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01 - Introductory - The Principles of Secularism - George J Holyoake · Logic Library

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  Chapter one, introductory. If you think it right to differ from the times,
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  and to make a stand for any valuable point of morals, do it,
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  however rustic, however antiquated, however pedantic it may appear. Do it
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  not for insolence, but seriously as a man who wore a soul of his
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  own in his bosom, and did not wait till it was breathed into him
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  by the breath of fashion. The Reverend Sidney Smith canon of Saint Paul's,
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  in a passage of characteristic sagacity, Doctor J. H. Newman has depicted
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  a partisan aimlessness more descriptive of the period when this little book first appeared sixteen
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  years ago than it is now. But it will be long before its relevance
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  and instruction have passed away. I therefore I take the liberty of still quoting
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  his words. When persons for the first time look upon the world of politics
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  or religion, all that they find their meets their mind's eye as a landscape
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  addresses itself for the first time to a person who has just gained his bodily
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  sight, one thing is as far off as another. There is no perspective
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  the connection of fact with fact, truth with truth, the bearing of fact
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  upon truth, and truth upon fact. What leads to what? What are
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  points primary? And what secondary? All this they have yet to learn.
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  It is all the new science to them, and they do not even know
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  their ignorance of it. Moreover, the world of to day has no connection
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  in their minds with the world of yesterday. Time is not a stream,
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  but stands before them, round and full, like the moon. They do
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  not know what happened ten years ago, much less the annals of a century.
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  The past does not live to them in the present. They do not
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  understand the worth of contested points. Names have no associations for them, and
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  persons kindle no recollections. They hear of men and things, and projects and
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  struggles and principles. But everything comes and goes like the wind. Nothing makes
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  an impression, nothing penetrates, nothing has its place in their minds. They
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  locate nothing. They have no system. They hear and they forget, or
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  they just recollect what they have once heard. They cannot tell where. Thus
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  they have no consistency in their arguments. That is, they argue one way
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  to day, and not exactly the other way tomorrow, but indirectly the other
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  way at random. Their lines of argument diverge, nothing comes to a point.
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  There is no one center in which their minds sits on which their judgment
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  of men and things proceeds. This is the state of many men all through
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  life, and miserable politicians or churchmen they make unless by good luck they are
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  in safe hands and ruled by others, or apledged to a course. Else
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  they are at the mercy of the wind and waves. And without being radical,
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  weak Tory or conservative, high Church or low Church. They do weak
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  acts, story acts, Catholic acts, and heretical acts as the fit takes
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  them, or as events or parties drive them, and sometimes when their self
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  importance is hurt, they take refuge in the idea that all this is a
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  proof that they are unfettered, moderate, dispassionate, that they observe the mean
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  that they are no party men, when they are in fact the most helpless
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  of slaves. For our strength in this world is to be the subjects of
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  the reason, and our liberty to be captives of the truth. Footnote loss
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  and gain ascribed to the Reverend Father Newman, and footnote how the organization of
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  ideas has fared with higher class societies. Others can tell the working class have
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  been left so much in want of initiative direction that almost everything has to be
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  done among them, and an imperfect and brief attempt to direct those interested in
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  free thought may meet with some acceptance to clamor for objects without being able to
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  connect them with principles, too smart, under contumely, without knowing how to
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  protect themselves, to bear some lofty name, without understanding the manner in which
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  character should correspond to profession. This is the amount of the popular attainment in
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  this new edition. I find little to alter and less to add. In
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  a passage on page twenty seven, the distinction between secular instruction and secularism is
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  ext explained in these words quote, secular education is by some confounded with secularism,
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  whereas the distinction between them is very wide. Secular education simply means imparting
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  secular knowledge separately by itself, without admixture of theology with it. The advocate
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  of secular education may be, and generally is, also an advocate of religion,
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  but he would teach religion at another time and treat it as a distinct
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  subject, too sacred for course. If admixture into the hard and vexatious routine
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  of a school. He would confine the inculcation of religion to fitting seasons and
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  chosen instruments. He holds also that one subject at a time is mental economy
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  in learning, secular education is the policy of a school. Secularism is the
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  policy of life to those who do not accept theology. Very few persons admitted
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  that these distinctions existed when this passage was written in eighteen fifty four. This
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  year eighteen seventy, they have been substantially admitted by the legislature in concession made
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  in the National Education Bill. It only remains to add that the whole text
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  has been revised and re arranged in an order which seems more consecutive. The
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  portion on secular organizations has been abridged in part rewritten, explaining particulars as to
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  the Secular Guild. A distinctive summary of secular principles may be read under the
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  article secularism in Chambers's Cyclopedia, end of chapter one