XXIV] 



SIR CHARLES LYELL 



431 



new to most persons), and freedom of thought as essential to 

 intellectual progress. The latter point (occupying pp. 13-23 

 of your MSS.) is of such immense importance, and your 

 opinion on it, clearly expressed, would have so much weight, 

 that I should much wish it to be developed in a little more 

 detail, though I cannot see how it can possibly be got into 

 * The Antiquity of Man.' The points that may be more fully 

 treated seem to me to be — ist, to show in a little more detail 

 that there was such practical freedom of thought in Greek 

 schools and academies ; 2nd, to put forward strongly, the 

 fact that, ever since the establishment of Christianity, the 

 education of Europe has been wholly in the hands of men 

 bound down by penalties to fixed dogmas, that philosophy 

 and science have been taught largely under the same in- 

 fluences, and that, even at the present day and among the 

 most civiHzed nations, it causes the greater part of the intel- 

 lectual strength of the world to be wasted in endeavours to 

 reconcile old dogmas with modern thought, while no step in 

 advance can be made without the fiercest opposition by those 

 whose vested interests are bound up in these dogmas. 



" 3rd. I should like to see (though, perhaps, you are not 

 prepared to do it) a strong passage following up your con- 

 cluding words, pointing out that it is a disgrace to civilization 

 and a crime against posterity, that the great mass of the 

 instructors of our youth should still be those who are fettered 

 by creeds and dogmas which they are under a penalty to 

 teach, and urging that it is the very first duty of the Govern- 

 ment of a free people to take away all such restraints from 

 the national church, and so allow the national teachers to 

 represent the most advanced thought, the highest intellect, 

 and the purest morality the age can produce. It is equally 

 the duty of the State to disqualify as teachers, in all schools 

 and colleges under its control, those whose interests are in 

 any way bound up with the promulgation of fixed creeds or 

 dogmas of whatever nature. 



" I should be exceedingly glad if you could do something 

 of this kind, because I look with great alarm on the move- 

 ment for the disestablishment of the Church of England, 



