London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2022 (originally published 2020)
1,008 pp., $18.99

The Enlightenment was a cultural current almost everyone has heard about—yet today it is not a major concern for many scholars nor for people interested in history and philosophy. Misleading stereotypes about thinkers of this movement include that they advanced a cynical version of reason, aimed to erase emotions, supported mechanistic theories, and hated religion. Some descriptions of the age allude to the widespread interest in science or mention that philosophers were often involved in politics, but it is hard to find an accurate explanation of the reasons that led to such phenomena and the ways thinkers acted in those cases. Today, most scholars and people interested in philosophy regard the Enlightenment as a two-dimensional, cold, and outdated cultural movement that is less relevant than other movements, such as postmodernism. Ritchie Robertson’s The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 (2020) acknowledges these problems and strives to avoid them. The work is written in a precise, nonacademic style that helps anyone curious about the Enlightenment approach the subject.

Robertson starts by declaring that his aim is to give a “rounded picture of the Enlightenment” and to focus on the practical consequences of reason (xvii). He deals with many facets of the Enlightenment, starting with happiness, reason, and passion in the first chapter, then the Scientific Revolution, toleration, religion, apostasy, science, sociability, practical disciplines, aesthetics, society, history, cosmopolitanism, the forms of government, and revolutions in the following thirteen chapters.

The way Robertson introduces the Enlightenment is both accurate and original. His first key argument is that, according to most Enlightenment thinkers, “the goal of life was happiness” and that it could be found in this world here and now, despite the fact that suffering is real (1). Robertson explains how philosophers from the Enlightenment conceived of happiness and the way they aimed to reach it, which led to “a commitment to understanding . . . the causes and conditions of human betterment in this world” and the rejection of anything that caused irrational fear, such as superstition and ignorance (37). They recognized that men, instead of being guided by “blind faith,” should be guided by reason (21). In his Preliminary Discourse, for example, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert claimed that, to build a useful system of knowledge, one must grasp that human understanding does not start with abstractions but with sense data; reason does not work against the senses but is based on and requires them.^[1] Further, Enlightenment thinkers generally understood that gaining knowledge does not require renouncing emotions.^[2] For instance, René Descartes, Alexander Pope, and Chevalier de Jacourt remarked on the importance of passions in human life and the possibility of their coexistence with reason. During the Enlightenment, human beings were not considered “first and foremost rational, endowed by God with the gift of reason in contrast to the animals” (261). The conception of humankind developed during the 18th century was more secular and rounded, and it aimed to account for not only reason but all the human passions and vices. Contrary to popular belief, Enlightenment views on morality broadly did not posit an idealized fantasy of men as behaving emotionlessly despite often leading to the conclusion that reason was the proper means of understanding emotions and dealing with desires.

This respect for reason fed the Scientific Revolution, the development of which Robertson covers extensively. This series of discoveries began with thinkers such as Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton who sought to understand the world around them without reference to a mystical deity. In their Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert continued the revolution by applying the Baconian and Newtonian scientific approaches to nature to find a way to learn about reality after rejecting the biblical narrative (60–63). Robertson points out that Voltaire (1694–1778), who is often remembered only for his literary production and his battle against Christian fanatics, was one of the first thinkers to advance Newtonianism in France and continental Europe (62).

Many thinkers at this time used science as a weapon against myriad forms of mysticism, though Robertson is aware that during the Enlightenment “scientific knowledge was [viewed as] the enemy of superstition, but not of religion” (83). However, he does not omit that thinkers challenged both the Old and New Testaments. According to Voltaire, for example, St. Paul was an authoritarian figure; he also noted that the miracles Jesus allegedly performed were impossible (191). At the same time, not every Enlightenment thinker was willing to believe that the world was governed by brute matter only, which was sometimes seen as the alternative to a religious view of the world.^[3] Deism (the belief in the existence of an impersonal God that created the universe but does not interfere with human life) was more popular than atheism, though many atheists and some Deists were wary of Christian dogma creeping into Deistic teachings. Deists’ main goal was to find a way to free men from the fear of the unknown and from the violence of fanatics. Humans were beginning to understand that they did not have a reason to fear a God above—their actions could be judged according to rational criteria rather than biblical dogmas or governmental decrees.

As Robertson concludes, it became clear that authorities could not rely on personal beliefs as the only standard to judge someone’s actions without the support of concrete evidence. Toleration, as it was usually discussed then, was not relativism, but the rejection of the imposition of dogma on individuals. Thus, despite popular portrayals to the contrary, there was much disagreement between Enlightenment thinkers about moral issues.^[4] For instance, Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) argued that punishing suicide (as many states did at that time by fining the relatives of those who ended their lives) was pointless. Charles Louis de Secondat baron of Montesquieu (1689–1755) claimed that it is unjust to deprive someone of an escape from an intolerable life, whereas Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) firmly condemned suicide.^[5]

The Enlightenment was also a time when individuals interacted in new social frameworks to communicate ideas (277). The 18th century has been called “the sociable century” because coffeehouses, salons (often run by women, who were starting to find their own intellectual dimension and autonomy more frequently than in the past), and scientific or philosophic societies were venues for key discussions (365). Robertson’s work provides a reliable description of the Republic of Letters, a community of scholars who interacted at a distance via letters and newspapers, trying to find other means besides printed books to spread and discuss ideas while avoiding censorship. The Republic of Letters chose Latin as their international language and aimed to share their discoveries with one another and with people all over Europe. This is an instance of the Enlightenment ideal of being “a cosmopolitan or ‘citizen of the world’” (601). To learn about the world meant, in part, to write a secular history, which could reconstruct the development of the Earth and of human beings starting from empirical evidence rather than religious stories about past events. Voltaire was a prominent figure in this field. In his Essai Sur les Mœurs et L’esprit des Nations (1756), he aimed to write an integrated history including both Christian and non-Christian cultures and to prove false the chronology put forth in the Bible (556–58).

The Enlightenment was, overall, a movement that saw philosophy as an instrument for living in this world and used it to promote practical changes in reality as well as to introduce innovations not only in history, science, metaphysics, and morality but also in industry, agriculture, and education. This attitude was embodied by the Encyclopedie, “a vast panorama of knowledge” that aimed to understand and communicate the way the human mind works, as well as how truth can be achieved and applied in any field from art to politics to manual labor.

The conclusion of the book deals with the objections the Enlightenment faced, mainly from the left. It also offers a valid yet short rejection of Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment), a work published in 1944 that became the main reference point not only for those who criticize the Enlightenment but also for those who are approaching it for the first time and looking for a guide. This work contributed to creating a false image of the Enlightenment that led to hostility toward it in the contemporary world. Roberston points out that stating that such a movement led to totalitarian regimes or to horrific events such as the Holocaust, as that book does, is utterly implausible (769–70).^[6] He remarks that many critics, Adorno and Horkheimer included, define the Enlightenment too narrowly, ignoring the diversity of views and approaches that nevertheless fall not only in the period of the Enlightenment but within its spirit of rational inquiry and curiosity. According to Robertson, Horkheimer and Adorno “produced a scattergun assault on many aspects of modernity” rather than focusing on the Enlightenment itself (775). Moreover, they built a narrative that uses capitalism as a strawman while acknowledging the horrors of Nazism and fascism—but ignoring the atrocities of Soviet socialism (775).

Robertson’s book focuses on the ideas that underpin what the Enlightenment was, including the most famous (such as those about reason, science, and religion), and also those concepts developed during the 18th century that aren’t often associated with it (including happiness, cosmopolitanism, and the renovation of history as a formal discipline). Robertson puts every key idea in relation to the historical and philosophic context of that time and gives many examples of arguments by philosophers of that age. He focuses on the most famous thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire and Kant, but he provides a more rounded description of their ideas than one often finds. In this book, Voltaire is remembered not only for his literary works and his battle for tolerance but also for his works on history and science. Robertson mentions Kant as a very influential thinker of that age and a supporter of what he considered to be reason but also makes clear that many of his ideas contradicted the values of the Enlightenment (31).

The author also describes the ideas of lesser-known thinkers of that age—including Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759), Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750), and Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749)—and the influence each of them had. Further, the book deals with the way the Enlightenment developed not just in France and England (the two nations generally associated with this age) but in many other European countries, including Germany and Italy. Robertson takes the Enlightenment era very broadly in this work, which includes several philosophers from the 17th century (e.g., Descartes and Spinoza), yet this might help readers understand the steps that led to the movement in the 18th century, avoiding a common depiction of that age as an isolated moment in human history.

The Age of Reason is much more complex than many philosophy books claim and much more valuable than some of its detractors claim. The tools it provided to fight superstition, understand human beings, and improve life are still useful today—and always will be. Ritchie Robertson is fully aware of this when he reminds the reader that “freeing people from false beliefs” was the “overriding purpose of enlightened thought and activity” (xvii), which is a task to keep in mind now, in a time when freedom of thought and of research are “under threat” (780). His book, with its nuanced portrayal and clear writing, is a valuable way to rediscover the power of the Enlightenment.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] The first of the two introductions to the Encyclopedie. Cfr. Jean Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, Discours préliminaire à l’Encyclopedie, Édition électronique (ePub, PDF) v.: 1, 0: Les Échos du Maquis, 2011, Discours préliminaire à l’Encyclopédie, 6–7.

^[2] Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), 23.

^[3] According to materialism, matter and its movements are the only cause of all phenomena, including thoughts and emotions.

^[4] Andrej Elzanowski, “Moral Progress: A Present-Day Perspective on the Leading Enlightenment Idea,” Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal 3, no. 1 (June 2023): 9–26, Moral Progress: A Present-day Perspective on the Leading Enlightenment Idea, 14–15.

^[5] It is important to note that Kant was not an Enlightenment thinker, yet he is commonly associated with this cultural movement.

^[6] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

New York: Harper & Row, 1980
348 pp., $ 11.82

Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (1980) was the first systematic work to develop an area of academia that became known as “ecofeminism” and is still influential among leftist feminists and environmentalists. The book argues that the Scientific Revolution replaced an organic view of the world—one that regarded the universe as a living being—with a mechanist one, in which natural phenomena can be explained as the result of the motion and interaction of matter according to the laws of physics. It focuses on the supposed social impact this change had on women and on many people’s conception of femininity: Merchant claims that the widespread rejection of “organicism” increased the marginalization and subjugation of women, whereas scientists and men in general gained much more power.

Merchant claims that the public attitude toward scientific disciplines began to change in the 1600s. She starts by looking at the philosophy of nature and literature before the 1600s, using what she deems Francis Bacon’s misogyny to claim that his influence in those fields was oppressive for women. As an example, she cites Bacon’s statement that scientists are men (meaning specifically males) who can manipulate nature (165). As Merchant explains, in the premodern world, the Earth was typically portrayed as a “feminine being.” When mechanism became popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, those who accepted it not only rejected the previous idea of nature as a living being but, she claims, imposed a male “mastery and domination” on this female entity (2). Following Bacon, they argued that nature is chaotic until men discover the laws of physics that govern it and are able in this way to predict and modify natural phenomena.

Merchant points out that women during this time were largely excluded from studying science and also argues that the disciplines that were commonly dominated by women were dismissed by many supporters of the Scientific Revolution. For example, she mentions many male philosophers throughout history who held limited or ignorant views of obstetricians (155). Merchant also claims that literature (particularly utopian literature) suffered from this change of mindset. She compares the “ideal” of equalitarian societies imagined by Tommaso Campanella in The City of the Sun (1602) and by Johann Valentin Andreä in Christianopolis (1619) with Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626). The latter is characterized by a hierarchical, patriarchal society in which scientists manipulate nature, whereas the former examples portray society as an organism in which everyone plays an equally important role for the “common good” (173; 183–84). According to Merchant, such views shaped what was once regarded as the ideal society in a more valuable way morally than did the Scientific Revolution.

Even when discussing feminist philosophers such as Anne Conway, Merchant continues to assert that the idea of man’s dominion over nature (and over women, according to her framework) was much more popular than their theories. She makes clear that Conway’s vision, according to which the universe is made up of the same substance and every part of it is self-conscious, was not as successful as the more mechanistic views of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Isaac Newton, which Merchant claims derive from Bacon’s mindset. She even presents the new scientific method as the main cause of rising concern about “witchcraft” (140).

Industry and modern science, Merchant argues, are characterized by the nature/culture (women/men) dichotomy. She states that, because men (culture) have used natural resources to build cities and develop industries throughout history, they therefore have oppressed women (nature) since the very beginning of industrialization (236). Merchant concludes that today’s society (which she incorrectly characterizes as capitalist) derives from misogyny and mechanicist attitudes developed in the Modern Age and that it is a sign of men working on the “manipulation of the environment” (182).

The Death of Nature was a turning point in ecology and “gender studies.” The comparison between women and nature presented in the book inspired leftwing thinkers to link the two under the banner of “ecofeminism.” Since the 1980s, the study of women’s history in academia has focused largely on the history of “the environment.” In 1985, Evelyn Fox Keller further developed Merchant’s ideas in Reflections on Gender Studies; in 1989 Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive used the term “maledevelopment” to describe what the author thinks is the main attitude men and science have toward women and nature.^[1] In 1991, the magazine Hypatia focused on the “philosophy of ecofeminism,” criticizing “rational tools” and Western culture. In the 2000s, many so-called feminists were concerned about the supposed oppression that they claimed were caused by male, scientific, and capitalistic views.^[2] In the 2010s, most scholars and activists kept claiming that ecology and feminism could develop only under socialism, which is opposed to the idea that individuals survive through the use of their own reason.^[3] Twenty-seven years after the publication of The Death of Nature, Merchant herself declared that socialism is the best way to discover and create new paths for knowledge and gender roles.^[4]

This kind of framework has rarely been challenged. Many activists and academics display great concern for the alleged problems with the environment, their attitude generally begetting a simultaneous strawman of capitalism and denial of the extent to which most Western societies today are heavily socialist already. Socialist scholars and “ecofeminists” define “capitalism” as a “male-controlled” system rather than seeing it as a system based on the recognition of individual rights.^[5] These positions are not accurate, yet they are still common in universities.^[6] Recent articles still focus on Merchant’s ideas and scholars still discuss them.^[7]

The common thread of Merchant’s analyses is what she calls the “violent” attitude Baconian scientists and semi-capitalist societies have toward nature, an attitude that supposedly corresponds to wider misogynism in Western culture. Until the Renaissance, most people believed that every entity in nature was alive (even minerals were thought to have a “lower level” of consciousness); to Merchant, this view seemed to better respect women’s dignity because every entity has a role in the “harmonic whole” of existence and knowledge could not justify the dismissal of any living being (27–28). The Scientific Revolution rejected that vision and, for Merchant, this meant rejecting respect toward women and natural elements in general. Bacon supported inductive reasoning, and, according to his own assertion, he inaugurated a methodology that could be compared to torture, describing experiments as the tool a scientist could use to force nature to be “bound into service” and confess every secret (168). From this, Merchant concludes that women and nature are “kindred spirits” because both have been discredited and taken advantage of by Western culture since the 1600s because Bacon’s method was “so readily applicable when nature is denoted by the female gender” (169). Therefore, this nature/culture dichotomy supposedly separated women from knowledge because “Women’s reproductive function required that more energy be directed toward pregnancy and maternity, hence less was available for the higher functions associated with learning and reasoning” (163). (Merchant’s “nature/culture” framework is just as dismissive of women as those advocated by many of the men she criticizes—perhaps even more so—but this irony seems to be lost on her.)

Humans depend exclusively on our rational faculty to survive; we must use natural materials to create what we need. Merchant seems to be aware of this fact and attributes it to men (but not women) while holding that it is somehow bad. She claims that after the Scientific Revolution, Western societies began to judge science largely in terms of the extent to which it could facilitate industrial productivity (251). Merchant criticizes capitalism as the consequence of a misogynist mindset and “the effort to control and harness nature through technology,” and she condemns “capital-intensive economic methods” (295) because they allegedly are related to the “subjugation of nature and women” (294). Merchant claims that this emphasis on industrial progress had terrible consequences for the Earth, such as the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear incident, which she claims “damaged” the surrounding environment. She bases this claim wholly on the fact that the soil nearby later contained high levels of cesium-137—but this had no consequences whatsoever for human, animal, or plant life in the area (295). That seems to be irrelevant to Merchant, or maybe she was not aware of the scientific studies that followed the incident and confirmed the absence of damage. In any case, her comment on the event is superficial and she ignores most facts related to the case.

The epilogue declares that the “death of the concept of living nature” in the 17th century is the main cause of both prejudice against women today and the current “ecological crisis” (XV). Merchant’s main conclusion is threefold: (a) that “natural resources and energy supplies” (295) are diminishing, (b) that pollution is increasing, and (c) that it is crucial to “reevaluate human priorities” and “change our attitude” with respect to these things (290). She also states erroneously that to see the “human race as a rational species” is not a complete definition, because a great part of humankind “seems to have been excluded by it” (251). As a possible solution, she recommends that we reject the oppression women have been facing “since the Scientific Revolution,” which she thinks led to today’s society and “environmental dilemma” (XXI), and “discover values associated with the premodern world that may be worthy of transformation and reintegration into today’s and tomorrow’s society” (XXIII).

The book does not mention the Enlightenment at all, negligently ignoring a time in which both the Baconian and Newtonian systems were further developed and challenged. She excludes influential thinkers of that time, such as Voltaire and Denis Diderot, to support her claim that Renaissance thinkers believed that the universe has no consciousness.^[8] Voltaire was always opposed to mechanism and Diderot spent almost his whole life looking for a consistent system able to describe nature.^[9] Both thinkers dealt with the issue of women’s treatment in their centuries, and their attitudes are far from misogynist. Similarly, Jean Baptiste le Rond D’Alembert never regarded progress as incompatible with women’s freedom. D’Alembert used rational tools to approach the study of the world and was convinced that the Scientific Revolution had improved living conditions, and believed this applied to everyone, including women—D’Alembert always claimed that men and women had the same value and needed to have the same legal rights.^[10] The description Merchant offers is, therefore, historically inaccurate and does not convey how complex the cultural framework was at that time. Her book is deeply unfair to many thinkers who contributed to the development of reason and improvement of human life.

The comparison Merchant makes between the beginning of the Scientific Revolution and the birth of capitalism is also superficial. It is true that the two events are linked in some respects, but her claim that they both caused women to be oppressed is baseless. Regardless of Bacon’s ideas, it is undeniable that, for both men and women, life before the Scientific Revolution was much worse overall than afterward.^[11] Even if women today face prejudice and violence more often than men, this does not mean that the past was better in this respect or that the Scientific Revolution was to blame.

The fundamental issue of The Death of Nature is the way it deals with human nature. Merchant tries to challenge a view of mankind that, according to her, has been dominant for centuries—the idea that humans are rational beings—but ends up explaining history by using a concept that has nothing to do with reality: her nature/culture dichotomy (which corresponds in her book with her women/men dichotomy). Her distorted conception of what happened to nature and women through the centuries leads her to exaggerate some circumstances and ignore other relevant events. During the Scientific Revolution, thinkers tried to develop a more rational approach to the world and human life. That women were largely excluded is because many at the time did not apply the description of mankind as rational to all humans, not because the definition itself was not inclusive. To advocate for another definition of humankind that does not involve reason in order to include women is much more misogynist than any statement of Bacon’s because it implies that women are not rational at all. Paradoxically, Merchant ends up enabling misogynists to exclude females from progress and science.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

[1] Gregory Morgan Swer, Nature, Gender and Technology: The Ontological Foundations of Shiva’s Ecofeminist Philosophy: Comparative and Continental Philosophy 12, no. 2—Get Access (Taylor and Francis online, 2020), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17570638.2020.1780685.

[2] Trish Glazebrook, “Karen Warren’s Ecofeminism,” in Ethics and the Environment 7, no. 2 (Autumn 2002): 12–26, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40339034?seq=4.

[3] Marco Armiero, ed., La storia ambientale ed io: intervista a Carolyn Merchant (Zest, 2007), https://www.zestletteraturasostenibile.com/la-storia-ambientale-ed-io-intervista-a-carolyn-merchant-a-cura-di-marco-armiero.

[4] Armiero, La storia ambientale ed io.

[5] Andrew Bernstein, The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire (University Press of America, 2005), 18.

[6] For example, Christine Bauhardt, “For More Than Forty Years on the Bookshelves: The Death of Nature—A Tribute to Carolyn Merchant,” in Ethics and the Environment, vol. 27 (Indiana University Press, 2022).

[7] Roberto Barbosa and Iohana Santarelli, “A Feminist History of Science: Carolyn Merchant and the Death of Nature,” in Educación y Ciencia 29, no. 2 (2025), https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.0120-7105.eyc.2025.29.e18331.

[8] Voltaire, Traité de métaphysique, ch. II, Italian translation by G. Ricci (autonomous publication, 2021), 23 ff.

[9] Voltaire, Traité de métaphysique, ch. II, 11 ff; cfr. Edoardo Tortarolo, L’Illuminismo (Roma: Carocci, 2020), 35.

[10] Tortarolo, L’illuminismo, 231 ff.

[11] Andrew Bernstein, The Capitalist Manifesto, op. cit. 55.

We cover a lot of ground in our 2-hour conversation. I hope you enjoy it!

I recently spoke with philosopher Michael Huemer about the nature and foundation of ethics. He argued for moral intuitionism based on intellectual appearances, and I upheld rational egoism derived from observation and logic.

Professor Huemer was my first guest on UnderStanding, and I enjoyed our conversation. I hope you enjoy it too!

I recently wrote a short essay titled “Moral Realism and Anti-Realism vs. the Metaethics of Life,” which is a tad more technical than what we typically publish in The Objective Standard. So I published it on my personal Substack, Thinking in Principles. But I want to bring it to your attention in case you might be interested.

If you’re familiar with Ayn Rand’s conceptualization of the three schools of thought regarding the nature of the good—the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective—then you have a head start on the subject. My essay examines these basic alternatives in the context of the categories and classifications used in today’s academic circles and among popular philosophers. It amounts to a plea for conceptual clarity.

You can read the essay here. I hope you enjoy it!

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For thousands of years, people have debated the objective standard of morality. Is there such a thing? If so, what is it? And how can we know it?

Is it “Might makes right,” as the Sophists claimed? Or “the Form of the Good” as Plato imagined? Or “God’s will,” as Jews, Christians, and Muslims submit?

Is it selfless service to others, as altruists declare? Or compliance with the will of some group, as socialists, communists, and fascists insist? Or “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” as Utilitarians say?

Or . . . is it the factual requirements of human life, given human nature and our basic needs?

It is the latter. And this fact is hiding in plain sight.

Observe that the very question morality or ethics seeks to answer is: How should we live? This aim—living—is captured in descriptions spanning from the great philosopher Socrates, who said that ethics is about “the way we ought to live,” to political commentator Ben Shapiro, who notes that it addresses the question, “How ought we to live?” The same aim appears in the titles and themes of countless books on ethics—from widely used college texts such as How Should We Live? by Louis Pojman and How Are We to Live? by Peter Singer, to popular books such as Epictetus’s The Art of Living and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, to groundbreaking works such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which is about living in harmony with your nature and thus living fully.

Whatever disagreements such thinkers may have about how we should live—and whatever contradictions might exist in their worldviews—their basic conception of ethics recognizes, at least implicitly, that the ultimate aim of the discipline is: living.

Likewise, when people express concern about the need for an objective standard of morality, they often say that without one, people could murder, rape, and rob—yet nothing would be wrong with such behavior. When asked why that matters, they reply that such conditions would make civilized society—and thus human life—impossible. They are right. Without a moral standard grounded in the facts of reality—namely, the factual requirements of human life—human beings would be in a constant war of each against all. We could not live as human beings.

There’s that concept of “life” again. It pervades every thoughtful discussion of ethics—and for good reason. The ultimate goal of moral thinking is to guide our actions so that we can live.

None of this is to say that people consciously or explicitly recognize human life as the ultimate goal of morality. Few do. But if we pay attention to what we and others think, say, and do regarding morality—and to the logical implications of our ideas, concerns, and actions—we can see that the ultimate reason we need morality is: to live.

Morality is a code of values and principles to guide our choices and actions. Either we need such a code or we don’t. If we don’t need it, then there’s no point in discussing or even pondering the subject. But if we do need morality, then the reason we need it—the ultimate end it serves—logically sets the standard by which we can determine what is good and bad, right and wrong, and how we should and shouldn’t act.

As Ayn Rand observed, human life is the basic phenomenon that gives rise to both the possibility and the need of morality. If human beings didn’t exist, morality couldn’t exist—as there would be no one to formulate or apply its principles. And if we didn’t want to live, we wouldn’t need principles to guide our choices and actions—as we wouldn’t need to make choices or take actions at all. Morality is possible only to human beings, and we need it only if we want to live. We can see that this is so.

From these and related observations, Rand induced the principle that the requirements of human life constitute the objective standard of morality. On this standard, the ideas, actions, and conditions that support and further human life are morally good; those that harm or destroy it are morally bad. For instance, the principle that reason is man’s only means of knowledge, the act of producing life-serving values, and the establishment of a society that protects individual rights are moral. By contrast, the notion that faith or feelings are means of knowledge, the act of destroying life-serving values, and the establishment of a society that violates individual rights are immoral. (For a step-by-step derivation of this principle, see Rand’s essay “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness, or my essay “Secular, Objective Morality: Look and See” in The Objective Standard.)

Morality is about how to live—specifically, how to live as a human being, given our nature and needs. And human life is the objective standard of moral value because it is the fundamental fact that gives rise to the possibility and need of morality.

So, whenever you think about morality or discuss it with others, look for the concept of “life.” See whether it’s being recognized—implicitly or explicitly—as the ultimate goal. Ask yourself whether the subject could exist or be of any use without it. And ask yourself why.

Over time, you’ll see increasingly clearly that the very reason we need a code of values and principles to guide our choices and actions is so that we can live in harmony with our nature. In other words, you’ll see that the requirements of human life constitute the objective standard of morality.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And with every additional person who sees it, the world becomes a better place for human beings to live.

This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

Charlie Kirk was murdered because someone felt his “hateful” speech should be silenced.

Iryna Zarutska was murdered because someone felt “that white girl” should die.

Angela Michelle Carr, Jerrald Gallion, and Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr. were murdered because someone felt that black people should die.

Hundreds of victims of school shootings—from those at Columbine High to Sandy Hook Elementary to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High—were murdered because someone felt that killing them would be good.

The victims of 9/11, 7/7, and 10/7 were murdered because Muslims have faith that God exists, that his will is the moral law, and that he wants them to kill infidels. Likewise, homosexuals are hanged or beheaded in the Islamic world because Muslims have faith that God wants gay people dead.

Giordano Bruno, Michael Servetus, Hypatia, and other freethinkers were murdered because Christians had faith that God exists, that his will is the moral law, and that he wants them to kill heretics. Similarly, homosexuals throughout the ages have been killed by Christians who had faith that God wants gay people dead.

Countless millions of men, women, and children were murdered by communists who communally agreed that the proletariat (“working class”) should do whatever it takes to eliminate the bourgeoisie (“business-owning class”). Likewise, six million Jews were killed by Nazis because they formed a consensus that this was the right thing to do.

What underpins all this carnage? What is the causal common denominator?

The fundamental action underlying and giving rise to all such murderous behavior is the choice to treat something other than reason as a means of knowledge—and thus something other than reason as a guide to action.

• The murderers of Kirk, Zarutska, Carr, Gallion, and Laguerre felt that they should kill these people—and acted accordingly. They treated feelings as a means of knowledge.

• The jihadists of 9/11, 7/7, and 10/7, the Muslims and Christians who’ve killed gay people, and the Christians who murdered Bruno, Servetus, and Hypatia had faith that they should kill these people—and acted accordingly. They treated faith as a means of knowledge.

• The communists and Nazis who slaughtered millions did so because they communally agreed that they should. They treated consensus as a means of knowledge.

None of these killers offered facts or evidence in support of the idea that they should kill the people they killed; nor could they have, as there are no facts to support the propriety of murder. None genuinely knew that they should kill their victims; you can’t know what isn’t so. They merely felt, had faith, or agreed that they should—and then treated that non-means of knowledge as a means of knowledge.

Those who accept absurdities commit or condone atrocities.

Man’s only means of knowledge is reason—the faculty that identifies and integrates the evidence of his senses. Reasoning involves perceptual observation, conceptual integration, and the formation and use of principles: general truths about the nature of reality, human nature, and the requirements of human life and social harmony.

Key among these principles is that of individual rights: the recognition of the fact that each individual’s life belongs to him (not to a group, a god, or a guy with a gun)—that he is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others—and that in order for human beings to live together peacefully (rather than as warring animals), they must renounce the initiation of physical force, leaving each individual free to act in accordance with his own rational judgment. (Force, under this principle, may be used only in retaliation against those who initiate its use.)

The principle of individual rights is not a gift from “God” or the government, nor is it a matter of mere preference or opinion. Rather, it is a truth that anyone can grasp—if he observes reality, uses reason, and refuses to pretend that feelings, faith, or consensus are means of knowledge.

Although there is no evidence to support the notion that murdering people or initiating force against them is good, a world of evidence supports the idea that in order to survive and thrive as human beings, we must use reason, produce life-serving goods and services, trade value for value by mutual consent to mutual benefit, and refrain from initiating force against one another—so that everyone can live his life as he sees fit.

In light of such observations and truths, we can draw a vital conclusion. We can achieve a civilized society only to the extent that we recognize and uphold two fundamental principles:

1. Reason is man’s only means of knowledge, his proper guide to action, and his basic means of living.

2. Initiating physical force against human beings is factually immoral and properly illegal—because to the extent that force is used against a person, it stops him from acting in accordance with his basic means of living: the judgment of his reasoning mind.

The measure of a society’s civility is precisely the extent to which its citizens and government recognize and uphold these principles.

Imagine a society that did so fully.

Let’s build it.

This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

While civilized people mourn the assassination of Charlie Kirk—and the uncivilized celebrate it—we would do well to name the relevant divide at a deeper level.

What is the fundamental distinction between these two camps?

It is the act of thinking vs. that of tribing.

Thinking consists in using reason—man’s means of knowledge—to grasp reality and form judgments based on evidence and logic. Tribing consists in subordinating one’s mind to a group, uncritically adopting its beliefs, values, and norms.

Thinkers know that the process of reasoning requires effort, that it is often complex, and that it can go wrong. They know that even when they strive to go by evidence and logic, they can and sometimes will reach false conclusions. But they also know that reason is their means of identifying and correcting such errors. And they bring all of this knowledge to bear in dealing with other people.

Thinkers know that anyone who characteristically uses reason to understand what is true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, is essentially good—even if mistaken. Thus thinkers can engage with one another civilly, even in disagreement.

Not so with tribers.

By subordinating their minds to the tribe, tribers relinquish reason, reject evidence and logic, and thus reduce themselves to mindless followers lacking a genuine means of knowledge. Having abandoned reason, tribers cannot reach rational conclusions nor engage civilly with those who differ. They can do only one thing: march in lockstep with the tribe.

The distinction between thinking and tribing is deeper than that of individualism vs. tribalism (or collectivism). Thinking and tribing name the methods that underlie and give rise to individualism and tribalism. Thinking fosters one, tribing the other.

These methods are the fundamental difference between, on the one hand, civilized human beings and, on the other, those who have abandoned their means of being human—and, with it, their capacity to be civil.

Recognize this distinction when you observe or engage with people. Use the contrasting verbs of “thinking” and “tribing” to name what they do. This is the fundamental factor in the battle for civilization. And we need to know who is who.

This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

Editor’s note: Elihu Palmer was a former Calvinist preacher who rejected everything he had been taught and became one of the leading critics of organized religion in revolutionary America. I detailed his life and ideas in my article, “Elihu Palmer’s Journey from Religion to Reason,” in The Objective Standard, Winter 2022. —Thomas Walker-Werth

What follows is an extract from Palmer’s most influential book, Principles of Nature; or a Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, in which he launches a scathing attack on religion and venerates the human intellect as the only means of discovering truth.

At this point in his life, Palmer was a Deist; he professed to believe based on evidence that the universe was created by an “inconceivable” divine being that takes no active role in human affairs and should not be worshipped. This idea is articulated in the first few paragraphs of the section titled “Theology and its Effects.” Aside from this idea of an impersonal god, Palmer rejected religion wholesale and advocated a philosophy based on reason and the study of nature.

This extract has been lightly edited for ease of reading, but the original wording is retained throughout, including some archaic language.

God, to remove his ways from human sense, plac’d Heaven from earth so far, that earthly sight, if it presume, might err in things too high, and no advantage gain. —Milton

The establishment of theological systems, claiming divine origin, has been among the most destructive causes by which the life of man has been afflicted. History furnishes an awful picture of the sad and fatal effects of fanaticism among the nations of the earth; but history furnishes only the exterior; there is a deeper internal wound, which superstition has inflicted in the bosom of society, subversive of all moral sympathy and the fairest traits in the character of man. The sincerity with which many upright minds are attached to the Christian religion can form no substantial objection against an unqualified investigation into its truth or falsehood. If it be founded in truth, it will stand the test of every examination—it will stand the test of all future ages, and become immortal.

It is a point of justice to observe that this work has been written under the misfortune and embarrassment of a total loss of sight. This, in the estimation of candid minds, will form at least a partial apology for verbal incorrectness, or the want of better arrangement in the construction of sentences; but it is not offered as constituting any kind of apology for errors of opinion or principle. On this head the fullest examination is invited; and, if any one can point out in what respect the principles herein advanced are inconsistent and erroneous, the author will be among the first to reject and condemn them. But this must be done upon the ground of evidence, and not of authority, as the latter bears no relation to truth. The great moral and political questions which now agitate the world, cannot be settled by an appeal to the authority of law books, theological books, or the decisions of ecclesiastical councils; they rest upon the broad basis of evidence, and by this principle alone they must be determined.

The circumstance that the author was once a public speaker in the cause of Christianity, which is here opposed, so far from forming a reasonable objection against the perusal of this work, ought to become an additional motive of attention; for it was by a candid and attentive investigation into the character of revealed religion that he became convinced that it was neither true nor divine. It was, therefore, a duty which he owed to the integrity of his own mind, and what was deemed the best interests of human society, to abandon that system, and assume a higher and better ground—that of Nature and the immutability of her laws. If any one should be disposed to censure on this account, let him remember that there is more honor and much more utility in the relinquishment than in the retention of errors. The new chapters contained in this edition are intended to awaken a spirit of philosophic inquiry in every description of adherents to the ancient regimen, and to induce them to pass once more in review the religious theories to which they have been so strongly attached. The principal design of the author, through the whole of this work, has been to give to moral principle a basis as durable as time, and as immortal as the specific succession of human existence; and to render the sentiment of virtue, as far as possible, independent of all the theological reveries of antiquity.

The Power of the Intellect, Its Duty, and the Obstacles That Oppose Its Progress

The sources of hope and consolation to the human race are to be sought for in the energy of intellectual powers. To these, every specific amelioration must bear a constant and invariable reference; and whatever opposes the progress of such a power is unquestionably in most pointed opposition to the best and most important interests of our species. The organic construction of man induces a strong conclusion that no limits can possibly be assigned to his moral and scientific improvements.

The question relative to the nature and substance of the human mind is of much less consequence than that which relates to the extent of force and capacity, and the diversified modes of beneficial application. The strength of human understanding is incalculable; its keenness of discernment would ultimately penetrate into every part of nature were it permitted to operate with uncontrolled and unqualified freedom. It is because this sublime principle of man has been constantly the object of the most scurrilous abuse, and the most detestable invective from superstition, that his moral existence has been buried in the gulf of ignorance, and his intellectual powers tarnished by the ferocious and impure hand of fanaticism. Although we are made capable of sublime reflections, it has hitherto been deemed a crime to think, and a still greater crime to speak our thoughts after they have been conceived.

The despotism of the universe had waged war against the power of the human understanding, and for many ages successfully combated its efforts, but the natural energy of this immortal property of human existence was incapable of being controlled by such extraneous and degrading restraints. It burst the walls of its prison, explored the earth, discovered the properties of its component parts, analyzed their natures, and gave to them specific classification and arrangement. Not content with terrestrial researches, intellect abandoned the earth, and travelled in quest of science through the celestial regions. The heavens were explored, the stars were counted, and the revolutions of the planets subjected to mathematical calculation. All nature became the theatre of human action, and man in his unbounded and ardent desire attempted to embrace the universe.

Such was the nature of his powers, such their strength and fervor, that hopes and anticipations were unqualified and unlimited. The subordinate objects in the great mass of existence were decompounded, and the essential peculiarities of their different natures delineated with astonishing accuracy and wonderful precision. Situated in the midst of a world of physical wonders, and having made some progress in the analytical decomposition of material substances and the relative position of revolving orbs, man began to turn his powers to the nice disquisitions of the subtle properties of his mental existence. Here, the force of his faculties was opposed by the darkness and difficulties of the subject; and superstition, ever ready to arrest and destroy moral improvement, cast innumerable difficulties in the way. And the bewildered mind found this part of the system of nature less accessible than the physical universe, whose prominent disparities struck the understanding and presented clear discrimination.

The ignorance and barbarism of former ages, it is said, furnish an awful intimation of the imbecility of our mental powers and the hopeless condition of the human race. If thought be reflected back for the purpose of recognizing through a long night of time the miseries and ignorance of the species, there will be found, no doubt, powerful causes of lamentation; but courage will be resuscitated when the energy of intellect is displayed, and the improvement of the world, which has been already made, shall be clearly exhibited to view. It is not sufficient that man acknowledge the possession of his intellectual powers, it is also necessary that these powers should be developed and their force directed to the discovery of direct principle and the useful application of it to social life; errors, evils, and vices everywhere exist, and by these the world has been rendered continually wretched, and the history of mankind furnishes the dreadful lessons and shocks the sensibility of every human being. The savage ferocity of despotism has destroyed the harmony of society; the unrelenting cruelty of superstition has cut asunder the finest fibres that ever concreted the hearts of intelligent beings. It has buried beneath its gloomy vale all the moral properties of our existence, and entombed in the grave of ignorance and terror the most sublime energies and the purest affections of the human mind. An important duty is therefore imposed upon intellect, and a departure from its faithful performance should be ranked among the crimes which have most disgraced and injured the felicity of the world. If the few philanthropists who have embarked in the cause of humanity have not been adequately rewarded, it is nevertheless true that the principle and force of duty remain the same, unbroken and incapable of being abrogated. It is the discovery and propagation of truth which ought to engage the attention of man, and call forth the powerful activity of his mind.

The nature of ancient institutions, instead of forming a reason against the activity of mind, should be considered as constituting a double stimulus; these institutions are such a complete abandonment of every just and correct principle; they have been so destructive in their operation and effects, that nothing but the strong and energetic movement of the human understanding will be capable of subverting them. The whole earth has been made the wretched abode of ignorance and misery; and to priests and tyrants these dreadful effects are to be attributed. These are the privileged monsters who have subjugated the earth, destroyed the peace and industry of society, and committed the most atrocious of all robberies; that which had robbed human nature of its intellectual property, leaving all in a state of waste and barrenness. Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, and Mahomet are names celebrated in history, but what are they celebrated for? Have their institutions softened the savage ferocity of man? Have they developed a clear system of principle, either moral, scientific, or philosophical? Have they encouraged the free and unqualified operation of intellect, or, rather, by their institutions, has not a gloom been thrown over the clearest subjects, and their examination prohibited under the severest penalties? The successors and followers of these men have adhered to the destructive lessons of their masters with undeviating tenacity. This has formed one of the most powerful obstacles to the progress of improvement, and still threatens, with eternal “damnation,” that man who shall call in question the truth of their “dogmas,” or the divinity of their systems.

The political tyranny of the earth coalesced with this phalanx of religious despots, and the love of science and of virtue was nearly banished from the world. Twelve centuries of moral and political darkness, in which Europe was involved, had nearly completed the destruction of human dignity, and every thing valuable or ornamental in the character of man. During this long and doleful night of ignorance, slavery, and superstition, Christianity reigned triumphant; its doctrines and divinity were not called into question. The power of the Pope, the clergy, and the church were omnipotent; nothing could restrain their frenzy, nothing could control the cruelty of their fanaticism; with mad enthusiasm they set on foot the most bloody and terrific crusades, the object of which was to recover from infidels the “Holy Land.” Seven hundred thousand men are said to have perished in the two first expeditions, which had been thus commenced and carried on by the pious zeal of the Christian church, and in the total amount, several millions were found numbered with the dead: the awful effects of religious fanaticism presuming upon the aid of heaven. It was then that man lost all his dignity and sunk to the condition of a brute; it was then that intellect received a deadly blow, from which it did not recover till the fifteenth century.

From that time to the present, the progress of knowledge has been constantly accelerated; independence of mind has been asserted, and opposing obstacles have been gradually diminished. The church has resigned a part of her power, the better to retain the remainder; civil tyranny has been shaken to its center in both hemispheres; the malignity of superstition is abating, and every species of “quackery,” imposture, and imposition are yielding to the light and power of science. An awful contest has commenced, which must terminate in the destruction of thrones and civil despotism; in the annihilation of ecclesiastical pride and domination; or, on the other hand, intellect, science, and manly virtue, will be crushed in one general ruin, and the world will retrograde towards a state of ignorance, barbarism, and misery. The latter however is an event rendered almost impossible by the discovery of the art of printing, by the expansion of mind, and the general augmentation of knowledge.

Church and State may unite to form an insurmountable barrier against the extension of thought, the moral progress of nations and the felicity of nature; but let it be recollected that the guarantee for the moral and political emancipation is already deposited in the archives of every school and college, and in the mind of every cultivated and enlightened man of all countries. It will henceforth be a vain and fruitless attempt to reduce the earth to that state of slavery of which the history of former ages has furnished such an awful picture. The crimes of ecclesiastical despots are still corroding upon the very vitals of human society; the severities of civil power will never be forgotten. The destructive influence of ancient institutions will teach us to seek in nature and the knowledge of her laws, for the discovery of those principles whose operation alone can emancipate the world from dreadful bondage. If in the succeeding chapters we shall be able to destroy any considerable portion of human errors, and establish some solid truths, our labours will bear a relation to the progressive improvement of the human race, which, to intelligent minds, is of all considerations the most beneficial and important.

Theology and Its Effects

The impressions that are made on the human mind by the awful and tremendous powers of nature have filled it with terror and astonishment. If by a laborious investigation of the universe, and the laws by which it is regulated; if by an examination of our own constitution and the refined properties of our existence; if from a view of the moral and physical world, in the aggregate, we are led to the idea of simple Theism including all possible perfection; it will nevertheless be found substantially true that, with all savage nations, and even with the mass of the people in civilized countries, no such sublime conception has ever formed any part of their systems of theology. Rude, immoral, and incoherent opinions have been heaped together upon this subject, and gods innumerable have been fabricated by a distempered and disordered imagination. It is only with those who have made some progress in science that any clear and correct ideas of theology have been found; the God of Ignorance has always been an immortal monster, whose attributes spread terror through the whole animal world.

The power of thought, directed to the examination of the laws of nature, or to the science of ontology, is pressed by an ultimate necessity to the admission of an immortal principle, to the faint conception of an eternal Being, whose perfections guarantee the existence and harmony of the universe. The essence of such a Being is inconceivable, and that mind which has no doubt on the reality of the case, is, nevertheless, incompetent to the discovery of mode, manner, or place of residence. If the material world be excluded from constituting any share in the essence of such a Being, the refinements and speculations will afterwards become extremely subtle, and conception will, perhaps, be nearly lost in the spirituality of the subject.

The principle of causation is, of all others, the most difficult of examination, because it includes the idea of an infinite series in which the last point at which the mind arrives presents a new difficulty not less than the former, and involving the idea of eternal progression. Metaphysical reasoning on the subject is, however, reserved to occupy a place near the close of this work, where Theism and its combatants will receive a suitable share of reflection. At present it is sufficient that we refer the universe, its laws, and order, to the divinity of thought emanating from the most perfect of all beings.

It has been a great question, how far the principle of theology affects the principle and practice of virtue. It can be a matter of no doubt, in the first place, that a corrupt and vitiated theology has ever been the bane of morality, and produced effects of the most destructive and detestable nature. An infinite Being, clothed with immoral attributes, and yet made an object of worship and affection, will indubitably pervert the finest sensations of the human heart, and render savage and ferocious the character of man. This is not conjecture, it is verified by facts; the history of all churches proves it beyond contradiction. It is natural to expect such an effect; the Being that is worshipped is presented as a pattern, and to imitate his properties is declared to be an essential duty. If such a Being commits murder, or at any time gives orders to the human race to perform such a cruel act, the order once given is the signal for military assassination, national vengeance, or the exercise of domestic resentment. The world becomes a field of blood, and man is slaughtered in the name of Heaven.

From the introduction of Christianity into the world to the present moment, there is scarcely a single war that has taken place in Europe but what has verified this opinion. The church has always been in danger; it is in danger still, and always will be, so long as there shall be found on earth a single privileged impostor to sound in the name of Heaven the trumpet of alarm among the nations of the world.

The purest ideas of the Divinity are necessary for the correct operation of the moral powers of man; there cannot remain a shadow of doubt, when recourse is made to the history of the Jews and Christians, that the god or gods whom they have adored have produced an unfavorable effect upon their moral temperament and habits. The Jewish god is denominated a god of vengeance, wrath, and fury. He gives commands for the indiscriminate massacre of men, women, and children, declaring that not a soul should be left alive. The God of the Jews is inherited by the Christians with additional specimens of injustice and immorality. An infinite and eternal Son, equal to himself, becomes the object of his wrath, and on him with unrelenting severity he wreaks his terrible vengeance. This awful and immoral action is considered in the view of the Christian believer, as an excellent preparatory step to the exercise of gratitude, and the overflowings of filial affections. When man makes to himself gods of such a character, it were far better that he had been destitute of all theological opinions, or that his adoration should have been offered to that resplendent luminary that enlightens the world, and vivifies the productions of the earth.

The principle of morality is founded in the nature of man, and modified by his reciprocal relations; this principle cannot be augmented in its force or application by a reference to those barbarous phantoms and incongruous beings which the theology of the Jews and Christians, as well as all savage nations, has presented to view. Individuals and nations will always be wicked so long as they adore a divinity of loose and immoral character. Theology must first be rendered pure, and then it will become a question of magnitude, what influential relation it bears to the science of morality and happiness of the world.

Christian Theology

Believers in the Christian system of religion are seldom aware of the difficulties into which their theological theories have plunged them. They are in habits of bestowing on this religion the most unqualified applause, and in most cases, no doubt, the most sincere approbation; but the errors and absurdities, the immorality and the incorrectness of principle, have never made any serious impression upon their minds. The dreadful idea of opposing that which has been called divine strikes with terror the uninstructed mind, and ignorance feeds the ecclesiastical deception. Ignorance is an excellent friend to an ancient system of error, to the church and the different projects by which mankind have been enslaved. If you can once persuade a man that he is totally ignorant of the subject on which you are about to discourse, you can make him believe anything. Impositions of this kind are furnished by every day’s experience; and the victim of such imposition is commonly the first to applaud the instrument of his ruin.

Nothing can be more true, nothing more certain, or important, than that a man owes to himself due respect, that his intellect is an object of veneration, and its result interwoven with the best interests of human society. The distorted exhibitions of imaginary beings contained in all ancient theology, ought to excite within us a strong desire to discover truth, and reclaim the dignity which nature gave to man. Fanaticism, when armed with the artillery of Heaven, ought not to be permitted to shake the throne or empire of reason; the base is immortal, and the superstructure will be augmented in beauty and excellence, in proportion to the progress of knowledge and the destruction of religious bigotry.

It is remarkable that with many honest minds the consciousness of intellectual independence has never been realized, and fear has prevented the activity of thought and the development of truth. Names have assumed a weight and authority, which in reality does not belong to them. The church and its maxims have been revered; subordinate agents of the Creator have produced universal trepidation; the Devil has broken into the felicity of the moral world, and God himself, even with the Christian church, is an object of terror and dismay. These subjects carry along with them the most dreadful alarm, and man, amidst the reveries of supernatural theology, becomes either feeble or foolish, his power relaxed, his energy is gone, and he sinks beneath the system of fear, which it is the office of cultivated reason alone to destroy.

Such are the fatal effects of all theology, but more particularly of that which is denominated Christian. The Christian world worships three infinite Gods and one omniscient and omnipresent Devil. This last being is an object rather of terror and frightful apprehension than of worship and adoration; but as he is clothed with nearly all of the attributes which this system of religion has ascribed to its divinity, or divinities. And as the latter is also clothed with the awful qualities of wrath and vengeance, it would be difficult to offer any good reason why the one should be entitled, in the view of the Christian believer, to more homage than the other, since between them there is so striking a resemblance of character. But whether Christian theology represents the Devil as an object of worship or only of fear, it is nevertheless certain, that he is a very important and essential character in the drama therein acted. He holds a prominent and conspicuous place in this wonderful system of mythology, and his destruction would go far to the ruin of the scheme itself.

There are many other subordinate agents who are actors in the Christian scenes, such as angels, ghosts, and witches; these, however, are not considered as objects of adoration, but are only to be treated with that degree of civility and respect, to which their station in this celestial and mythological aristocracy may justly entitle them. This variegated group of gods, devils, angels, ghosts, and witches is what constitutes essentially the supernatural theology, or rather mythology of the Christian world. One sect, the most ancient—and like all others, in their own estimation, the most orthodox—have added one female divinity to complete the beauty and wonder of the scheme. The “Virgin Mary,” among the Papists, is called the mother of God; and having produced so respectable an offspring, is frequently addressed with prayers and supplications, and to her also divine honors are paid.

Next to the absurdity of the leading idea contained in the nature of this theological system is that branch of it which violates all the rules of arithmetical calculation, and mathematical proportion; that which violates all ideas of common sense and common understanding: the awful doctrine of the Trinity. “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; and yet there are not Three Gods, but One God. The Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty, and the Holy Ghost is Almighty; yet there are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.” The essence of this doctrine is that there is but one infinite and perfect being, yet there are three infinite and perfect beings. When the Christian is asked how many Gods there are, he will answer there is but one. If the inquiry be made how many persons this God is divided into, the answer is three; but to each of these three persons all possible perfection is attributed, and yet in a compound state, the whole mass of perfection continues the same.

Let this doctrine be subjected to rational investigation, and its absurdity and contradiction must strike with astonishment every correct mind. There cannot possibly exist in nature more than one infinite, eternal, and perfect being; one infinity swallows up all others, and it is impossible to add to that which is already as great as it can be. If God the Father possesses all possible excellence, if he be infinite in extent, infinite in duration, there can be no space or time in which any other infinite being could possibly exist. Two infinities must either coincide and coalesce, and then they would become one, or they would destroy each other. If the Father is possessed of infinite wisdom, such attribute cannot belong either to the Son, or to the Holy Ghost; if the Son, the second person, possessed such infinite wisdom, it would operate as a disfranchisement of the other two; the same will apply to the “Holy Ghost,” in exclusion of his competitors; there can be but one infinite; a double infinite is a double absurdity, and the Trinitarian idea in incongruous and impossible.

If the assertion be made that one is equal to three, and that three are no more than one, all numerical distinction is totally destroyed, and man consents to become a fool upon the plainest points. Trinitarian declarations are direct contradictions to each other; the part is as great as the whole, and the whole is no greater than the part; three infinities put together make only one, and the destruction of two of them does not diminish the mass of existence or perfection. If facts did not stare us in the face, we should never have believed that it was in the power of superstition to have perverted in so gross a manner the human understanding. In all the common concerns and calculations of human life, Christians themselves practically declare that they do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. In these concerns, they would be very unwilling that a part should be considered as equal to the whole, or that the whole should be estimated no higher than the part; they would not consent to destroy all numerical distinction, nor would they be willing to annihilate the just ideas of discrimination, by which their interest is supported; but although in common life they would reject all this, yet in theology the nature of things is stripped of its true character, and every species of just distinction is perverted or destroyed. This doctrine of the Trinity, Christianity has borrowed from the ancient heathen ideas, and the church has incorporated it for the purposes of mystery and ecclesiastical imposition. It was found among the reveries of Plato, and being transferred to the followers of Jesus, it has appeared under the modification, and with the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thus modified, it became the foundation of a cruel and ferocious dogma, that eternal damnation should be the portion of him who called in question this holy mystery. The spirit of this Trinitarian opinion has diffused itself through several other parts of the Christian system, and the idea of an atonement is not the least shocking amongst the consequences that are to be ascribed to this theological absurdity. The followers of the Son of Mary boast of the purity of their theistical doctrine; but a candid examination of it proves that it is nothing more than a modification of the mythological opinions of all ancient and barbarous nations.

This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

Some of the first actions Donald Trump took after returning to the White House targeted the federal government’s so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. His second administration’s approach to reversing DEI policies has marked a clear shift from his first administration, which tended merely to loudly signal opposition to these policie…

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If someone builds a business, cures a disease, or writes a symphony, did he choose to exert the effort that caused the achievement? Could he have done otherwise? Or was he moved by forces beyond his control?

Similarly, if someone robs a bank, rapes a woman, or commits murder, did he choose to do so? Could he have done otherwise? Or was he a victim of forces beyond his control?

Are we human beings in charge of the decisions we make—or not?

This is the alternative of free will or determinism.

Free will is the idea that people initiate and control certain mental and physical actions, such that they could have done otherwise. These actions are freely chosen.

Determinism is the idea that all our actions—mental and physical—are caused and necessitated by forces beyond our control. No action is freely chosen.

To the extent that you accept one of these ideas (or some mixture), it underlies and directly affects the way you think about every concern in your life—from personal achievement to moral responsibility, self-confidence, self-development, friendship, romance, recreational activities, and political freedom. Most fundamentally, your acceptance of free will or determinism affects your psychological orientation toward the world, yourself, and others—and thus your general relationship to each.

If you freely choose your actions, then your relationship to the world, yourself, and others is active. You can—and, if you want to thrive, you should—use your mind to understand the world and yourself; choose and pursue a fulfilling career, friendships, and romantic relationships that support and enhance your life; deliberately plan and strive for success; and cooperate with like-minded people to create and maintain a social system in which everyone is politically free to choose his own goals, act on his own judgment, and keep the product of his effort.

If you don’t freely choose your actions, then your relationship to the world is passive. Whatever illusions you might have about “free will,” you are not actively in charge of your life; rather, you merely experience events happening to you. You might have a job and go to work, or not—but whether you do or don’t is not up to you. You might have friends or a lover, or not; either way, you didn’t make it so. And whatever social system happens to exist wherever you happen to be is what you’re stuck with—at least until another one happens to come along or you happen to be moved to another place where a different system happens to exist.

If determinism is true, there is no “should” or even “could” about what you do. Your strings are pulled one way or another, and you move as you must, like a marionette. As Sam Harris, a leading proponent of this idea, puts it, “you are being played by the universe”—you are “a biochemical puppet” who “will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise.”¹

So, which is it? Are you an active agent or a passive puppet?

Let’s consider arguments and evidence for each, beginning with determinism.

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The Case for Determinism

Determinism is the idea that all our actions—mental and physical—are caused and necessitated by forces beyond our control. Free will, in this view, is an illusion; you might think you make choices, you might feel as though you have some degree of control, but you don’t.

According to determinism, all events—including events we may think we control, such as choosing to apply for a job, ask someone on a date, or crash a truck into a parade of people—are caused by prior events, which, in turn, are caused by prior events, and so on, back to before we were born and, indeed, before Earth was formed. In this view, people no more control their actions than rocks control their locations or rivers control their flows.

The core argument for determinism involves three related claims:

1. You don’t choose the thoughts that arise in your mind; to choose them, you would have to “think them before you think them,” which is impossible.2

2. You can act only as you want to act (or are forced to act), and you can’t control your wants, so you can’t choose your actions.3

3. The law of cause and effect holds that all events are caused and necessitated by prior events; thus, free will—a choice not necessitated by a prior event—would violate the law of causality.4

Let’s examine each claim with examples, then turn to the case for free will.

1. You Don’t Choose Your Thoughts

“Two plus two equals . . .” Observe that the word “four” arose in your mind and that you had no control over it. You didn’t choose it. It simply appeared.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a . . .” Again, you had no control over whether “wall” surfaced in your mind. You had no choice in the matter.

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite . . .” Just the reaction I expected! Once again, you didn’t choose that thought; it just popped into your head.

From such observations, determinists argue that you have no control over your thoughts—and thus none over your mind. As Harris puts it,

If you pay attention to how thoughts arise, you’ll see that they simply appear quite literally out of nowhere—and you’re not free to choose them before they appear. That would require that you think them before you think them. So, here’s the question: If you can’t control your next thought, if you can’t decide what it will be before it arises, and if you can’t prevent it from arising, where is your freedom of will?5

Harris offers an extended example to emphasize this point. “Think of a city anywhere in the world. You can choose any city you want,” he begins:

Now, the first thing to notice about this is that this is as free a decision as you are ever going to make in your life. You have all the cities in the world to choose from, and I’m just asking you to pick one. Now, several cities have probably occurred to you. Just focus on one. . . . Do this again just so you can see what the process is like. Pick another city—it can’t be the first—and notice what that experience is like. Did you see any evidence for free will? We better be able to find it here. If it’s not here, it’s not anywhere. So let’s look for it.

First, let’s set aside all those cities whose names you don’t know and therefore could not have picked—because you couldn’t have picked one of those if your life depended on it. There’s no freedom in that, obviously. There are many other cities whose names are quite well known to you but which simply didn’t occur to you to pick. For instance, perhaps Cairo didn’t occur to you. You absolutely know that Cairo is a city but, for whatever reason, your Cairo circuits were not engaged; as a matter of neurophysiology, Cairo was not in the cards.

Think about this: Were you free to choose that which did not occur to you to choose? Based on the state of your brain a few moments ago, Cairo was not coming. Where is the freedom in that? . . .

Now, you probably thought of several cities. Let’s say you thought of Paris, New York, and Tokyo. And, then you thought, “I love Paris, I’m going to go with Paris”—and at the last minute you thought, “No, no, Tokyo. I’ll go with Tokyo.”

This is the sort of decision that motivates the idea of free will: You’ve got two or more choices, you’re picking between them, and it’s just you and your thoughts. There’s no coercion from the external world—you are doing it, apparently. But, when you look closely, I think you’ll find that you are in no position to know why you picked what you picked—in this case, why you chose Tokyo over Paris. You might have some additional story to tell about it. You might think, “Well, I had Japanese food last night, and so I remembered it, and I picked Tokyo.” . . .

Even if you are right in this instance—even if your choice of Tokyo over Paris is based on your memory of having Japanese food last night, you still can’t explain why you remembered having Japanese food last night, or why the memory had the effect that it did. Why didn’t it have the opposite effect? Why didn’t you think, “Well, I just had Japanese food last night, so let’s go with something new, let’s go with Paris”?

The thing to notice about this is that you as the conscious witness of your inner life are not making these decisions—you can only witness these decisions. You no more picked the city you settled on than you would have if I picked it for you.6

The conclusion that Harris and other determinists draw from such examples is that every idea that arises in your mind is caused and necessitated by forces beyond your control. “You think you’re the thinker of the thoughts,” says Harris, but “you’re not. Thoughts just arise.”7 Indeed, he ventures to say, “If you look for the thinker of these thoughts, you will not find one. And the sense that you have—‘What the hell is Harris talking about? I’m the thinker!’—is just another thought, arising in consciousness.”8

In this view, you are not a thinker but a reactor. You are a puppet being played by the universe.

We’ll revisit these claims about thoughts and thinkers later. For now, let’s consider another argument determinists make.

2. You Act Only as You Want to Act or Are Forced to Act

Alex O’Connor, another popular proponent of determinism, argues against free will primarily by zeroing in on the fact that our actions are motivated by our desires: “You only ever do anything—ever—because you want to, or because you’re forced to. That’s it. There’s no counterexample to this. . . . If you’re forced to [act], you’re not in control. If you do it because you want to, then given that you can’t control your wants, you’re not in control of that [action], either.”

O’Connor illustrates this point by querying a woman who thought she had chosen to walk her dog:

“Why did you walk your dog?” he asks.

“Because if I didn’t, he wouldn’t have gotten walked.”

“So what?”

“I suppose I want to care for him.”

“You want to care for the dog because you have a desire for your dog to be in good health.”

“Yes.”

“Had the desire to stay at home been stronger, that’s what you would have done. Wants have governed your decision.”9

Harris uses this same line of argument:

You are “free” to do an almost infinite number of things today—free in the sense that no one will try to stop you from doing these things or put you in prison if you do them. But you’re not free to want what you don’t in fact want, or to want what you want more than you want it. . . . Where is the freedom in doing what one wants when one’s very desires are the products of prior events that one had absolutely no hand in creating?10

This is the second prong of the core argument against free will: You can act only as you want to act (or are forced to act), and your desires are products of prior events over which you had no control, so there is no room for freedom of choice.

We’ll return to these claims later, as well. But now, let’s consider what many regard as the strongest argument against free will: an argument pertaining to natural law—specifically, the law of causality.

3. Free Will Would Violate the Law of Causality

The basic argument of this third prong is that because every event is caused by prior events, because every action is a reaction to preceding actions, free will is impossible. If you take an action, mental or physical, that seems to be freely chosen—say, you think about your plans for the weekend, or go for a run, or attend a marketing seminar—what actually happened is that prior events inexorably made you do it. In this view, an event not necessitated by prior events would be causeless or random. If it’s causeless, you didn’t cause it; and if it’s random, it happened by chance. Either way, you didn’t cause it, so you are not in control.

As Harris puts it,

Everywhere we look, we see patterns of events, and all these events have prior causes, which is to say they depend materially and functionally and logically on other events that preceded them in time. And, most relevantly for our purposes, all of our conscious experiences—our thoughts, intentions, desires—and the actions and choices that result from them are caused by events of which we are not conscious and which we did not bring into being.11

Most determinists acknowledge, as Harris does, that so-called “choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behavior.” But, they say, these influences “are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no ultimate control.”12 Thus, all control is illusory. As Harris sums it up, “The next thing you think and do can only emerge from this totality of prior causes, and it can only emerge in one of two ways: lawfully—that is, deterministically, like one domino just getting knocked over by another—or randomly.”13

To indicate the significance of this point regarding moral responsibility, Harris provides this example:

Consider a generic serial killer. His choice to commit his last murder was determined by neurophysiological events in his brain, which were, in turn, determined by prior causes—bad genes, the developmental effects of an unhappy childhood, a night of lost sleep because a car alarm was going off down the street. These events precede any conscious decision to act.

So, what does it mean to say that this murderer committed his crime of his own free will? If this statement means anything, it must mean that he could have behaved differently. He could have resisted the impulse to commit the murder, or he could have declined to feel the impulse altogether—and not on the basis of some random influences over which he had no conscious control, but because he was actually the conscious author of his thoughts and actions.

The problem is that no one has been able to describe a way in which mental and physical events could arise that would make sense of this claim of freedom. When we assume that violent criminals have such freedom, we reflexively blame them for their actions. But when we look at this wider net of causality, the basis for placing blame seems to evaporate. The moment we catch sight of a stream of causes that reach back into childhood and beyond, the sense of his culpability begins to disappear.

To say that he would have done otherwise or could have done otherwise, had he chosen to, is simply to say he would have lived in a different universe had he been in a different universe. As sickening as I might find such a person’s behavior, I have to admit that if I were to trade places with him, atom for atom, I would be him. There’s no extra part of me that could resist the impulse to victimize innocent people.14

This is the meaning of determinism regarding morality and personal responsibility: We all are inexorably driven to act as we do by prior conditions and events beyond our control, so no one is genuinely responsible for anything—not for good behavior, bad behavior, or the most evil behavior imaginable.

Leveraging this conception of causality, Harris seemingly drives the final nail into the coffin of free will:

You didn’t choose your parents. You didn’t choose the society into which you were born. There’s not a cell in your body or brain that you the conscious subject created, nor is there a single influence coming from the outside world that you brought into being. And yet everything you think and do arises from this ocean of prior causes. . . .

There’s no way to describe causality such that the idea of free will could make sense. Neither determinism nor randomness nor any combination of the two cashes out this idea of free agency. Under determinism you lose the free part, and under randomness you lose the agency.15

In sum, as Harris puts it,

1. “You are no more responsible for the next thing you think (and therefore do) than you are for the fact that you were born into this world.”16

2. “The ‘you’ that you take yourself to be isn’t in control of anything.”17

3. “The future is set—and this includes all our future states of mind and our subsequent behavior.”18

To many people, the foregoing arguments seem decisive. It appears that free will is simply impossible. To reconcile free will with our thoughts, desires, and causality, we would have to integrate it with each—without contradiction.

We will.

But before we do, let’s note some general implications of determinism.

Implications of Determinism

If we have no free will—if we are not in control of our actions—then we are in a strange and dark place. Among other things:

• As indicated above, moral responsibility is out. No one can be morally responsible for something over which he has no control. If you didn’t will yourself to study for the exam, then you can’t legitimately claim credit for the A. If you didn’t freely choose the actions that built your company and created your wealth, then you can’t legitimately claim ownership of either. And if jihadists didn’t will themselves to burn families alive; rape, torture, and mangle women and children; murder people in myriad unspeakable ways; and celebrate all this in the streets, then we can’t legitimately hold them responsible or even hold them in contempt for having done so; they couldn’t help it.

• Romantic love is out. “Honey, I didn’t choose you; I was pushed by forces beyond my control to ask you out. Then I was forced to kiss you. Then to have sex with you. Then to marry you. And now, unless the forces change, I have to stay with you. Perhaps tomorrow they’ll push me toward our neighbor, Mary. Who knows? But remember, I’m just a puppet being played by the universe. So, whatever happens, the universe made me do it.”

• Friendship is out—for the same reason as romance. You didn’t choose your friends. They didn’t choose you. You don’t choose to get together when you do. And when you enjoy each other’s company, there is no “you” or “self” involved on anyone’s part. You’re just meat puppets running your mouths and slapping your knees.

• Purpose is out. You might feel like you choose your career, hobbies, and various projects. But you don’t. It’s all accidental. You are merely pushed this way or that by forces beyond your control; there’s no intention or striving to any of it. You’re merely a passive reactor. Tell yourself what you will—lie if you must. But you have no purposes or aims in life.

• Self-esteem is out—for the same reason as purpose. You might feel as though you’ve achieved worthy goals—say, creating an app or climbing El Capitan. But you haven’t achieved anything. All your alleged achievements were caused and necessitated by forces beyond your control. To take pride in them is to pretend that they were achievements. Again, lie if you must. But you don’t deserve to feel good about yourself.

• Political freedom is out. The whole point of political freedom—the reason human beings need it—is that we have free will and need to act in accordance with our own choices, purposes, and aims. If Frederick Douglass had no free will, why would it matter that Thomas Auld forced him to serve against his “will”? If people have no free will, they have no need for political freedom. Forcing someone to work in a field or factory is no more “wrong” or “immoral” than forcing a horse to pull a plow or training a dog to lead the blind. What’s more, people—including statist politicians and dictators—who act to enslave others have no choice in the matter. They merely do as they must—and they can’t be blamed. If free will doesn’t exist, then there is no moral difference between Abraham Lincoln and the United States on the one hand and Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union on the other.

Those are just some of the implications of determinism.

Now let’s consider a different approach to free will.

What Free Will Is and Isn’t

Free will is not the ability to fully control which thoughts or memories arise from your subconscious. Nor is it the ability to act in ways you don’t want to act—or to act on a weaker rather than a stronger desire. Nor is free will a violation of the law of causality, properly understood.

What, then, is free will? It is the choice to think or not to think—to exert mental effort or not to do so.19

That you can and do make this choice is introspectively self-evident. When you introspect—when you look inward at the functions of your consciousness—you can watch yourself choosing to focus your mind fully or less than fully. You can observe that you are able to choose to increase or decrease mental effort.

The word “introspection” derives from the Latin specere, meaning “to look” or “to observe.” And “evidence” derives from the Latin videre, meaning “to see.” When you look inward and observe yourself choosing to activate your mind, you are observing evidence of the fact that you can choose to activate your mind.

The process of looking inward and observing yourself choosing to think is as valid as the process of looking outward and observing a traffic light turning green. It is direct evidence. (If someone claims that your introspective evidence of your choice to think is invalid, the burden is on him to provide evidence that what you observe yourself doing is not what you observe yourself doing.)

To fully grasp the nature of free will, we must understand the relationship between free will and reason.

Reason is the faculty that operates by means of perceptual observation, conceptual integration, and logic (non-contradictory identification). Using reason, we can perceive the outside world with our senses (extrospection) and the functions of our mind through introspection; we can integrate our perceptions into concepts, propositions, generalizations, and principles; and we can check our ideas for contradictions and correct them along the way. In short, reason is the faculty that enables us to think.

Whereas reason is our capacity to think, free will (or volition) is our ability to activate that capacity. Seen this way, reason and volition are two sides of the same faculty; whereas reason enables us to think, free will is the choice to think.

As the philosopher Ayn Rand observed, “man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not.”20 At any waking moment, a person “can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment.”21 A person can even actively turn his mind against its proper function; he can deliberately try to push out of his awareness relevant facts that he does not want to face. In a word, he can evade.22

Consider these alternatives regarding one of the most important matters in life: the need for productiveness. To live, we human beings must produce the values necessary to sustain and further our lives (or survive parasitically on the productive efforts of others). The things we need don’t spring into existence from a wish or a prayer. We must produce them—or produce something we can trade to get them from others who have produced them. This sphere of life entails a vast range of options—from construction work to chemical engineering, from teaching to gardening, from medical work to method acting, from writing novels to programming computers—the list is practically endless. Within this massive range, each of us must choose some way to produce values in order to survive and thrive (or suffer the consequences of not doing so). This is a basic fact of reality: Human beings must produce in order to live.

Given the alternatives that free will affords, we can approach the need of productiveness in one of three ways: fully in focus, less than fully in focus, or evasively:

1. We can set our minds to full, conscious awareness of our need for productiveness; consider our alternatives in the full context of our lives, needs, values, and desires—all the things that matter to us; and choose to pursue a productive path fully rationally. (People who love and excel in their careers do so because they approach the subject this way.)

2. We can approach the issue less than fully focused, thinking about it some but not a lot, and drift in a semiconscious daze regarding this important area of life. (Many people do this.)

3. We can actively set our minds against recognizing and accepting the fact that our life requires productiveness, try to push it out of our minds, and seek instead to “get by” without having to produce values. (Thieves, con artists, and many politicians and bureaucrats choose this approach.)

That these alternatives exist is a matter of observation. You can see them both introspectively and extrospectively (i.e., through your observations of and experiences with others). And what makes them possible is free will.

Consider another example: moral justice. If, when judging someone’s character, you take into account your full context of knowledge about him—all that you know he has said and done, including good, bad, or questionable things—and judge him accordingly, you have judged him in full focus. If, instead, you don’t consider the available and relevant facts but you hear others say positive or negative things about the person (which you don’t know to be true) and judge him on the basis of such hearsay, then you have judged him in less than full focus, in a semiconscious daze (not to mention secondhandedly). And if you know that the person has been honest and just in all your dealings with him—or, alternatively, that he has been dishonest or unjust at times—but you try to push this knowledge out of your mind so that you can judge him, say, in a way that aligns with the views of people from whom you seek approval, then you have judged him evasively (and secondhandedly).

Again, these alternatives are possible because you have free will. They couldn’t exist without it.

We make many choices in life, but to focus our mind (or not) is our fundamental and primary choice. It is the choice that governs all our other choices. The choice to think, as Rand observed, is the locus of free will; it’s where free will fundamentally resides.23

Our other choices are real but secondary in that they follow from and are governed by our choice to think or not to think. Secondary choices include everything from choosing a career to choosing friends, a lover, where you’ll live, which entrée to order, or which movie to watch. In all such cases, you can activate your mind fully to the task at hand, less than fully, or evasively. The primary choice is always present. And the secondary choices are always real.

The foregoing indicates the basic nature of free will. Now, let’s see how this idea stands in relation to thoughts and memories arising from our subconscious, wants or desires that motivate our actions, and the law of causality, properly understood.

Free Will and Thoughts

Although as Harris and other determinists note, you can’t fully control the thoughts and memories that arise from your subconscious, you can choose to deal with them rationally—or not. When thoughts arise, you can activate your mind fully or less than fully to assess or work with them.

If I say, “Two plus two equals . . .” and “four” pops into your mind, that is not evidence against free will. It’s simply a consequence of the fact that you have a subconscious full of knowledge and memories, some of which were activated by the prompt. If you are paying attention when I issue the prompt, you likely can’t stop “four” from arising, but your free will does not lie in your ability to stop the automatic functions of your subconscious from happening. Rather, your free will lies in your ability to activate your consciousness fully or not, to be rational or not.

Likewise, if Harris asks you to think of a city, and Paris comes to mind, that is not evidence against free will. When your conscious mind queries your subconscious, it cannot predict precisely what will come up. It cannot think thoughts before they arise. But this is not evidence for determinism.

Your mind has a nature, and it can act only in accordance with its nature. It is capable of thinking, exerting mental effort, and trying to make sense of the material it receives—whether from your subconscious or from the outside world. Likewise, your subconscious has a nature, and it acts in accordance with its nature. Your subconscious is the storage facility for your knowledge, ideas, memories, skills. It does not actively think; rather, it passively stores data caused by your thinking or non-thinking and the experiences you’ve mentally processed one way or the other. So, although as Harris notes, your mind can’t know exactly what data will come up before it comes up, this has no bearing on whether you can choose to think or not to think. The content of your thoughts and the choice to think are not the same thing.

The content of your thoughts is the ideas you are forming, assessing, or working with at any given time. The choice to think is the choice to apply reason while forming, assessing, or working with ideas. If you apply reason to the question of whether you can control or predict every thought that arises from your subconscious, you will see that you can’t. If you apply reason to the question of whether you can activate your mind by choice, you will see that you can. The fact that thoughts sometimes pop into your mind unbidden is not evidence against free will. Rather, it is evidence of the existence and nature of your subconscious—which interacts with but is distinct from your conscious mind.

This distinction will become clearer as we consider the relationship between free will and desires.

Free Will and Wants

As O’Connor observes, apart from coercion, you always act on your desires; and, when faced with competing desires, you always act on your strongest desire. All of this is trivially true. The important question is: Do you think about your desires before acting on them? Do you rationally assess them with respect to the full context of your relevant knowledge and then act—or do you act on your desires without thinking about them at all? Free will is your power to do either. The choice is yours.

Which comes first: the will or the want? In a certain respect, they come together, as both free will and desires are omnipresent in our minds. However, in an important respect, free will comes first. To know what we want—especially to know what we want most and to know whether the things we want are good for our lives—we must think. We must activate our minds to identify our desires, analyze them, name them, compare them, determine whether they integrate with or contradict our long-range plans and purposes, project the course of our lives if we act this way rather than that way, and so on. Desires, to be understood, must be examined. Our means of examining them is reason—which operates by choice.

Moreover, our desires are not causeless starting points. Rather, they are caused by the ideas and values we’ve accepted—which, in turn, are consequences of the thinking or non-thinking we’ve done. Of course, our thinking or non-thinking is done within the context of our social environment and our biological and psychological nature. Someone born and raised in Boston who is six feet tall and has an IQ of 90 will have substantially different experiences and opportunities than someone born and raised in Nairobi who is five feet tall and has an IQ of 130. But none of this changes the fact that we can and do choose to think or not to think. Contrary to the widely accepted false alternative, “nature and nurture” are not the only things that affect your life. Your choices affect it, too—and this part is entirely up to you.

Whether and to what extent you choose to think about your wants before acting on them makes a massive difference. Acting on your desires without full-context thinking is not the same as acting on your desires with full-context thinking, and the difference is decisive. If you think and act rationally as a matter of principle, you will live a profoundly different life than if you don’t. This is why rational parents and teachers encourage children to think before they act, to use their heads, to consider the consequences of their actions, and so on.

To fully grasp the relationship between free will and wants, we need to understand exactly what emotions are and how they relate to reason. Our emotions are automatic consequences of our value judgments; they arise from our evaluations of the things, people, and events in our lives. And they are vitally important. They are our psychological means of experiencing our values.

For instance, if you apply for a job that you consider ideal for your career path and get it, you experience positive, joyful emotions. If you don’t get the job, you experience frustration or disappointment. Similarly, if you haven’t seen your friend for a long time and you see him at a concert, you will be thrilled. If, however, he informs you that he’s been diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer, your emotion will change to sorrow. Likewise, if your favorite team wins a major game, you’ll be happy about it. If they lose, you’ll be sad—especially if you bet a lot of money on the game.

Your emotions reflect what is important to you; they are, as Rand put it, “lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values.”24 As such, they are crucial to your life. If you didn’t experience desire, you wouldn’t be motivated to take any actions at all, and you’d soon die. If you never experienced joy, you’d have no reason to remain alive; a life devoid of joy is not worth living.

We need emotions. But emotions are not our means of knowledge. They can’t tell us which berries are edible, how to build a hut, how to write a constitution, who is honest, or what will make us happy. Only reason can tell us such things—and only if we choose to use it.

If we choose to use reason as a matter of course in life, we develop healthy, life-serving values and, correspondingly, life-serving emotions. We feel emotions of joy when we achieve our life-enhancing goals or see other good people achieve theirs. And we feel emotions of frustration, sorrow, or anger when we fail or experience or witness tragedies or atrocities.

So, although we don’t control our emotions directly, we do control them indirectly: by means of our thinking or non-thinking.

This means that, over time, we can change how we feel about something or someone. For instance, if a woman wants to remain in a relationship with a man who is abusive, because she’s attracted to his “bad boy” demeanor, but she also wants to stop wanting to remain in the relationship, she can make this change. She can choose to exert the effort necessary to engage in full-context thinking about the situation. She can question the value of the “bad boy” to her life, physical well-being, psychological needs, and long-term happiness. She can compare him and his ilk to the kind of men who treat people rationally and justly as a matter of principle. She can project what her life would be like if she were to leave the “bad boy” and begin engaging with men of (genuine) self-esteem. She can do this kind of thinking—if she chooses to. And if she does, she can also choose to act accordingly. She can choose to act in her rational self-interest. And if she thinks and acts this way as a matter of course, then, in time, she will lose her desire for a “bad boy” and instead desire a good man.

Given the respective natures and relationship of reason and emotion, the lag time between our thinking and corresponding emotional changes can be substantial. But, if we choose to think, we can understand this fact, project the future value of acting in accordance with our rational judgment today, and thus develop a strong desire to do so. Free will makes this possible. To make it actual, we must choose to think.

With this in mind, let’s revisit O’Connor’s and Harris’s claims that we have no control over our wants or desires.

O’Connor says, “You only ever do anything—ever—because you want to, or because you’re forced to. That’s it. There’s no counterexample to this.” OK. That comports with experience. But what about this: “If you [take an action] because you want to, then given that you can’t control your wants, you’re not in control of that [action].” Is this true? As we’ve seen, it is not.

Likewise, Harris says, “You are ‘free’ to do an almost infinite number of things today—free in the sense that no one will try to stop you from doing these things . . . [but] Where is the freedom in doing what one wants when one’s very desires are the products of prior events that one had absolutely no hand in creating?” Is it true that you have no hand in creating your desires? Again, on examination, it is not.

We do control our desires—in two ways: First, we choose to think (or not) while forming our values—which, in turn, give rise to our emotions and desires; and, second, when we experience a given desire or set of desires, we choose to assess them rationally (or not) before acting on them. So, our choice to think (or not) governs both sides of the equation: our formation of the values that cause our emotions and desires—and our decisions about whether to act on a given desire.

It is worth noting the abundance of literature, audio, and video on the subject of changing the way you think in order to change the way you feel. All of it presupposes and depends on the idea that you can choose to think. For instance, both rational emotive behavior therapy, developed by Albert Ellis in the 1950s, and cognitive behavioral therapy, developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960s, emphasize the causal relationship between the ideas you accept and how you feel. Likewise, Nathaniel Branden’s work on the psychology of self-esteem, developed with Ayn Rand in the 1950s and 60s and elaborated by him in subsequent decades, focuses explicitly on the relationship between rational thinking and personal happiness. Similarly, positive psychology, developed by Martin Seligman in the 1990s, is about choosing to focus on the positive aspects of your life, including life-enhancing opportunities and courses of action—and challenging and reframing negative thoughts in light of positive alternatives. And of course, the entire self-help and self-development industry is premised on your ability to take charge of your life by activating your mind. Examples include the work of James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, who observes, “Ultimately, the only way to truly be in control of your life is to be in control of your thoughts”; and the work of Carol S. Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which is based explicitly on the premise that “You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way.”25

The foregoing is an indication of the relationship of reason and emotion and how they can and should work in harmony. Your fundamental means of making them work in harmony is free will: your choice to think.

In light of these facts, we can see that no dichotomy exists between acting on your desires and acting on your rational judgment. You can do both at the same time. But you can do so only if you place reason in charge of the process. This is because reason can account for and assess your emotions—including your wants and desires—which are important facts that can and should be included in your thought processes; but your emotions cannot account for your reason, because they are not a means of thinking. Nor can your wants or desires make you think or not think. They are incentives; they can and do provide motivation for you to act (or not) in certain ways. But they cannot force you to act one way or another. Incentives are not coercions—which is why we have different concepts for the two different things. Incentives are incentives.

Your wants and desires are real, and they are involved in your thinking and choosing—even in your choice to think or not to think. You don’t make that choice in a vacuum; you make it in the context of your values, desires, and aims—all of which provide incentive for you to think. Indeed, the desire for a life of happiness provides a massive incentive to think. If you want to flourish, you must think rationally and act accordingly. Every adult with a normal, healthy brain knows this to some extent, whether explicitly or implicitly; and if he ignores or evades this knowledge, he suffers the consequences. But not even this powerful incentive can force anyone to think.

The only thing that can make a choice happen—the only thing that can cause a choice—is the person who chooses. This will become clearer as we think through our next subject: the law of causality.

Free Will and Causality

The final and most fundamental problem in the determinist’s approach to the question of free will is a false conception of causality: the notion that events are caused by events.

This idea seems to make sense in the realm of mechanistic or physical causation—planetary motion, river flows, chemical reactions, and the like. But this conception of causality is fundamentally flawed, which is why it cannot account for our observations of free will.

The correct formulation of the law of causality is not that “events are caused by events” (aka “event causality”) but, rather, that actions are actions of entities—and entities act (and interact) in accordance with their identities (“entity causality”). As Rand put it, “The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.”26

This conception of causality is observably true. We can see that things are what they are—and that they act in accordance with their natures. For example, we can see that a rose is a rose and a woman is a woman. We can see that a rose can bloom but cannot speak, that a woman can become an engineer but cannot become a pillar of salt.

The event-causality model is observably false. Events are self-evidently not primaries; they cannot happen apart from entities. Blooming can’t happen in the absence of a thing that blooms (e.g., a rose), and speaking can’t happen in the absence of a thing that speaks (e.g., a woman). Entities—including people (agents)—are the causes of events.

Recall Harris’s claim that thinking just happens—that there is no thinker of thoughts: “You think you’re the thinker of the thoughts,” but “you’re not. Thoughts just arise.” “If you look for the thinker of these thoughts, you will not find one. And the sense that you have—‘What the hell is Harris talking about? I’m the thinker!’—is just another thought, arising in consciousness.”

The notion that an action or event (such as thinking) can happen without an entity that takes the action or causes the event is absurd. Just as “dancing” can’t happen without a dancer, and “skiing” can’t happen without a skier, so, too, “thinking” can’t happen without a thinker.

Events are not primary aspects of existence. Entities are. And entities are what cause actions and interactions (e.g., “colliding” can’t happen without entities that collide). If you (an entity/agent) throw a rock (an entity) at a window (an entity), what happens—and why? The window breaks—and it breaks because of the natures, the identities, of the entities involved. Likewise, if you throw a cotton ball at the same window, what happens? Exactly. And why? What difference makes the difference? The difference that makes the difference is the nature of the cotton ball in relation to the nature of the window—and how they interact given their respective natures.

The valid conception of the law of causality is that actions are actions of entities, and that entities act in accordance with their identities. With this conception in mind, we can see that free will is not an exception to the law of causality but an instance of it. Human beings have a nature, the essence of which is that we possess the faculty of reason—which operates by choice. Your choice to think (or not) is caused—caused by you: the agent (entity) making the choice.

That you must choose one way or the other—to focus your mind fully or not to do so—also is caused: It is caused by your nature as a being who possesses the faculty of reason. But your choice to think or not to think in any given moment is not necessitated by any prior event or any other entity. You are the cause of the choice. You are the primary cause.

Recall Harris’s claim that “There’s no way to describe causality such that the idea of free will could make sense.” This seems to be true—if you describe causality as events causing events. But in light of the observably correct law of causality—the fact that actions are actions of entities and that entities act in accordance with their identities—we can see that the determinists are wrong on this count, too. Free will is an instance of causality.

Free will makes us remarkably different from other things, including other animals. This is because they don’t possess the faculty of reason. We do. And with reason comes the ability to activate it: free will.

Just as we don’t look at inanimate objects such as rocks or gears and say, “These objects are the model of causation for all entities, regardless of kind”—and just as we don’t look at plants and say, “No way! These things can’t possibly engage in self-generated action, because inanimate objects can’t take such action”—and just as we don’t look at animals and say, “Impossible! These things can’t conceivably engage in self-generated locomotion, because plants can’t engage in such action”—so, too, we shouldn’t look at human beings and say, “Absolutely not! These things can’t possibly engage in self-generated mental action, because non-human animals can’t take such action.”

Different things have different identities. Different things have different natures. And each thing acts in accordance with its nature.

Free will is a complex subject. There is a lot here to get our heads around—especially given how much has been written and said in support of determinism and against free will in recent decades. So, take your time with these ideas. Be patient with yourself and with others. The goal in thinking about and discussing this subject (as with all philosophic subjects) is to see which ideas derive from and integrate non-contradictorily with direct evidence, both introspective and extrospective—and thus which ideas ultimately make sense.

Toward that end, let’s consider a few common fallacies that can and often do cause confusion about free will.

Fallacies Against Free Will

The following is not an exhaustive list of fallacies that cause confusion about free will, but these prevalent few are worth understanding and bearing in mind. I encourage you to think through them and be on the lookout for them in your own thinking and in the arguments and claims of others.

Loaded Question

A loaded question is one that contains an unwarranted assumption or implication.

Whereas the question “What caused my choice to think?” is not a loaded question (something must have caused it, and that something is me), the question “What caused me to choose?” is loaded. It implies that something other than me (i.e., other than the choosing agent) ultimately caused the choice. This is an unwarranted assumption. What’s more, it flies in the face of direct introspective evidence that I initiate my choice to think.

Circular Reasoning or Begging the Question

Circular reasoning (aka question begging) consists in assuming that which you are trying to prove.

If someone argues that “something must have caused you to choose one way or the other—because every event is caused by a prior event,” he is begging the question. In an argument about whether free will exists, the question of whether something other than the agent caused his choice is precisely the issue at hand. For someone to argue that “something must have made you choose . . .” is to assume what he is trying (and has the burden) to prove—namely, that your choice to think (or not) is caused not by you but by something else.

Frozen Abstraction

The fallacy of the frozen abstraction consists in falsely equating ideas by substituting a particular conceptual concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs.27

To treat the law of causality (a broad abstraction—indeed, a universal law) as the equivalent of one of its constituent kinds of causality, say, mechanistic causality, is to exclude from the universal law things that are in the universe yet operate via a different kind of causality—such as vegetative causality (specific to plants), instinctive causality (specific to certain animals), and volitional causality (specific to humans).

Just as we don’t equate math with algebra and thus omit arithmetic, geometry, and calculus from the broader abstraction of “math,” so, too, we shouldn’t equate the law of causality with one specific kind of causality and thereby omit the others. To do so is to conceive a universal law in non-universal terms.

Post Hoc

“Post hoc” is short for “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” which means “after this, therefore because of this.” The fallacy consists in assuming that because one event precedes another, the first event caused the second. It’s an instance of assuming that correlation implies causation but specifically regarding temporal sequence.

One way this fallacy manifests regarding free will is in claims to the effect that because certain experiments show that a certain kind of brain activity precedes people’s alleged choices, the brain activity caused the choices. Harris cites such experiments in his book, Free Will. As you read this passage, see if you can spot the fallacy:

The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab extended this work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made. More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it. . . .

One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.28

Did you catch it?

That final paragraph is an instance of the post hoc fallacy. The fact that activity in the subjects’ brains preceded their decisions to act doesn’t mean the brain activity caused their decisions to act. The brain activity may be a necessary condition for a choice to be made, but that doesn’t make it a sufficient condition. Engine activity is a necessary condition for a car to move; that doesn’t make it a sufficient condition. For the car to move, the driver must put the car in gear and press the accelerator.

As various scientists and thinkers (including Libet himself) have noted, the brain activity could be and likely is part of a pre-choice process leading up to the agent’s choice to act one way or another. Assuming causation based merely on temporal sequence is not scientific.

Libet himself saw his experiments not as disproving free will but as affirming it in some form or another. In his article “Do We Have Free Will?,” he wrote,

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain (the ‘readiness potential’, RP) that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350–400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. . . .

Potentially available to the conscious function is the possibility of stopping or vetoing the final progress of the volitional process, so that no actual muscle action ensues. Conscious-will could thus affect the outcome of the volitional process even though the latter was initiated by unconscious cerebral processes. Conscious-will might block or veto the process, so that no act occurs. The existence of a veto possibility is not in doubt.29

“After this, therefore because of this” is not a scientific method or principle but a logical fallacy.

Whatever the relationship of brain activity to choice, introspective observation of our ability to choose to think (or not) is direct evidence of free will. And any experiment that ignores direct introspective evidence of the fact that a person can choose to think (or not) violates the primary, most fundamental principle of science: Perceptual evidence is the ultimate standard of knowledge and truth.

Stolen Concept

Concept stealing consists in using a concept while denying or ignoring more basic ideas on which it logically depends—the ideas that connect it to reality and thereby give it meaning.30 Whereas question begging consists in relying on an idea you are trying to affirm or prove, concept stealing consists in relying on an idea you are trying to deny or disprove.

We’ve already seen a clear-cut case of this fallacy: the notion that there can be “thinking” without a thinker. To claim or assume that thinking can happen while denying the very thing that makes thinking possible (a being who can think) is to steal the concept of “thinking.”

Another example is any experiment allegedly proving that free will does not exist. When someone claims that an experiment has shown that all human action is caused and necessitated by forces beyond our control, he steals the concept of “experiment” (among others).

Think about what an experiment involves, presupposes, and depends on. To perform an experiment, the experimenter must choose the variables he will control, the factors he will isolate, the data he will include or exclude from his thinking, and so forth. If these mental actions were not freely chosen but determined by forces beyond his control, then his alleged experiment would not be an experiment; rather, it would be a series of predetermined actions over which he had no control. Consequently, his alleged conclusion could neither be true nor false. It would be merely a necessary outcome of the prior actions and events that caused it. It would be no more or less “true” or “valid” or “scientific” or “controlled” than any other result of any other antecedently necessitated actions performed by any other alleged experimenters—including those whose alleged “experiments” allegedly show that human beings do possess free will. If people could not choose to think (or not), no one’s uncontrolled noises or preordained utterances would have any greater cognitive status or truth value than any other. Indeed, none would have any greater truth value than a dog’s bark, a snake’s slither, or a river’s flow.

An experiment presupposes and depends on acts of choice. To claim that an experiment proved that choices are an illusion is like claiming that a mathematical equation proved that numbers are an illusion. It is to steal the concept of “experiment”—to tear it away from the context that connects it to reality and gives it meaning.

This same basic analysis applies to people’s use of normative terms such as “ought” or “should” while denying the existence of free will. For instance, if someone says, “Science shows that we don’t have free will; and, of course, we ought to go by science!,” he steals the concept of “ought.” Ought implies can. To say that someone ought to act this way rather than that way presupposes that he can choose to act one way or the other. This principle applies both to epistemology (“you should go by evidence and logic”) and to ethics (“you ought to act in accordance with the requirements of human life”). If we had no free will, then all “oughts” and “shoulds” would be meaningless. To use “ought” or any prescriptive concept while denying free will is to steal the prescriptive concept—to tear it away from the foundation that grounds it in reality and gives it meaning: namely, free will.

Indeed, because all concepts and ideas ultimately are caused by and depend on the use of reason (i.e., the choice to think), to use any concepts at all to deny or even to challenge free will is to steal literally every concept used in the effort.

No concepts could exist or be used were it not for the faculty of reason and its corollary: the choice to think or not. Free will makes concepts possible.

Self-Exclusion

The fallacy of self-exclusion consists in making a claim that contradicts the very act of making it. Examples include “There is no such thing as truth” (is that true?), “No one can be certain of anything” (are you certain of that?), and “Knowledge is impossible” (do you know that?). If the claim is “true,” it’s toast; and if it’s not true, it’s toast. To “get around” this glaring contradiction, those who make such claims either say or imply that their claim should be excluded from itself: “There is no such thing as truth—except this truth!”

When determinists claim that people are biochemical puppets being played by the universe—that nothing anyone thinks, says, or does could have been otherwise—do they include themselves in this claim? Are they—the determinists—biochemical puppets being played by the universe such that nothing they think, say, or do could have been otherwise? If so, their claim is just predetermined noise, like a clap of thunder. If not, their claim falls flat. “This biochemical puppet issues truths, whereas those biochemical puppets issue falsehoods” is not a rational claim but a comedy skit.

Fat Cattle Fallacy

The fat cattle fallacy consists in assuming that a cause must be like its effects, or vice versa. It is so named because any such assumption is like assuming that a person who drives cattle and thus causes them to be fat must himself be fat.31

When someone assumes or argues that neither free will nor even consciousness can exist or function in a manner different from physical things because consciousness and free will, if they exist, must be caused by physical things and thus be like physical things, he is committing the fat cattle fallacy.

There is no reason to assume that a cause must be like its effects—or vice versa. And there is a world of evidence showing that such an assumption is false. For instance, the cause of a wooden table is the table maker who made it. The table is made of wood, yet the table maker is not. The table has four legs and a flat surface, yet the table maker does not. Likewise, the cause of a tsunami is shifting tectonic plates; the plates are solid, yet the tsunami is liquid. You can multiply examples endlessly.

Whatever the cause or origins of consciousness and free will, there is no reason to believe that they must be like their cause—or that their cause must be like them.

Claims and arguments against free will involve many other fallacies as well, but the foregoing are some of the most prevalent.

Implications of Free Will

What are the implications of human beings having free will? They are precisely the same as the implications of human beings possessing the faculty of reason—because reason and free will are the same faculty viewed from different perspectives. Reason is our capacity to think; free will is our ability to activate that capacity.

If we have free will, if we have direct control over whether we think and thus control over our corresponding actions—and we do—then we are in a bright and beautiful place. Among other things:

• Moral responsibility is in. People are morally responsible for their choices and actions. If you choose to study for an exam, then you legitimately get credit for the effort and the outcome. If you build a company and create wealth, then you morally own both. And when faith-driven monsters attack, torture, and murder people, they are morally responsible for the evil they committed, and we are morally justified in ending their undeserved existence.

• Romantic love is in. Romance is all about celebrating your life, values, and experiences with someone you choose because he or she brings you great joy. Romantic love is a consequence of myriad choices that form your soul and your lover’s soul and make you sublimely suitable to live and love life together.

• Friendship is in—for the same reason as romance. You do choose your friends, and they choose you. You choose to spend time together, to share experiences, and to support each other through thick and thin. When you enjoy your friends’ company, you are enjoying the presence of individuals with minds, values, and control over their lives. They are worthy of your friendship because they choose to think and because they have substantial values that you enjoy together.

• Purpose is in. You choose your aims. You are able to set long-range goals, pursue a career, develop hobbies, engage in soul-fueling projects, and take deliberate steps to achieve your aims. Your life has meaning and purpose because you have a mind and choose your goals.

• Self-esteem is in—for the same reason as purpose. When you set and achieve worthy goals—when you create an app, climb El Capitan, build a business, or raise children with logic and love—you did that. You can and should take pride in your achievements. They are real, and they are yours. You can and should reflect on your successes, gain confidence by acknowledging them, and thus feel capable of success and worthy of happiness.

• Political freedom is in. If people have free will—and we do—then we need freedom from coercion so we can make choices, act on our own judgment, and thus live fully as human beings. This is why the enslavement of Frederick Douglass and every other slave was a moral abomination: Humans are beings with free will—and for them to live as human beings, they must be free to act as they choose, so long as they don’t force others to act against their will. Because free will exists, the moral difference between Abraham Lincoln and the United States, on the one hand; and Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, on the other, is profound, and we should shout it from the rooftops.

In sum, because free will is real:

1. You are responsible for your thoughts and actions—and for the self-made soul and life you build with them.

2. The “you” that you know yourself to be is the integrated being of body and mind whose rational faculty operates by choice and who is, therefore, fundamentally in control of his or her life.

3. Your future is open, and it includes your power to shape your mind, your ideas, your actions, your emotions—your life—into a beautiful, enjoyable, unified whole of which you can be proud.

It is time to accept what we directly observe about free will: We have it. And it is a beautiful thing to use correctly.

This article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn. —Robert Ingersoll1

In the long battle for freedom of thought and speech, few figures stand out as boldly as Giordano Bruno. Born in 1548 in Nola, Italy, Bruno emerged as the most radical thinker of the Italian Renaissance and exhibited an unwavering commitment to reason, science, and freedom of expression. He was a beloved philosopher, poet, teacher, and lover of life whose gruesome and untimely death by fire at the hands of the Catholic Church has burned his memory vividly into the minds of his countrymen.

Many Italians still consider him the greatest, most daring thinker their country has produced. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Galileo, Bruno influenced many scientists and thinkers including Newton, Kepler, Descartes, Spinoza, and Goethe, as well as such modern thinkers as Carl Sagan. In 1872, the University of Leipzig in Germany honored Bruno as a pioneer of modern philosophy by publishing his works in its “Philosophical Library” series. In 1942, the prestigious Collège de France in Paris established a chair in the history of philosophy, acknowledging Bruno as a foundational figure in the transition from the Renaissance’s revival of classical learning to the emerging modern worldview rooted in reason, science, and skepticism of religious dogma that would become known as the Enlightenment.

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In America, 19th-century freethinkers such as Robert Ingersoll and Walt Whitman paid tribute to Bruno, recognizing him as a martyr for liberty and for freedom of conscience. NASA has even acknowledged Bruno by naming a lunar crater, the Giordano Bruno Crater, in his honor.2

Bruno’s unique work in memory enhancement (which he called “the art of memory”) has been cited as a precursor to the modern field of artificial intelligence research.3

Bruno was a blend of philosopher, scientist, and teacher who stood at a crossroads in the evolution of human thought. His courage in speaking about his ideas during times when it could be deadly to do so was remarkable, as was his unwillingness to accept any shackles on his mind. He sought to integrate his time’s most important knowledge by studying multiple disciplines to create an overarching understanding of the universe and of man’s role in it. The essence of his vision centered on liberating human thought from the constraints and dogmas of religion, thereby enabling individuals to freely explore reality and use the forces of nature for human flourishing and peace.

In 1876, because of a popular movement in Italy in support of Bruno, a statue of him was installed in Rome’s Campo de Fiori (Field of Flowers) on the spot where the Catholic Church burned Bruno as an “impenitent, obstinate, pertinacious heretic.”4 Today, the statue of a hooded, glowering Bruno stares at the Vatican in eternal, silent rebuke.

***

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 into a modest family in the Kingdom of Naples. His birthplace, Nola, was a small village in the fertile hills beneath Cicada Mountain. As a young boy, Bruno loved to wander the hills and contemplate the stars at night. He often spoke of gazing at Mount Vesuvius, which he could see in the distance. His father, a soldier, and his mother, a homemaker, instilled in him a sense of curiosity and reverence for knowledge. Renaissance humanism, which emphasized classical learning (Greek and Roman), individual potential, and critical inquiry, was a significant part of Nola’s intellectual environment.

Nola was under Spanish rule at the time; the Spanish Habsburgs controlled the Kingdom of Naples. The Spanish crown enforced strict Catholic orthodoxy via the violent Inquisition, making Nola a dangerous place for radical thinkers such as Bruno.5 Though Nola itself was not a major intellectual hub, Naples—just fifteen miles away—was home to the University of Naples, one of the oldest universities in Europe. It had a strong tradition of Aristotelian thought, which influenced Bruno’s early education when he joined the Dominican Order of Naples in 1565 at the age of seventeen.

From an early age, Bruno displayed a keen intellect. The Dominicans introduced him to the teachings of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other classical philosophers. The Renaissance’s emphasis on inquiry and exploration ignited his passion for knowledge. Influenced by the works of Plato and Aristotle, Bruno began to question established beliefs, setting the stage for his future challenges to the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was ordained as a priest in 1572 at age twenty-four after completing his ecclesiastical studies. However, his devotion to reason and truth soon brought him into conflict with his religious teachers. He began to question dogma, such as the Trinity and the Virgin Birth; removed or hid religious images placed in his room; and started reading “forbidden” books, such as the works of Erasmus.6 These behaviors raised suspicion among his superiors; and in 1576, when he learned that he might face an Inquisition trial, he fled the monastery and abandoned his Dominican habit, becoming a wandering scholar across Europe.

The Nomadic Philosopher

Bruno’s first destination was Geneva, a city known for its Calvinist reformers and supposed tolerance of new ideas. Although Bruno was aware that John Calvin had executed the theologian and physician Michael Servetus for “heresy” in 1553, that did not stop him from speaking his mind. He had hoped to find protection among fellow critics of Catholic dogma, but it was not long before he found Calvinism just as rigid as the Church he had escaped. When Bruno openly criticized a respected professor, he was excommunicated and forced to move on.

In France, his fortunes improved briefly. Settling in Toulouse, he secured a doctorate in theology and lectured at the university for a time. But it was in Paris where he truly began to make his mark. His prodigious intellect and mastery of mnemonics—a technique for enhancing memory—earned him the patronage of King Henry III, who took an interest in the radical young thinker. With the king’s favor, Bruno published several of his early works, including The Shadows of Ideas and The Art of Memory, which showcased his unique ideas about enhancing memory as a way of improving one’s ability to retain knowledge and integrate facts about the natural world. One striking example from The Art of Memory is Bruno’s use of a “wheel of memory,” a conceptual diagram wherein ideas and facts are organized around a central wheel divided into segments, each linked to vivid, symbolic images. Bruno proposed that to retain and integrate knowledge about the natural world (e.g., celestial bodies, elements, or philosophical concepts), one should assign each piece of information to a specific segment of the wheel and pair it with a striking, emotionally charged image. These images act as mental “hooks” to aid recall of abstract or complex ideas.

Encouraged by his growing reputation, Bruno traveled to England in 1583 under the protection of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. He lectured at Oxford University and boldly debated the conservative scholars who still clung to the outdated geocentric model of the cosmos, arguing instead for a boundless universe filled with infinite worlds—a notion that scandalized the academic community. He famously called Oxford “the widow of true learning” because of its dogmatic clinging to religious orthodoxy and traditional scholasticism.7 His most important works on cosmology, including On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, were written during this period, but his confrontational style made him enemies. By 1585, he had again worn out his welcome and was forced to leave, despite the intellectual recognition he had gained in England’s literary and philosophical circles—most notably from the highly respected soldier and poet Sir Philip Sidney.

Returning to mainland Europe, Bruno drifted through the courts of kings and the universities of Germany and central Europe, always searching for a place to teach freely. In Wittenberg, he found temporary stability and lectured at the university, though his unorthodox views remained controversial. In Prague, he gained an audience with Emperor Rudolf II after dedicating a book to him (a common Renaissance tactic to secure patronage). Bruno must have made a positive impression on Rudolf, because he was rewarded with the equivalent of a year’s wages.8 However, Rudolf offered no further patronage, and after a few months, Bruno moved to Helmstedt and enrolled in the local university, hoping to gain a teaching position. The university, Academia Julia, was a Lutheran institution known for its relatively progressive theological scholarship. However, soon after arriving and engaging in debates, he was excommunicated by the Lutherans—yet another rejection from the very type of institution that should have fostered his intellectual pursuits.9

Ideas and Major Works

Despite his nomadic lifestyle, Bruno produced a remarkable body of work, including dialogues, treatises, plays, and poems. His key texts, such as On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, articulated his theory of an unbounded cosmos. These writings were provocative, often using metaphor and allegory to challenge readers to reconsider their understanding of existence. Bruno was a proponent of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, which posited that Earth revolves around the sun. This radical idea contradicted the geocentric model that the Church endorsed, which placed Earth at the center of the universe. Bruno expanded on the Copernican theory, positing an infinite universe with numerous worlds, each potentially inhabited.

Although Bruno’s works contain some elements of Neoplatonist mysticism (which is understandable given the context of his time), his philosophic ideas championed reason and empirical observation. He advocated a worldview that valued rational thinking, saying, “He who desires to philosophize . . . must not assume a position in a debate before he has listened to the various opinions and considered and compared the reasons for and against.”10

Bruno also warned against appeals to authority or consensus, saying that one should never “judge or take up a position” based on “the opinion of the majority, the age, merits, or prestige of the speaker concerned, but he must proceed according to the persuasion of an organic doctrine that adheres to real things, and to a truth that can be understood by the light of reason.”11

Bruno recognized that existence is axiomatic and made the point that anything outside the universe was by definition nonexistent: “The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond.”12 This completely contradicted the Christian concept of a supernatural deity that created and controls a finite universe.

His twenty published works cover an astounding breadth of topics, including philosophy, cosmology, theology, mnemonics, and social satire. He conveyed his ideas in a variety of styles as well, including formal treatises, philosophic dialogues, satire, and poetry.

His first defense of the heliocentric theory is in his book The Ash Wednesday Supper (1584), a philosophic dialogue. Written during Bruno’s time in England, the work is structured as a conversation between several intellectuals, Bruno himself being one of the participants. The book presents Bruno’s theory that the Earth is not the center of the cosmos but merely one of many celestial bodies in an endless, dynamic universe. In it, Bruno criticized Oxford scholars and the Church for their unwillingness to accept new scientific and philosophical perspectives, portraying them as ignorant and dogmatic. Beyond astronomy, The Ash Wednesday Supper promotes intellectual freedom and the pursuit of truth through reason rather than blind adherence to authority. In a passage speaking about his own character, The Nolan, he writes,

Here, then, you see the man who has soared into the sky, entered the heavens, wandered among the stars, passed beyond the boundaries of the universe, effaced the imaginary barriers constituted by the first, the eighth, and tenth spheres, and many others they might wish to add on authority of false mathematics and distorted vision of the commonly accepted philosophy. By the light and sense of reason, and with the key of diligent inquiry, he has opened those cloisters of truth which it is given to us to open, stripped the veils and coverings from the face of nature, given eyes to the moles and sight to the blind who were unable to contemplate her image in the mirrors which reflect her on every side.13

Bruno intertwined Copernican thought with his own metaphysical ideas, suggesting that understanding nature requires a break from rigid traditions and a mind willing to accept new ideas. The work’s bold and often acerbic critique of established institutions contributed to Bruno’s growing reputation as a heretic.

His 1584 book, The Infinite Universe and Its Worlds, was a revolutionary work that not only supported heliocentrism but also proposed that the universe itself is infinite, with no fixed center, populated by countless suns and planets like our own. The idea of an infinite universe, with the earth floating freely in space, had been proposed by the Greek philosopher Anaximander (ca. 610–546 BCE).14 However, Bruno took this idea even further, arguing that the universe has no center at all and that countless worlds revolve around their own suns. Bruno further deduced that the countless other worlds he theorized could be inhabited by beings like or unlike humans, a concept virtually unheard of at the time. Although Bruno was not a scientist in the modern sense, his work was profoundly philosophic and logical. He defended Copernicus and extended his ideas deductively, saying, “If the Earth moves, why not other earths around other suns?” He drew from Copernican heliocentrism but went beyond it by thinking through the logical implications of what Copernicus had proposed. This led Bruno to conclude that the universe was far larger and more complex than Copernicus himself had thought:

There are countless suns and countless earths, all rotating around their suns in the same way as the seven planets of our system. We see only the suns because they are the largest bodies and are luminous, but their planets remain invisible to us because they are smaller and non-luminous.15

Scientists would later prove that Bruno’s amazing deductions were correct. Bruno rejected Aristotle and Ptolemy’s finite, hierarchical view of the cosmos, which regarded the “perfect and unchanging” heavens as separate from the “corruptible” Earth.16 Instead, he argued for a decentralized and dynamic universe governed by the same natural laws everywhere. Bruno’s conception of the universe had strong elements of Pantheism—he believed that the universe itself was a manifestation of God and that divinity was immanent in all creation (also an idea that had been common in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy).17 This contrasted sharply with the Catholic Church’s theological view of God as a transcendent being separate from the rest of the universe.

Bruno’s On Magic, written in the 1590s and published posthumously, is a philosophic treatise that explores his ideas about the nature of “magic,” its role in human understanding, and its connection to the natural world. Compared to its generally accepted meaning today, the connotation and understanding of the word “magic” were significantly different in the late 16th century. In the Renaissance, magic was a multifaceted concept rooted in natural philosophy, theology, and humanism and seen as a legitimate intellectual pursuit as opposed to mere illusionist tricks or supernatural nonsense. Bruno’s conception of “magic” is not about supernatural or occult practices but rather is rooted in his broader philosophy, emphasizing the universe’s interconnectedness, the power of the human mind, and the potential for humans to harness natural forces to shape their environment. Bruno distinguished between an idea he called “natural magic”—which he viewed as a legitimate, rational study of the forces and principles of nature—and “superstitious magic,” which he dismissed as irrational and tied to baseless beliefs. For example, he viewed magnets attracting iron or the moon’s influence on the tides as “natural magic.”

In his view, we use “magic” by understanding and manipulating causal connections. This idea resembles Francis Bacon’s observation that “nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”18 However, unlike Galileo and Bacon, Bruno focused heavily on deductive versus inductive reasoning. Bruno didn’t use induction in the scientific sense—collecting observations (e.g., star positions, planetary motions) to form a theory. He lacked instruments such as telescopes (Galileo’s came in 1609, after Bruno’s death) and didn’t record empirical data like Tycho Brahe. His “evidence” was intellectual—Copernicus’s model, ancient texts, and his own logic—not sensory.

Bruno presented the magician (or “Magus”) as a philosopher-scientist who seeks to uncover and master the hidden principles of nature—much like the scientists of today seek to understand the fundamental nature of reality. Bruno’s approach to “magic” was deeply rational and scientific for his time, seeing it as a means of extending human understanding rather than a form of mystical or religious practice. In fact, he viewed rational mastery of natural laws as a way to puncture the Church’s claim of miracles. Bruno’s “Magus” was much closer to an Edison, Tesla, or Einstein than to Jesus or the mythical Merlin of Arthurian legend.

Bruno was an expert in mnemonic techniques, and his works on memory demonstrate his interest in combining logic, imagination, and philosophy to enhance human understanding. In Bruno’s time, books were scarce and extremely valuable. The ability to memorize large amounts of information was essential for scholars and intellectuals who could not easily obtain written texts. Scholars, clergy, and philosophers needed to rely on their memory to preserve and transmit knowledge. Mnemonic techniques were considered an essential tool for education and for intellectual life, especially in an era when oral communication played a significant role in disseminating ideas.

In On the Shadows of Ideas (1582), Bruno explained how to use mnemonic techniques to recall and organize complex information. This work blends classical memory systems with his philosophic ideas. For example, he explains the classical memory trick of using vivid images by imagining a list of animals—lion, eagle, dolphin, snake, bull—each paired with a mythological figure such as Hercules wrestling the lion or Apollo riding the dolphin, making the figures easy to recall. He infuses this with his philosophy, turning the list into a reflection of the living universe, where these active gods mirror natural forces (such as strength for Hercules), blending practical recall with his pantheistic vision.

The Art of Memory (1582) is a detailed exposition of Bruno’s mnemonic techniques, showing how imagination and visualization can improve the mind’s ability to understand and retain concepts. For example, Bruno asks readers to memorize a list of virtues by picturing them as animated statues in a grand hall. He suggests imagining Justice as a towering woman in a flowing robe, blindfolded, holding scales that tip and sway as she strides forward. The idea is that her movement and vivid detail stretch the mind beyond simple recall to actively engage with the concept and thus improve retention.

Bruno believed that memory was not merely a capacity for recalling information but an active force for enlightenment and knowledge that could be enhanced using specific techniques. His system of mnemonics also involved visualization techniques, in which the mind arranges symbols, images, and concepts into a structured mental “memory palace” or “theater.” Bruno viewed the memory palace as a mental storage system and a way to expand knowledge, saying, “By the orderly arrangement of images in the mind, man strengthens his intellect and discovers the truths that lie beyond mere sensation.”19

Bruno’s ideas about memory were subversive because they suggested that knowledge and “divine” insight did not come from the Church or scripture but from within the human mind. His memory training system was a form of intellectual empowerment, teaching individuals to break free from dogma and examine reality for themselves. Bruno saw memory as a dynamic system for synthesizing new insights, enabling the mind to make connections beyond the stored data. Modern neural networks, through large-scale data training and continuous learning, similarly expand their knowledge base over time, making it a kind of digital successor to Bruno’s vision of infinite intellectual potential.

Bruno’s The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584) is an allegorical and philosophic dialogue that critiques religious dogma, moral corruption, and traditional (geocentric) cosmology. Written as a celestial debate among the gods of Olympus, the work reimagines the constellations as a symbolic stage for reforming human virtues and vices. The book challenges the hypocrisy of religious institutions and the rigid moral structures imposed by Christianity. It offers a vision of moral and intellectual progress based on reason, self-improvement, and respect for the laws of nature. Unfortunately, Bruno weaves in elements of Neoplatonism, suggesting that humans should align themselves with the divine order through knowledge and virtue rather than blind faith, but the book is nonetheless a powerful attack on the Christian hegemony of his day.

His portrayal of the gods expelling vices and replacing them with new, enlightened virtues symbolizes his call for philosophic and spiritual renewal. Bruno saw human potential as limitless when guided by reason rather than faith. He often used the sun as a metaphor for reason and enlightenment: “He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does not recognize it, ungrateful who is not thankful unto it.”20 A bold and provocative work, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast contributed to Bruno’s eventual persecution; its critiques of religious authority were considered deeply heretical by Church authorities.

Bruno’s growing body of work, combined with his notoriety and polarizing reputation as a thinker, inevitably set him on a collision course with the Catholic Church.

Betrayal and Inquisition

In 1591, weary of endless exile, Bruno made the fateful decision to return to Italy, perhaps believing that Venice, with its reputation for relative openness, might be a safe haven. He accepted an invitation from a Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo, who wished to learn Bruno’s famed memory techniques and to drink from the well of his astonishing intellect. But this supposed benefactor soon turned against Bruno, betraying him to the Venetian Inquisition in 1592. It’s not clear whether Mocenigo acted on his own or he had been conspiring with the Church, but whatever his motive, he accused Bruno of spreading heresies that threatened the very foundation of the Church’s power.

From that moment on, Bruno’s fate was sealed. The Venetian authorities, eager to appease Rome, arrested him and threw him into a cold, damp cell with foul air, the first of many dungeons that would become his world for the remainder of his life. They then handed him over to the Roman Inquisition, and he was dragged in chains to Rome, where he faced the full wrath of the Church.21 Bruno, the man who had gazed at the stars and dreamed of infinite worlds, who had dared to say that the universe was not a prison of divine order but an endless expanse of possibility, now found himself trapped in a place where no light could reach him, where he would never again see the stars shine above him.

For eight long years, he suffered under the relentless cruelty of the Inquisition. He was not allowed legal counsel and had to defend himself. The Inquisition did not simply question him—they tried to break his body and his spirit. He was subjected to psychological and physical torment, interrogated over and over, his own words twisted and used against him. Among other things, he was accused of:

• heresy for rejecting the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of Virgin Birth, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and other dogmas such as eternal damnation.

• blasphemy for saying that God was not a distant ruler but present in all things—that divinity was within and around, not above.

• sedition for claiming that the Church was corrupt and that it had used faith as a tool of control.

• treason for saying that the universe was infinite, that the Earth was just another world among countless others—a mere speck in a vast cosmos.22

To the men who sat in judgment over him, Bruno’s greatest crime was not simply heresy—it was his very freedom. He refused to let them dictate what he could think, what he could say, or what he could believe. Over and over, they called him an “obstinate” heretic. But Bruno did not break. Amazingly, he stood against the darkness, even as it closed in around him. For eight years, they demanded that he recant. They offered him mercy—if only he would bow his head and surrender his mind. But Bruno refused. His soul was his own; his thoughts belonged to no man.

Bruno stood alone against the Catholic Church, which at the time was a deadly combination of religious mysticism and authoritarian statism—twin forces designed to suppress the individual mind and strangle human freedom. Bruno’s story is an essential reminder that faith and force often go hand in hand. Because faith cannot rationally persuade, it ultimately resorts to coercion—whether through social and moral pressure, religious persecution, censorship, or political tyranny.

At last, in 1600, under the authority of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and with the blessing of Pope Clement VIII, the Inquisition made its final decision.23 Bruno was to be put to death. Upon pronouncing his sentence, his Inquisitors asked Bruno if he had anything to say. He lifted his head and, in a powerful voice that belied his physical suffering, said, “Perhaps your fear in passing this sentence upon me is greater than mine in receiving it.”24

Giordano Bruno was not only a genius thinker far ahead of his time, he was a rare soul with the courage of his convictions and an indomitable spirit. Unlike his accusers, he had no fear of hell:

When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death, for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.25

On February 17, 1600, a cold Ash Wednesday in Rome, the Inquisitors led a gaunt Bruno from his cell, his body weak but his spirit stronger than ever. They gagged him by driving a metal spike through his cheeks to pin his tongue, terrified that in his final moments he would speak the truth one last time and that his words might ignite rebellion. They marched him to Campo de Fiori, where Rome’s public executioners had prepared a pyre. Then they stripped him naked, bound him to a stake, and lit the fire at his feet.

As the flames rose and Bruno writhed in agony, the Church believed that it had won. It thought that it had erased him, silenced him, and burned away his obstinate defiance.

But it failed.

Bruno’s body turned to ash after his death, but his ideas burned brighter than ever. The universe did not shrink back into the Church’s narrow, ignorant vision. Instead, it expanded, just as Bruno had foretold. Centuries later, when modern science confirmed much of his thinking—when telescopes gazed into the endless cosmos he had imagined—the world finally saw what he had seen.

Giordano Bruno’s execution stands as one of the greatest crimes of Christianity—a perverse monument to its irrationality, fear, cruelty, and desperate need to crush what it cannot control. But Bruno lives on in the stars, in the infinite worlds beyond our own, in every mind that refuses to bow—in every mind that dares to think, to question, and to seek the truth.

This article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

Editor's note: Though little known today, Robert Ingersoll (1833–1899) was the post-Civil War era’s most potent orator and intellectual defender of reason and freedom. “I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man,” said Thomas Edison, “and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.” After hearing Ingersoll speak, Mark Twain said it was “the supreme combination of words that was ever put together since the world began” and that “Of all men living or dead, I love Ingersoll most.” There were only two men that Frederick Douglass reported ever feeling inferior to: Abraham Lincoln and Robert Ingersoll. In the essay that follows, you can assess Ingersoll’s stature and eloquence for yourself. For more on this great-souled giant, I refer you to Tom Malone’s wonderful biographical portrait, “Robert Ingersoll: Intellectual and Moral Atlas.”1 —Jon Hersey

“His Soul was like a Star and dwelt apart.” 2

On every hand are the enemies of individuality and mental freedom. Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb. Our first questions are answered by ignorance, and our last by superstition. We are pushed and dragged by countless hands along the beaten track, and our entire training can be summed up in the word—suppression. Our desire to have a thing or to do a thing is considered as conclusive evidence that we ought not to have it and ought not to do it. At every turn we run against cherubim and a flaming sword guarding some entrance to the Eden of our desire. We are allowed to investigate all subjects in which we feel no particular interest, and to express the opinions of the majority with the utmost freedom. We are taught that liberty of speech should never be carried to the extent of contradicting the dead witnesses of a popular superstition. Society offers continual rewards for self-betrayal, and they are nearly all earned and claimed, and some are paid.

We have all read accounts of Christian gentlemen remarking, when about to be hanged, how much better it would have been for them if they had only followed a mother’s advice. But after all, how fortunate it is for the world that the maternal advice has not always been followed. How fortunate it is for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being to obey. Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the conditions of progress. Select any age of the world and tell me what would have been the effect of implicit obedience. Suppose the church had had absolute control of the human mind at any time, would not the words liberty and progress have been blotted from human speech? In defiance of advice, the world has advanced.

Suppose the astronomers had controlled the science of astronomy; suppose the doctors had controlled the science of medicine; suppose kings had been left to fix the forms of government; suppose our fathers had taken the advice of Paul, who said, “be subject to the powers that be, because they are ordained of God”; suppose the church could control the world to-day, we would go back to chaos and old night. Philosophy would be branded as infamous; Science would again press its pale and thoughtful face against the prison bars, and round the limbs of liberty would climb the bigot’s flame.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions—some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, “The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.” On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.

The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time. They think the fathers of their nation were the greatest and best of all mankind. All these things they implicitly believe because it is popular and patriotic, and because they were told so when they were very small and remember distinctly of hearing mother read it out of a book. It is hard to overestimate the influence of early training in the direction of superstition. You first teach children that a certain book is true—that it was written by God himself—that to question its truth is a sin, that to deny it is a crime, and that should they die without believing that book they will be forever damned without benefit of clergy. The consequence is, that long before they read that book, they believe it to be true. When they do read it, their minds are wholly unfitted to investigate its claims. They accept it as a matter of course.

In this way the reason is overcome, the sweet instincts of humanity are blotted from the heart, and while reading its infamous pages even justice throws aside her scales, shrieking for revenge, and charity, with bloody hands, applauds a deed of murder. In this way we are taught that the revenge of man is the justice of God; that mercy is not the same everywhere. In this way the ideas of our race have been subverted. In this way we have made tyrants, bigots, and inquisitors. In this way the brain of man has become a kind of palimpsest upon which, and over the writings of nature, superstition has scrawled her countless lies. One great trouble is that most teachers are dishonest. They teach as certainties those things concerning which they entertain doubts. They do not say, “we think this is so,” but “we know this is so.” They do not appeal to the reason of the pupil, but they command his faith. They keep all doubts to themselves; they do not explain, they assert. All this is infamous. In this way you may make Christians, but you cannot make men; you cannot make women. You can make followers, but no leaders; disciples, but no Christs. You may promise power, honor, and happiness to all those who will blindly follow, but you cannot keep your promise.

A monarch said to a hermit, “Come with me, and I will give you power.”

“I have all the power that I know how to use,” replied the hermit.

“Come,” said the king, “I will give you wealth.”

“I have no wants that money can supply,” said the hermit.

“I will give you honor,” said the monarch.

“Ah, honor cannot be given, it must be earned,” was the hermit’s answer.

“Come,” said the king, making a last appeal, “and I will give you happiness.”

“No,” said the man of solitude, “there is no happiness without liberty, and he who follows cannot be free.”

“You shall have liberty, too,” said the king.

“Then I will stay where I am,” said the old man.

And all the king’s courtiers thought the hermit a fool.

Now and then somebody examines, and in spite of all keeps his manhood, and has the courage to follow where his reason leads. Then the pious get together and repeat wise saws, and exchange knowing nods and most prophetic winks. The stupidly wise sit owl-like on the dead limbs of the tree of knowledge, and solemnly hoot. Wealth sneers, and fashion laughs, and respectability passes by on the other side, and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and all the snakes of superstition writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and infamy her brand, and perjury her oath, and the law its power, and bigotry tortures, and the church kills.

The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. Tyranny likes courtiers, flatterers, followers, fawners, and superstition wants believers, disciples, zealots, hypocrites, and subscribers. The church demands worship—the very thing that man should give to no being, human or divine. To worship another is to degrade yourself. Worship is awe and dread and vague fear and blind hope. It is the spirit of worship that elevates the one and degrades the many; that builds palaces for robbers, erects monuments to crime, and forges manacles even for its own hands. The spirit of worship is the spirit of tyranny. The worshiper always regrets that he is not the worshiped. We should all remember that the intellect has no knees, and that whatever the attitude of the body may be, the brave soul is always found erect. Whoever worships, abdicates. Whoever believes at the command of power, tramples his own individuality beneath his feet, and voluntarily robs himself of all that renders man superior to the brute.

The despotism of faith is justified upon the ground that Christian countries are the grandest and most prosperous of the world. At one time the same thing could have been truly said in India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Rome, and in every other country that has, in the history of the world, swept to empire. This argument proves too much not only, but the assumption upon which it is based is utterly false. Numberless circumstances and countless conditions have produced the prosperity of the Christian world. The truth is, we have advanced in spite of religious zeal, ignorance, and opposition. The church has won no victories for the rights of man. Luther labored to reform the church—Voltaire, to reform men. Over every fortress of tyranny has waved, and still waves, the banner of the church. Wherever brave blood has been shed, the sword of the church has been wet. On every chain has been the sign of the cross. The altar and throne have leaned against and supported each other.

All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce, climate, soil, geographical position, industry, invention, discovery, art, and science. The church has been the enemy of progress for the reason that it has endeavored to prevent man thinking for himself. To prevent thought is to prevent all advancement except in the direction of faith.

Who can imagine the infinite impudence of a church assuming to think for the human race? Who can imagine the infinite impudence of a church that pretends to be the mouthpiece of God, and in his name threatens to inflict eternal punishment upon those who honestly reject its claims and scorn its pretensions? By what right does a man, or an organization of men, or a god, claim to hold a brain in bondage? When a fact can be demonstrated, force is unnecessary; when it cannot be demonstrated, an appeal to force is infamous. In the presence of the unknown all have an equal right to think.

Over the vast plain, called life, we are all travelers, and not one traveler is perfectly certain that he is going in the right direction. True it is that no other plain is so well supplied with guide-boards. At every turn and crossing you will find them, and upon each one is written the exact direction and distance. One great trouble is, however, that these boards are all different, and the result is that most travelers are confused in proportion to the number they read. Thousands of people are around each of these signs, and each one is doing his best to convince the traveler that his particular board is the only one upon which the least reliance can be placed, and that if his road is taken the reward for so doing will be infinite and eternal, while all the other roads are said to lead to hell, and all the makers of the other guide-boards are declared to be heretics, hypocrites and liars. “Well,” says a traveler, “you may be right in what you say, but allow me at least to read some of the other directions and examine a little into their claims. I wish to rely a little upon my own judgment in a matter of so great importance.” “No, sir,” shouts the zealot, “that is the very thing you are not allowed to do. You must go my way without investigation, or you are as good as damned already.” “Well,” says the traveler, “if that is so, I believe I had better go your way.” And so most of them go along, taking the word of those who know as little as themselves. Now and then comes one who, in spite of all threats, calmly examines the claims of all, and as calmly rejects them all. These travelers take roads of their own, and are denounced by all the others, as infidels and atheists.

Around all of these guide-boards, as far as the eye can reach, the ground is covered with mountains of human bones, crumbling and bleaching in the rain and sun. They are the bones of murdered men and women—fathers, mothers and babes.

In my judgment, every human being should take a road of his own. Every mind should be true to itself—should think, investigate and conclude for itself. This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul should repel dictation and tyranny, no matter from what source they come—from earth or heaven, from men or gods. Besides, every traveler upon this vast plain should give to every other traveler his best idea as to the road that should be taken. Each is entitled to the honest opinion of all. And there is but one way to get an honest opinion upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion must be free from fear. The merchant must not fear to lose his custom, the doctor his practice, nor the preacher his pulpit There can be no advance without liberty. Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression and must end in intellectual night. The tendency of orthodox religion to-day is toward mental slavery and barbarism. Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.

Is it desirable that all should be exactly alike in their religious convictions? Is any such thing possible? Do we not know that there are no two persons alike in the whole world? No two trees, no two leaves, no two anythings that are alike? Infinite diversity is the law. Religion tries to force all minds into one mould. Knowing that all cannot believe, the church endeavors to make all say they believe. She longs for the unity of hypocrisy and detests the splendid diversity of individuality and freedom.

Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. In this sense, every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph.

We should all remember that to be like other people is to be unlike ourselves, and that nothing can be more detestable in character than servile imitation. The great trouble with imitation is that we are apt to ape those who are in reality far below us. After all, the poorest bargain that a human being can make is to give his individuality for what is called respectability.

There is no saying more degrading than this: “It is better to be the tail of a lion than the head of a dog.” It is a responsibility to think and act for yourself. Most people hate responsibility; therefore, they join something and become the tail of some lion. They say, “My party can act for me—my church can do my thinking. It is enough for me to pay taxes and obey the lion to which I belong, without troubling myself about the right, the wrong, or the why or the wherefore of anything whatever.” These people are respectable. They hate reformers and dislike exceedingly to have their minds disturbed. They regard convictions as very disagreeable things to have. They love forms and enjoy, beyond everything else, telling what a splendid tail their lion has and what a troublesome dog their neighbor is. Besides this natural inclination to avoid personal responsibility, is and always has been, the fact that every religionist has warned men against the presumption and wickedness of thinking for themselves. The reason has been denounced by all Christendom as the only unsafe guide. The church has left nothing undone to prevent man following the logic of his brain. The plainest facts have been covered with the mantle of mystery. The grossest absurdities have been declared to be self-evident facts. The order of nature has been, as it were, reversed, that the hypocritical few might govern the honest many. The man who stood by the conclusion of his reason was denounced as a scorner and hater of God and his holy church. From the organization of the first church until this moment, to think your own thoughts has been inconsistent with membership. Every member has borne the marks of collar, and chain, and whip. No man ever seriously attempted to reform a church without being cast out and hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy. The highest crime against a creed is to change it. Reformation is treason.

Thousands of young men are being educated at this moment by the various churches. What for? In order that they may be prepared to investigate the phenomena by which we are surrounded? No! The object, and the only object, is that they may be prepared to defend a creed; that they may learn the arguments of their respective churches and repeat them in the dull ears of a thoughtless congregation. If one, after being thus trained at the expense of the Methodists, turns Presbyterian or Baptist, he is denounced as an ungrateful wretch. Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason that if you think the church is right, you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you. The consequence of this is that most of the theological literature is the result of suppression, of fear, tyranny and hypocrisy.

Every orthodox writer necessarily said to himself, “If I write that, my wife and children may want for bread. I will be covered with shame and branded with infamy; but if I write this, I will gain position, power, and honor. My church rewards defenders and burns reformers.”

Under these conditions all your Scotts, Henrys, and McKnights have written; and weighed in these scales, what are their commentaries worth? They are not the ideas and decisions of honest judges, but the sophisms of the paid attorneys of superstition. Who can tell what the world has lost by this infamous system of suppression? How many grand thinkers have died with the mailed hand of superstition upon their lips? How many splendid ideas have perished in the cradle of the brain, strangled in the poison-coils of that python, the Church!

For thousands of years a thinker was hunted down like an escaped convict. To him who had braved the church, every door was shut, every knife was open. To shelter him from the wild storm, to give him a crust when dying, to put a cup of water to his cracked and bleeding lips; these were all crimes, not one of which the church ever did forgive; and with the justice taught of her God, his helpless children were exterminated as scorpions and vipers.

Who at the present day can imagine the courage, the devotion to principle, the intellectual and moral grandeur it once required to be an infidel, to brave the church, her racks, her fagots, her dungeons, her tongues of fire—to defy and scorn her heaven and her hell—her devil and her God? They were the noblest sons of earth. They were the real saviors of our race, the destroyers of superstition and the creators of Science. They were the real Titans who bared their grand foreheads to all the thunderbolts of all the gods.

The church has been, and still is, the great robber. She has rifled not only the pockets but the brains of the world. She is the stone at the sepulchre of liberty; the upas tree, in whose shade the intellect of man has withered; the Gorgon beneath whose gaze the human heart has turned to stone. Under her influence even the Protestant mother expects to be happy in heaven, while her brave boy, who fell fighting for the rights of man, shall writhe in hell.

It is said that some of the Indian tribes place the heads of their children between pieces of bark until the form of the skull is permanently changed. To us this seems a most shocking custom; and yet, after all, is it as bad as to put the souls of our children in the strait-jacket of a creed? to so utterly deform their minds that they regard the God of the Bible as a being of infinite mercy, and really consider it a virtue to believe a thing just because it seems unreasonable? Every child in the Christian world has uttered its wondering protest against this outrage. All the machinery of the church is constantly employed in corrupting the reason of children. In every possible way they are robbed of their own thoughts and forced to accept the statements of others. Every Sunday school has for its object the crushing out of every germ of individuality. The poor children are taught that nothing can be more acceptable to God than unreasoning obedience and eyeless faith, and that to believe God did an impossible act is far better than to do a good one yourself. They are told that all religions have been simply the John-the-Baptists of ours; that all the gods of antiquity have withered and shrunken into the Jehovah of the Jews; that all the longings and aspirations of the race are realized in the motto of the Evangelical Alliance, “Liberty in non-essentials,” that all there is, or ever was, of religion can be found in the apostles’ creed; that there is nothing left to be discovered; that all the thinkers are dead, and all the living should simply be believers; that we have only to repeat the epitaph found on the grave of wisdom; that grave-yards are the best possible universities, and that the children must be forever beaten with the bones of the fathers.

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey. He certainly would now and then be tempted to make the same remark made by an English gentleman to his poor guest. The gentleman had invited a man in humble circumstances to dine with him. The man was so overcome with the honor that to everything the gentleman said he replied, “Yes.” Tired at last with the monotony of acquiescence, the gentleman cried out, “For God’s sake, my good man, say ‘No,’ just once, so there will be two of us.”

Is it possible that an infinite God created this world simply to be the dwelling-place of slaves and serfs? simply for the purpose of raising orthodox Christians? That he did a few miracles to astonish them; that all the evils of life are simply his punishments, and that he is finally going to turn heaven into a kind of religious museum filled with Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians and Methodist mummies? I want no heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality. Better rot in the windowless tomb, to which there is no door but the red mouth of the pallid worm, than wear the jeweled collar even of a god.

Religion does not, and cannot, contemplate man as free. She accepts only the homage of the prostrate and scorns the offerings of those who stand erect. She cannot tolerate the liberty of thought. The wide and sunny fields belong not to her domain. The star-lit heights of genius and individuality are above and beyond her appreciation and power. Her subjects cringe at her feet, covered with the dust of obedience.

They are not athletes standing posed by rich life and brave endeavor like antique statues, but shriveled deformities, studying with furtive glance the cruel face of power.

No religionist seems capable of comprehending this plain truth. There is this difference between thought and action: for our actions we are responsible to ourselves and to those injuriously affected; for thoughts, there can, in the nature of things, be no responsibility to gods or men, here or hereafter. And yet the Protestant has vied with the Catholic in denouncing freedom of thought; and while I was taught to hate Catholicism with every drop of my blood, it is only justice to say that in all essential particulars it is precisely the same as every other religion. Luther denounced mental liberty with all the coarse and brutal vigor of his nature; Calvin despised, from the very bottom of his petrified heart, anything that even looked like religious toleration, and solemnly declared that to advocate it was to crucify Christ afresh. All the founders of all the orthodox churches have advocated the same infamous tenet. The truth is that what is called religion is necessarily inconsistent with free thought. A believer is a bird in a cage, a Freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.

At present, owing to the inroads that have been made by liberals and infidels, most of the churches pretend to be in favor of religious liberty. Of these churches, we will ask this question: How can a man, who conscientiously believes in religious liberty, worship a God who does not? They say to us: “We will not imprison you on account of your belief, but our God will.” “We will not burn you because you throw away the sacred Scriptures, but their author will.” “We think it an infamous crime to persecute our brethren for opinion’s sake—but the God, whom we ignorantly worship, will on that account, damn his own children forever.”

Why is it that these Christians not only detest the infidels but cordially despise each other? Why do they refuse to worship in the temples of each other? Why do they care so little for the damnation of men and so much for the baptism of children? Why will they adorn their churches with the money of thieves and flatter vice for the sake of subscriptions? Why will they attempt to bribe Science to certify to the writings of God? Why do they torture the words of the great into an acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity? Why do they stand with hat in hand before presidents, kings, emperors, and scientists, begging, like Lazarus, for a few crumbs of religious comfort? Why are they so delighted to find an allusion to Providence in the message of Lincoln? Why are they so afraid that some one will find out that Paley wrote an essay in favor of the Epicurean philosophy, and that Sir Isaac Newton was once an infidel? Why are they so anxious to show that Voltaire recanted; that Paine died palsied with fear; that the Emperor Julian cried out, “Galilean, thou hast conquered”; that Gibbon died a Catholic; that Agassiz had a little confidence in Moses; that the old Napoleon was once complimentary enough to say that he thought Christ greater than himself or Cæsar; that Washington was caught on his knees at Valley Forge; that blunt old Ethan Allen told his child to believe the religion of her mother; that Franklin said, “Don’t unchain the tiger,” and that Volney got frightened in a storm at sea?

Is it because the foundation of their temple is crumbling, because the walls are cracked, the pillars leaning, the great dome swaying to its fall, and because Science has written over the high altar its mene, mene, tekel, upharsin—the old words, destined to be the epitaph of all religions?3

Every assertion of individual independence has been a step toward infidelity. Luther started toward Humboldt—Wesley, toward John Stuart Mill. To really reform the church is to destroy it. Every new religion has a little less superstition than the old, so that the religion of Science is but a question of time.

I will not say the church has been an unmitigated evil in all respects. Its history is infamous and glorious. It has delighted in the production of extremes. It has furnished murderers for its own martyrs. It has sometimes fed the body but has always starved the soul. It has been a charitable highwayman—a profligate beggar—a generous pirate. It has produced some angels and a multitude of devils. It has built more prisons than asylums. It made a hundred orphans while it cared for one. In one hand it has carried the alms-dish and in the other a sword. It has founded schools and endowed universities for the purpose of destroying true learning. It filled the world with hypocrites and zealots, and upon the cross of its own Christ it crucified the individuality of man. It has sought to destroy the independence of the soul and put the world upon its knees. This is its crime. The commission of this crime was necessary to its existence. In order to compel obedience, it declared that it had the truth, and all the truth; that God had made it the keeper of his secrets; his agent and his vicegerent. It declared that all other religions were false and infamous. It rendered all compromise impossible and all thought superfluous. Thought was its enemy, obedience was its friend. Investigation was fraught with danger; therefore, investigation was suppressed. The holy of holies was behind the curtain. All this was upon the principle that forgers hate to have the signature examined by an expert and that imposture detests curiosity.

“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” has always been the favorite text of the church.

In short, Christianity has always opposed every forward movement of the human race. Across the highway of progress, it has always been building breastworks of Bibles, tracts, commentaries, prayer-books, creeds, dogmas and platforms, and at every advance the Christians have gathered together behind these heaps of rubbish and shot the poisoned arrows of malice at the soldiers of freedom.

And even the liberal Christian of to-day has his holy of holies, and in the niche of the temple of his heart has his idol. He still clings to a part of the old superstition, and all the pleasant memories of the old belief linger in the horizon of his thoughts like a sunset. We associate the memory of those we love with the religion of our childhood. It seems almost a sacrilege to rudely destroy the idols that our fathers worshiped and turn their sacred and beautiful truths into the fables of barbarism. Some throw away the Old Testament and cling to the New, while others give up everything except the idea that there is a personal God, and that in some wonderful way we are the objects of his care.

Even this, in my opinion, as Science, the great iconoclast, marches onward, will have to be abandoned with the rest. The great ghost will surely share the fate of the little ones. They fled at the first appearance of the dawn, and the other will vanish with the perfect day. Until then the independence of man is little more than a dream. Overshadowed by an immense personality, in the presence of the irresponsible and the infinite, the individuality of man is lost, and he falls prostrate in the very dust of fear. Beneath the frown of the absolute, man stands a wretched, trembling slave—beneath his smile he is at best only a fortunate serf. Governed by a being whose arbitrary will is law, chained to the chariot of power, his destiny rests in the pleasure of the unknown. Under these circumstances, what wretched object can he have in lengthening out his aimless life?

And yet, in most minds, there is a vague fear of the gods—a shrinking from the malice of the skies. Our fathers were slaves, and nearly all their children are mental serfs. The enfranchisement of the soul is a slow and painful process. Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, Fear and Faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world, and will until the mind of woman ceases to be the property of priests.

When women reason, and babes sit in the lap of philosophy, the victory of reason over the shadowy host of darkness will be complete.

In the minds of many, long after the intellect has thrown aside as utterly fabulous the legends of the church, there still remains a lingering suspicion, born of the mental habits contracted in childhood, that after all there may be a grain of truth in these mountains of theological mist, and that possibly the superstitious side is the side of safety.

A gentleman, walking among the ruins of Athens, came upon a fallen statue of Jupiter; making an exceedingly low bow he said: “O Jupiter! I salute thee.” He then added: “Should you ever sit upon the throne of heaven again, do not, I pray you, forget that I treated you politely when you were prostrate.”

We have all been taught by the church that nothing is so well calculated to excite the ire of the Deity as to express a doubt as to his existence, and that to deny it is an unpardonable sin. Numerous well-attested instances are referred to of atheists being struck dead for denying the existence of God. According to these religious people, God is infinitely above us in every respect, infinitely merciful, and yet he cannot bear to hear a poor finite man honestly question his existence. Knowing, as he does, that his children are groping in darkness and struggling with doubt and fear; knowing that he could enlighten them if he would, he still holds the expression of a sincere doubt as to his existence, the most infamous of crimes. According to orthodox logic, God having furnished us with imperfect minds, has a right to demand a perfect result.

Suppose Mr. Smith should overhear a couple of small bugs holding a discussion as to the existence of Mr. Smith, and suppose one should have the temerity to declare, upon the honor of a bug, that he had examined the whole question to the best of his ability, including the argument based upon design, and had come to the conclusion that no man by the name of Smith had ever lived. Think then of Mr. Smith flying into an ecstasy of rage, crushing the atheist bug beneath his iron heel, while he exclaimed, “I will teach you, blasphemous wretch, that Smith is a diabolical fact!” What then can we think of a God who would open the artillery of heaven upon one of his own children for simply expressing his honest thought? And what man who really thinks can help repeating the words of Ennius: “If there are gods, they certainly pay no attention to the affairs of man.”

Think of the millions of men and women who have been destroyed simply for loving and worshiping this God. Is it possible that this God, having infinite power, saw his loving and heroic children languishing in the darkness of dungeons; heard the clank of their chains when they lifted their hands to him in the agony of prayer; saw them stretched upon the bigot’s rack, where death alone had pity; saw the serpents of flame crawl hissing round their shrinking forms—saw all this for sixteen hundred years, and sat as silent as a stone?

From such a God, why should man expect assistance? Why should he waste his days in fruitless prayer? Why should he fall upon his knees and implore a phantom—a phantom that is deaf, and dumb, and blind?

Although we live in what is called a free government—and politically we are free—there is but little religious liberty in America. Society demands either that you belong to some church or that you suppress your opinions. It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah. Such judges are the Jeffries of the church. They believe that decisions, made by hirelings at the bidding of kings, are binding upon man forever. They regard old law as far superior to modern justice. They are what might be called orthodox judges. They spend their days in finding out not what ought to be but what has been. With their backs to the sunrise, they worship the night. There is only one future event with which they concern themselves, and that is their reelection. No honest court ever did, or ever will, decide that our Constitution is Christian. The Bible teaches that the powers that be are ordained of God. The Bible teaches that God is the source of all authority and that all kings have obtained their power from him. Every tyrant has claimed to be the agent of the Most High. The Inquisition was founded not in the name of man, but in the name of God. All the governments of Europe recognize the greatness of God and the littleness of the people. In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.

The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery—through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man was to dethrone him.

To Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin are we indebted, more than to all others, for a human government, and for a Constitution in which no God is recognized superior to the legally expressed will of the people.

They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship, or not to worship; that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man, and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality and liberty of all; to prevent the few from governing the many, and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.

Notwithstanding all this, the spirit of persecution still lingers in our laws. In many of the States, only those who believe in the existence of some kind of God are under the protection of the law.

The supreme court of Illinois decided, in the year of grace 1856, that an unbeliever in the existence of an intelligent First Cause could not be allowed to testify in any court. His wife and children might have been murdered before his very face, and yet in the absence of other witnesses, the murderer could not have even been indicted. The atheist was a legal outcast. To him, Justice was not only blind but deaf. He was liable, like other men, to support the Government, and was forced to contribute his share towards paying the salaries of the very judges who decided that under no circumstances could his voice be heard in any court. This was the law of Illinois and so remained until the adoption of the new Constitution. By such infamous means has the church endeavored to chain the human mind and protect the majesty of her God. The fact is, we have no national religion, and no national God; but every citizen is allowed to have a religion and a God of his own, or to reject all religions and deny the existence of all gods. The church, however, never has and never will understand and appreciate the genius of our Government.

Last year, in a convention of Protestant bigots, held in the city of New York for the purpose of creating public opinion in favor of a religious amendment to the Federal Constitution, a reverend doctor of divinity, speaking of atheists, said: “What are the rights of the atheist? I would tolerate him as I would tolerate a poor lunatic. I would tolerate him as I would tolerate a conspirator. He may live and go free, hold his lands and enjoy his home—he may even vote; but for any higher or more advanced citizenship, he is, as I hold, utterly disqualified.” These are the sentiments of the church to-day.

Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all the ages will turn to ashes on the lips of men.

In religious ideas and conceptions there has been for ages a slow and steady development. At the bottom of the ladder (speaking of modern times) is Catholicism, and at the top is Science. The intermediate rounds of this ladder are occupied by the various sects, whose name is legion.

But whatever may be the truth upon any subject has nothing to do with our right to investigate that subject and express any opinion we may form. All that I ask is the same right I freely accord to all others.

A few years ago, a Methodist clergyman took it upon himself to give me a piece of friendly advice. “Although you may disbelieve the Bible,” said he, “you ought not to say so. That, you should keep to yourself.”

“Do you believe the Bible,” said I.

He replied, “Most assuredly.”

To which I retorted, “Your answer conveys no information to me. You may be following your own advice. You told me to suppress my opinions. Of course, a man who will advise others to dissimulate will not always be particular about telling the truth himself.”

There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest thought. No man, worthy of the form he bears, will at the command of church or state solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns.

It is the duty of each and every one to maintain his individuality. “This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” It is a magnificent thing to be the sole proprietor of yourself. It is a terrible thing to wake up at night and say, “There is nobody in this bed.” It is humiliating to know that your ideas are all borrowed; that you are indebted to your memory for your principles; that your religion is simply one of your habits, and that you would have convictions if they were only contagious. It is mortifying to feel that you belong to a mental mob and cry “crucify him” because the others do; that you reap what the great and brave have sown, and that you can benefit the world only by leaving it.

Surely every human being ought to attain to the dignity of the unit. Surely it is worth something to be one and to feel that the census of the universe would be incomplete without counting you. Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and all depths; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought; that your intellect owes no allegiance to any being, human or divine; that you hold all in fee and upon no condition and by no tenure whatever; that in the world of mind you are relieved from all personal dictation, and from the ignorant tyranny of majorities. Surely it is worth something to feel that there are no priests, no popes, no parties, no governments, no kings, no gods, to whom your intellect can be compelled to pay a reluctant homage. Surely it is a joy to know that all the cruel ingenuity of bigotry can devise no prison, no dungeon, no cell in which for one instant to confine a thought; that ideas cannot be dislocated by racks, nor crushed in iron boots, nor burned with fire. Surely it is sublime to think that the brain is a castle, and that within its curious bastions and winding halls the soul, in spite of all worlds and all beings, is the supreme sovereign of itself.

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• Antiracism is the only acceptable position on race.

• Secularism is the cause of moral subjectivism and cultural relativism.

• Social justice is a moral imperative.

• Toleration is a virtue we can all agree on, whatever our differences.

• Selfishness is the root cause of our problems—and altruism is the solution.

• Equality is a moral imperativ…

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Editor’s Note: William Kingdon Clifford was a 19th-century English mathematician and philosopher. In this essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” originally published in 1877, he argues that “it is wrong always, everywhere and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” The essay beautifully fleshes out Clifford’s case for this position, and I think you will find it interesting and enlightening.

Born May 4, 1845, Clifford tragically died of tuberculosis in 1879, at the age of thirty-three—just two years after the publication of this essay. But this thoughtful and well-concretized argument will live forever. I hope you enjoy it. —Craig Biddle

I. Duty of Inquiry

A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not over-well built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it.

Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong forever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him.

There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment. A suspicion got abroad that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children. They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in the exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made, that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused on insufficient evidence, but the evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgment was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honorable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion.

Let us vary this case also, and suppose, other things remaining as before, that a still more accurate investigation proved the accused to have been really guilty. Would this make any difference in the guilt of the accusers? Clearly not; the question is not whether their belief was true or false, but whether they entertained it on wrong grounds. They would no doubt say, “Now you see that we were right after all; next time perhaps you will believe us.” And they might be believed, but they would not thereby become honorable men. They would not be innocent, they would only be not found out. Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself in foro conscientiæ [in the court of conscience], would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would know that he had done a wrong thing.

It may be said, however, that in both of these supposed cases it is not the belief which is judged to be wrong, but the action following upon it. The shipowner might say, “I am perfectly certain that my ship is sound, but still I feel it my duty to have her examined, before trusting the lives of so many people to her.” And it might be said to the agitator, “However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man’s character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care.”

In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man’s belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in regard to the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts.

But this being premised as necessary, it becomes clear that it is not sufficient, and that our previous judgment is required to supplement it. For it is not possible so to sever the belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other. No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty.

Nor is that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may some day explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character forever.

And no one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handed on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgment is not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever. Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves, but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendor to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.

It is not only the leader of men, statesman, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with—if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and holds good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that I have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves, but in the name of Man and in his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of bringing a plague upon his family and his neighbors?

And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterward. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong toward Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby. In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong toward Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other’s mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, “Peace,” to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbors ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. So closely are our duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterward, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it—the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

If this judgment seems harsh when applied to those simple souls who have never known better, who have been brought up from the cradle with a horror of doubt, and taught that their eternal welfare depends on what they believe, then it leads to the very serious question, Who hath made Israel to sin?

It may be permitted me to fortify this judgment with the sentence of Milton—

“A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.”

And with this famous aphorism of Coleridge—

“He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”

Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete.

‘But,’ says one, ‘I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.’ Then he should have no time to believe.

II. The Weight of Authority

Are we then to become universal skeptics, doubting everything, afraid always to put one foot before the other until we have personally tested the firmness of the road? Are we to deprive ourselves of the help and guidance of that vast body of knowledge which is daily growing upon the world, because neither we nor any other one person can possibly test a hundredth part of it by immediate experiment or observation, and because it would not be completely proved if we did? Shall we steal and tell lies because we have had no personal experience wide enough to justify the belief that it is wrong to do so?

There is no practical danger that such consequences will ever follow from scrupulous care and self-control in the matter of belief. Those men who have most nearly done their duty in this respect have found that certain great principles, and these most fitted for the guidance of life, have stood out more and more clearly in proportion to the care and honesty with which they were tested, and have acquired in this way a practical certainty. The beliefs about right and wrong which guide our actions in dealing with men in society, and the beliefs about physical nature which guide our actions in dealing with animate and inanimate bodies, these never suffer from investigation; they can take care of themselves, without being propped up by “acts of faith,” the clamor of paid advocates, or the suppression of contrary evidence. Moreover there are many cases in which it is our duty to act upon probabilities, although the evidence is not such as to justify present belief; because it is precisely by such action, and by observation of its fruits, that evidence is got which may justify future belief. So that we have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyze the actions of our daily life.

But because it is not enough to say, “It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence,” without saying also what evidence is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire under what circumstances it is lawful to believe on the testimony of others; and then, further, we shall inquire more generally when and why we may believe that which goes beyond our own experience, or even beyond the experience of mankind.

In what cases, then, let us ask in the first place, is the testimony of a man unworthy of belief? He may say that which is untrue either knowingly or unknowingly. In the first case he is lying, and his moral character is to blame; in the second case he is ignorant or mistaken, and it is only his knowledge or his judgment which is in fault. In order that we may have the right to accept his testimony as ground for believing what he says, we must have reasonable grounds for trusting his veracity, that he is really trying to speak the truth so far as he knows it; his knowledge, that he has had opportunities of knowing the truth about this matter; and his judgment, that he has made proper use of those opportunities in coming to the conclusion which he affirms.

However plain and obvious these reasons may be, so that no man of ordinary intelligence, reflecting upon the matter, could fail to arrive at them, it is nevertheless true that a great many persons do habitually disregard them in weighing testimony. Of the two questions, equally important to the trustworthiness of a witness, “Is he dishonest?” and “May he be mistaken?” the majority of mankind are perfectly satisfied if one can, with some show of probability, be answered in the negative. The excellent moral character of a man is alleged as ground for accepting his statements about things which he cannot possibly have known. A Mohammedan, for example, will tell us that the character of his Prophet was so noble and majestic that it commands the reverence even of those who do not believe in his mission. So admirable was his moral teaching, so wisely put together the great social machine which he created, that his precepts have not only been accepted by a great portion of mankind, but have actually been obeyed. His institutions have on the one hand rescued the negro from savagery, and on the other hand have taught civilization to the advancing West; and although the races which held the highest forms of his faith, and most fully embodied his mind and thought, have all been conquered and swept away by barbaric tribes, yet the history of their marvellous attainments remains as an imperishable glory to Islam. Are we to doubt the word of a man so great and so good? Can we suppose that this magnificent genius, this splendid moral hero, has lied to us about the most solemn and sacred matters? The testimony of Mohammed is clear, that there is but one God, and that he, Mohammed, is his prophet; that if we believe in him we shall enjoy everlasting felicity, but that if we do not we shall be damned. This testimony rests on the most awful of foundations, the revelation of heaven itself; for was he not visited by the angel Gabriel, as he fasted and prayed in his desert cave, and allowed to enter into the blessed fields of Paradise? Surely God is God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.

What should we answer to this Mussulman? First, no doubt, we should be tempted to take exception against his view of the character of the Prophet and the uniformly beneficial influence of Islam: before we could go with him altogether in these matters it might seem that we should have to forget many terrible things of which we have heard or read. But if we chose to grant him all these assumptions, for the sake of argument, and because it is difficult both for the faithful and for infidels to discuss them fairly and without passion, still we should have something to say which takes away the ground of his belief, and therefore shows that it is wrong to entertain it. Namely this: the character of Mohammed is excellent evidence that he was honest and spoke the truth so far as he knew it; but it is no evidence at all that he knew what the truth was. What means could he have of knowing that the form which appeared to him to be the angel Gabriel was not a hallucination, and that his apparent visit to Paradise was not a dream? Grant that he himself was fully persuaded and honestly believed that he had the guidance of heaven, and was the vehicle of a supernatural revelation, how could he know that this strong conviction was not a mistake? Let us put ourselves in his place; we shall find that the more completely we endeavor to realize what passed through his mind, the more clearly we shall perceive that the Prophet could have had no adequate ground for the belief in his own inspiration. It is most probable that he himself never doubted of the matter, or thought of asking the question; but we are in the position of those to whom the question has been asked, and who are bound to answer it. It is known to medical observers that solitude and want of food are powerful means of producing delusion and of fostering a tendency to mental disease. Let us suppose, then, that I, like Mohammed, go into desert places to fast and pray; what things can happen to me which will give me the right to believe that I am divinely inspired? Suppose that I get information, apparently from a celestial visitor, which upon being tested is found to be correct. I cannot be sure, in the first place, that the celestial visitor is not a figment of my own mind, and that the information did not come to me, unknown at the time to my consciousness, through some subtle channel of sense. But if my visitor were a real visitor, and for a long time gave me information which was found to be trustworthy, this would indeed be good ground for trusting him in the future as to such matters as fall within human powers of verification; but it would not be ground for trusting his testimony as to any other matters. For although his tested character would justify me in believing that he spoke the truth so far as he knew, yet the same question would present itself—what ground is there for supposing that he knows?

Even if my supposed visitor had given me such information, subsequently verified by me, as proved him to have means of knowledge about verifiable matters far exceeding my own; this would not justify me in believing what he said about matters that are not at present capable of verification by man. It would be ground for interesting conjecture, and for the hope that, as the fruit of our patient inquiry, we might by and by attain to such a means of verification as should rightly turn conjecture into belief. For belief belongs to man, and to the guidance of human affairs: no belief is real unless it guide our actions, and those very actions supply a test of its truth.

But, it may be replied, the acceptance of Islam as a system is just that action which is prompted by belief in the mission of the Prophet, and which will serve for a test of its truth. Is it possible to believe that a system which has succeeded so well is really founded upon a delusion? Not only have individual saints found joy and peace in believing, and verified those spiritual experiences which are promised to the faithful, but nations also have been raised from savagery or barbarism to a higher social state. Surely we are at liberty to say that the belief has been acted upon, and that it has been verified.

It requires, however, but little consideration to show that what has really been verified is not at all the supernal character of the Prophet’s mission, or the trustworthiness of his authority in matters which we ourselves cannot test, but only his practical wisdom in certain very mundane things. The fact that believers have found joy and peace in believing gives us the right to say that the doctrine is a comfortable doctrine, and pleasant to the soul; but it does not give us the right to say that it is true. And the question which our conscience is always asking about that which we are tempted to believe is not, “Is it comfortable and pleasant?” but, “Is it true?” That the Prophet preached certain doctrines, and predicted that spiritual comfort would be found in them, proves only his sympathy with human nature and his knowledge of it; but it does not prove his superhuman knowledge of theology.

And if we admit for the sake of argument (for it seems that we cannot do more) that the progress made by Moslem nations in certain cases was really due to the system formed and sent forth into the the world by Mohammed, we are not at liberty to conclude from this that he was inspired to declare the truth about things which we cannot verify. We are only at liberty to infer the excellence of his moral precepts, or of the means which he devised for so working upon men as to get them obeyed, or of the social and political machinery which he set up. And it would require a great amount of careful examination into the history of those nations to determine which of these things had the greater share in the result. So that here again it is the Prophet’s knowledge of human nature, and his sympathy with it, that are verified; not his divine inspiration, or his knowledge of theology.

If there were only one Prophet, indeed, it might well seem a difficult and even an ungracious task to decide upon what points we would trust him, and on what we would doubt his authority; seeing what help and furtherance all men have gained in all ages from those who saw more clearly, who felt more strongly, and who sought the truth with more single heart than their weaker brethren. But there is not only one Prophet; and while the consent of many upon that which, as men, they had real means of knowing and did know, has endured to the end, and been honorably built into the great fabric of human knowledge, the diverse witness of some about that which they did not and could not know remains as a warning to us that to exaggerate the prophetic authority is to misuse it, and to dishonor those who have sought only to help and further us after their power. It is hardly in human nature that a man should quite accurately gauge the limits of his own insight; but it is the duty of those who profit by his work to consider carefully where he may have been carried beyond it. If we must needs embalm his possible errors along with his solid achievements, and use his authority as an excuse for believing what he cannot have known, we make of his goodness an occasion to sin.

To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour. The special mark of his religion, it is said, that in which it has never been surpassed, is the comfort and consolation which it gives to the sick and sorrowful, the tender sympathy with which it soothes and assuages all the natural griefs of men. And surely no triumph of social morality can be greater or nobler than that which has kept nearly half the human race from persecuting in the name of religion. If we are to trust the accounts of his early followers, he believed himself to have come upon earth with a divine and cosmic mission to set rolling the wheel of the law. Being a prince, he divested himself of his kingdom, and of his free will became acquainted with misery, that he might learn how to meet and subdue it. Could such a man speak falsely about solemn things? And as for his knowledge, was he not a man miraculous with powers more than man’s? He was born of woman without the help of man; he rose into the air and was transfigured before his kinsmen; at last he went up bodily into heaven from the top of Adam’s Peak. Is not his word to be believed in when he testifies of heavenly things?

If there were only he, and no other, with such claims! But there is Mohammed with his testimony; we cannot choose but listen to them both. The Prophet tells us that there is one God, and that we shall live forever in joy or misery, according as we believe in the Prophet or not. The Buddha says that there is no God, and that we shall be annihilated by and by if we are good enough. Both cannot be infallibly inspired; one or the other must have been the victim of a delusion, and thought he knew that which he really did not know. Who shall dare to say which? and how can we justify ourselves in believing that the other was not also deluded?

We are led, then, to these judgments following. The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying. And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify.

If a chemist tells me, who am no chemist, that a certain substance can be made by putting together other substances in certain proportions and subjecting them to a known process, I am quite justified in believing this upon his authority, unless I know anything against his character or his judgment. For his professional training is one which tends to encourage veracity and the honest pursuit of truth, and to produce a dislike of hasty conclusions and slovenly investigation. And I have reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the truth of what he is saying, for although I am no chemist, I can be made to understand so much of the methods and processes of the science as makes it conceivable to me that, without ceasing to be man, I might verify the statement. I may never actually verify it, or even see any experiment which goes toward verifying it; but still I have quite reason enough to justify me in believing that the verification is within the reach of human appliances and powers, and in particular that it has been actually performed by my informant. His result, the belief to which he has been led by his inquiries, is valid not only for himself but for others; it is watched and tested by those who are working in the same ground and who know that no greater service can be rendered to science than the purification of accepted results from the errors which may have crept into them. It is in this way that the result becomes common property, a right object of belief, which is a social affair and matter of public business. Thus it is to be observed that his authority is valid because there are those who question it and verify it; that it is precisely this process of examining and purifying that keeps alive among investigators the love of that which shall stand all possible tests, the sense of public responsibility as of those whose work, if well done, shall remain as the enduring heritage of mankind.

But if my chemist tells me that an atom of oxygen has existed unaltered in weight and rate of vibration throughout all time, I have no right to believe this on his authority, for it is a thing which he cannot know without ceasing to be man. He may quite honestly believe that this statement is a fair inference from his experiments, but in that case his judgment is at fault. A very simple consideration of the character of experiments would show him that they never can lead to results of such a kind; that being themselves only approximate and limited, they cannot give us knowledge which is exact and universal. No eminence of character and genius can give a man authority enough to justify us in believing him when he makes statements implying exact or universal knowledge.

Again, an Arctic explorer may tell us that in a given latitude and longitude he has experienced such and such a degree of cold, that the sea was of such a depth, and the ice of such a character. We should be quite right to believe him, in the absence of any stain upon his veracity. It is conceivable that we might, without ceasing to be men, go there and verify his statement; it can be tested by the witness of his companions, and there is adequate ground for supposing that he knows the truth of what he is saying. But if an old whaler tells us that the ice is three hundred feet thick all the way up to the Pole, we shall not be justified in believing him. For although the statement may be capable of verification by man, it is certainly not capable of verification by him, with any means and appliances which he has possessed; and he must have persuaded himself of the truth of it by some means which does not attach any credit to his testimony. Even if, therefore, the matter affirmed is within the reach of human knowledge, we have no right to accept it upon authority unless it is within the reach of our informant’s knowledge.

What shall we say of that authority, more venerable and august than any individual witness, the time-honored tradition of the human race? An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labors and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. It is around and about us and within us; we cannot think except in the forms and processes of thought which it supplies. Is it possible to doubt and to test it? and if possible, is it right?

We shall find reason to answer that it is not only possible and right, but our bounden duty; that the main purpose of the tradition itself is to supply us with the means of asking questions, of testing and inquiring into things; that if we misuse it, and take it as a collection of cut-and-dried statements, to be accepted without further inquiry, we are not only injuring ourselves here, but by refusing to do our part toward the building up of the fabric which shall be inherited by our children, we are tending to cut off ourselves and our race from the human line.

Let us first take care to distinguish a kind of tradition which especially requires to be examined and called in question, because it especially shrinks from inquiry. Suppose that a medicine-man in Central Africa tells his tribe that a certain powerful medicine in his tent will be propitiated if they kill their cattle; and that the tribe believe him. Whether the medicine was propitiated or not, there are no means of verifying, but the cattle are gone. Still the belief may be kept up in the tribe that propitiation has been effected in this way; and in a later generation it will be all the easier for another medicine-man to persuade them to a similar act. Here the only reason for belief is that everybody has believed the thing for so long that it must be true. And yet the belief was founded on fraud, and has been propagated by credulity. That man will undoubtedly do right, and be a friend of men who shall call it in question and see that there is no evidence for it, help his neighbors to see as he does, and even, if need be, go into the holy tent and break the medicine.

The rule, which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbors is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them. Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so, unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. However many nations and generations of men are brought into the witness-box, they cannot testify to anything which they do not know. Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all. And when we get back at last to the true birth and beginning of the statement, two serious questions must be disposed of in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying?

This last question is unfortunately a very actual and practical one even to us at this day and in this country. We have no occasion to go to La Salette, or to Central Africa, or to Lourdes, for examples of immoral and debasing superstition. It is only too possible for a child to grow up in London surrounded by an atmosphere of beliefs fit only for the savage, which have in our own time been founded in fraud and propagated by credulity.

Laying aside, then, such tradition as is handed on without testing by successive generations, let us consider that which is truly built up out of the common experience of mankind. This great fabric is for the guidance of our thoughts, and through them of our actions, both in the moral and in the material world. In the moral world, for example, it gives us the conceptions of right in general, of justice, of truth, of beneficence, and the like. These are given as conceptions, not as statements or propositions; they answer to certain definite instincts, which are certainly within us, however they came there. That it is right to be beneficent is matter of immediate personal experience; for when a man retires within himself and there finds something, wider and more lasting than his solitary personality which says, “I want to do right,” as well as, “I want to do good to man,” he can verify by direct observation that one instinct is founded upon and agrees fully with the other. And it is his duty so to verify this and all similar statements.

The tradition says also, at a definite place and time, that such and such actions are just, or true, or beneficent. For all such rules a further inquiry is necessary, since they are sometimes established by an authority other than that of the moral sense founded on experience. Until recently, the moral tradition of our own country—and indeed of all Europe—taught that it was beneficent to give money indiscriminately to beggars. But the questioning of this rule, and investigation into it, led men to see that true beneficence is that which helps a man to do the work which he is most fitted for, not that which keeps and encourages him in idleness; and that to neglect this distinction in the present is to prepare pauperism and misery for the future. By this testing and discussion, not only has practice been purified and made more beneficent, but the very conception of beneficence has been made wider and wiser. Now here the great social heirloom consists of two parts: the instinct of beneficence, which makes a certain side of our nature, when predominant, wish to do good to men; and the intellectual conception of beneficence, which we can compare with any proposed course of conduct and ask, “Is this beneficent or not?” By the continual asking and answering of such questions the conception grows in breadth and distinctness, and the instinct becomes strengthened and purified. It appears then that the great use of the conception, the intellectual part of the heirloom, is to enable us to ask questions; that it grows and is kept straight by means of these questions; and if we do not use it for that purpose we shall gradually lose it altogether, and be left with a mere code of regulations which cannot rightly be called morality at all.

Such considerations apply even more obviously and clearly, if possible, to the store of beliefs and conceptions which our fathers have amassed for us in respect of the material world. We are ready to laugh at the rule of thumb of the Australian, who continues to tie his hatchet to the side of the handle, although the Birmingham fitter has made a hole on purpose for him to put the handle in. His people have tied up hatchets so for ages: who is he that he should set himself up against their wisdom? He has sunk so low that he cannot do what some of them must have done in the far distant past—call in question an established usage, and invent or learn something better. Yet here, in the dim beginning of knowledge, where science and art are one, we find only the same simple rule which applies to the highest and deepest growths of that cosmic Tree; to its loftiest flower-tipped branches as well as to the profoundest of its hidden roots; the rule, namely, that what is stored up and handed down to us is rightly used by those who act as the makers acted, when they stored it up; those who use it to ask further questions, to examine, to investigate; who try honestly and solemnly to find out what is the right way of looking at things and of dealing with them.

A question rightly asked is already half answered, said Jacobi; we may add that the method of solution is the other half of the answer, and that the actual result counts for nothing by the side of these two. For an example let us go to the telegraph, where theory and practice, grown each to years of discretion, are marvelously wedded for the fruitful service of men. Ohm found that the strength of an electric current is directly proportional to the strength of the battery which produces it, and inversely as the length of the wire along which it has to travel. This is called Ohm’s law; but the result, regarded as a statement to be believed, is not the valuable part of it. The first half is the question: what relation holds good between these quantities? So put, the question involves already the conception of strength of current, and of strength of battery, as quantities to be measured and compared; it hints clearly that these are the things to be attended to in the study of electric currents. The second half is the method of investigation; how to measure these quantities, what instruments are required for the experiment, and how are they to be used? The student who begins to learn about electricity is not asked to believe in Ohm’s law: he is made to understand the question, he is placed before the apparatus, and he is taught to verify it. He learns to do things, not to think he knows things; to use instruments and to ask questions, not to accept a traditional statement. The question which required a genius to ask it rightly is answered by a tyro. If Ohm’s law were suddenly lost and forgotten by all men, while the question and the method of solution remained, the result could be rediscovered in an hour. But the result by itself, if known to a people who could not comprehend the value of the question or the means of solving it, would be like a watch in the hands of a savage who could not wind it up, or an iron steam-ship worked by Spanish engineers.

In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day. The very sacredness of the precious deposit imposes upon us the duty and the responsibility of testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to the utmost of our power. He who makes use of its results to stifle his own doubts, or to hamper the inquiry of others, is guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall never be able to blot out. When the labors and questionings of honest and brave men shall have built up the fabric of known truth to a glory which we in this generation can neither hope for nor imagine, in that pure and holy temple he shall have no part nor lot, but his name and his works shall be cast out into the darkness of oblivion forever.

III. The Limits of Inference

The question in what cases we may believe that which goes beyond our experience, is a very large and delicate one, extending to the whole range of scientific method, and requiring a considerable increase in the application of it before it can be answered with anything approaching to completeness. But one rule, lying on the threshold of the subject, of extreme simplicity and vast practical importance, may here be touched upon and shortly laid down.

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. A burnt child dreads the fire, because it believes that the fire will burn it to-day just as it did yesterday; but this belief goes beyond experience, and assumes that the unknown fire of to-day is like the known fire of yesterday. Even the belief that the child was burnt yesterday goes beyond present experience, which contains only the memory of a burning, and not the burning itself; it assumes, therefore, that this memory is trustworthy, although we know that a memory may often be mistaken. But if it is to be used as a guide to action, as a hint of what the future is to be, it must assume something about that future, namely, that it will be consistent with the supposition that the burning really took place yesterday; which is going beyond experience. Even the fundamental “I am,” which cannot be doubted, is no guide to action until it takes to itself “I shall be,” which goes beyond experience. The question is not, therefore, “May we believe what goes beyond experience?” for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but “How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?”

And an answer, of utter simplicity and universality, is suggested by the example we have taken: a burnt child dreads the fire. We may go beyond experience by assuming that what we do not know is like what we do know; or, in other words, we may add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature. What this uniformity precisely is, how we grow in the knowledge of it from generation to generation, these are questions which for the present we lay aside, being content to examine two instances which may serve to make plainer the nature of the rule.

From certain observations made with the spectroscope, we infer the existence of hydrogen in the sun. By looking into the spectroscope when the sun is shining on its slit, we see certain definite bright lines: and experiments made upon bodies on the earth have taught us that when these bright lines are seen hydrogen is the source of them. We assume, then, that the unknown bright lines in the sun are like the known bright lines of the laboratory, and that hydrogen in the sun behaves as hydrogen under similar circumstances would behave on the earth.

But are we not trusting our spectroscope too much? Surely, having found it to be trustworthy for terrestrial substances, where its statements can be verified by man, we are justified in accepting its testimony in other like cases; but not when it gives us information about things in the sun, where its testimony cannot be directly verified by man?

Certainly, we want to know a little more before this inference can be justified; and fortunately we do know this. The spectroscope testifies to exactly the same thing in the two cases; namely, that light-vibrations of a certain rate are being sent through it. Its construction is such that if it were wrong about this in one case, it would be wrong in the other. When we come to look into the matter, we find that we have really assumed the matter of the sun to be like the matter of the earth, made up of a certain number of distinct substances; and that each of these, when very hot, has a distinct rate of vibration, by which it may be recognized and singled out from the rest. But this is the kind of assumption which we are justified in using when we add to our experience. It is an assumption of uniformity in nature, and can only be checked by comparison with many similar assumptions which we have to make in other such cases.

But is this a true belief, of the existence of hydrogen in the sun? Can it help in the right guidance of human action?

Certainly not, if it is accepted on unworthy grounds, and without some understanding of the process by which it is got at. But when this process is taken in as the ground of the belief, it becomes a very serious and practical matter. For if there is no hydrogen in the sun, the spectroscope—that is to say, the measurement of rates of vibration—must be an uncertain guide in recognizing different substances; and consequently it ought not to be used in chemical analysis—in assaying, for example—to the great saving of time, trouble, and money. Whereas the acceptance of the spectroscopic method as trustworthy, has enriched us not only with new metals, which is a great thing, but with new processes of investigation, which is vastly greater.

For another example, let us consider the way in which we infer the truth of an historical event—say the siege of Syracuse in the Peloponnesian war. Our experience is that manuscripts exist which are said to be and which call themselves manuscripts of the history of Thucydides; that in other manuscripts, stated to be by later historians, he is described as living during the time of the war; and that books, supposed to date from the revival of learning, tell us how these manuscripts had been preserved and were then acquired. We find also that men do not, as a rule, forge books and histories without a special motive; we assume that in this respect men in the past were like men in the present; and we observe that in this case no special motive was present. That is, we add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in the characters of men. Because our knowledge of this uniformity is far less complete and exact than our knowledge of that which obtains in physics, inferences of the historical kind are more precarious and less exact than inferences in many other sciences.

But if there is any special reason to suspect the character of the persons who wrote or transmitted certain books, the case becomes altered. If a group of documents give internal evidence that they were produced among people who forged books in the names of others, and who, in describing events, suppressed those things which did not suit them, while they amplified such as did suit them; who not only committed these crimes, but gloried in them as proofs of humility and zeal; then we must say that upon such documents no true historical inference can be founded, but only unsatisfactory conjecture.

We may, then, add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature; we may fill in our picture of what is and has been, as experience gives it us, in such a way as to make the whole consistent with this uniformity. And practically demonstrative inference—that which gives us a right to believe in the result of it—is a clear showing that in no other way than by the truth of this result can the uniformity of nature be saved.

No evidence, therefore, can justify us in believing the truth of a statement which is contrary to, or outside of, the uniformity of nature. If our experience is such that it cannot be filled up consistently with uniformity, all we have a right to conclude is that there is something wrong somewhere; but the possibility of inference is taken away; we must rest in our experience, and not go beyond it at all. If an event really happened which was not a part of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all.

Are we then bound to believe that nature is absolutely and universally uniform? Certainly not; we have no right to believe anything of this kind. The rule only tells us that in forming beliefs which go beyond our experience, we may make the assumption that nature is practically uniform so far as we are concerned. Within the range of human action and verification, we may form, by help of this assumption, actual beliefs; beyond it, only those hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions.

To sum up:—

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.

We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.

It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.

This article appears in the Summer 2023 issue of The Objective Standard.

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The despotism of kings and priests trembles only when it is approached by the vigorous power of thought, and the efforts of a philosophic mind. —Elihu Palmer1

The United States of America was the first country in the world “to have an avowed philosophic meaning,” observes philosopher Leonard Peikoff. However, he points out:

The Founding Fathers were thinke…

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The history of Western philosophy is essentially a struggle of the human mind to discover truth and the method for achieving it, the method of objectivity.

A number of leading philosophers struggled heroically to identify, define, and explain this method. In this context, a “hero” is an individual of outstanding ability who struggles against substantial …

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How do we know what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong? What is our means of knowledge?

Our answers to these questions are the most consequential of all. They underlie and affect everything we think, say, and do. They determine the ideas we accept and reject, the plans we make, the actions we take, what we support, and whom we enable. They determine the course of our lives and the course of our culture, for better or worse.

Is knowledge a product of reason, observation, and logic? Is it a product of religious faith or social consensus? Is it acquired through a mixture of these—or perhaps some other means?

Toward answering these questions, we will look first at reason, its key components, and how they work. Then we will consider two forms of mysticism (i.e., claims to a means of knowledge other than reason) along with arguments in support of each: (1) the claim that religious faith is a means of knowledge, and (2) the claim that social consensus is a means of knowledge.

Reason and How It Works

Reason, as the philosopher Ayn Rand observed, is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.1 It operates by means of perceptual observation, conceptual integration, and logic.

In using reason, we perceive things, such as rocks, roses, people, and birds—and we observe their qualities and actions, such as hardness, redness, speaking, and flying. We mentally integrate our observations into conceptual abstractions, such as “rock,” “bird,” “speak,” and “fly”—and we integrate our concepts into increasingly abstract concepts, such as “animal,” “life,” “inanimate,” and “mortal.”

We further integrate our concepts into propositions and generalizations, such as “roses can be red,” “rocks are inanimate,” and “animals are mortal”—and into principles, such as “living things must take certain actions in order to remain alive” and “people must acquire knowledge in order to live.”

By enabling us to mentally integrate our perceptions into abstractions (concepts, generalizations, etc.), reason enables us to acquire, retain, and use a vast network of observation-based conceptual knowledge—from the principles of hunting to those of biology, to those of physics, engineering, art, and psychology.

Of course, human beings are fallible; we can err in our thinking. So, in order to correct any misconceptions or errors we might make, we must check our ideas for correspondence to reality. Our touchstones for this are the basic laws of nature: the laws of identity and causality.

The law of identity is the self-evident truth that everything is something specific; everything has properties that make it what it is; everything has a nature: A thing is what it is. (A rose is a rose; a woman is a woman.) The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action: A thing can act only in accordance with its nature.2 (A rose can bloom, it cannot speak; a woman can become an engineer, she cannot become a pillar of salt.) Insofar as our thinking is consistent with the laws of identity and causality, our thinking is grounded in reality; insofar as it is not, it is not. Our method for checking our ideas for compliance with these laws is logic, the method of non-contradictory identification.3

The basic law of logic is the law of non-contradiction, which is the law of identity in negative form: A thing cannot be both what it is and what it is not at the same time and in the same respect.4 (A rose cannot simultaneously be a non-rose.) The law of non-contradiction is the basic principle of rational thinking. Because a contradiction cannot exist in nature—because things are what they are—if a contradiction exists in our thinking, then our thinking is mistaken and in need of correction. (If we believe that a bush spoke or that a woman turned into a pillar of salt, then we need to correct our thinking).

Reason also enables us to use concepts for engaging in fantasy. We can pretend for the sake of fun or enjoyment that reality is other than it is—for instance, when we read science fiction or play Dungeons and Dragons. We also can pretend that reality is other than it is in an effort to “get away” with something we know we shouldn’t do—such as when a bank robber pretends that other people’s money belongs to him. Further, reason enables us to distinguish between these two types of pretending (fantasy and immorality) and to form concepts for identifying the state of mind of an adult who is unable to make the distinction (e.g., schizophrenic) or unwilling to do so (dishonest).

Reason is astonishingly powerful. It is why human beings have achieved so much and continue to achieve more and more. Consider modern agriculture, shipping, and food production; atomic theory, fracking, and energy production; air and space travel; symphonies and sculptures; COVID vaccines and radiation treatment; satellites, the internet, Zoom meetings—all such values are made possible by reason.

“Knowledge,” as Ayn Rand defines it, is “a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation.”5

Reason is our means of knowledge and our basic means of living. It works. We can see that it works. And we can see how it works. It works by means of identifiable sense organs and methods—including our eyes and ears, conceptual integration, and logic.

Now let’s consider the claim that faith is a means of knowledge.

Religious Faith as a Means of Knowledge

According to the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, faith is a means of gaining knowledge apart from or against evidence and logic.

Understanding the distinction between reason and faith is crucial, so I want to emphasize it from a few perspectives.

When a person accepts ideas on the basis of evidence and logic, he is accepting them by means of reason. When he accepts ideas on faith, he is accepting them in the absence of evidence or in defiance of logic. We have the two different concepts—reason and faith—so that we can differentiate between these two different ways of accepting ideas.

What one can know by reason is limited to that for which there is evidence. What one (allegedly) can know by faith is not limited. For instance, on the premise that faith is a means of knowledge, a person can “know” that a woman turned into a pillar of salt—even though (a) no evidence supports the idea and (b) the idea defies the laws of nature and logic. Likewise, on this premise, a person can “know” that a bush spoke, that a stick turned into a snake, that the Earth is only six thousand years old, or that seventy-two virgins await those who die fighting for Allah.

Because faith rejects the need for evidence and logic, a person of faith can “know” literally anything to be true. The following observations and integrations will bear this out.

“Faith,” according to the Bible, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”6 As Rabbi Abraham Heschel puts it, faith is a way of grasping truths that are “beyond our rational discerning,” beyond what “either reason or perception is able to grasp.”7

Given that faith does not operate by means of reason or perception, how exactly does it work? When we use reason, we receive data from external reality by means of our senses. We see by means of our eyes, hear by means of our ears, touch and feel by means of our skin and nerves. Our sense organs are our points of direct contact with reality. They are where and how the basic data of knowledge comes in. When someone “knows” by means of faith, what organ receives the data?

Islamic scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali explains: “Faith is belief in things which you do not see with your eyes but you understand with your spiritual sense.”8 What is your “spiritual sense”? Rabbi Heschel elaborates: It’s the sense that pertains not to the truth of perceptual reality, but to “the truth of an invisible reality,” a reality “man’s physical sense does not capture, yet the ‘spiritual soul’ in him perceives.”9

In other words, your “spiritual sense” is an extra, non-physical sense—a form of “extrasensory perception” or ESP—a sense that functions by means of no physical organ.

And what is the purpose of this “spiritual sense”? What does it do for you that reason and your physical senses do not? It enables you to believe in the existence of God and to obey his (alleged) commandments. Rabbi Heschel explains: “Just as clairvoyants may see the future” by means of their mystical powers, so, too, people of faith can grasp “the presence of God” and the imperative “to obey His rules and commandments” by way of their “spiritual sense.”10

What kind of rules and commandments does this “spiritual sense” enable people of faith to “understand” and obey? A biblical example is the commandment God issued to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.”11 That order, of course, does not make any rational sense. Why should a man kill his beloved son? But pointing out that an “understanding” received by the “spiritual sense” doesn’t make rational sense misses the point of faith.

The fact that the “spiritual sense” may deliver “truths” or “commandments” that don’t make sense from a rational perspective is, according to people of faith, irrelevant. “Where the act of faith takes place,” Rabbi Heschel explains, “is beyond all reasons. . . . Nobody can explain rationally why he should sacrifice his life and happiness for the sake of the good. The conviction that we must obey [God’s] ethical imperatives is not derived from logical arguments. It originates in an intuitive certitude, in a certitude of faith.”12

Now that we have a more fleshed-out idea of what faith is and how it supposedly works, let us ask a pressing question: What reason is there to accept faith as a means of knowledge? Why should people accept the idea that truth can be grasped by non-sensory, non-rational means?

Saint Thomas Aquinas answers: People “ought to believe matters of faith, not because of human reasoning, but because of the divine authority.” And why should people accept “the divine authority”? More to the point: Why should people accept the existence of a “divine being” in the first place? Aquinas answers: “In order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it was necessary for divine truths to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them, as it were, by God Himself who cannot lie.”13

That, of course, is a circular argument. It commits the logical fallacy of question begging or circular reasoning (i.e., assuming the point at issue, in an attempt to prove it).14 But such logical errors do not faze people of faith, because by accepting faith as a means of knowledge, they reject the principles of logic.

Theologian and pastor John Calvin attests to this:

Our conviction of the truth of Scripture must be derived from a higher source than human conjectures, judgments, or reasons; namely, the secret testimony of the Spirit. . . . God alone can properly bear witness to his own words. . . . The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted.15

The devoutly religious philosopher René Descartes provides another example, with the added twist of openly acknowledging the circularity of his argument and the fact that people of reason will not accept it:

It is of course quite true that we must believe in the existence of God because it is a doctrine of Holy Scripture, and conversely, that we must believe Holy Scripture because it comes from God; for since faith is the gift of God, he who gives us grace to believe other things can also give us grace to believe that he exists. But this argument cannot be put to unbelievers because they would judge it to be circular.16

Indeed, they would.

To accept faith as a means of knowledge is to undermine (and ultimately reject) reason along with all of the principles that attend it—including the need of evidence, the laws of logic, the method of science. If someone accepts the idea that he can know by means of faith, he thereby rejects the need of evidence and logic in support of knowledge. Conversely, if a person requires evidence and logic in support of knowledge, he thereby rejects the notion that anyone can know anything by means of faith. Thus, for people to maintain that faith is a means of knowledge, they must not allow the principles of reason to interfere with their project. An 18th-century Historical and Critical Dictionary explained:

Since the mysteries of religion are of a supernatural order, they cannot and must not be subjected to the rules of natural light. They are not made for being exposed to the test of philosophical disputations. Their greatness and sublimity forbid them to undergo this ordeal. It would be contrary to the nature of things that they should come out from such a combat as the victors. Their essential character is to be an object of Faith, not an object of Scientific Knowledge. . . . A disputation conducted exclusively in the light of our natural human intelligence will always end unfavourably for the theologians.17

The theologians are well aware of this.

Rabbi Heschel insists, “Reason is not the measure of all things, not the all-controlling power in the life of the man, not the father of all assertions. . . . Logical plausibility does not create faith nor does logical implausibility refute it.”18

Theologian and priest Martin Luther has more choice words for reason. It is, he says, “The Devil’s bride” and “God’s worst enemy”:

There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right. . . . Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. . . . Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God.19

We’ve seen what faith is. We’ve heard its advocates acknowledge that it involves no identifiable apparatus or means of operation, save a so-called “spiritual sense,” which amounts to clairvoyance or ESP. And we’ve heard what defenders of faith have to say about reason.

Now let’s take seriously this question: What would it mean genuinely to embrace faith as a means of knowledge—and to advocate that others do so, too? What would it mean in practice?

If we accept the idea that faith is a means of knowledge, we thereby accept the notion that people can “know” literally anything to be true:

• If a person has faith that he should love his neighbor, then he knows he should love his neighbor.

• If he has faith that he should love his enemies, then he knows he should love his enemies.

• If he has faith that he should turn the other cheek if someone strikes him, then he knows he should do so.

• If he has faith that he should kill his son if God commands it, then he knows he should do this.

• If he has faith that he should convert or kill unbelievers in obedience to Allah, then he knows he should do that.

And so on.

You see the breadth and depth of the problem.

This is why people of faith have been slaughtering each other—and slaughtering people of reason—for centuries. The Middle Ages were fraught with misery and bloodshed because of people’s faith-based obedience to an alleged God’s will. The Crusades entailed the massacre of tens of thousands of men, women, and children because people had faith that those of the wrong faith must die. In faith-based compliance with an alleged God’s will, priests and soldiers of the Inquisition imprisoned, tortured, hanged, gored, or burned tens of thousands of “heretics.” (Victims included the astronomer Giordano Bruno, who was burned alive for the “heresy” of thinking, and the scientist Galileo, who was sentenced to life under house arrest for defying the Church by reporting the truth.) The Thirty Years’ War was thirty uninterrupted years of Protestants and Catholics slaughtering each other over whose “spiritual sense” got things right. Christians in 17th-century Massachusetts held “witch” trials and hanged or crushed to death those whom their “spiritual sense” deemed “guilty.” Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, ordering his execution for “insulting” Allah in his novel The Satanic Verses, because Muslims have faith that their alleged God wants them to kill anyone who insults him. Osama bin Laden ordered jihadists to hijack commercial airliners and crash them into skyscrapers full of people because bin Laden and the jihadists had faith that Allah exists and wants Muslims to kill unbelievers. In the so-called “Holy Land” in the Middle East, people of faith have been at war since religion began, slaughtering each other for having the wrong “spiritual sense.” Religious disputes between Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Muslims are at the core of centuries of faith-based hatred and slaughter in the Balkans. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regularly beat, jail, and murder people for breaking the faith-based laws of Islam. (The punished include women for holding a job or exposing their ankles, men for failing to wear a beard, homosexuals for existing, and anyone for partaking in activities such as playing music, dancing, playing soccer, playing cards, taking photographs, or flying a kite.) And Muslims throughout the world declitorize young girls and make them “marry” old men because they “know” that this is moral.

Should we support these practices? The question is absurd. Yet if we accept faith as a means of knowledge, we do support them.

Either faith is a means of knowledge, or it is not. If it is, then whatever people have faith is true is by that fact true—and whatever they have faith they should do, they know they should do. Contrary to the tired bromide, “If there is no God, anything goes,” the fact is: If faith is a means of knowledge, anything goes.

Fortunately, every thinking adult knows, on some level, that faith is not a means of knowledge. This is why (rational) parents and teachers tell children to look at reality, to use their minds, to think. For instance, they tell children to look both ways before crossing the street, to think about where they’re going, what they’re doing, and what things are. They never tell children to close their eyes and use their “spiritual sense” to determine whether cars are coming, or the sum of two and two, or the elements that make up water, or the theme of a novel. The fact that everyone knows on some level that faith is not a means of knowledge is also why anyone who genuinely tries to determine whether an argument (such as the one I’m making here) is valid or invalid does so not by using his “spiritual sense” but by asking himself whether the argument is supported by evidence, whether it makes logical sense, and whether he can detect any contradictions in it.

Unfortunately, some people pretend that faith is a means of knowledge even when they know it is not. But to “get away” with this pretense, they need help.

In order to feel less guilty about their pretense, those who pretend that faith is a means of knowledge seek psychological support from others. They need others to pretend that their pretense is not pretense so that they will feel absolved of it. Ayn Rand called the seeking of such support “compound second-handedness,” and this is an important and useful phenomenon to understand.

Whereas regular second-handedness consists in treating the views or opinions of other people as more important than one’s own perception of reality and the judgment of one’s own mind, compound second-handedness consists in pretending that facts are other than they are, knowing the nature of one’s action, expecting others to fake their judgment of it, and accepting their faked judgment as a vindication of one’s pretense.20

When someone tries to get you to pretend that his pretense is not pretense, he is engaging in compound second-handedness. Do yourself—and him—a favor: Don’t pretend for him. Tell him that you know that faith is not a means of knowledge, that you know that he knows it, too, and that pretending faith is a means of knowledge is one of the most destructive and immoral things a person can do.

He might not thank you right away. But he might thank you someday. In any event, you will have spared him support of a vice that harms his life and that is responsible for unfathomable cruelty, suffering, and death.

Let’s turn now to another form of mysticism, the notion that social consensus is a means of knowledge.

Social Consensus as a Means of Knowledge

The idea that “social consensus is a means of knowledge” or that “agreement of the group determines what’s true and what’s right” has a long and complex history. But postmodernist philosopher Richard Rorty sums up the idea quite neatly: “There’s no court of appeal higher than a democratic consensus.”21

Of course, we can learn from other people, and we can work with others to acquire knowledge, discover truths, or check the veracity of our conclusions. But this is not what is meant by the claim that “social consensus is a means of knowledge.” When we learn from others, we use our own mind to determine whether their ideas, arguments, or claims make logical sense to us based on our own perceptions of reality. Likewise, when we collaborate with others to acquire knowledge, discover truths, or check the accuracy of conclusions, each person involved uses his own mind to determine what the facts are, what the evidence says, what is or isn’t true. As Ayn Rand put it,

The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.22

This view stands in sharp contrast to the idea that there’s no court of appeal higher than a democratic consensus.

Why do “people of consensus” (I’ll use that phrase for ease of identification) regard the ideas of a group as superior to an individual’s perception and judgment of the facts of reality? They make (or rely on) essentially two claims: (1) No one can know reality “as it really is,” and (2) What we call “knowledge” is really “group agreement” or “intersubjective consensus.” We’ll consider these in turn.

No one can know reality as it really is, the argument goes, because man’s sense organs process all incoming data before it reaches consciousness; thus, man is conscious not of an external reality or a world “out there,” but rather of internal processes or modifications.

One of the clearest statements of this idea comes from neuroscientist Sam Harris: “No human being has ever experienced an objective world, or even a world at all,” he writes. “The sights and sounds and pulsings that you experience” are consequences of processed data—data that has been “structured, edited, or amplified by the nervous system.” Thus, “The world that you see and hear is nothing more than a modification of your consciousness.”23

This view is rooted in the ideas of 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who wrote, “What objects may be in themselves, and apart from all this receptivity of our sensibility [i.e., sense perception], remains completely unknown to us.” Once we understand this, Kant says, we “realise that not only are the drops of rain mere appearances, but that even their round shape, nay even the space in which they fall, are nothing in themselves, but merely modifications” of consciousness. In principle, Kant says, the actual object—the object as it really is—“remains unknown to us.”24

It is true, of course, that our sense organs process the data we receive from the external world. But does that mean they distort our view of the world, or that all we perceive are modifications of consciousness?

Let’s put some relevant points in plain language: We have sense organs. They are our points of direct contact with the external world. When our eyes see, they connect with that world. When our ears hear, they connect with that world. When our fingers touch, they touch something real. When we perceive things, it is because our senses connect with things that exist. Those things—whether light, vibrations, liquids, solids, textures, or whatever they happen to be—affect our sense organs as they must, given what those things and our sense organs respectively are (recall the laws of identity and causality). Our sense organs, in turn, react as they must, and this reaction includes transmitting data to our nervous system and brain, which also have specific identities and act accordingly. Our consciousness becomes aware of the data as we perceive the objects by means of this chain of causal connections. The data is real. Our sense organs are real. Our nervous system and brain are real. All of the processing along the way is real. And our perception of reality is real.

Can we err? Of course, we can. But any error we make is not caused by our senses. It is not an error in perception. Our senses give us evidence that something exists. But they don’t tell us what that something is. As Ayn Rand observes, “what it is must be learned by [one’s] mind.”25 Philosopher Leonard Peikoff elaborates:

It is only in regard to the “what”—only on the conceptual level of consciousness—that the possibility of error arises. If a boy sees a jolly bearded man in a red suit and infers that Santa Claus has come down from the North Pole, his senses have made no error; it is his conclusion that is mistaken.

A so-called sensory illusion, such as a stick in water appearing bent, is not a perceptual error. . . . It is a testament to the reliability of the senses. The senses do not censor their response; they do not react to a single attribute (such as shape) in a vacuum, as though it were unconnected to anything else; they cannot decide to ignore part of the stimulus. Within the range of their capacity, the senses give us evidence of everything physically operative, they respond to the full context of the facts—including, in the present instance, the fact that light travels through water at a different rate than through air, which is what causes the stick to appear bent. It is the task not of the senses but of the mind to analyze the evidence and identify the causes at work (which may require the discovery of complex scientific knowledge). If a casual observer were to conclude that the stick actually bends in water, such a snap judgment would be a failure on the conceptual level, a failure of thought, not of perception. To criticize the senses for it is tantamount to criticizing them for their power, for their ability to give us evidence not of isolated fragments, but of a total.26

If we had no sense organs, we would have no means of seeing, hearing, or touching—no means of sensing or perceiving anything. The fact that we do have sense organs—and that they have specific identities and act in accordance with their identities—is not an obstacle to our perception of objects, but the basic means by which we perceive them.

Ayn Rand eloquently summed up the absurdity of Kant’s argument against the validity of the senses and our ability to know reality:

His argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is blind, because he has eyes—deaf, because he has ears—deluded, because he has a mind—and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them.27

The notion that we can’t perceive reality or know it “as it really is” flies in the face of everything we know and do in our lives. Even so, many modern philosophers and virtually all postmodernists doggedly embrace Kant’s position and restate it ad nauseam:

Professor Stanley Fish writes, “there is nothing that undergirds our beliefs, nothing to which our beliefs might be referred for either confirmation or correction.”28 So, if you pour a cup of coffee, you can’t refer to reality and confirm that you did?

Richard Rorty, channeling philosopher John Dewey, writes, “the idea . . . of an antecedently existing reality . . . the idea that there is a reality ‘out there’ with an intrinsic nature to be respected and corresponded to is not a manifestation of sound common sense.”29 So, it’s contrary to common sense to acknowledge that you are reading these words—and that your acknowledgement corresponds to reality?

Rorty continues: “Nothing grounds our practices, nothing legitimizes them, nothing shows them to be in touch with the way things are.”30 Philosopher Susan Haack responds pricelessly:

Once, at a conference in Brazil, I found myself obliged to make polite small talk with Rorty while we waited for the lecture room in which we were both to speak to open. Thinking the topic suitably neutral, I asked whether his wife had come with him on this trip. No, Rorty replied, she hadn’t; they were bird-watchers, he continued, and Mary only accompanied him when he was going to places where there were birds they had never seen before. I was on the point of exploding: “but, look, you say you don’t believe in ‘the way the world is’; so what could you possibly mean by ‘places where there are birds we have never seen before’?” But luckily, our conversation was interrupted by a pure black hummingbird flying by, and we were able to chat politely about that instead.31

This points to a fallacy identified by Ayn Rand, the fallacy of “concept stealing,” which Kant, Rorty, Fish, Dewey, Harris, and others commit regularly. Concept stealing consists in using an idea or concept while ignoring or denying ideas on which it logically depends.32 To use a concept such as “places” or “are” or “seen”—or any concept that refers directly or indirectly to the existence of reality—while denying the existence of reality is to tear the concept from the context that gives rise to it, the context that connects it to reality, the context that gives it meaning. Susan Haack’s question to Rorty, “what could you possibly mean by ‘places where there are birds we have never seen before’?” (emphasis added), goes right to the point. If there is no reality, or if we can’t know reality “as it is,” then our concepts are just floating abstractions with no real referents, no real meaning. Put another way, to hold that you can’t know reality while nevertheless referring to reality is to contradict yourself.

Even so, Kant, Rorty, Dewey, and company say that we can’t know reality “as it is.” What then can we “know”? What does this thing we call “knowledge” refer to? It refers, they say, to “intersubjective consensus.”

This is the second point that people of consensus make (or rely on) in denying that individuals can know facts of reality.

“Knowledge,” they say (insofar as they use the term) is a product not of the individual’s mind grasping reality, but of group agreement. It is “self-deception,” writes Rorty, to believe “that we know ourselves . . . or anything else” by “knowing a set of objective facts.”33 “Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective consensus among human beings.” To achieve what may be called “knowledge,” he says, one must refer to the “consensus about how things are”—and to do that, “one must use democratic institutions and procedures.”34 In other words, the individual is incapable of knowing on his own. He can “know” only through the collective consciousness of the group.

Indeed, writes Dewey, the individual, apart from the collective, is not even real:

Society in its unified and structural character is the fact of the case; the non-social individual is an abstraction arrived at by imagining what man would be if all his human qualities were taken away. Society, as a real whole, is the normal order, and the mass as an aggregate of isolated units is the fiction.35

Because the group or society “is the fact of the case” and the individual is a mere abstraction, we must refer to the group to determine what is true. We must turn to the collective and see what they agree to. “The best definition” of truth, writes Dewey, is the one posed by philosopher Charles Peirce: “The opinion that is fated to be agreed by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented by this opinion is the real.”36 In other words, truth is a product of social agreement, not individual perception and judgment.

All of this is neatly summed up in Rorty’s maxim: “There’s no court of appeal higher than a democratic consensus.”

Does this idea mean that whatever the majority says is true is, by that fact, true? Yes, that is the basic point. Does it mean that whatever the majority or the powerful decide to do they can legitimately do—regardless of how horrific it might be? It does. Stanley Fish clarifies: In answer to the question, “Does might make right? . . . the answer I must give is yes.”37 Does it mean that there is no fact of reality, aspect of human nature, or objective standard by reference to which we can judge human action at all? It does, explains Rorty: There is no “neutral ground on which to stand and argue that either torture or kindness are preferable to the other.”38 Indeed, writes Rorty:

When the secret police come, when the torturers violate the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form “There is something within you which you are betraying. Though you embody the practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is something beyond those practices which condemns you.”39

If there is no such thing as truth or knowledge in the sense of the individual perceiving reality, using his mind, generating ideas, and using logic to check them for correspondence to reality—if the individual is merely an abstraction and the group “is the fact of the case”—if all we can “know” is what a “collective consciousness” or “intersubjective consensus” agrees to—then we are in a very bad place. This is cultural relativism, plain and simple.40 And its practical consequences are as horrifying as you might imagine.

As Benito Mussolini explained in 1921, while he was developing the idea of fascism, which he would soon unleash on the world:

Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism. . . . If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth . . . then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. . . . From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.41

Fasces is Latin for “bundle” or “group”; fascism literally means “group-ism.” It regards the group as real, the state as most real, and the individual as an abstraction that is completely subservient to the collective. Having rejected the idea of objective truth, and having embraced the supremacy of the collective over any and all individuals, Mussolini and the Italian fascists set out to remake the world in the image of their ideology. In The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism (1932), Mussolini wrote:

If the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. . . .

Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. . . . The Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality. . . . The individual . . . is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom. . . .

For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. . . . But Empire demands discipline, the co-ordination of all forces and a deeply-felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains . . . the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement.42

The Italian fascists enforced their group consensus, attacked their neighbors, and took severe measures against those who resisted. They invaded Greece, murdering eleven thousand individuals and instigating a famine that killed three hundred thousand more. The methods of torture they used on dissidents included extracting their teeth with pliers, dragging them by the tail of a galloping horse, and dousing them with boiling oil.43 They invaded Ethiopia, dropping bombs of mustard gas on civilians, bombing Red Cross camps, shooting resisters, and throwing men, women, and children into concentration camps. They ultimately made Ethiopians submit and join the Empire. The death toll there was more than 382,000.44 They invaded Yugoslavia, where they massacred tens of thousands of men, women, and children, and herded thousands more to their deaths in concentration camps. An Italian soldier wrote home saying, “We have destroyed everything from top to bottom without sparing the innocent. We kill entire families every night, beating them to death or shooting them.”45

The National Socialists followed suit. “Truth” they insisted, is a matter of group consensus—in this case, the consensus of the “Aryan race” or “master race”—and the group has the right to create its own ideology—in this case Nazism—and to enforce it with all the energy of which it is capable. The Nazis proceeded to torture and murder six million individuals—men, women, and children—who belonged to the “wrong” race. The rationale? Individuals do not matter. Only “groups,” “types,” and “kinds” do. And only people of the right “kind” can know the truth of the matter or act accordingly because a person’s knowledge and character are determined by his kind, his race.

Virtually everyone knows about the Nazi’s systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. Relatively few know about the essence of the Nazis’ philosophy—in particular, their theory of knowledge. Carl Schmitt, a renowned jurist in National Socialist Germany, put it clearly:

A sound theory of knowledge demonstrates that only the person whose character and attitude are determined by his kind race . . . and who actually belongs to the community, is able to see facts in the right way, and to form valid impressions of human beings and things.

In the deepest core of his feelings, and in the smallest fibre of his brain tissue, man stands within the confines of his folk and race. . . . An alien [a person of a different race] may be as critical as he wants to be, he may be intelligent in his endeavour, he may read books and write them, but he thinks and understands things differently because he belongs to a different kind, and he remains within the existential conditions of his own kind in every decisive thought.46

This theory of knowledge was known and propagated throughout the Nazi ranks. Alfred Rosenberg, a leading theorist among National Socialists, said, “The race-soul is the measure of all our thoughts, . . . the final criterion of our values.”47 Otto Wacker, a leading National Socialist in the Ministry of Education, said, “The Negro or the Jew will view the same world in a different way from the German.”48 Philipp Lenard, “Chief of Aryan Physics” under the National Socialists, explained what this means for science: “Science, like every other human product, is racial and conditioned by the blood.” (Lenard and other “Aryan” physicists rejected Albert Einstein’s work because it was “Jewish physics” and thus inferior to “Aryan physics.”)49 And Hermann Goering, a major figure among the National Socialists, explained what this principle means for women: They must, he said, “take hold of the frying pan, dustpan and broom and marry a man.”50

The National Socialists held social consensus, in the form of the “race-soul,” as the source of all Aryan knowledge and values. Everything else the Nazis did—including murdering six million Jews—followed from that.

Marxist Socialists and communists also embrace the notion that truth and knowledge are matters of social consensus. In their case, the relevant “group” or “kind” is one’s economic class. The bourgeois (“middle class”) creates its own truth; and the proletariat (“working class”) creates its own truth; and neither’s truth applies to the other, so class warfare is inevitable until one class is gone.

As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto,

Don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.51

What did this theory of knowledge lead to? By conservative estimates, the number of individuals murdered during the 20th century by Marxist socialists and communists for belonging to the “wrong class” and thus not knowing the “right truth” is about 100 million. These include sixty-five million murdered by the Chinese communists, twenty million murdered by the Soviet socialists, and more than two million murdered by the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communists).52

Each and every one of these victims of collectivism was a real, living, breathing individual human being, with real values, goals, dreams, and loved ones. Each was murdered because people of consensus “knew” that he or she should be murdered. How did they “know”? They embraced social consensus as a means of knowledge.

Now, observe a profoundly relevant fact. The idea that social consensus determines truth is a textbook logical fallacy. It’s the fallacy of appeal to the masses or appeal to the majority. It is fallacious for the simple fact that truth is correspondence to reality, not social consensus. Every thinking adult knows that truth is not a matter of group consensus. We know that societies used to think that the Sun revolves around Earth rather than Earth revolving around the Sun, and we know that this did not make it so. We know that society in the antebellum South agreed that slavery should be legal—we know that some societies in Africa still agree that it should be legal—and we know that this didn’t make it true in the antebellum South and doesn’t make it true in Africa today. Likewise, we know that some people believe or pretend that truth and knowledge are matters of group consensus, and we know that this doesn’t make it so.

People of consensus embrace a logical fallacy as their theory of knowledge. They treat group opinion as the determinant of truth. In doing so, they foster second-handedness as their basic psychological disposition: They look to the group to see what they should think, believe, say, and do. And, having done that, they engage in compound second-handedness—seeking your faked agreement with their pretense that social consensus is the source of truth—in order to assuage their guilt for failing to look at reality, use their minds, and think for themselves.

***

Reason or mysticism: These are our basic alternatives.

One leads to knowledge, production, trade, prosperity, and social harmony. The other leads to ignorance, destruction, plunder, poverty, and unspeakable cruelty.

Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is the faculty that enables us to understand reality, the nature of things, and how we can use them to advance our lives, liberty, and happiness. Mysticism includes any claim to a non-sensory, non-rational means of knowledge—whether religious faith, a “spiritual sense,” social consensus, a “race-soul,” clairvoyance, ESP, or any other form of “just knowing.”53 Mysticism is an excuse for any criminal, dictator, collective, or “intersubjective consensus” to “get away” with anything, from robbery to rape to terrorism to genocide.

Mystics of all varieties want you to pretend that their pretense is not pretense. Do yourself—and them—a favor: Don’t pretend for them. Stand firm as a person of reason. Tell them that you know that reason is man’s only means of knowledge, that you know that they know it, too, and that pretending otherwise is one the most destructive and immoral things a person can do.

I recently joined Ricardo Ibáñez on his podcast, “Ricardo’s Time” to discuss Ayn Rand’s morality of rational egoism and how it compares to religious morality.

Our conversation focuses on the value of Rand’s ideas to people from Latin America who were raised in religious families and environments. We discuss real-life problems associated with religion alo…

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