Chapter XIV: Freedom of Thought

Authority and Knowledge in Science--The Duty of Doubt--Authority
and Individual Judgment in Religion--The Protestant Position--Sir
Charles Lyell and the Deluge--Infallibility--The Church and
Science--Morality and Dogma--Civil and Religious
Liberty--Agnosticism and Clericalism--Meaning of
Agnosticism--Knowledge and Evidence--The Method of Agnosticism.

In the practice of modern law-courts, a witness rarely is allowed to offer as evidence any statement for which he himself is not the direct authority. What he himself saw or heard or did with regard to the matter at issue--these, and not what others told him they had seen or heard or done, are the limits within which he is allowed to be a competent witness. As a matter of fact, in the business of life we have to act differently. A large proportion of our opinions, beliefs, and reasons for conduct must come to us on the authority of others. We have no direct experience of the past; of the present we can see little and only the little immediately surrounding us. In a multitude of affairs we have to act on authority, to accept from books or from persons what we have not ourselves the opportunity of knowing. It would seem, then, to be a primary duty to learn to distinguish in our minds those matters which we know directly from those matters which we have accepted on trust; and, secondly, to learn and to apply the best modes of choosing the good and of rejecting the bad authorities. The work of the scientific man is a lifelong exercise of these primary duties. From the first moment he begins to observe living things or to dissect their dead frameworks, to mix chemical substances, to make experiments with magnets and wires, he begins to build, and as long as he continues to work he continues to build for himself a body of first-hand knowledge. But, however he work arduously or through long years, he can visit only the smallest portion of the field of nature in which he is working. It is necessary for him to employ the work of others, submitting, from time to time such accepted work to the tests suggested by his own observations. He learns to regard in a different light all knowledge taken on the authority of others; to distrust it a little until he has learned to weigh its general credibility by his own standards, and its particular credibility by subjecting portions of it to his own tests; to distrust it still more when even small portions fail to answer his tests, and to reject it altogether when the percentage of detected error is large. He learns, in fact, what Huxley called the duty of doubt.

This duty has not been universally accepted. In the history of Christian civilisation (and a parallel series of events might be portrayed from the history of other civilisations), many great institutions and very many great and good men have condemned and feared the habit and attitude of doubt in all its forms. Certain doctrines believed to be of supreme importance to mankind were held to rest on authority independent of, and perhaps not susceptible to, the kind of testing employed in science. Around these doctrines there grew, in time, a body of traditions, customs, new dogmas, and fantasies; and the duty of belief in the first was extended to cover the whole system, the central jewel as well as the accretions and encrustations of time. The domain of religious authority was extended to the whole field of human thought and of human action, and the more unreasonable the dominion became, the more strenuously was the duty of belief urged. The Protestant Reformation was one of the great stages in the conflict for freedom against the universal tyranny that had arisen, but the reformers very naturally retained a considerable portion of the bias against which they had fought. In Protestant countries, in the first half of this century, the duty of belief in the Protestant doctrines, traditions, philosophy, history, and attitude to science reigned supreme, and all weapons, from legitimate argument to abusive invective and social ostracism, were employed against those who acted in accordance with the duty of doubt. Allegations of "unsoundness" or of "free thinking" became barriers to success in life, and those against whom they were made became lowered in the esteem of their fellows.

At the present time, when the advance of science and of civilisation has almost won the battle for freedom of thought, it is difficult to realise the strength of the forces against which Huxley and many others had to fight. Huxley himself said with perfect justice: "I hardly know of a great physical truth whose universal reception has not been preceded by an epoch in which most estimable persons have maintained that the phenomena investigated were directly dependent on the Divine Will, and that the attempt to investigate them was not only futile but blasphemous." As a particular instance of this he cited some episodes in the history of geological science.

"At the present time, it is difficult to persuade serious
scientific enquirers to occupy themselves, in any way, with the
Noachian Deluge. They look at you with a smile and a shrug, and
say they have more important matters to attend to than mere
antiquarianism. But it was not so in my youth. At that time
geologists and biologists could hardly follow to the end any path
of enquiry without finding the way blocked by Noah and his ark,
or by the first chapter of Genesis; and it was a serious matter,
in this country at any rate, for a man to be suspected of
doubting the literal truth of the Diluvial or any other
Pentateuchal history. The fiftieth anniversary of the foundation
of the Geological Club (in 1824) was, if I remember rightly, the
last occasion on which the late Sir Charles Lyell spoke to even
so small a public as the members of that body. Our veteran leader
lighted up once more; and, referring to the difficulties which
beset his early efforts to create a rational science of geology,
spoke, with his wonted clearness and vigour, of the social
ostracism which pursued him after the publication of the
_Principles of Geology_, in 1830, on account of the obvious
tendency of that noble work to discredit the Pentateuchal
accounts of the Creation and the Deluge. If my younger
contemporaries find this hard to believe, I may refer them to a
grave book _On the Doctrine of the Deluge_, published eight years
later, and dedicated by the author to his father, the then
Archbishop of York. The first chapter refers to the treatment of
the 'Mosaic Deluge,' by Dr. Buckland and Mr. Lyell, in the
following terms: 'Their respect for revealed religion has
prevented them from arraying themselves openly against the
Scriptural account of it--much less do they deny its truth--but
they are in a great hurry to escape from the consideration of it,
and evidently concur in the opinion of Linnæus, that no proofs
whatever of the Deluge are to be discovered in the structure of
the earth.' And after an attempt to reply to some of Lyell's
arguments, which it would be cruel to reproduce, the writer
continues:--'When, therefore, upon such slender grounds, it is
determined, in answer to those who insist on its universality,
that the Mosaic Deluge must be considered a preternatural event,
far beyond the reach of philosophical enquiry; not only as to the
causes employed to produce it, but as to the effects most likely
to result from it; that determination wears an aspect of
scepticism, which, however much soever it may be unintentional in
the mind of the writer, yet cannot but produce an evil impression
on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at the
evidence of Revelation.'"

The great evil of authority was its tendency to erect itself into some form of infallibility of universal application. When, for a time, the geological victory was won, and the supporters of authority had comforted themselves with reconciliations, there arose the much greater and more serious opposition between authority and the conceptions involved in evolution. Huxley, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, found that all the old weapons of authority were resumed with a renewed assurance, and his advocacy of the duty of doubt became not merely the defence of a great principle but a means of self-defence. The conception of infallible authority had been transferred by Protestants from the Church to the Bible, and against this Huxley strove with all his might. It is convenient to reserve a full treatment of Huxley's attitude to the Bible for a separate chapter, but at this point a quotation will shew his general view.

"The truth is that the pretension to infallibility, by whomsoever
made, has done endless mischief; with impartial malignity it has
proved a curse, alike to those who have made it and those who
have accepted it; and its most baneful shape is book
infallibility. For sacerdotal corporations and schools of
philosophy are able, under due compulsion of opinion, to retreat
from positions that have become untenable; while the dead hand of
a book sets and stiffens, amidst texts and formulæ, until it
becomes a mere petrifaction, fit only for that function of
stumbling-block, which it so admirably performs. Wherever
bibliolatry has prevailed, bigotry and cruelty have accompanied
it. It lies at the root of the deep-seated, sometimes disguised,
but never absent, antagonism of all varieties of ecclesiasticism
to the freedom of thought and to the spirit of scientific
investigation."

Moreover, Presbyter is but Priest writ large, and the Protestant clergy were the leaders in denunciation of every person and every branch of investigation or of thought in any way connected with evolution. Huxley was no respecter of persons, and, following the example of Darwin, he was ready to study carefully any arguments for or against any scientific doctrines by whomsoever or howsoever brought forward. The right of criticism and duty of doubt, which he insisted on for himself, he was extremely willing to extend to others, and, as a matter of fact he was on terms of intimate friendship with some of his most distinguished clerical opponents. But to an extent which it is almost impossible now to realise, the clergy generally abused their legitimate position and authority, and demanded or assumed a right to give authoritative opinions on questions which did not come within their domain. It was the old attempt of the Church to make its authority felt in all departments of thought and of action, and the attempt was made in the traditional fashion. Questions of fact were associated with questions of morality, and those who held one view as to the meaning and implication of certain facts were denounced as wicked. Huxley at once carried the war into the enemy's own country:

"And, seeing how large a share of this clamour is raised by the
clergy of one denomination or another, may I say, in conclusion,
that it really would be well if ecclesiastical persons would
reflect that ordination, whatever deep-seated graces it may
confer, has never been observed to be followed by any visible
increase in the learning or the logic of its subject. Making a
man a Bishop, or entrusting him with the office of ministering to
even the largest of Presbyterian congregations, or setting him up
to lecture to a church congress, really does not in the smallest
degree augment such title to respect as his opinions may
intrinsically possess. And when such a man presumes on an
authority, which was conferred on him for other purposes, to sit
in judgment on matters his incompetence to deal with which is
patent, it is permissible to ignore his sacerdotal pretensions,
and to tell him, as one would tell a mere, common, unconsecrated
layman: that it is not necessary for any man to occupy himself
with problems of this kind unless he so choose; life is filled
full enough with the performance of its ordinary and obvious
duties. But that, if a man elect to become a judge of these grave
questions; still more if he assume the responsibility of
attaching praise or blame to his fellow-men for the conclusions
at which they arrive touching them, he will commit a sin more
grievous than most breaches of the decalogue, unless he avoid a
lazy reliance upon the information that is gathered by prejudice
and filtered through passion, unless he go back to the prime
sources of knowledge--the facts of Nature, and the thoughts of
those wise men who for generations past have been her best
interpreters."

In the campaign for absolute freedom of thought, for the duty of not believing anything except on sufficient evidence, Huxley was frequently met by an argument of superficial strength, and which no doubt was in the minds of many of his clerical opponents. In the minds of a majority of people, it was said, and particularly of slightly educated people, the reasons for right conduct and the distinctions between right and wrong are firmly associated with the Bible and with religion. If you allow doubts as to the absolute veracity of the Bible, or as to the supernatural origin of religion to reach such persons, you run a grave risk that they will reflect the uncertainty on the canons of morality. In taking from them what you believe to be false, inevitably you will unsettle their ideas on moral questions although you might be in full agreement as to these moral questions. Huxley refused to accept the asserted association between morality and particular metaphysical or religious doctrines.

"Many ingenious persons now appear to consider that the
incompatibility of pantheism, of materialism, and of any doubt
about the immortality of the soul, with religion and morality is
to be held as an axiomatic truth. I confess that I have a certain
difficulty in accepting this dogma. For the Stoics were
notoriously materialists and pantheists of the most extreme
character; and while no strict Stoic believed in the eternal
duration of the individual soul, some even denied its persistence
after death. Yet it is equally certain, that, of all gentile
philosophies, Stoicism exhibits the highest ethical development,
is animated by the most religious spirit, and has exerted the
profoundest influence upon the moral and religious development
not merely of the best men among the Romans, but among the
moderns down to our own day."

He held the view now generally taken by students of the history of man, that standards of conduct and religious beliefs arose in separate ways and developed independently, and that it was only comparatively recently that "religion took morality under its protection." But he met the argument in a still more direct fashion by rejecting entirely the possibility or advisability of founding any system of ethics upon a false basis.

"It is very clear to me," he wrote, "that, as Beelzebub is not
to be cast out by Beelzebub, so morality is not to be established
by immorality. It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the
devil that he was a liar from the beginning. If we set out in
life with pretending to know that which we do not know; with
professing to accept for proof evidence which we are well aware
is inadequate; with wilfully shutting our eyes and our ears to
facts which militate against this or that comfortable hypothesis;
we are assuredly doing our best to deserve the same character."

Freedom of thought meant for Huxley all that is best in liberalism applied to life. In an essay on Joseph Priestley, he described the condition of affairs in England last century, when scientific investigation and all forms of independent thinking laboured under the most heavy restrictions that could be imposed by dominant ecclesiastical and civil prejudice. He pointed out the astounding changes between these times and the times of to-day.

"If we ask," he wrote, "what is the deeper meaning of all these
vast changes, there can be but one reply. They mean that reason
has asserted and exercised her primacy over all the provinces of
human activity; that ecclesiastical authority has been relegated
to its proper place; that the good of the governed has been
finally recognised as the end of government, and the complete
responsibility of governors to the people as its means; and that
the dependence of natural phenomena in general on the laws of
action of what we call matter has become an axiom."

The common ground of those who advocate the duty of belief and those who insist on the duty of doubt is clear. Both are agreed as to the necessity of accepting whatever has sufficient evidence to support it; both agree that there is room for doubt though not necessarily for rejection in cases where the evidence is contaminated or insufficient. It is in the application that the difference lies. The scientific theologian admits the agnostic principle, however widely his results may differ from those reached by the majority of agnostics. "But, as between agnosticism and ecclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours across the Channel call it, clericalism, there can be neither peace nor truce. The cleric asserts that it is morally wrong not to believe certain propositions, whatever the results of a strict scientific investigation of the evidence of these propositions. He tells us that "religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature" (Newman). It necessarily follows that, for him, the attainment of faith, not the ascertainment of truth, is the highest aim of mental life."

Huxley helped largely in the modern movement which has made it impossible to blame people for doubt, and this was what he strove for most strenuously. Freedom of thought, like freedom of the Press, by no means implies that what is free must necessarily be good. In both cases there may be a rank growth of weeds, nurtured in vicious imagination, and finding a ready market with the credulous mob. For the detection and rejection of these, the critical method of science serves as well as it does against the loftier errors supported by authority.

It was on Descartes and on Hume that Huxley founded the precise form in which he urged the duty of doubt, and his exact words are worth quoting.

"It was in 1619, while meditating in solitary winter quarters,
that Descartes (being about the same age as Hume when he wrote
the _Treatise on Human Nature_) made that famous resolution, to
"take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such,"
the great practical effect of which is the sanctification of
doubt; the recognition that the profession of belief in
propositions, of the truth of which there is no sufficient
evidence, is immoral; the discrowning of authority as such; the
repudiation of the confusion, beloved of sophists of all sorts,
between free assent and merely piously gagged dissent, and the
admission of the obligation to reconsider even one's own axioms
on due demand."

This was the healthy and active scepticism which took no direct pleasure in doubting, but used doubt only as a means of making knowledge doubly secure, and which prevented false ideas being bolstered up by privilege or by tyranny.

"The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast
range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence
of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to take
nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such; to
consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of
authority as neither greater nor less than as much as it can
prove itself to be worth. The modern spirit is not the spirit
'which always denies,' delighting only in destruction; still less
is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not
construct; it is the spirit which works and will work 'without
haste and without rest,' gathering harvest after harvest of truth
into its barns and devouring error with unquenchable fire."

It is a special weakness of the modern human race to love inventing descriptive names by which particular modes of thought may be classified and labelled. In order to meet this demand, Huxley invented the word _agnosticism_, to serve as a label for his own attitude. The word rapidly became popular, and attempts were made to read into it far more than its inventor implied. For him it was no definite body of doctrine, no creed in any positive sense. It merely expressed the attitude he assumed towards all problems on which he regarded the evidence as insufficient. It was a habit of mind rather than a series of opinions or beliefs; an intellectual weapon and not materials on which to exercise the intellect.

Hume had written that "the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics was that they are not properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the human understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these entangling brambles to cover and protect them." In these considerations he found reason not for leaving superstition in possession of its ground, but for making a bold and arduous attack upon it in its haunts. The great difficulty in the way of carrying the war into the enemy's own camp was that in those days so-called science was itself cumbered with many illogical and metaphysical ideas, and for the first time in the present century the great advances of physical science, and, in particular, the renewed life poured by Darwin into the doctrine of evolution, made it possible to bring a new series of exact arguments against hazy metaphysical dogmas. The militant side of agnosticism was directed against the camp of superstition and armed with the new weapons of exact science. Its stern refusal of belief without adequate evidence was a challenge to all the supporters of the sanguine philosophy which replaces proof by assured and emphatic statement and restatement. It is possible, although rare, for those who hold a positive belief upon evidence, howsoever insufficient, to leave their doubting neighbours in peace, and these neighbours, assured in their own beliefs, equally positive and perhaps equally unfounded, may return the lazy tolerance. But the agnostic position is at once a reproof and a challenge to all who do not hold it. Perhaps no one has ever put the agnostic attitude more clearly than Kant when he wrote that "the greatest and perhaps sole use of all philosophy of pure reason, is, after all, merely negative, since it serves, not as an organ on (for the enlargement of knowledge), but as a discipline for its delimitation: and instead of discovering truth has only the modest merit of preventing error." It is precisely because it is addressed against error that agnosticism brings not peace but a sword; precisely because, instead of adding to the beliefs of the world, it seeks to examine them and perhaps by the examination to diminish them, that it aroused passionate resentment. In this respect it stands entirely separate and apart from any other similar term, as all these implied a definite acceptance or rejection of some definite propositions. Agnosticism means none of these things. Huxley said of it:

"Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed but a method, the essence
of which lies in a rigorous application of a single principle.
That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates;
as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that
which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which
simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to
give reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great
principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern
science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of
the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you,
without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In
matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are
certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take
to be the agnostic faith, which, if a man keep whole and
undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the
face, whatever the future may have in store for him."