Intellectual Slavery

Our new curate called upon me the other day and remained to tea; in fact, he remained till seven o'clock; and I cannot but suspect that he gave me so much of his time by reason of a rumour which has run through the parish, like sparks through stubble, to the effect that I was observed coming out of the Papistical Massing-house last Friday, about four o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Joliffe's cart, with its blue-smocked, blood-stained driver, was certainly drawn up opposite Miss Simpson's house about that hour, and I suspect that her maid's attention was drawn to my emerging figure: probably when she took up the buttered toast her mistress was informed, — and no more explanation is needed.

My young spiritual pastor pronounced a very fervent discourse u})on intellectual slavery, placing his fingers together and looking tactfully into the fire for fear that he should observe my confusion. He pressed my hand sympathetically, too, as he took his leave, looking sweetly into my eyes meanwhile, with the air of one who says, "I understand; I understand. But take courage and be resolute."

I of course was silent in the presence of an ordained clergyman; for I have long since learned that nothing is to be gained by speech on such occasions. My poor little earthen pot of theology cannot swim for an instant in the same stream with a brazen vessel hammered with consummate craftsmanship for three long years in St. Catherine's College at Cambridge, put through the fire of St. Paul's Epistles in the original Greek once more in Birmingham Theological Seminary for eighteen months, polished and brought to perfection by four years' intellectual struggle with the villagers of Little Brasted, and the occasional reading of Dr. Pearson's standard work upon the Creed. Besides, I have noticed that ecclesiastics of the EstabUshment are seldom able to keep the personal note out of religious discussion: they are apt to beg one, as it were a kind of return-call, to come to church for Morning Prayer, and to take as an insult to their personal erudition and authority any questioning of their tenets. I must confess that I prefer to be told by a Papist cleric that he does not care a twopenny piece whether I believe him or not — (and I generally don't believe him and tell him so) — but that I shall certainly be damned if I do not; and meanwhile (since nothing is to be gained by anticipating the Judgment Day and our final severance), will I have another glass of whisky and water?

But the Rev. Mr. Marjoribanks' remarks have set me thinking; and I am determined to pour out my baffled spleen on paper, and behind his back, since I am not man enough to do it in his presence.

I understood him to say that the Popish

Church fetters the intellect; that free thought and free speech are forbidden; that the souls in bondage to that institution walk in chains with the task-master's whip flickering about their shoulders; in short — well, all the rest of it.

Now, what do we mean by "liberty"? It appears to me more pertinent to deal with that question first.

A lion is at liberty who can follow the laws of his ow^n nature, who can eat when his stomach tells him, who can sleep when his fierce eyes grow weary, who can scratch long furrows in a forest tree when his claws feel so disposed. He is not at liberty when he lives in a cage, is fed on horseflesh at 4 p.m., and is compelled at the point of a red-hot poker to spell P-I-G — PIG, in the presence of a diverted crowd.

According to Mr. Marjoribanks a Papist resembles a lion, or rather a kind of fox or jackal, in the latter circumstances; he is caged in Councils and infallible pronouncements, he is told when and where to obtain grace, and he is prodded by a weapon which his own superstitious fears and the ambitions of his clergy have heated red-hot in the fire of a bogus hell. While Mr. Marjoribanks resembles the monarch of beasts at liberty, ranging this fair world at his own will, choosing this doctrine and not that for his sustenance, resting under the shadow of whatever institution seems the more convenient — which in his case happens to be the Church of England — tearing down this monstrous figment and sparing that tender plant, the terror of agnostics and the envy and admiration of a captive Christendom.

But let us push the analogy further up the scale, and make a comparison more befitting the gentleman's condition. Let us imagine, not a lion, but a child; and ask ourselves, which has the more liberty, the child who has mastered the laws of grammar, the elements of history and geography, and a few of the physical facts that tend to make life more easy (such as that fire burns, pins prick, gunpowder explodes in the eyes if ignited immediately below them, and that the consumption of yew-berrics leads to internal discomfort) — or the child who ranges the forest with the hungry lion looking at him out of a bush, who picks up a red-hot brand because it looks pretty, whose vocabulary is confined to the monosyllables *'boo" and "bah," who thinks that a hedgehog will be an agreeable bed-follow.

Now really, Mr. Marjoribanks, the civilized child has the advantage in point of liberty. It is true that his liberty came under a disguise, when it compelled him to sit at a table with Mademoiselle from ten to twelve and six to seven, but he sat there for the purpose of having chains broken, not forged. He was being freed, for example, from the belief that Bagdad could be reached in a day's journey, and from the discomforts of an attempt that he might otherwise have made to find it; he was being freed from the painful experience of picking up a red-hot coal; from the narrowing view that the sounds that Frenchmen make to one another are nothing but unmeaning grunts and whines; and from the potentiality of pain that lay hidden in those attractive red berries.

In other words, information, if true, makes for freedom, not slavery.

If we turn to the laws that govern society we are confronted by a similar fact. I am more free in that I can walk abroad in Little Brasted with no other weapon than an umbrella, than if my safety could only be found in a suit of steel, a vizored helmet, and a battleaxe; and the reason of my freedom is to be sought ultimately in the presence of a policeman, the existence of the gallows, and all the other sanctions of justice against which the Anarchists cry so lamentably. Discipline, therefore, and the threat of penalties, do not necessarily enslave their subjects, and the only question I have a right to put is not, Is not this compulsion, and therefore slavery.^ but^ Do these regulations tend to the conservation of society and to the survival of the individual under conditions where he may follow out the laws of normal life?

Let us, therefore, apply these analogies to the doctrine and discipline of the Christian religion.

When the Papist informs me that God is in the tabernacle with the Body, Blood, and Human Soul assumed in the Incarnation, it is the merest folly to answer, "Such information fetters my freedom of thought, for it deprives me, if I believe it, of the liberty of thinking that He is not there." When he tells me that I have to choose between going to Mass and going to Hell, and that an impure thought deliberately entertained places me in hostility to God Almighty, who has bidden me to be pure in heart if I wish to enjoy the Beatific Vision, it is simple stupidity for me to answer, "You should not have told me these truths, for by doing so you have deprived me of the liberty of remaining in bed all Sunday morning, and of encouraging the luxury of a foul imagination." For information, if it is true, does not enslave a man, but rather frees him from the fetters of ignoring it, as well as of the painful consequences of disregarding it.

If, then, the Papist is right, my liberty is increased, not lessened, by the fact that I know more than I did before. Ignorance may be bHss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light, and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement.

Push the parallel back once more into the physical sphere, and re-tread the ground from another direction. Granted the existence of God the Creator, it is evident that the laws of nature are one expression of His will. I may or may not like those laws; they may appear to me indeed profoundly arbitrary; but it is better that I should know them than be ignorant of them, for it is only by the knowledge of them that I have any hope of gaining the mastery of them for my own use, or indeed of surviving at all on earth. To be ignorant of the properties of lightning and to take my stand during a thunderstorm on the top of a high hill, brandishing a steel rod in either hand, is to court the disaster by which Ajax fell. The scientist, therefore, who informs my ignoi'cince, and explains to me how electric force may be not only evaded but positively set to turn the wheels of my motor-brougham, cannot justly be cried out upon as a tyrant over my thoughts or a subverter of my liberty.

Even Mr. Marjoribanks, I imagine, would grant me this; and therefore I should desire, if I had the courage, to direct his attention to the parallel line in the spiritual world. Presumably God Almighty has a system of government, enactments, rewards, and penalties for that world as for this. An expert therefore in that realm, when he discloses to me the secrets of God's will, cannot be blamed if my personal predilections happen to conflict with theological facts. I may not like going to confession, any more than I like the destructive energy of lightning, or the astringent properties of quinine, but if those things are facts I had better know them.

Ah! Mr. Marjoribanks, I see you writhing on your chair with the pangs of refutation.

"That is all very well: but God is not in the tabernacle, any more than in the confessional: you need not, in fact you must not, go to Mass, for it is no less than idolatry. Therefore, when the Papist tells you this or that, he is enslaving you after all, darkening your intellect with fallacies, and inflaming your imagination with delusions."

Ah! sir, I understand. But observe how you have shifted your platform. When you sat in my chair just now you made as if you waived the question as to whether the Papist religion were true or not; you set that generously on one side as irrelevant; and you were content to point out to me that, true or not, such a system, mapping out as it does the minutiae of what is to be believed or practised, could not but exercise an enslaving influence on the fair liberty of thought with which God had endowed me. But if this is all that you mean, I agree with you most heartily. The vital question for us both is not. Should we prefer to have a minute revelation, to be experts in the

Divine Will? — but, Is the Romish claim to give me such a revelation justified or not by fact?

It is to that question that I had been endeavouring to set my poor powers to work, when the butcher remarked me on the steps of St. Aloysius' Church....