The Limitations of Freethinking

Thoughts have their ethics as well as deeds. A man has a right to his opinion; but not always. He has a right to his opinion if his opinion is right. Perhaps that opinion is born of ignorance ; if so, to say that he has a right to the opinion is to assert that he has a right to the ignorance. That opinion may be the result of prejudice, and he has no more right to hold the one than to entertain the other. A man has a right to hold a right opinion, and the further right to be righteously disabused of a wrong opinion. Human laws, in regulating the external actions of men, but formulate the civilization that enacts them. But they only regulate the conduct of men toward each other. "With acts that begin and end with the individual, and which nowise affect the rights of others, human laws have nothing to do. Laws are expedients. What instinct does for the lower animals, in securing for them peace and plenty, that human laws do for men. The most perfect laws the world has known or can know but guarantee to man what instinct secures to the brute creation. Not only the bees and the ants live in a perfect society, but the bears and the vultures enjoy the luxury of good government. In the vast wilderness, where the foot of man has never trodden, the savage beast enjoys a law which its instinct, could it think, would formulate into our " Salus populi suprema lex esto." But there are fountains of law far beyond the reach of the human lawgiver, fountains of freshness and purity from which only the conscience can drink. Beyond our high and grand civilization there is a higher and grander still — the civilization of the cult- ured soul. The ages of the world most renowned for their material civilization were oftentimes eras of exceptional brutality. The most polished nation in the world is the French ; yet a French duelist will withdraw his rapier from out the heart of his antagonist, executing a bow the while that would make a society actor turn yellow with envy. The Antonines sought solace from the cares of state by witnessing a butchery in the amphitheater, and in the days of cultured Greece cripples and idiots were outside the protection of the laws.

- D. S. Phelan

The Limitations of Freethinking
(Page 287 of 287-295)

Read more