A History of Freedom of Thought | Page 6

expression and an important condition of their
freedom. Homer’s poems were secular, not religious, and it may be
noted that they are freer from immorality and savagery than sacred
books that one could mention. Their authority was immense; but it was
not binding like the authority of a sacred book, and so Homeric
criticism was never hampered like Biblical criticism.
In this connexion, notice may be taken of another expression and
condition of freedom, the absence of sacerdotalism. The priests of the
temples never became powerful castes, tyrannizing over the community
in their own interests and able to silence voices raised against religious
beliefs. The civil authorities
[25] kept the general control of public worship in their own hands, and,
if some priestly families might have considerable influence, yet as a
rule the priests were virtually State servants whose voice carried no
weight except concerning the technical details of ritual.
To return to the early philosophers, who were mostly materialists, the
record of their speculations is an interesting chapter in the history of

rationalism. Two great names may be selected, Heraclitus and
Democritus, because they did more perhaps than any of the others, by
sheer hard thinking, to train reason to look upon the universe in new
ways and to shock the unreasoned conceptions of common sense. It
was startling to be taught, for the first time, by Heraclitus, that the
appearance of stability and permanence which material things present
to our senses is a false appearance, and that the world and everything in
it are changing every instant. Democritus performed the amazing feat
of working out an atomic theory of the universe, which was revived in
the seventeenth century and is connected, in the history of speculation,
with the most modern physical and chemical theories of matter. No
fantastic tales of creation, imposed by sacred authority, hampered these
powerful brains.
All this philosophical speculation prepared
[26] the way for the educationalists who were known as the Sophists.
They begin to appear after the middle of the fifth century. They worked
here and there throughout Greece, constantly travelling, training young
men for public life, and teaching them to use their reason. As educators
they had practical ends in view. They turned away from the problems
of the physical universe to the problems of human life—morality and
polities. Here they were confronted with the difficulty of distinguishing
between truth and error, and the ablest of them investigated the nature
of knowledge, the method of reason—logic— and the instrument of
reason—speech. Whatever their particular theories might be, their
general spirit was that of free inquiry and discussion. They sought to
test everything by reason. The second half of the fifth century might be
called the age of Illumination.
It may be remarked that the knowledge of foreign countries which the
Greeks had acquired had a considerable effect in promoting a sceptical
attitude towards authority. When a man is acquainted only with the
habits of his own country, they seem so much a matter of course that he
ascribes them to nature, but when he travels abroad and finds totally
different habits and standards of conduct prevailing, he begins to
understand

[27] the power of custom; and learns that morality and religion are
matters of latitude. This discovery tends to weaken authority, and to
raise disquieting reflections, as in the case of one who, brought up as a
Christian, comes to realize that, if he had been born on the Ganges or
the Euphrates, he would have firmly believed in entirely different
dogmas.
Of course these movements of intellectual freedom were, as in all ages,
confined to the minority. Everywhere the masses were exceedingly
superstitious. They believed that the safety of their cities depended on
the good-will of their gods. If this superstitious spirit were alarmed,
there was always a danger that philosophical speculations might be
persecuted. And this occurred in Athens. About the middle of the fifth
century Athens had not only become the most powerful State in Greece,
but was also taking the highest place in literature and art. She was a
full-fledged democracy. Political discussion was perfectly free. At this
time she was guided by the statesman Pericles, who was personally a
freethinker, or at least was in touch with all the subversive speculations
of the day. He was especially intimate with the philosopher Anaxagoras
who had come from Ionia to teach at Athens. In regard to the popular
gods Anaxagoras was a thorough-going
[28] unbeliever. The political enemies of Pericles struck at him by
attacking his friend. They introduced and carried a blasphemy law, to
the effect that unbelievers and those who taught theories about the
celestial world might be impeached. It was easy to prove that
Anaxagoras was a blasphemer who taught that the gods were
abstractions and that the