VI Free Speech

“Before all things, a means must be devised for improving and clarifying the understanding.”¹ “Since there is no single thing we know which is more excellent than a man who is guided by reason, it follows that there is nothing by which a person can better show how much skill and talent he possesses than by so educating men that at last they will live under the direct authority of reason.”² But how?

First of all, says Spinoza, thought must be absolutely free: we must have the possible profit of even the most dangerous heresies. If that proposition appear a trifle trite, let it be remembered that Spinoza wrote at a time when Galileo’s broken-hearted retraction was still fresh in men’s memories, and when Descartes was modifying his philosophy to soothe the Jesuits. The chapter on freedom of thought is really the pivotal point and raison d’être of the Tractatus Theologico-politicus; and it is still rich in encouragement and inspiration. Perhaps there is nothing else in Spinoza’s writings that is so typical at once of his gentleness and of his strength.

Free speech should be granted, Spinoza argues, because it must be granted. Men may conceal real beliefs, but these same beliefs will inevitably influence their behavior; a belief is not that which is spoken, it is that which is done. A law against free speech is subversive of law itself, for it invites derision from the conscientious. “All laws which can be broken without any injury to another are counted but a laughing-stock.”³ It is useless for the state to command “such things as are abhorrent to human nature.” “Men in general are so constituted that there is nothing they will endure with so little patience as that views which they believe to be true should be counted crimes against the law.... Under such circumstances men do not think it disgraceful, but most honorable, to hold the laws in abhorrence, and to refrain from no action against the government.”⁴ Where men are not permitted to criticise their rulers in public, they will plot against them in private. There is no religious enthusiasm stronger than that with which laws are broken by those whose liberty has been suppressed.

Spinoza goes further. Thought must be liberated not only from legal restrictions but from indirect and even unintentional compulsion as well. Spinoza feels very strongly the danger to freedom, that is involved in the organization of education by the state. “Academies that are founded at the public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them. But in a free commonwealth arts and sciences will be best cultivated to the full if everyone that asks leave is allowed to teach in public, at his own cost and risk.”⁵ He would have preferred such “free lances” as the Sophists to the state universities of the American Middle West. He did not suggest means of avoiding the apparent alternative of universities subsidized by the rich. It is a problem that has still to be solved.

In demanding absolute freedom of speech Spinoza touches the bases of state organization. Nothing is so dangerous and yet so necessary; for ignorance is the mother of authority. The defenders of free speech have never yet met the contention of such men as Hobbes, that freedom of thought is subversive of established government. The reason is only this, that the contention is probably true, so far as most established governments go. Absolute liberty of speech is assuredly destructive of despotism, no matter how constitutional the despotism may be; and those who have at heart the interests of any such government may be forgiven for hesitating to applaud Spinoza. Freedom of speech makes for social vitality, certainly; without it, indeed, the avenues of mental and social development would be blocked, and life hardly worth living. But freedom of speech cannot be said to make for social stability and permanence, unless the social organization in question invites criticism and includes some mechanism for profiting by it. Where democracy is real, or is on the way to becoming real, free speech will help, not harm, the state; for there is no man so loyal as the man who knows that he may criticise his government freely and to some account. But where there is the autocracy of a person or a class, freedom of speech makes for dissolution,—dissolution, however, not of the society so much as of the government. The Bourbons are gone, but France remains. Nay, if the Bourbons had remained, France might be gone.

But to argue to-day for freedom of speech is to invite the charge of emphasizing the obvious. It may be wholesome to remind ourselves, by a few examples, that however universal the theory of free speech may be, the practice is still rather sporadic. An American professor is dismissed because he thinks there is a plethora of unearned income in his country; an English publicist is reported to have been refused “permission” to fill lecture engagements in America because he had not been sufficiently patriotic; and one of the most prominent of living philosophers loses his chair because he supposes that conscience has rights against cabinets. But indeed our governing bodies are harmless offenders here in comparison with the people themselves. The last lesson which men and women will learn is the lesson of free thought and free speech. The most famous of living dramatists finds himself unsafe in London streets, because he has dared to criticise his government; the most able of living novelists finds it convenient to leave Paris because there are still some Germans whom he does not hate; and an American community full of constitutional lawyers shows its love of “law and order” by stoning a group of boys bent on expounding the desirability of syndicalism.

Perhaps the world has need of many Spinozas still.