LIBERTY OF THOUGHT. 61 



to go ; has also fixed the laws of literature and art, as we see in the 

 conventional architecture, sculpture, and paintings of Egypt, Assyria, 

 and Babylonia. This ecclesiastical conventionalism, supported by the 

 popular superstition, has greatly hampered original thought. 



This sacred fixedness has not allowed, on the one hand, any progress 

 in the native mind itself, nor the influence upon it of foreign mind and 

 foreign methods. 



In Egypt we have a priesthood dominant and fixing all forms of 

 life. In the Assyrian power we have the kings constantly exalting the 

 gods, in proclamation and inscription ; and the architecture and sculp- 

 ture are of an ecclesiastical and unchanging pattern. In the Medo- 

 Persian power the ecclesiastical authorities largely shape the people's 

 life; and- we find that part of the creed, that idols should be de- 

 stroyed, enforced wherever the Persian arms were carried. In Hin- 

 dostan we have religion setting conventional limits to religion, phi- 

 losophy, science, art, literature, politics, and social life. 



But, on the other hand, we also find libertv of thought. Buddhism 

 has been tolerant and pacific ; has propagated itself never by war nor 

 by legal force, but only by moral suasion. China, too, seems to have 

 allowed a measure of liberty of thought in everything but politics. 

 Several religions exist there side by side ; and philosophy, science, 

 and literature are found without an ecclesiastical imprint. 



In the ancient republican systems of government there seems to 

 have been more or less liberty of thought, except in religion and poli- 

 tics. This was so in the Phoenician confederacy, in the Carthaginian 

 commercial states, in the Grecian republics, and in the Roman com- 

 monwealth. 



In the dawn of Greece we find the priestly class weakened and 

 superseded by the military. The despotic colleges of priests which 

 existed in the East never had a place among the high-spirited and 

 independent chiefs of Greece, who are described in Homer and else- 

 where as taking the offices of religion into their own hands, and in 

 various ways keeping its ministers in check. Doubtless, the genius of 

 the people also had something to do with this. Nowhere has there 

 been more liberty of thought in heathendom than in Greece, more 

 freedom from superstition and bigotry ; and yet even the Greeks were 

 intolerant. Anaxagoras, who tried to explain astronomical and mete- 

 orological phenomena, had a narrow escape with his life from the 

 offended "piety" of the Athenians. It took all the influence of Peri- 

 cles to save him. Socrates was put to death. Phidias was persecuted, 

 and died broken-hearted in prison. Every honest man was, at one 

 time, in danger of being accused of atheism by the zealots. Noble 

 citizens were tortured. Yet, on the whole, " at the epoch of the high- 

 est glory of philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, and most of the philosophers, 

 whether of Grecian, or, more latterly, of Greco-Roman antiquity, had 

 full liberty of thought, or nearly so. The state's public policy inter- 



