Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

§ 4. England

It is a curious dialogue to put upon the stage, by the mouth of children-actors, and the arbitrary ascription to Aristotle of high theistic views, in a scene in which he is expressly described by a fellow philosopher as a Naturalist, suggests that Lilly felt the danger of giving offence by presenting the supreme philosopher as an atheist. It is evident, however, both from Euphues and from Campaspe, that naturalistic views were in some vogue, else they had not been handled in the theatre and in a book essentially planned for the general reader. But however firmly held, they could not be directly published; and a dozen years later, over thirty years after the outburst of Ascham, we still find only a sporadic and unwritten freethought, however abundant, going at times in fear of its life.

“That the newe Testament and Gospell of Christe are but mere foolishnesse, a storie of menne, or rather a mere fable.

“Item, that man is restored to grace by the meere mercy of God, wythout the meane of Christ’s bloud, death, and passion.

“Item, that Christe is not God, nor the Saviour of the world, but a meere man, a sinfull man, and an abhominable Idoll.

“Item, that al they that worshippe him are abhominable Idolaters; And that Christe did not rise agayne from death to life by the power of his Godhead, neither, that hee did ascende into Heaven.

“Item, that the holy Ghoste is not God, neither that there is any suche holy Ghoste.

“Item, that Baptisme is not necessarie in the Churche of God, neither the use of the sacrament of the body and bloude of Christ.”

Most surprising of all perhaps is the record of the trial of one John Hilton, clerk in holy orders, before the Upper House of Convocation on December 22, 1584, on the charge of having “said in a sermon at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields that the Old and New Testaments are but fables.” (Lansdowne MSS. British Museum, No. 982, fol. 46, cited by Prof. Storojenko, Life of Robert Greene, Eng. tr. in Grosart’s “Huth Library” ed. of Greene’s Works, i, 39, note.) As Hilton confessed to the charge and made abjuration, it may be surmised that he had spoken under the influence of liquor. Even on that view, however, such an episode tells of a considerable currency of unbelieving criticism.

Apart from constructive heresy, the perpetual religious dissensions of the time were sure to stimulate doubt; and there appeared quite a number of treatises directed wholly or partly against explicit unbelief, as: The Faith of the Church Militant, translated from the Latin of the Danish divine Hemming (1581), and addressed “to the confutation of the Jewes, Turks, Atheists, Papists, Hereticks, and all other adversaries of the truth whatsoever”; “The Touchstone of True Religion ... against the impietie of Atheists, Epicures, Libertines, Hippocrites, and Temporisours of these times” (1590); An Enemie to Atheisme, translated by T. Rogers from the Latin of Avenar (1591); the preacher Henry Smith’s God’s Arrow against Atheists (1593, rep. 1611); an English translation of the second volume of La Primaudaye’s L’Académie Française, containing a refutation of atheistic doctrine; and no fewer than three “Treatises of the Nature of God”—all anonymous, the third known to be by Bishop Thomas Morton—all appearing in the year 1599.

The belief about Raleigh’s atheism was so strong that we have Archbishop Abbot writing to Sir Thomas Roe on Feb. 19, 1618–1619, that Raleigh’s end was due to his “questioning” of “God’s being and omnipotence.” It is asserted by Francis Osborn, who had known Raleigh, that he got his title of Atheist from Queen Elizabeth. See the preface (Author to Reader) to Osborn’s Miscellany of Sundry Essays, etc., in 7th ed. of his Works, 1673. As to atheism at Elizabeth’s court see J. J. Tayler, Retrospect of Relig. Life of England, 2nd ed. p. 198, and ref. Lilly makes one of his characters write of the ladies at court that “they never jar about matters of religion, because they never mean to reason of them” (Euphues, Arber’s ed. p. 194).

A curious use was made of Raleigh’s name and fame after his death for various purposes. In 1620 or 1621 appeared “Vox Spiritus, or Sir Walter Rawleigh’s Ghost; a Conference between Signr. Gondamier ... and Father Bauldwine”—a “seditious” tract by one Captain Gainsford. It appears to have been reprinted in 1622 as “Prosopoeia. Sir Walter Rawleigh’s Ghost.” Then in 1626 came a new treatise, “Sir Walter Rawleigh’s Ghost, or England’s Forewarner,” published in 1626 at Utrecht by Thomas Scott, an English minister there, who was assassinated in the same year. The title having thus had vogue, there was published in 1631 “Rawleigh’s Ghost, or, a Feigned Apparition of Syr Walter Rawleigh to a friend of his, for the translating into English the Booke of Leonard Lessius (that most learned man), entituled De Providentia Numinis et animi immortalitate, written against the Atheists and Polititians of these days.” The translation of a Jesuit’s treatise (1613) thus accredited purports to be by “A. B.” In a reprint of 1651 the “feigned” disappears from the title-page; but “Sir Walter Rawleigh’s Ghost” remains to attract readers; and the translation, now purporting to be by John Holden, who claims to have been a friend of Raleigh’s, is dedicated to his son Carew. In the preface the Ghost adjures the translator (who professes to have heard him frequently praise the treatise of Lessius) to translate the work with Raleigh’s name on the title, so as to clear his memory of “a foul and most unjust aspersion of me for my presumed denial of a deity.”

The latest documentary evidence as to the case of Marlowe is produced by Mr. F. S. Boas in his article, “New Light on Marlowe and Kyd,” in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1899, reproduced in his edition of the works of Thomas Kyd (Clarendon Press, 1901). In addition to the formerly known data as to Marlowe’s “atheism,” it is now established that Thomas Kyd, his fellow dramatist, was arrested on the same charge, and that there was found among his papers one containing “vile hereticall conceiptes denyinge the divinity of Jhesus Christe our Saviour.” This Kyd declared he had had from Marlowe, denying all sympathy with its view. Nevertheless, he was put to the torture. The paper, however, proves to be a vehement Unitarian argument on Scriptural grounds, and is much more likely to have been written by Francis Kett than by Marlowe. In the MSS. now brought to light, one Cholmeley, who “confessed that he was persuaded by Marlowe’s reasons to become an Atheiste,” is represented by a spy as speaking “all evil of the Counsell, saying that they are all Atheistes and Machiavillians, especially my Lord Admirall.” The same “atheist,” who imputes atheism to others as a vice, is described as regretting he had not killed the Lord Treasurer, “sayenge that he could never have done God better service.”

For the rest, the same spy tells that Cholmeley believed Marlowe was “able to shewe more sound reasons for Atheisme than any devine in Englande is able to geve to prove devinitie, and that Marloe told him that he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others.” On the last point there is no further evidence, save that Sir Walter, his dependent Thomas Harriott, and Mr. Carewe Rawley, were on March 21, 1593–1594, charged upon sworn testimonies with holding “impious opinions concerning God and Providence.” There was, however, no prosecution. Harriott had published in 1588 a work on his travels in Virginia, at the close of which is a passage in the devoutest vein telling of his missionary labours (quoted by Mr. Boas, art. cited, p. 225). Yet by 1592 he had, with his master, a reputation for atheism; and that it was not wholly on the strength of his great scientific knowledge is suggested by the statement of Anthony à Wood that he “made a philosophical theology, wherein he cast off the Old Testament.”

Of this no trace remains; but it is established that he was a highly accomplished mathematician, much admired by Kepler; and that he “applied the telescope to celestial purposes almost simultaneously with Galileo” (art. Harriott in Dict. of Nat. Biog.; cp. art. in Encyc. Brit.). “Harriott ... was the first who dared to say A=B in the form A – B = 0, one of the greatest sources of progress ever opened in algebra” (Prof. A. De Morgan, Newton, his Friend and his Niece, 1885, p. 91). Further, he improved algebraic notation by the use of small italic letters in place of Roman capitals, and threw out the hypothesis of secondary planets as well as of stars invisible from their size and distance. “He was the first to verify the results of Galileo.” Rev. Baden Powell, Hist. of Nat. Philos. 1834, pp. 126, 168. Cp. Rigaud, as cited by Powell; Ellis’s notes on Bacon, in Routledge’s 1-vol. ed. 1905, pp. 674–76; and Storojenko, as above cited, p. 38, note.

[Prof. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd ed. p. 25. In the concluding pages of his lecture on Hamlet, Professor Bradley slightly modifies this statement, suggesting that the ghost is made to appear as “the representative of the hidden ultimate power, the messenger of divine justice” (p. 174). Here, it seems to the present writer, Professor Bradley obtrudes the chief error of his admirable book—the constant implication that Shakespeare planned his plays as moral wholes. The fact is that he found the ghost an integral part of the old play which he rewrote; and in making it, in Professor Bradley’s words, “so majestical a phantom,” he was simply heightening the character as he does others in the play, and as was his habit in the presentment of a king. In his volume of lectures entitled Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909), Professor Bradley goes more fully into the problem of Shakespeare’s religion. Here he somewhat needlessly obscures the issue by contending (p. 349) that it is preposterous to suppose that Shakespeare was “an ardent and devoted atheist or Brownist or Roman Catholic,” and makes the most of the poet’s sympathetic treatment of religious types and religious sentiments; but still sums up that he “was not, in the distinctive sense of the word, a religious man,” and that “all was, for him, in the end, mystery” (p. 353).]

O wearisome condition of humanity,

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick, commanded to be sound:

If nature did not take delight in blood,

She would have made more easy ways to good.

And then, for your religion, profess none,

But wonder at the diversity of all;

And, for your part, protest, were there no other

But simply the laws o’ th’ land, you would content you.

Nic Machiavel and Monsieur Bodin both

Were of this mind.

But the testimony is not the less significant; as is the account in The Magnetick Lady (1632) of

A young physician to the family

That, letting God alone, ascribes to Nature

More than her share; licentious in discourse,

Such statements of course prove merely a frequent coolness towards religion, not a vogue of reasoned unbelief. But the existence of rationalizing heresy is attested by the burning of two men, Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman, for avowing Unitarian views, in 1612. These, the last executions for heresy in England, were results of the theological zeal of King James, stimulated by the Calvinistic fanaticism of Archbishop Abbot, the predecessor of Laud.

[It was probably such deliverances as these that led to the ascription to Bacon of The Christian Paradoxes, first published (surreptitiously), without author’s name, in 1645. As has been shown by Dr. Grosart (Lord Bacon NOT the Author of “The Christian Paradoxes,” 1865) that treatise was really by Herbert Palmer, B.D., who published it in full in part ii of his Memorials of Godliness and Christianity, 5th ed. 1655. The argument drawn from this treatise as to Bacon’s skepticism is a twofold mystification. The Paradoxes are the deliberate declaration of a pietist that he believes the dogmas of revelation without rational comprehension. The style is plainly not Bacon’s; but Bacon had said the same thing in the sentence quoted above. Dr. Grosart’s explosive defence against the criticism of Ritter (work cited, p. 14) is an illustration of the intellectual temper involved.]

Lechler (Gesch. des englischen Deismus, pp. 23–25) notes that Bacon involuntarily made for deism. Cp. Amand Saintes, Hist. de la philos. de Kant, 1844, p. 69; and Kuno Fischer, Francis Bacon, Eng. tr. 1857, ch. xi, pp. 341–43. Dean Church (Bacon, in “Men of Letters” series, pp. 174, 205) insists that Bacon held by revelation and immortality; and can of course cite his profession of such belief, which is not to be disputed. (Cp. the careful judgment of Prof. Fowler in his Bacon, pp. 180–91, and his ed. of the Novum Organum, 1878, pp. 43–53.) But the tendency of the specific Baconian teaching is none the less to put these beliefs aside, and to overlay them with a naturalistic habit of mind. At the first remove from Bacon we have Hobbes.

§ 5. Popular Thought in Europe

See H. E. Watts, Miguel de Cervantes, p. 167. Don Quixote was “always under suspicion of the orthodox.” Id. p. 166. Mr. Watts, saying nothing of Cervantes’s approval of the expulsion of the Moriscoes, claims that his “head was clear of the follies and extravagances of the reigning superstition” (id. p. 231). But the case is truly summed up by Mr. Ormsby when he says: “For one passage capable of being tortured into covert satire” against things ecclesiastical, “there are ten in Don Quixote and the novels that show—what indeed is very obvious from the little we know of his life and character—that Cervantes was a faithful son of the Church” (tr. of Don Quixote, 1885, introd. i, 57).

§ 6. Scientific Thought

It remains to trace briefly the movement of scientific and speculative thought which constituted the transition between the Scholastic and the modern philosophy. It may be compendiously noted under the names of Copernicus, Bruno, Vanini, Galileo, Ramus, Gassendi, Bacon, and Descartes.

The doctrine of the earth’s two-fold motion, as we have seen, had actually been taught in the fifteenth century by Nicolaus of Cusa (1401–1464), who, instead of being prosecuted, was made a cardinal, so little was the question then considered (Ueberweg, ii, 23–24). See above, vol. i, p. 368, as to Pulci. Only very slowly did the work even of Copernicus make its impression. Green (Short History, ed. 1881, p. 297) makes first the mistake of stating that it influenced thought in the fifteenth century, and then the further mistake of saying that it was brought home to the general intelligence by Galileo and Kepler in the later years of the sixteenth century (id. p. 412). Galileo’s European notoriety dates from 1616; his Dialogues of the Two Systems of the World appeared only in 1632; and his Dialogues of the New Sciences in 1638. Kepler’s indecisive Mysterium Cosmographicum appeared only in 1597; his treatise on the motions of the planet Mars not till 1609.

Of his extensive literary output not much is stamped with lasting scientific fitness or literary charm; and some of his treatises, as those on mnemonics, have no more value than the product of his didactic model, Raymond Lully. As a writer he is at his best in the sweeping expatiation of his more general philosophic treatises, where he attains a lifting ardour of inspiration, a fervour of soaring outlook, that puts him in the front rank of the thinkers of his age. And if his literary character is at times open to severe criticism in respect of his lack of balance, sobriety, and self-command, his final courage atones for such shortcomings.

An attempt has been made by Professor Desdouits in a pamphlet (La légende tragique de Jordano Bruno; Paris, 1885) to show that there is no evidence that Bruno was burned; and an anonymous writer in the Scottish Review (October, 1888, Art. II), rabidly hostile to Bruno, has maintained the same proposition. Doubt on the subject dates from Bayle. Its main ground is the fewness of the documentary records, of which, further, the genuineness is now called in question. But no good reason is shown for doubting them. They are three.

1. The Latin letter of Gaspar Schopp (Scioppius), dated February 17, 1600, is an eye-witness’s account of the sentencing and burning of Bruno at that date. (See it in full, in the original Latin, in Berti, p. 461 sq., and in App. V to Frith, Life of Bruno, and partly translated in Prof. Adamson’s lectures, as cited. It was rep. by Struvius in his Acta Literaria, tom. v, and by La Croze in his Entretiens sur divers sujets in 1711, p. 287.) It was not printed till 1621, but the grounds urged for its rejection are totally inadequate, and involve assumptions, which are themselves entirely unproved, as to what Scioppius was likely to do. Finally, no intelligible reason is suggested for the forging of such a document. The remarks of Prof. Desdouits on this head have no force whatever. The writer in the Scottish Review (p. 263, and note) suggests as “at least as possible an hypothesis as any other that he [Bruno] was the author of the forged accounts of his own death.” Comment is unnecessary.

2. There are preserved two extracts from Roman news-letters (Avvisi) of the time; one, dated February 12, 1600, commenting on the case; the other, dated February 19, relating the execution on the 17th. (See both in S. R., pp. 264–65. They were first printed by Berti in Documenti intorno a Giordano Bruno, Rome, 1880, and are reprinted in his Vita, ed. 1889, cap. xix; also by Levi, as cited.) Against these testimonies the sole plea is that they mis-state Bruno’s opinions and the duration of his imprisonment—a test which would reduce to mythology the contents of most newspapers in our own day. The writer in the Scottish Review makes the suicidal suggestion that, inasmuch as the errors as to dates occur in Schopp’s letter, “the so-called Schopp was fabricated from these notices, or they from Schopp”—thus admitting one to be historical.

3. There has been found, by a Catholic investigator, a double entry in the books of the Lay Brotherhood of San Giovanni Decollato, whose function was to minister to prisoners under capital sentence, giving a circumstantial account of Bruno’s execution. (See it in S. R., pp. 266, 269, 270.) In this case, the main entry being dated “1600. Thursday. February 16th,” the anonymous writer argues that “the whole thing resolves itself into a make-up,” because February 16 was the Wednesday. The entry refers to the procedure of the Wednesday night and the Thursday morning; and such an error could easily occur in any case. Whatever may be one day proved, the cavils thus far count for nothing. All the while, the records as to Bruno remain in the hands of the Catholic authorities; but, despite the discredit constantly cast on the Church on the score of Bruno’s execution, they offer no official denial of the common statement; while they do officially admit (S. R., p. 252) that on February 8 Bruno was sentenced as an “obstinate heretic,” and “given over to the Secular Court.” On the other hand, the episode is well vouched; and the argument from the silence of ambassadors’ letters is so far void. No pretence is made of tracing Bruno anywhere after February, 1600.

Since the foregoing note appeared in the first edition I have met with the essay of Mr. R. Copley Christie, “Was Giordano Bruno Really Burned?” (Macmillan’s Magazine, October, 1885; rep. in Mr. Christie’s Selected Essays and Papers, 1902). This is a crushing answer to the thesis of M. Desdouits, showing as it does clear grounds not only for affirming the genuineness of the letter of Scioppius, but for doubting the diligence of M. Desdouits. Mr. Christie points out (1) that in his book Ecclesiasticus, printed in 1612, Scioppius refers to the burning of Bruno almost in the words of his letter of 1600; (2) that in 1607 Kepler wrote to a correspondent of the burning of Bruno, giving as his authority J. M. Wacker, who in 1600 was living at Rome as the imperial ambassador; and (3) that the tract Machiavellizatio, 1621, in which the letter of Scioppius was first printed, was well known in its day, being placed on the Index, and answered by two writers without eliciting any repudiation from Scioppius, who lived till 1649. As M. Desdouits staked his case on the absence of allusion to the subject before 1661 (overlooking even the allusion by Mersenne, in 1624, cited by Bayle), his theory may be taken as exploded.

Lonely antagonist of Destiny

See the details of the procedure in Domenico Berti, Il Processo Originale de Galileo Galilei, ed. 1878, cap. iv; in Fahie, ch. viii; and in Gebler, ch. vi. The last-cited writer claims to show that, of two records of the “admonition” to Galileo, one, the more stringent in its terms, was false, though made at the date it bears, to permit of subsequent proceedings against Galileo. But the whole thesis is otiose. It is admitted (Gebler, p. 89) that Galileo was admonished “not to defend or hold the Copernican doctrine.” Gebler contends, however, that this was not a command to keep “entire silence,” and that therefore Galileo is not justly to be charged with having disobeyed the injunction of the Inquisition when, in his Dialogues on the Two Principal Systems of the World, the Ptolemaic and Copernican (1632), he dealt dialectically with the subject, neither affirming nor denying, but treating both theories as hypotheses. But the real issue is not Galileo’s cautious disobedience (see Gebler’s own admissions, p. 149) to an irrational decree, but the crime of the Church in silencing him. It is not likely that the “enemies” of Galileo, as Gebler supposes (pp. 90, 338), anticipated his later dialectical handling of the subject, and so falsified the decision of the Inquisition against him in 1616. Gebler had at first adopted the German theory that the absolute command to silence was forged in 1632; and, finding the document certainly belonged to 1616, framed the new theory, quite unnecessarily, to save Galileo’s credit. The two records are quite in the spirit and manner of Inquisitorial diplomacy. As Berti remarks, “the Holy Office proceeded with much heedlessness (legerezza) and much confusion” in 1616. Its first judgment, in either form, merely emphasizes the guilt of the second. Cp. Fahie, pp. 167–69.

Compare Gebler, p. 241; Private Life, p. 257, quoting Tiraboschi. For an exposure of the many perversions of the facts as to Galileo by Catholic writers see Parchappe, Galilée, sa vie, etc., 2e Partie. To such straits has the Catholic Church been reduced in this matter that part of its defence of the treatment of Galileo is the plea that he unwarrantably asserted that the fixity of the sun and the motion of the earth were taught in the Scriptures. Sir Robert Inglis is quoted as having maintained this view in England in 1824 (Mendham, The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, 2nd ed. 1830, p. 176), and the same proposition was maintained in 1850 by a Roman cardinal. See Galileo e l’Inquisizione, by Monsignor Marini, Roma, 1850, pp. 1, 53–54, etc. Had Galileo really taught as is there asserted, he would only have been assenting to what his priestly opponents constantly dinned in his ears. But in point of fact he had not so assented; for in his letter to Castelli (see Gebler, pp. 46–50) he had earnestly deprecated the argument from the Bible, urging that, though Scripture could not err, its interpreters might misunderstand it; and even going so far as to argue, with much ingenuity, that the story of Joshua, literally interpreted, could be made to harmonize with the Copernican theory, but not at all with the Ptolemaic.

The thesis revived by Monsignor Marini deserves to rank as the highest flight of absurdity and effrontery in the entire discussion (cp. Berti, Giordano Bruno, 1889, p. 306, note). Every step in both procedures of the Inquisition insists on the falsity and the anti-scriptural character of the doctrine that the earth moves round the sun (see Berti, Il Processo, p. 115 sq.; Gebler, pp. 76–77, 230–34); and never once is it hinted that Galileo’s error lay in ascribing to the Bible the doctrine of the earth’s fixity. In the Roman Index of 1664 the works of Galileo and Copernicus are alike vetoed, with all other writings affirming the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun; and in the Index of 1704 are included libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terrae et immobilitatem solis (Putnam, The Censorship of the Church of Rome, 1906–1907, i, 308, 312).

Such anomalies meet us many times in the history of scientific as of other lines of thought; and the residual lesson is the recognition that progress is infinitely multiplex in its causation. Nothing is more vital in this regard than scientific truth, which is as a light-house in seas of speculation; and those who, like Galileo and Descartes, add to the world’s exact knowledge, perform a specific service not matched by that of the Bacons, who urge right method without applying it. Yet in that kind also an incalculable influence has been wielded. Many minds can accept scientific truths without being thereby led to scientific ways of thought; and thus the reasoners and speculators, the Brunos and the Vaninis, play their fruitful part, as do the mentors who turn men’s eyes on their own vices of intellectual habit. And in respect of creeds and philosophies, finally, it is not so much sheer soundness of result as educativeness of method, effectual appeal to the thinking faculty and to the spirit of reason, that determines a thinker’s influence. This kind of impact we shall find historically to be the service done by Descartes to European thought for a hundred years.

From Descartes, then, as regards philosophy, more than from any professed thinker of his day, but also from the other thinkers we have noted, from the reactions of scientific discovery, from the terrible experience of the potency of religion as a breeder of strife and its impotence as a curber of evil, and from the practical freethinking of the more open-minded of that age in general, derives the great rationalistic movement, which, taking clear literary form first in the seventeenth century, has with some fluctuations broadened and deepened down to our own day.