440

INDEX.

Freethought in modern France, 389.

in Catholic countries, 390-1

425-

in Russia and Scandinavia,
429-3o.

in Oriental countries, 430-433.

Greek religion, 70-1.

influence on Jews, 86-7.

Rome, 128-134.

Free-will, doctrine of, 309, n.

Froissart, 242.

Fronto, 161.

Fry, 306.

Fuegians, religion of, 66-70.

Fukuzawa, 432-3.

Gabriele de Salo, 230.

Galeotto Marcio, 230.

Galiani, 374.

Galileo, 233, «., 288, »., 292-3.

Gall and Spurzheim, 408.

Garasse, 272-3.

Gard, Jean de la, 266.

Gassendi, 295, 305, 329-330.

Gaul, Christian, freethought in, 160.

vice in, 168.

Gaunilo, 220.

Gazier, cited, 352, »., 409, «.

Gazzali, 188-9.

Gebhardi, 360.

•Gebhardt, discussed, 253, n.

Geddes, Dr. 394.

Geijer, 429.

Gemistos Plethon, 293.

Geneva, freethought in, 2, 375.

Genovesi, 394.

Geology, 384, 396-7.

Germany, religion in, 247-8, 426-9.

Reformation in, 259-60, 281.

freethought in, 282-3, 355. 3^5.

392, 404-5, 426-9.
Gewisscner, 283,
Giannone, 373, 374.
Gibbon, 168, 315, 321, »., 323.
Giorgio da Novara, 230.
( rlanvill, 305.
Glisson, 305.
Gnosticism, 151-5, 156.
God-idea, evolution of, 121, 420.
Goethe, 349, 362, n., 366-7, 397.
Gogol, 414.
Goliards, 210.
Gorgias, in.
Gorlseus, 261.

Gospels, freethought in, 145-9.
Gottschalk, 200-1, 206.
Graf, 80.
< rranovsky, 414.
<irant, General, 382.
Gray, cited, 321.
Greek influence in India, 32.

Saracens, 179.

Green, J. R., cited, 274, n , 277,
286, n.

T. H., 404.

Greene, 279.
Greg, W. R. 3S4, 393.
Gregory IX, 215.
Gregoire, 353.
Grirhs, cited, 431.
Grosstete, 222.
Grote, 402, 417.
Grotius, 260-1, 279.
Gruet, Jacques, 257.
Gruppe, 22.

Guicciardini, 231-2, 242.
Guizot, cited, 254, 405.
Gutschmid, cited, 44.

Hadi, Khalif, 180.
Haeckel, 399.
Hafiz, 18S.
Hagenbach, 359, n.
Hall, Robert, 412.
Hallam, cited, 244, 293, n.
Halle, university of, 358.
Haller, von, 360.

Halyburton, cited, 313, »., 319, «.
Hamilton, 403.
Hamond, M., 274.
Hampden, Dr., quoted, 154, »., 202.
tianyfism, 172.
Hardy, 413.
Hare, Bishop, 310, n.
Harnack, 159, n., 427.
Haroun Alraschid, 180.
Harriott, 276-7.
Hartley, 402.
Hartmann, 400.
Havet, E., 80, 384, 393.
Hawaii, freethought in, 21-22.
Hawthorne, 413.
Hubert, 355.

Hebrews, religion of, and ethics of,
23-4, 40, 68-89.

mythology of, 72-4.

Hegel, 399-400.

Heine, 384, 414

llelvctius. 343, 347-8, 351, 374.

I lenley, 412.

I lennell, C. C, 384, 393.

Hennequin, 411.

I lenotheism, 28.

Henry, the monk, 207.

VIII, oJ England, 251.

IV, of France, 272.

INDEX.

44I

Herakleitos, 98, 101.

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 280,

296-7.
Hermotimos, 99.
Herodotos, 37, 41.
Herder, 405.
Hesiod, 52, 93-4, 97.
Heyse, 414.
Hibbert, Julian, 350.
Hicksites, 381.
Hiero, 106.
Hierocles, 152, 164.
Higginson, Col. T. W., 413.
Hipparchos, 124.
Hippias, in.
Hippokrates, 119.
Hobbes, 297-9, 309, n.
d'Holbach, 341, 343, 346, 350-1, 353,

361, 362.
Holland. See Netherlands.
Holland, G. J., 343.
Holmes, O. W., 413.
" Holy," early meaning of, 75.
Holyoake, G. J., 387, 388, n.
Homeric poems, 90, 92-5, 97, ioi, 108.
Hone, William, 387.
Hooker, 238.
Horace, 139, 142.
Hosea, 75-78, 80.
Howells, 413.
Huet, 316, »., 329, 341-2.
Hugo, Victor, 384, 410.
Humanists, Italian, 233.
Humanity, Religion of, 379, «.
Hume, 314, 315, 316, 317-8, 322, 323,

342-
Humiliati, 218.
Hungary, thought in, 405.
Huss, 259.

Hutcheson, 322, 347.
Hutton, 396.
Huxley, 398, 417, 420.
Hyksos, 47.
Hypatia, 159, 169.

Ibsen, 415.

Iconoclasm, 196-7, 198.

Idolatry, 38, 40, 42, 67, 74, 150,

172, 195-6, 198,200, 430.
Hive, J., 320.
Iketas, 105.
Imitatio Christi, 248.
Immortality, belief in, 70-1, 87, 225-

6, 232.

of animals, 360.

Impostors, the Three, 225, 11.

India, freethought in, 18, 26-36, 193.

magic in, 24, ».

India, influence of, on Greece, 34.

religious evolution in, 64, 193.

Indulgences, 213.
Industrialism, 321.
Infidel, use of word, 2.
Infidelity, use of word, 5.
Ingersoll, Colonel, 389, 418.
Innocent III, 209, 212.
Inquisition, 213, 219, 242, 2S3-5,

288.
Institutions, power of in religion,

17, 19, 425.

lack of freethinking, 418.

Ionia, culture of, 90-6, 98-9, 100-2.
Ireland, ancient, culture in, 200-1.

Protestantism in, 252.

freethought in, 386.

Isaiah, 76-80, 83.

Isis, 49.

Islam, 49, 171-194.

Italy, freethought in, 224, 372.

influence of, on Europe, 241,

262-4.
Reformation in, 253.

Jabariles, 178.
Jacob, 73.
Jainism, 30, 33, 35
Jamblichos, 160.
James, Prof. W., 9, n.

Henry, 413.

Jami, 188.

Jansenists, 327-8, 336, 337, 344.

Japan, freethought in, 430-3.

Jeannin, 271, «., 272.

Jefferson, 376-S.

Jehovah (see Yahweh).

Jenghiz Khan, 174, 184.

Jerome, 196.

Jerome of Prague, 259.

Jesuits, 264, 341, 344, 354, 375-

Jesus, 73. 145-9, 156.

horoscope of, 227, n.

Jevons, F. B., criticised, 24, n.
Jews, in Middle Ages, 199, 212, 221

283-4.
Joachim, Abbot, 218.
Job, book of, 84-5.
John the Scot, 200-2, 219.

of Salisbury, 221.

of Parma, 218.

of Jandun, 245.

Joseph, 73.

Joseph II, 361.

Joshua, 73.

Journalism, freethinking, 389, 390.

Jovinian, 195.

"Juan di Posos," 334.

442

INDEX.

Julian, 125, 164.
Justin Martyr, 161.
Juvenal, 141-2, 148.

Kadaritcs, 178

Kalam, 183.

Kant, 368-370, 395, 399.

Karaites, 221.

Karians, 90, 92-3, 98.

Karmathians, 184.

Karneades, 124.

Kett, Francis, 275.

Ketzcr, origin of word, 204.

Kharejites, 177

Kidd, B., 424.

Kielmeyer, 397, n.

Kindi, Al, 189.

King, Archbishop, 311.

Kipling, 412.

Kleist, H. von, 414.

Klitomachos, 124.

Knutzen, M., 283, 355.

Koerbagh, 261.

Koheleth, 81, 84-6, 137.

Koornhert, 261.

Koran, 171-3, 175-6, 179-182, 191.

Kortholt, 356.

Krishna myth, 31.

Kritias, 108.

Kronos, 93.

Kuenen, 384, 394.

Kyd, Thomas, 276.

Lagrange, 343.

Lalande, 343.

Lamarck, 397.

La Mettrie, 343, 346-7, 360.

La Mothe le Vayer, 273, 326-7, 330.

Landau, cited, 228, n.

Lang, A., criticised, 20, 23, »., 61,

65, 66, 69-71, 75, 322, n.
Lange, 6, 119, 316.
Languedoc, civilisation of, 210-212
Lanson, cited, 328, n., 331, 344,

345. «■
I.ao-Tsze, 56-58.
Laplace, 343, 384, 395
Larroque, 393.
I.asson, cited, 248.
Latitudinarians, 264, 307.
Lavater, 366
Law, William, 317.
Lawrence, Dr. 398, n., 416
Lea, H. C, cited, 244.
Lechlcr, cited, 280.
Lecky, quoted, 222, 278.
Le Clerc, 383.
Leconte de Lisle, 384, 410.

Leenhof, 334.

Legge, Dr., cited, 54.

Leibnitz, 283, 309, 315, 316, 356-9.

Lemaitre, 411.

Lennstrand, V. E., 429.

Leo the Isaurian, 179, 196.

Leopardi, 384, 414.

Leopold of Tuscany, 375.

Lessing, 227, 362, 363 4, 366, »., 369.

Leukippos, 99, 109.

Levites, 24, 84, 87.

Lewes, 417.

L'Hopital, 268.

Libanius, quoted, 205.

Libertin, use of word, 1, 272.

Libcrtini, use of word, 1-2, 257.

Liewe van Aitzema, 261.

Lincoln, President, 382.

Liszinski, 361-2.

Littre, cited, 241 ; death of, 425, it.

Livy, 139.

Localisation of Gods, 25, 50.

Locke, 306, 308, 311, 357-8.

Lollards, 235-240, 251.

Lope de Vega, 285.

Louis, Saint, 361.

Lubbock, 18.

Lucian, 121, 125-6, 141, 142, 150, 163.

Lucilius, 134, n.

Lucretius, 121, 132-3.

Ludovicus Vives, 294.

Luther, 254-6.

Lydia, civilisation of, 98.

Lysander, 138.

Macaulay, cited, 303, n., 309, 11.

416.
Machiavelli, 231-2, 242.
Mackay, R. W., 393.
Madison, 381. ■
Magi, 40-42.
Magian religion, 39-44.
Magic and religion, 24, n.
Mahdi, Khalif, 180.
Mahmoud, Sultan, 184-5.
Maimonides, 212, 222.
Malherbe, 327.
Malthus, 403.

Maninnn, Khalif, 181-2, 184, 197, n.
Mandeville, 312, 315, 322, 347.
Manfred, 225.

Manicheism, 154, 155, 197-9. 203-215.
Mansel, 403.

Manscrar, Khalif, 179-180.
Marcionites, 153-4, 203.
Marcus Aurelius, 141, 143, 144.
M.n.chal, Sylvain, 7, 341, 351, >'
Marguerite of Navarre, 2, 266-7.

INDEX.

443

Marius, 136.

Marlowe, 275-7.

Marri, El, 185.

Marsiglio of Padua, 245.

Marten, 300.

Martineau, H., 424.

Marx, 384, 487.

Maupertuis, 347, 360.

Mauvillon, 365.

Maximus Tyrius, 143.

Mazarin, 327.

Mazdeism, 39-44.

Melanchthon, 255-6.

Melissos, 103.

Mencius, 58.

Mendelssohn, Moses, 362, 363.

Menippos, 126.

Menziss, Dr., cited, 43.

Meredith, G., 413.

Merivale, Dean, criticised, 136-7.

Metempsychosis, 109.

Metrodoros, 108.

Mexico, religions of, 59.

Meyer, E., quoted, 39, 41, 43.

Michael, Emperor, 197.

Michelet, 354, »., 409, 425.

Middleton,Conyers, 323.

Miletos, 92, 98-9.

Militarism, 321.

Mill, James, 402, 417.

J. S., 348, 416, 417.

Miller, Hugh, 397.

Milman, cited, 168.

Milton, 306.

Mirabaud, 340, 350.

Mirabeau, 343.

Miracles, 203.

Miriam, 73.

Mithra, 42, 43.

Mithraism, 154, 155, 165.

Mitra, 27.

Mohammed, 16, 171-6.

Moktader, Khalif, 184.

Molech, 74.

Moleschott, 401, ».

Moliere, 328.

Molyneux, 4.

Mommsen, 128, «., 129.

Monolatry, 69, 172.

Monotheism, 42, 54, 61-2, 68-89,

171-2.
Monroe, 381.

Montaigne, 268-270, 278, 326, 327.
Montalembert, cited, 213, u., 215,;/.
Montesquieu, 343, 344"5. 373
Moore, G., 413.

Moors, 189-192,284-5. (See Arabs.)
More, Sir Thomas, 239, 25S.

More, Henry, 300, 305.

Hannah, 412.

Morehead, 417, n.

Morgan, 314, 316, 322.

Morley, J., cited, 309, »., 338, ».,

346, »., 350, «... 359, »., 417.
Mosheim, 141.
Motasim, Khalif, 182.
Motawakkel, Khalif, 182, 184.
Motazilites, 177-182, 192, 222, 227, n.
Motecallemin, 192, 227, n.
Miiller, K. O., 91, »., 92.
Miiller, Max, cited, 18, 27, n.,. 33.
Musset, 410.
Mylius, 363.
Mysticism, 154, n.

Arab, 182.

Mythology, 384, 407.

Nabonidos, King, 25, 39.

Naigeon, 450.

Nanak, 25.

Napoleon, 136.

Naturaliste, use of word, 1.

Naude, Gabriel, 268, 326, 330.

" Negative " criticism, 9-11.

Neo-Platonism, 49.

Netherlands, thought in, 24S, 260-1,

295. 332-5. 384. 390.
Newman, F. W., 384, 393, 417.
New Testament criticism, 392, 394,

407.
New Zealand, freethought in, 422.
Newton, 306, 309, 315, 330, 345, 357,

395. 399-
Nezahuatl, 60.

Nicolai, 362.

Nicolaus of Autricuria, 247.

of Cusa, 2S6.

Nicon, 372.
Nietzsche, 400.
Ninon de l'Enclos, 337.
Nodier, cited, 266, ».
Nominalism, 201.

Ochino, 257-8, 263.
( )_;lethorpe, 348, ».
1 U.l Testament criticism, 29S, 331-2,

333- 392, 393. 4°7. 4-7
Omar, 173.

Omar Khayyam, 1S5-8.
( Jrigen, 152, 161-3.
Ormazd (see Ahura Mazda).
Osborn, Major, cited, 178, n.

Francis, cited, 276, n.

Ottavio Ubaldini, 22", ».
Ovi.l, i.vi. 142.

444

INDEX.

Owen, Rev. John, 7, 210, «., 231, ».,
232, »., 269, «., 270, n.

Robert, 384, 387.

Robert Dale, 378, n.

Oxford in 16th c, 287.

in 18th c, 321.

Ozanam, cited, 156, n.

Pachacamac, 61.
Padua, school of, 249.
Paganism, suppression of, 159, 165.
Paine, 324, 376, 377, 379-82, 385-6,

396..
Paleario, 264.
Palmer, Prof., 172, n.

Elihu, 381.

Pantheism, 26, 28, 29, 48.
Papacy and heresy, 209-215, 264.

power of, 218, 264.

hostility to, 231, 375.

Paris, university of, 241.

Parker, Theodore, 362, »., 384, 393,

4°5-
Parr, 404.

Parmenides, 99, 103.

Pascal, 328-9, 342.

Passerani, 335.

Paterini, 242, 250.

Patin, Gui, 326, 330.

Paul, 145-150, 167.

Paulicians, the sect, 2, 197-9, 202-3,

210.
Pearson, cited, 404.
Pecock, Reginald, 238-9, 298.
Pelagianism, 156-8, 195.
Perikles, 106-7, IX9-
Persecution, 143, 159, 165, 209-215,

245, 251-261, 263-4, 265-9, 274-7,

292-3, 308, 312, 320, 345, 416.
Persia, religions of, 39-44, 82-4.
freethought in, 172, »., 181, 187,

190, 192-3.
Peru, ancient, freethought in, 22, 62.

religion of, 59-62.

modern, freethought in, 391.

Peter de 15rueys, 207.

I ''tit, Claude, 327.

Petrarch, 228-9, 233> 249-

Petronius, 140.

Peyrat, 393.

Peyrere, 332.

1'liilo, 221.

Phoenicia, religion of, 39, 49-53.

Photius, 197.

Phrenology, 407-8.

I 'uric Aiik-oI, 245.

Pierre d'Ailly, 2 )'•

Piers Ploughman, Vision of, 235.

Pietism, 358.

Pindar, 95.

Pitt, the elder, 314, 320.

the younger, 324, 325, 355.

Plato, in, 114-7, 142, 152.

Platonism, 152, 161, 163, 293, 300.

Pliny, 140, 142.

Plotinus, 48, 152.

Plutarch, 126, 164.

Poe, 413.

Poland, freethought in, 371.

Socinianism in, 237.

Polybios, 126,

Polytheism, 23-28, 35-37, 44"53>

59-62, 68-81, 105, 116, 121, 129,

133, 151, 165, 171.
Pompeius, 136.
Pomponazzi, 202, 232.
Pomponius Laetus, 233.
Poole, R. L, cited, 202, 220, 246, 247.
Pope, 315.

Porphyry, 152, 161, 169.
Potapenko, 415.
Poushkine, 414.
Preaching, early, 144.
Priestley, 317, 372.
Prodikos, in.
Prophecy, 79, 80.

Prophets, Hebrew, dates of, 76-81.
Protagoras, 99, no.
Protestantism, 250-261, 274,279, 281.
Provence, civilisation of, 210-212.
Psychology, 384, 407.
Ptolemy. 125.
Pulci, 230.
Punjer, 347, n.
Puritanism, 279, 298.
Pusey, 322, n.
Pyrrho, 120.
Pythagoras, 99, 100-6.

Quakers, 339. 380, 381.
Quetzalcoatl, 60.

Rabanus, 200.
Rabelais, 265.
Race-character, theories of, 39, 50,

53, 91, 119, 128-9.
Raleigh, 275-7.
Ramsay, Chevalier de, 336.
Ramus, 294.
Raoul de Houdan, 211.
Kappolt, 356.
Rationalism, religious phases of,

154, «., 202, 364-5.
Ratramnus, 201.
Rawlinson, Canon, cited, 41, 44.
Raymond Berenger, 211.

INDEX.

445

Raymund of Sebonde, 246.

Raynal, 343.

Reformation, the, 204, 250-61, 281-2.

Regnard, 331.

Reimarus, 363-4.

Reimmann, 7, 273, n.

Reinach, S., 90, n.

Religion and conquest, 173-4, 184-5.

Renaissance in Italy, 2, 67, 224-34.

in France, 240-7.

in England, 234-40.

Renan, quoted, 73, 84, 85, 178, «.,

3S4. 393- 401- 4°7- 425-
Reville, Dr., A., 69.
Revolution, French, 324, 351-5, 383-

398, 40S-9.

American. 376.

Rewandites, 180.

Reynard the Fox, 216-7, 247.

Richelieu, 326.

Riddle, Rev. J. E., 7-8.

Riem, 362.

Rihoriho, King, 21-22.

Rings, the Three, 227-8, 364.

Ritualism, 423.

Roalfe, Matilda, 386.

Robespierre, 343, 355.

Robinet, 347, 360.

Roman religion, 70-1, 128-144.

Ronsard, 267.

Roscelin, 201.

Rousseau, J. B., 337.

Rousseau, J. J., 344- 351. 354- 3&3<

369-
Royal Society, 2-3, 305.

Rudiger, 360.

Russia, thought in, 372, 414-5, 429"

430-
Ruteboeuf, 211.
Rystwich, 261.

Sabbath, origin of, 83.

Sacraments, 59-60.

Sacred Books, 64.

Sacrifices, 29, 30, 59-62, 66, 70, 76,

142.
Sadducces, 86, 87.
Sadi, 188.
Sahagun, 63.

Sainte-Beuve, cited, 270, 11 , 410.
St. Evremond, 330-1.
St. Hilaire, B., cited, 33.

Geoffroy, 397-8.

St. Simon, 389.
Saladin, 227.
Salaville, 355.
Salverte, 405-6.
Salvian, 160, 168.

Samoans, religion of, 20.

Samson, 51, 73.

Sanchez, 291-2.

Sanchoniathon, 51.

Sand, George, 410.

Saracen culture, 211 (see Arabs).

Satan, 83, 85.

Saturnalia, 24.

Saunderson, 310.

Savages, freethought among, 15-22.

religion of, 17-20, 64-5.

ethics of, 64-5.

Savonarola, 251.

Sayce, cited, 39, 53.

Scaevola, 134, n

Scandinavia, freethought in, 370,

414-5, 429-430.
Sceptic, use of word, 3.
Scepticism, academic, 107, 275.
Pyrrhonic, 120, 124, 126, 275,

287, 292, 370.
Schade, 362.
Schelling, 399.
Scherer, E., 80, 410.
Schiller, 366-8.
Schleiermacher, 392.
Scholastics, 220-3, 228, 245-7.
Schopenhauer, 400.
Schrader, cited, 93.
Scot, Reginald, 274.
Scotland, Reformation in, 252.

Freethought in, 318-319.

Scott, Thomas, 393.

Semele, 93.

Semites, theories concerning, 39.

5°. 53. 73-4-

religions of, 68-9, 98.

Semitic influence on Greeks, 90-4,

96.
Sender, 365.

Seneca, 139, 140, 142, 143, 169.
Serra, 373, n.
Servetus, 255-7.

Sextus Empiricus, 126, 269, 275.
Shaftesbury, 310. 315. 322, 359. 377-
Shakspere, 252, 277-9.
Shelley, 3S4, 411.
Sherlock, W., 3.
Shiites, 177-8.
Sifatites, 178.
Sikhs, 35.

Simon deMontfort, 214.
Simon. Richard, 331-2.
Simonidcs, >
Sismondi, cited, JS5, n.
Sixtiis IV. 230.
Slavery, Christianity and,

Paine and, 379, n.

446

INDEX.

Smith, W. Robertson, cited, 29, 74, 1

394-

Adam, 321, n., 323.

Smyrna, ancient, 92.

Social causation, 19, 21, 46-9, 59, 62,

119, 129, 135, 137, 167.
Socialism, 63. 67, 384, 426.
Socinianism, 257, 263, 30G, 307, 309.
Sociology, 384, 405-6.
Sokrates, 107, 108, 111-113.
Soury, cited, 348, n
South Place Institute, 391-2.
Southwell, C, 386.
Sozzini, 263.
Spain, culture history of, 283-6, 375,

425-
Spalding, 363.

Spencer, H., 18, 20, 384, 403, 406.

Speusippos, 123.

Spinoza, 313, 332-3, 356, 357.

Spinozism, 333-5, 356, 357.

Spirituales, the sect, 1.

Sprat, Dr., 2-3.

Statius, 140-1.

Stiiudlin, 370.

Steele, 310.

Steinbart, ^C>^.

Stephen, Sir J., 242, 342.

Leslie, cited, 305, 308, »., 309,

»., 313, «., 314-6, 317, »., 417.
Stillingfieet, 3, 302.
Stilpo, 122.
Stoicism, 120, 124, 125, 133-4, r39>

160.
Stosch, 356.
Stout, Sir R., 422.
Strabo, 126.
Strato, 123.
Strauss, 365, 393, 407.
Stubbs, Bishop, cited, 252, 424.
Sufiism, 187-8, 193.
Sulla, 136.
Sully, J., cited, 22.
Sun-Gods, worship of, 45, 47, 50, 52,

59, 60, 69, 73.
Sunniles, 177.
Swift, 4, 310.
Switzerland, Reformation in, 253.

thought in, 375.
Swinburne, 384, .\ 1 1
Sylvester II, 212, n.

Tabari, cited, 180.
T.iine, 402, 410.
Talmud, 155, n.
Tamerlane, 174, 1
Tanquelin, 207.
1 ism, 58,

Tauler, 248.

Taylor, Robert, 386.

Telesio, 294.

Templars, the Knights, 243-5.

Tennyson, 384, 411.

Tertullian, 156, 158, 159, 16c, 167.

Thackeray, 412.

Thales, 98-100.

Theophilanthtopy, 380.

Theophile de Viau, 327.

Theodoros, 122.

Theodotos, 156.

Theophrastos, 123-4.

Thomas Aquinas, 245.

Thomas a Kempis, 248.

Thomasius, Jenkin, 7, 296, n.

Christian, 359, n.

Thompson, F., 412.

Thomson, J., 412.

Thrakians, 91.

Thukydides, 114.

Thunder-Gods, 69.

Tiele, cited, 16, 25, 45.

Tillotson, 307.

Tindal, 312, 316, 322, 359, ».

Toland, 4, 307-8, 316.

Tolstoy, 414.

Tourguenief, 414.

Trenchard, J., 304.

Trebonian, 168.

Tractarianism, 423.

Tribbechov, 7.

Trinity, dogma of, 201, 255, 257, 306.

Trinius, 7.

Trouveres and Troubadours, 210,

211, 247.
Turgot, 343, 351, 353, »., 355.
Turkish civilisation, 194, 433.
Turlupins, 217.
Twelve, sacred number, 68.
"Twofold truth," 232, 294.
Tylor, Dr., cited, 15, 406.

Ueberweg, quoted, 202.

opinions of, 426, ;;.

Unitarianism, early, 255-8, 262-4,

275. 287, 300, 306, 317, 422-3.
United States, freethought in, 370-

382, 391-2, 416-425.

German freethinkers in, 391.

Universities, 241, 269, 200, 287, 305,

321. 35»-
Upanishads, 29, 30, 48.

Valentinus Gentilis, 257.
Van der Ende, 332-3
Vanini, 14, 290-1.
Van Mildert, 7-8.

INDEX.

447

Varro, 134, n.
Varuna, 27.
\rauvenargues, 343.
Vedanta, 29, n., 30.
Vedas, 17-18, 26-28, 29-30.

translations ol, 18, n.

scepticism in, 18, 27-28.

Venturini, 363.

Verlaine, 410.

Vico, 373, 405.

Vigilantius, 196, 209, n.

Virchow, 426.

Viret, 262.

Virgil, 139.

Virgin-Mother-Goddess, 59, 151.

Yogt, Carl, 401, «.

Volney, 343, 351.

Voltaire, 14, 312, 323, 324, 336-339,

34x-3. 345-6. 349. 351. 36°. 375. 384

Wahabi sect, 193.
Waitz, 406.
Waldenses, 209.
Wallace, A. R., 398.
Warburton, 315.
Washington, 355, 376, 378.
Wasil ibn Atta, 177.
Waterland, 315.
Wathik, Khalif, 182.
Watson, Bishop, 381, 386.

W., 412.

Watts, C, 6.

Weber, A., cited, 24, 29, 30, 31, 32.

Wellhausen, quoted, 75, 99, 384, 394

Wesleyanism, 321.

Wheeler, J. M., 7.

Whewell, 398.

Whiston, 310.

White, A. D., 420.

Whitman, 413.

Wiclif, 219, 236-8, 239, 250.

Wier, 282.

Wilberforce, 412.

" Will to believe," 9.

William of Conches, 221.

William of Occam, 245-6

Witchcraft, belief in, 256, 268, 270,

274, 282.
Wolff and Wolffianism, 358-9.
Women, orthodoxy among, 135.
freethought among, 337, 345,

386, 424, 425-6.

position of Christian, 16S

Woolston, 312, 322, 338, n.
Wordsworth, 384.
Wright, Susanna, 386.

Frances, 424-5.

Writing, antiquity of, 77, n.

Xenophanes, 99, 102.
Xenophon, 130.

Yahweh, 69, 72, 74-6.
Yeats, 412.

Zaid, 171-2.

Zarathustra, 43, 54.

Zeller, 428, n.

Zendavesta, 42.

Zendekism (Arab atheism), 179, >'■,

180, n.
Zeno (the elder), 99, 103.

■ (the Stoic), 120, 124.

Zwingli, 201, 255.

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