Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 02 - The Term Secularism - The Principles of Secularism - George J Holyoake
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- Chapter two, the term secularism. The adoption of the term secularism is justified by its including a large number of persons who are not atheists and uniting them for action which has secularism for its object and not atheism. On this ground, and because by the adoption of a new term a vast amount of impediment from prejudice is got rid of, the use of the name secularism is found advantageous. Harriet Martineau, Boston Liberator, letter to Lloyd Garrison, November eighteen fifty three. Every one observant of public controversy in England is aware of its improved tone of late years. This improved tone is part of a wider progress. Increase of wealth has led to improvement of taste, and the diffusion of knowledge to refinement of sentiment. The mass are better addressed, better mannered, better spoken than formerly. A coffee room discussion conducted by mechanics is now a more decorous exhibition than a debate in Parliament was in the days of Canning. Boisterousness at the tables of the rich and insolence in the language of the poor are fast disappearing. Good society is now that society in which people practice the art of being genial without being familiar, and in which an invincible courtesy of speech is no longer regarded as timidity or effeminacy, but rather as proof of a disciplined spirit which chooses to avoid all offense, the better to maintain the right peremptorily punishing wanton insult. Theologians more inveterate in speech than politicians, now observe a respectfulness to opponents. Before unknown that diversity of opinion, once ascribed to badness of heart, is now with more discrimination referred to defect or diversity of understanding, a change which, discarding invective, recognizes instruction as the agent of uniformity. Amid all this newness of conception, it must be obvious that many old terms of theological controversy are obsolete. The idea of an atheist as one warring against moral restraints, of an infidel as one treacherous to the truth, of a freethinker as a loose thinker, arose in the darkness of past times, when men fought by the flickering light of their hatreds, times which tradition has peopled with monsters of divinity as well as of nature. But the glaring colors in which the party names invented by past priests were died no longer harmonized with the quieter taste of the present day. The more sober spirit of modern controversy has therefore need of new terms. And if the term secularism was merely a neutral substitute for freethinking, there would be reason for its adoption. The centers might as well continue the designation of schismatics or political reformers that of anarchists, as that the students of positive philosophy should continue the designation atheism, infidelism, or any similar term by which their opponents have contrived to brand their opinions. It is as though a merchant vessel should consent to carry a pirate flag. Freethinker is, however, getting an acceptable term upon the platform. Christian disputants frequently claim it and resent the exclusive assumption of it by others. These new claimants say, we are as much freethinkers as yourselves, so that it is necessary to define freethinking. It is fearless thinking based upon impartial inquiry, searching on both sides, not regarding doubt as a crime or opposite conclusions as a species of moral poison. Those who inquire with sinister prepossessions will never inquire fairly. The freethinker fears not to follow a conclusion to the utmost limits of truth, whether it coincides with the Bible or contradicts it. If therefore, any pronounced the term secularism a concealment or a disguise, they can do so legitimately only after detecting some false meaning it is intended to convey, and not on the mere ground of its being a change of name, since nothing can more completely conceal and disguise the purposes of free thought than the old names imposed upon it by its adversaries, which associate with guilt its conscientious conclusions, and impute to it as outrages its act of self defense. Besides the term secularism, there was another term which seemed to promise also distinctiveness of meaning, namely cosmism, under which adherents would have taken the designation of cosmists. But this name scientific men would have understood in a purely physical sense, after the great example of Humboldt, and the public would not all have understood it. Besides, it was open to easy perversion in one of its declinations. Next to this as a name stands that of realism intrinsically good. A society of realists would have been intelligible, but many would have supposed it to be some revival of the old realists. Moralism, a sound name in itself, is under evangelical condemnation as mere morality. Naturalism would seem an obvious name, were it not that we should be confounded with naturalists. To say no more, some name must be taken, As was the case with the teophilanthropists of Paris. Many of them would rather not have assumed any denomination, but they yielded to the reasonable argument that if they did not choose one for themselves, the public would bestow upon them one which would be less to their liking. Those who took the name of philanthropes found it exposed them to a pun which greatly damaged them. Philanthropes was turned into philu entropes. Historical characteristics, however, seemed to point to a term which expressed the secular element in life, a term deeply engrafted in literature of irreproachable associations, a term found and respected in the dictionaries of opponents, and to which therefore they might dispute our right, but which they could not damage. Instead, therefore, of finding ourselves self branded or caricatured by this designation, we have found opponents claiming it and disputing with us for its possession. End of Chapter two