A History of Freedom of Thought | Page 2

any one who asks inconvenient
questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is
considered a pestilent person.
The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine which is its
consequence, are strengthened by superstition. If the social structure,
including the whole body of customs and opinions, is associated
intimately
[10] with religious belief and is supposed to be under divine patronage,
criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while criticism of the
religious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of supernatural
powers.

The psychological motives which produce a conservative spirit hostile
to new ideas are reinforced by the active opposition of certain powerful
sections of the community, such as a class, a caste, or a priesthood,
whose interests are bound up with the maintenance of the established
order and the ideas on which it rests.
Let us suppose, for instance, that a people believes that solar eclipses
are signs employed by their Deity for the special purpose of
communicating useful information to them, and that a clever man
discovers the true cause of eclipses. His compatriots in the first place
dislike his discovery because they find it very difficult to reconcile with
their other ideas; in the second place, it disturbs them, because it upsets
an arrangement which they consider highly advantageous to their
community; finally, it frightens them, as an offence to their Divinity.
The priests, one of whose functions is to interpret the divine signs, are
alarmed and enraged at a doctrine which menaces their power.
In prehistoric days, these motives, operating
[11] strongly, must have made change slow in communities which
progressed, and hindered some communities from progressing at all.
But they have continued to operate more or less throughout history,
obstructing knowledge and progress. We can observe them at work
to-day even in the most advanced societies, where they have no longer
the power to arrest development or repress the publication of
revolutionary opinions. We still meet people who consider a new idea
an annoyance and probably a danger. Of those to whom socialism is
repugnant, how many are there who have never examined the
arguments for and against it, but turn away in disgust simply because
the notion disturbs their mental universe and implies a drastic criticism
on the order of things to which they are accustomed? And how many
are there who would refuse to consider any proposals for altering our
imperfect matrimonial institutions, because such an idea offends a mass
of prejudice associated with religious sanctions? They may be right or
not, but if they are, it is not their fault. They are actuated by the same
motives which were a bar to progress in primitive societies. The
existence of people of this mentality, reared in an atmosphere of

freedom, side by side with others who are always looking out for new
ideas and
[12] regretting that there are not more about, enables us to realize how,
when public opinion was formed by the views of such men, thought
was fettered and the impediments to knowledge enormous.
Although the liberty to publish one’s opinions on any subject without
regard to authority or the prejudices of one’s neighbours is now a well-
established principle, I imagine that only the minority of those who
would be ready to fight to the death rather than surrender it could
defend it on rational grounds. We are apt to take for granted that
freedom of speech is a natural and inalienable birthright of man, and
perhaps to think that this is a sufficient answer to all that can be said on
the other side. But it is difficult to see how such a right can be
established.
If a man has any “natural rights,” the right to preserve his life and the
right to reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societies
impose upon their members restrictions in the exercise of both these
rights. A starving man is prohibited from taking food which belongs to
somebody else. Promiscuous reproduction is restricted by various laws
or customs. It is admitted that society is justified in restricting these
elementary rights, because without such restrictions an ordered society
could not exist. If then we
[13] concede that the expression of opinion is a right of the same kind,
it is impossible to contend that on this ground it can claim immunity
from interference or that society acts unjustly in regulating it. But the
concession is too large. For whereas in the other cases the limitations
affect the conduct of every one, restrictions on freedom of opinion
affect only the comparatively small number who have any opinions,
revolutionary or unconventional, to express. The truth is that no valid
argument can be founded on the conception of natural rights, because it
involves an untenable theory of the relations between society