Is astrology a product of science as a tool? It is logical in its arguments and based on observations. Yet, if we agree that science is not a universal tool but only another name for rationality, then the most primitive aborigines practice science because their behavior within their surroundings is quite rational. It is clear, then, that it is not useful either to consider scientific inquiry as a universal tool or science as a synonym for rationality. Is scientific inquiry in a nearly mythological context the golden path to truth? Look in the newspaper, and you will see that science can be used to define as true many incompatible statements.
One day red wine is good for your health.
The next day alcohol use may lead to liver disease. No wonder some lost school board in Kansas has declared creation to be a true scientific theory. Perhaps Winnie the Pooh could be put forth as a theory of small bears. Uncertain and vague statements about science seem to be due to an unnecessary broadening of the definition of scientific inquiry. In defining scientific inquiry, we first have to identify its goals. If we read texts in physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and psychology, we find that the goal is always the same: Scientific inquiry is based on two premises, says Rosenberg: Observers from other planets would find ruins of lost cities and all our toys as real as they once were to us.
The world exists even without us.
rational thinking, responsible behavior,
We call it the common reality premise. Our observations of them are logically related. We call this the causality premise. Science as an art of describing the world around us cannot function if either of these two premises is violated. Are they ever challenged? The French postmodernists and deconstructionists challenge the common reality premise. The structure of the world we observe as scientists is observer-neutral and common to us all.
You cannot deconstruct it to different pieces depending on who you are. The process of doing it is scientific inquiry. This inquiry is based solely on past or present observations. The inquiry itself is practical and takes place in seven consecutive steps: How well is the external world described by the laws derived by the seven-point method? In our assumptions, we assume that all our theories have become laws, and we get dangerously close to describing a totally determined universe that no one believes in any more.
What about the presence of randomness, supported by quantum mechanical theory? There are too many variables for us to observe with necessary precision; due to the limited nature of our senses, we inevitably influence events in measuring them. The problem of uncertainty is closely linked to the effect of measurements. We have to visualize events so our senses will allow us to make an observation. This is the major limitation of science. Scientific inquiry will lead to a true picture of the world surrounding us, but the picture is never complete and has to be continuously amended when and if new observations are made.
Can something be true if it has to be amended? Yes, all scientific laws are approximations, and what we mean by amendment is that we have isolated new variables and can work with higher precision than before so that the picture of the world becomes clearer and shows more details. This does not mean that the previous picture was wrong, only that it was true at that level of detail and precision. The behavioral sciences-sociology, psychology, economics, etc.
There has been plenty of hard work done in them and brilliant insights gained, but their level is simply a function of the complexity of the systems at issue. Finally, the verbal extension of science into the realm of spirituality…may contribute to literature and poetry, but not to science. Written by Lawrence T: I am persuaded that this experience permits the following assertions: Criminal offenders are in conflict with the norms of society; they are not suffering from psychological disorders that both explain and excuse their conduct.
They have consciously and deliberately chosen to commit a crime or, in numerous cases, they consciously and deliberately set themselves up for committing a crime by altering their normal mental and physical capacities. Now that I have exposed most of the philosophical guts of my position on crime and punishment, the specific purpose of this essay is to elucidate the reasons why I believe that an introduction to the gadfly of Athens is a highly potent crime-prevention initiative that should be made available to a multitude of prisoners.
I graduated from high school in and the thought of pursuing higher education was almost totally foreign to my mind. Primarily to maintain my association with buddies in my graduating class, I enrolled in a local junior college and unceremoniously flunked out after less than a full semester due to a total lack of interest. I went to work full time and made some very foolish choices that brought me dangerously close to becoming a felonious hoodlum.
When not working, I was in the neighborhood bowling alley, where I achieved some local notoriety as the kid with a plus average. In the fall of , motivated mainly by the desire for an adventure away from parental oversight, I enrolled in the four-year college in Oklahoma where my mother had been a student. Although I was not failing any of my classes during my first semester, I refused to allow any serious reflection and study to engage my mind or interfere with fun, so by January I was determined to drop out and pursue the career of a professional bowler.
The passage of very close to forty years has not significantly dimmed the memory of an event during the same month that marks the beginning of a radical transformation in my thinking and conduct. Walking to class one afternoon I encountered one of the recognized campus intellectuals. Not having a clue as to the meaning of his curt remark, I articulated a response in very unscholarly language.
Several days later I asked a senior who was majoring in something called philosophy to explain to me the distinction between knowing and understanding. I was able to grasp the difference between knowledge and understanding, and I was introduced to the life and teachings of Socrates. During the semester my ambitions, my thinking, and even my behavior changed. I sold my prized black-beauty bowling ball and purchased some philosophical works, which are still in my library.
To the teacher, Dr. Mel-Thomas Rothwell deceased , I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude for his patient mentoring until my graduation in And, at the risk of making a generalization to which I acknowledge numerous exceptions, a Socratic conversion usually requires the inspired communication of a teacher or mentor who has experienced the transformative power of ideas and concepts. In the academic year I was given my first opportunity to introduce Socrates to prison inmates under the auspices of what was at the time Brazosport Junior College in Lake Jackson, Texas.
This institution, now known as Brazosport College, continues to provide a two-year course of instruction leading to an associate of arts degree. I possess no knowledge of the success or failure of any of these men, but I do have some vivid recollections of some of the classes, including our lively discussions of Socrates. The first session of the first class has left a permanent mark in my bank of memories. Standing in front of a group of men convicted of a range of serious felonies and incarcerated for a substantial number of years can be terrifying, to say the least.
This is essentially how I introduce myself to all new classes of prison inmates. And if they perceive that I really mean what I say, the path is clear for some existentially meaningful discussions and insights. Perhaps the most important fact I can report about these men—inclusive of the inmates I have taught to date—is that, except for a mere few, they do not blame society or others for their criminal behavior.
This acceptance of guilt and responsibility is probably at odds with the belief of most people about the supposed rationalizations of criminals. Not unexpectedly, many of the inmates vented their resentment about how they believe they were unfairly treated at one or more steps in our system of criminal justice, and any seasoned practitioner in the system is obliged to acknowledge the truth of some of their claims. The pertinent and critical point, however, is their acceptance of the facts that they made real choices to commit crimes and that society has a right to protect itself by incarcerating malefactors.
These intuitive or pre-philosophical beliefs are fertile ground for introducing the free-will-versus-determinism debate and the arguments employed to justify the institution of punishment. And these issues lead straight to what is usually a hotly contested debate of the Socratic view that persons do not voluntarily or knowingly commit evil or unlawful acts because knowledge and wisdom are the most powerful elements in human life.
Another student, convicted of aggravated robbery, attempted to articulate the centuries-old view that all persons are born with an innate knowledge of right and wrong—that is, a moral compass called the conscience. It should come as no surprise that a discussion of the purpose and justification of punishment with prison inmates, many of whom have been incarcerated for a major portion of their lives, reaches a high level of emotional intensity. No student, in either class, claimed or even implied that he did not deserve to be punished. A chorus of voices, however, condemned the enormous disparity in sentences characteristic of an indeterminate sentencing system and the wide range in which judicial discretion is free to roam.
With no hesitation, one of the men expressed the belief that if he stole a car and Dr. Jablecki stole a car the latter would undoubtedly be gently treated with probation and the former would be sentenced to prison. This, he exclaimed, is not justice or equality, as both committed the same crime and deserved the same punishment. Heads nodded in agreement and several voiced the caustic remark that the lovely lady of justice wearing the blindfold of impartiality and equality is never blind to the influences of money and status in the community.
Anyone, therefore, who plays the role of a Socratic midwife in a similar situation needs to be prepared to maneuver through an emotional minefield in which they will be made aware of all the ugly warts and blemishes in our system of criminal justice. Socrates, according to the first consensus, had been drinking too much wine or he was an insane old man. The inmates said they knew exactly what they were doing when they committed a murder, robbed a store at gunpoint, sexually assaulted a woman, or cut a drug deal. Assuming the role of Socrates, I called them a collection of ignorant fools incapable of recognizing their best and permanent interests as human beings.
Needless to say, this enlivened the tone of the discussion and set the stage to unpack the meaning of a cluster of relevant words: In a fortuitous meeting with George Trabing, the director of the prison program for the University of Houston at Clear Lake, resulted in an invitation for me to join the adjunct faculty of the university.
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My assignment was to teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy to prison inmates housed in the Ramsey I prison unit in Rosharon, Texas. Four degrees are currently offered to inmates: Texas Department of Criminal Justice Outreach Component Human Sciences and Humanities , the degree in behavioral science contributes to the development of the.
The primary mission of the undergraduate and graduate plans in Humanities and literature is to promote cultural literacy and interdisciplinary skills through the study of the liberal arts. The most important dimension of the mission of all of these educational programs, however, is to promote positive changes in the thinking and conduct of inmates and to reduce the recidivism rate of those who are released on parole. These students find that courses in history, literature, and philosophy profoundly deepen their sensitivities and expand their horizons.
TDCJ students may come from pockets of economic and intellectual poverty from which they have never escaped—they have literally no knowledge of other ways of living. Humanities courses open new realities to them, wholly changing their perspectives about who they are and what the world is about…. Such courses are truly revelations, showing ways of living and thinking that they have not encountered before. At the outset, the creators of these academic programs for prison inmates were cognizant of the paramount importance of documenting a bank of data from which they could quantify the apparent successes and failures.
To argue that their academic accomplishment is the only factor capable of explaining their successful reintegration into society would be a mistake. The only near definitive answer to this issue is to track a control group of parolees in the same age range and duration of incarceration who have not completed a similar academic program. Department of Justice did not fund a recent grant proposal from the university to conduct such research, studies conducted in Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and other states have all reported significantly low recidivism rates for inmates in correctional higher-education programs, ranging from 1 percent to In addition, my contact with the students in the Texas program—some of whom are now on parole confirms a determination to change and make contributions to society totally unmatched by the majority of inmates who spend their idle time playing dominos, watching television, and reflecting on their perceptions that they are the oppressed victims of society.
Similarly, five of the former inmates who achieved academic success deserve to be heard. The latter reference to the payment of taxes by a former inmate exposes the shortsighted and factually incorrect arguments of the politicians in Washington, D. When Bart Gordon, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, sponsored the crime-bill amendment that barred prisoners from receiving Pell Grants, his aim was to trim the fat in federal education spending.
He was under the impression that prisoners were using up something like seventy million dollars a year in Pell Grants that could have gone to more deserving students—those on the outside. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a Republican who led the fight in the Senate against Pell Grants for prisoners, argued that inmates siphoned off two hundred million dollars and displaced a hundred thousand law-abiding students.
It would probably be incorrect to suggest that Hutchison and the other members of Congress who helped her destroy hope for thousands of inmates in this country are in the philosophical camp of the ancient Cynics, who were contemptuous of bodily pleasures, sneering fault-finders, and incredulous of human goodness and the capacity to change from vice to virtue.
I am persuaded, however, that the policy these politicians approved places them in the category of unmerciful retributivists who sincerely believe in the moral imperative of severe punishment for all criminal offenders—that is, they have no mercy for the wicked.
They are not hypocrites, because they really believe that the construction of new prisons is not a necessary evil but a necessary good. Some of the extremists in this camp probably believe that it would be good policy to literally brand the scarlet letter C for convict on the forehead of every prison inmate. Contrary to the philosophy of unmerciful retributivism, Pell Grants for inmates had the long-range potential of saving billions of tax dollars that will now be spent on the construction and maintenance of prisons and the annual costs of warehousing multitudes of federal and state inmates in what can best be described as toxic waste dumps inhabited by persons with little or no hope for a future that can make life worth living.
And equally, if not more important, the advocates of unmerciful retributivism have crafted a policy that unintentionally results in a multitude of new victims of crime perpetrated by parolees who have changed from bad to worse. Most of them are convicted of new felony offenses, many of which involve victims who suffer among numerous things the loss of property, physical injuries, and death. Although it is an expansion of the normal usage of the word, this is an obscenity that in addition to all of the accompanying human suffering is costing taxpayers many millions of dollars every year.
However, there is an urgent and compelling public interest at stake, justifying the use of tax dollars to create and sustain academic programs for them. Once they grasp the Socratic definition of knowledge and its vast distance from opinions and beliefs, most of my current students articulate the hindsight observation that, had they met Socrates at the age of twenty or earlier, it is not unrealistic to suggest they might not be meeting him now clothed in prison garb. Despite the occasional bitterness aimed at the alleged disparities in the system of criminal justice, during these discussions many of the inmates feel at ease to lay bare their souls and express genuine remorse about the impact of their conduct on parents, spouses, children, and victims.
It would be foolhardy to claim or even imply that an encounter with Socrates is a necessary prerequisite to bring the majority of them to a profound existential consciousness of the negative consequences of their crimes. But none of them have participated in a methodical unpacking of the content, the profound truth, and the errors in Socratic doctrine and instead have had their emotions shaped by traumatic events in their lives—the death of one or both parents, a divorce decree from a former spouse, children who commit crimes, and a denial of parole.
There is a great deal of wrong conduct by individuals and by groups that owes its wrongness to want of wisdom rather than to want of will…. We all know that boys brought up in a slum district may get the notion that gang loyalty is really better than loyalty to society; the stealing, kidnapping, and even murder are justifiable and thrilling adventures; and that pity for the weak is stupid or unmanly.
It is obvious enough that here the kind of moral reform that is called for is educational in the broadest sense, involving destruction of hideous economic conditions and of the cultural squalor and ignorance that go with them. Not all criminals indeed but probably the majority could be reformed or cured by being given a Socratic wisdom or knowledge of the things in life that are really worthwhile and an environment that would make it possible to achieve them.
Moreover the whole philosophy of punishment would be revolutionized. Prevention rather than cure would be emphasized, and when preventive measures had failed the necessary restraint of the criminal would be accompanied by education rather than by social revenge. My Socratic conversion justified the use of the word good in response to the above claims.
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According to the most recent estimates released by the U. Department of Justice, at the close of there were 1,, federal and state prison inmates. To advocate the belief that the majority of them could be reformed by a strong dose of Socrates appears to be an incredulous form of idealism completely out of touch with reality. More specifically, I am absolutely convinced that the recidivism rate of former prison inmates can be reduced significantly if, while incarcerated, they are skillfully guided through a systematic discussion of the life and teachings of Socrates as presented by Plate in the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Protagaras , and the analysis of the concept of justice in the Republic.
This is the largely uncultivated and fertile soil in which federal and state authorities should plant the seeds of carefully designed and well-funded programs capable of tracking the lives of the participants male and female and those in control groups for three to five years in order to establish some incontrovertible data regarding the power of education to change the thinking and conduct of former criminal offenders.
So I tell all of my students that the only way to silence the voices of the cynics committed to the view that providing a university or college education to prison inmates is flushing clean dollars down a dirty toilet is to remain crime-free following release on parole. I tell them that the continuation of the program is contingent upon years of cumulative success stories and that their moral obligation to succeed is grounded in the lives of the students who remain behind bars.
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They are encouraged to contact me after their release, as I may be able to assist them in their search for employment. However, if they call me for help after committing another felony offense, I will volunteer to testify against them. The profound sense in which Socrates was correct is precisely why we are here this evening. Collectively, your teachers have guided you on the ascent from the cave of ignorance as articulated by Plate in his Republic.
However I am obliged to tell you that, if you have not or do not experience a Socratic conversion prior to your release, you will be nothing more than a hypocritical, educated crook. Socrates does not hold all the answers. For example, I readily admit to my students that, although he was committed to the view that humankind is essentially good, Socrates failed to recognize what philosopher David Hume called the incurable weakness in human nature. In his essay Of the Origin of Government, Hume comments on the nature of humanity and why it was necessary to invent a system of rules to protect lives and property: It is impossible to keep men faithfully and unerringly in the paths of justice.
Some extraordinary circumstances may happen, in which a man finds his interests to be more promoted by fraud or rapine than hurt by the breach which his injustice makes in the social union. But much more frequently he is seduced from this great and important but distant interest by the allurement of present, though often very frivolous, temptations.
This great weakness is incurable in human nature. Men must, therefore, endeavor to palliate what they cannot cure. They must institute some persons under the appellation of magistrates, whose peculiar office it is to point out the decrees of equity, to punish transgressors, to correct fraud and violence, and to oblige men, however reluctant, to consult their own real and permanent interests.
In a word, obedience is a new duty which must be invented to support that of justice, and the ties of equity must be corroborated by those of allegiance. Wisdom by itself is not enough and great Socrates was wrong in thinking that it was. The majority of my students, in widely diverse environments, were nurtured in the tradition of Christian theism, and, not surprisingly, a significant number of them are unwilling to concede that Socratic doctrines inflict any serious damage on their religious commitments.
As was the case when I was introduced to Socrates, he can shake unexamined beliefs and faiths. The Declaration identified religion with: Humanism seemed intent on destroying itself. He says that the s found humanists as antagonistic toward their fellow humanists as to Fundamentalists and right-wing Christians. Since then another manifestation of fragmentation in the humanist movement has been the attempts by other groups to distinguish themselves from the American Humanist Association. Rationalism, free thought, and atheism went their separate ways.
Countervailing attempts to bring humanists together were the Conference on Science and Democracy and the North American Committee for Humanism, which had only minor success. Manifesto II , published in , Radest argues, was a long and puzzling essay, lacking the clarity, directness, and assurance of the document and was symptomatic of the unresolved issues. Meanwhile America was pushing toward secularization.
Religion on the left had developed a moralistic tone and center. The pulpit addressed itself to social criticism as much as it did to salvation. Its efforts were often in the secular world and its energies devoted to social reform. There was a widely felt need to bring religion into the modern world. This cultural pattern was an appropriate home for the appearance of humanism.
Edwin Wilson, an important leader in organizing the humanist movement, recalled that it first came to self-awareness as a movement among Unitarians. Humanists, more than most, are given to an argumentative game by temperament and by history…we lose ourselves in the joys of argument and forget that it is only argument.
When such a mood seizes us, we embrace its complement, a simple-minded secularism that denies any value to a move beyond the immediate…it is all too human to invest ourselves in our arguments and then to be unable to retreat. The authors of Manifesto I could speak with confidence about the world to come. They had not yet seen science perverted into holocaust and nuclear destruction.
They had not yet seen democracy turned into populist conformism…In the midst of chaos, it is much more satisfying to separate into sheep and goat, saved and damned. Like everyone else, humanists, he continues, tend to revert to a mythic past where matters were simpler, clearer, and more assured. When we are lost…we seek out a villain…within the debates is hidden the question: How shall human life be purposeful and joyful in a universe where human life seems only a chemical and biological incident? Humanism is not yet. This arises from the fact that the game of either-or and not the accidents of history blocks the reconstruction the signers of Manifesto I proposed.
Radist suggests that, although humanism is worldly and secular, the qualities of experience to which humanism must address itself are those that have legitimately been called religious. Thus both sacred and secular are transformed under the aegis of a humanist naturalism. Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man.
It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.
There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the strong and the weak grasp at this alibi. The latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of obedience: The strong, too, claim absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen instrument of a higher power—God, history, fate, nation or humanity.
THE Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral courage and of political wisdom. I say of physical courage, because it was a declaration of war against the most powerful nation then on the globe; a declaration of war by thirteen weak, unorganized colonies; a declaration of war by a few people, without military stores, without wealth, without strength, against the most powerful kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war made when the British navy, at that day the mistress of every sea, was hovering along the coast of America, looking after defenseless towns and villages to ravage and destroy.
It was made when thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, and when the principal cities of America were in the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, all things considered, it was the bravest political document ever signed by man. And if it was physically brave, the moral courage of the document is almost infinitely beyond the physical. They had the courage not only, but they had the almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are created equal. Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world, the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal.
With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war—centuries of hypocrisy—centuries of injustice. What more did they do? They then declared that each man has a right to live.
And what does that mean? It means that he has the right to make his living. It means that he has the right to breathe the air, to work the land, that he stands the equal of every other human being beneath the shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor—the labor of his hand and of his brain. That every man has the right to pursue his own happiness in his own way.
And what more did these men say? They laid down the doctrine that governments were instituted among men for the purpose of preserving the rights of the people. The old idea was that people existed solely for the benefit of the state—that is to say, for kings and nobles. The old idea was that the people were the wards of king and priest—that their bodies belonged to one and their souls to the other. That the people are the source of political power. That was not only a revelation, but it was a revolution. It changed the ideas of people with regard to the source of political power.
For the first time it made human beings men. What was the old idea? The old idea was that no political power came from, or in any manner belonged to, the people. The old idea was that the political power came from the clouds; that the political power came in some miraculous way from heaven; that it came down to kings, and queens, and robbers. That was the old idea. The nobles lived upon the labor of the people; the people had no rights; the nobles stole what they had and divided with the kings, and the kings pretended to divide what they stole with God Almighty.
The source, then, of political power was from above. The people were responsible to the nobles, the nobles to the king, and the people had no political rights whatever, no more than the wild beasts of the forest. The kings were responsible to God; not to the people. The kings were responsible to the clouds; not to the toiling millions they robbed and plundered.
And our forefathers, in this Declaration of Independence, reversed this thing, and said: No; the people, they are the source of political power, and their rulers, these presidents, these kings are but the agents and servants of the great sublime people.
For the first time, really, in the history of the world, the king was made to get off the throne and the people were royally seated thereon. The people became the sovereigns, and the old sovereigns became the servants and the agents of the people. It is hard for you and me now to even imagine the immense results of that change. It is hard for you and for me, at this day, to understand how thoroughly it had been ingrained in the brain of almost every man that the king had some wonderful right over him that in some strange way the king owned him; that in some miraculous manner he belonged, body and soul, to somebody who rode on a horse—to somebody with epaulets on his shoulders and a tinsel crown upon his brainless head.
Our forefathers had been educated in that idea, and when they first landed on American shores they believed it. It took a long time for them to get that idea out of their heads and hearts. They were three thousand miles away from the despotisms of the old world, and every wave of the sea was an assistant to them. The distance helped to disenchant their minds of that infamous belief, and every mile between them and the pomp and glory of monarchy helped to put republican ideas and thoughts into their minds. Besides that, when they came to this country, when the savage was in the forest and three thousand miles of waves on the other side, menaced by barbarians on the one hand and famine on the other, they learned that a man who had courage, a man who had thought, was as good as any other man in the world, and they built up, as it were, in spite of themselves, little republics.
And the man that had the most nerve and heart was the best man, whether he had any noble blood in his veins or not. It has been a favorite idea with me that our fore-fathers were educated by Nature, that they grew grand as the continent upon which they landed; that the great rivers—the wide plains—the splendid lakes—the lonely forests—the sublime mountains—that all these things stole into and became a part of their being, and they grew great as the country in which they lived. They began to hate the narrow, contracted views of Europe.
They were educated by their surroundings, and every little colony had to be to a certain extent a republic. The kings of the old world endeavored to parcel out this land to their favorites. But there were too many Indians. There was too much courage required for them to take and keep it, and so men had to come here who were dissatisfied with the old country—who were dissatisfied with England, dissatisfied with France, with Germany, with Ireland and Holland. Men came here for liberty, and on account of certain principles they entertained and held dearer than life.
And they were willing to work, willing to fell the forests, to fight the savages, willing to go through all the hardships, perils and dangers of a new country, of a new land; and the consequence was that our country was settled by brave and adventurous spirits, by men who had opinions of their own and were willing to live in the wild forests for the sake of expressing those opinions, even if they expressed them only to trees, rocks, and savage men.
The best blood of the old world came to the new. When they first came over they did not have a great deal of political philosophy, nor the best ideas of liberty. We might as well tell the truth. When the Puritans first came, they were narrow. They did not understand what liberty meant—what religious liberty, what political liberty, was; but they found out in a few years. There was one feeling among them that rises to their eternal honor like a white shaft to the clouds—they were in favor of universal education.
Wherever they went they built schoolhouses, introduced books and ideas of literature.
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They believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and should find out all that his capacity allowed him to comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan fathers. They forgot in a little while what they had suffered, and they forgot to apply the principle of universal liberty—of toleration.
Some of the colonies did not forget it, and I want to give credit where credit should be given. The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be remembered to their eternal honor. Let it be remembered to the disgrace of the Protestant government of England, that it caused this grand law to be repealed. And to the honor and credit of the Catholics of Maryland let it be remembered that the moment they got back into power they re-enacted the old law. The Baptists of Rhode Island also, led by Roger Williams, were in favor of universal religious liberty.
No American should fail to honor Roger Williams. He was the first grand advocate of the liberty of the soul. He was in favor of the eternal divorce of church and state. So far as I know, he was the only man at that time in this country who was in favor of real religious liberty. While the Catholics of Maryland declared in favor of religious toleration, they had no idea of religious liberty, They would not allow anyone to call in question the doctrine of the Trinity, or the inspiration of the Scriptures.
They stood ready with branding-iron and gallows to burn and choke out of man the idea that, he had a fight to think and to express his thoughts. So many religions met in our country—so many theories and dogmas came in contact—so many follies, mistakes, and stupidities became acquainted with each other, that religion began to fall somewhat into disrepute. Besides this, the question of a new nation began to take precedence of all others. The people were too much interested in this world to quarrel about the next.
The preacher was lost in the patriot. The Bible was read to find passages against kings. Everybody was discussing the rights of man. Farmers and mechanics suddenly became statesmen, and in every shop and cabin nearly every question was asked and answered. During these years of political excitement the interest in religion abated to that degree that a common purpose animated men of all sects and creeds.
At last our fathers became tired of being colonists—tired of writing and reading and signing petitions, and presenting them on their bended knees to an idiot king. They began to have an aspiration to form a new nation, to be citizens of a new republic instead of subjects of an old monarchy. They had the idea—the Puritans, the Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Quakers, and a few Freethinkers, all had the idea—that they would like to form a new nation. Now, do not understand that all of our fathers were in favor of independence.
Do not understand that they were all like Jefferson; that they were all like Adams or Lee; that they were all like Thomas Paine or John Hancock. There were thousands and thousands of them who were opposed to American independence. There were thousands and thousands who said: They met in Philadelphia; and the resolution was moved by Lee of Virginia, that the colonies ought to be independent states, and ought to dissolve their political connection with Great Britain.
They made up their minds that a new nation must be formed. All nations had been, so to speak, the wards of some church. The religious idea as to the source of power had been at the foundation of all governments, and had been the bane and curse of man. Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to dictate to the rest. Fortunately for us, the colonists not only, but the colonies differed widely in their religious views. Low to High Price: High to Low Avg.
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