Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/240

Let it be the last word of ours! It is the most honest course; it may, perhaps, also be the most efficacious and certain for the progress of civilization.

Humanity, indeed, advances on the way of progress by prodigiously unequal steps. The rude and violent Esau is out of patience with the slow pace of Jacob's flock. Let us give time to all. We may not, indeed, permit simplicity and ignorance to hinder the free movements of the intellect, but let us not either interfere with the slow evolution of less active intelligences. The liberty of absurdity in these is the condition of the liberty of reason in those. Services rendered to the human mind by violence are not services after all. That such as lay no stress on truth should exercise constraint in order to obtain outward submission, what can be more natural? But we, who believe that truth is something real, and deserving of supreme respect, how can we dream of obtaining by force an adherence which is valueless except as the fruit of free conviction? We no longer admit sacramental formulas operating by their own virtue independently of the mind of him to whom they are applied. In our eyes, a belief has no worth if it be not gained by the reflection of the individual—if he have not understood and assimilated it. A mental conviction brought about by superior order is as absolute nonsense as love obtained by force or sympathy by command. Let us promise to ourselves not only to defend our own liberty against all who seek to attack it, but, if need be, to defend the liberty of those who have not always respected ours, and who, it is probable, if they were the masters, would not respect it.

It is Holland that had the glory, more than two hundred years ago, to demonstrate the possibility of these theories by realizing them.

"Must we prove," said Spinoza, "that this freedom of thought gives rise to no serious inconvenience, and that it is competent to keep men, openly diverse in their opinions, reciprocally respectful of each other's rights? Examples abound, nor need we go far to seek them. Let us instance the town of Amsterdam, whose considerable growth—an object of admiration to other nations—is simply the fruit of this freedom. In the midst of this flourishing republic, this eminent city, men of all nations and all sects live together in most perfect concord; . . . and there is no sect, however odious, whose adepts, provided they do not offend against the rights of any, may not meet with public aid and protection before the magistrates."

 

Descartes was of the same opinion when he came to ask from this country the calm essential to his thinking. Later—thanks to that noble privilege of a free land so gloriously maintained by your fathers against all opponents!—your Holland became the asylum where the human intellect, sheltered from the tyrannies that overspread Europe, found air to breathe, a public to comprehend it, organs to multiply its voice, then gagged elsewhere.