A History of Freedom of Thought | Page 8

I
think, be
[32] little doubt that the motives of the accusation were political. [1]
Socrates, looking at things as he did, could not be sympathetic with
unlimited democracy, or approve of the principle that the will of the
ignorant majority was a good guide. He was probably known to

sympathize with those who wished to limit the franchise. When, after a
struggle in which the constitution had been more than once overthrown,
democracy emerged triumphant (403 B.C.), there was a bitter feeling
against those who had not been its friends, and of these disloyal
persons Socrates was chosen as a victim. If he had wished, he could
easily have escaped. If he had given an undertaking to teach no more,
he would almost certainly have been acquitted. As it was, of the 501
ordinary Athenians who were his judges, a very large minority voted
for his acquittal. Even then, if he had adopted a different tone, he would
not have been condemned to death.
He rose to the great occasion and vindicated freedom of discussion in a
wonderful unconventional speech. The Apology of Socrates, which was
composed by his most brilliant pupil, Plato the philosopher, reproduces
[33] the general tenor of his defence. It is clear that he was not able to
meet satisfactorily the charge that he did not acknowledge the gods
worshipped by the city, and his explanations on this point are the weak
part of his speech. But he met the accusation that he corrupted the
minds of the young by a splendid plea for free discussion. This is the
most valuable section of the Apology; it is as impressive to-day as ever.
I think the two principal points which he makes are these—
(1) He maintains that the individual should at any cost refuse to be
coerced by any human authority or tribunal into a course which his own
mind condemns as wrong. That is, he asserts the supremacy of the
individual conscience, as we should say, over human law. He
represents his own life-work as a sort of religious quest; he feels
convinced that in devoting himself to philosophical discussion he has
done the bidding of a super-human guide; and he goes to death rather
than be untrue to this personal conviction. “If you propose to acquit
me,” he says, “on condition that I abandon my search for truth, I will
say: I thank you, O Athenians, but I will obey God, who, as I believe,
set me this task, rather than you, and so long as I have breath and
strength I will never
[34] cease from my occupation with philosophy. I will continue the
practice of accosting whomever I meet and saying to him, ‘Are you not

ashamed of setting your heart on wealth and honours while you have no
care for wisdom and truth and making your soul better?’ I know not
what death is—it may be a good thing, and I am not afraid of it. But I
do know that it is a bad thing to desert one’s post and I prefer what may
be good to what I know to be bad.”
(2) He insists on the public value of free discussion. “In me you have a
stimulating critic, persistently urging you with persuasion and
reproaches, persistently testing your opinions and trying to show you
that you are really ignorant of what you suppose you know. Daily
discussion of the matters about which you hear me conversing is the
highest good for man. Life that is not tested by such discussion is not
worth living.”
Thus in what we may call the earliest justification of liberty of thought
we have two significant claims affirmed: the indefeasible right of the
conscience of the individual —a claim on which later struggles for
liberty were to turn; and the social importance of discussion and
criticism. The former claim is not based on argument but on intuition; it
rests in fact on the assumption
[35] of some sort of superhuman moral principle, and to those who, not
having the same personal experience as Socrates, reject this assumption,
his pleading does not carry weight. The second claim, after the
experience of more than 2,000 years, can be formulated more
comprehensively now with bearings of which he did not dream.
The circumstances of the trial of Socrates illustrate both the tolerance
and the intolerance which prevailed at Athens. His long immunity, the
fact that he was at last indicted from political motives and perhaps
personal also, the large minority in his favour, all show that thought
was normally free, and that the mass of intolerance which existed was
only fitfully invoked, and perhaps most often to serve other purposes. I
may mention the case of the philosopher Aristotle, who some seventy
years later left Athens because