We are already acquainted with this freedom. We approach now the main question: What is the true relation of the freedom, which man may rightly claim for his scientific activity and reason, to external laws and regulations? Is man really justified to reject them all on the plea that they degrade his intellect and are an obstacle to his development, or does this rejection but manifest an error into which his desire of freedom has decoyed him? This is the question, it will be remembered, that we reached soon in the beginning of our investigation. We have already found the categorical answer – an emphatic rejection of such justification; we also traced the hypotheses on which the answer rests. We now return to the question to discuss it in principle. We begin with the freedom of scientific research, in order to take up afterwards the freedom in teaching.
What are those external powers that may interrupt or caution the scientist in his investigations and problems? Here we do not yet consider the scientist as a teacher, communicating to the public the result of his investigation, his ideas and views, from the university chair to his scientific audience, or to a wider circle of hearers by means of publications; we here regard him in his private study only, in the pursuit of which he perhaps encounters new questions, and new solutions suggest themselves to him. What freedom can he and must he enjoy here? This private freedom must evidently be judged from a point of view other than that from which the freedom in teaching should be judged. With the latter, the interests of his contemporaries must be taken into account, and the question must be considered, whether they suffer by such teaching. The freedom of the scientist is greater than that of the teacher. Moreover, research is the principal and most important activity of science: nothing, surely, is taught that has not been previously investigated. If, therefore, research is in any way restricted, so also is teaching; but not vice versa. Are there, then, exterior authorities that may restrain research and reasoning, and what are they?
One who lives in the Christian world knows at once of what authority to think. It is not the state. The state cannot directly influence the private work of the student: if it may exert its influence directly upon anything, it is only upon freedom in teaching. No, the authority to think of is the authority of the faith, revealed religion and its guardian, the Church.
Of course, this is not the only authority. Even if a revelation from heaven had not been given us, yet those general convictions of mankind, common to all nations and times, of the immutability of the laws of thought and morality, of the existence of a supramundane God, of the retribution for moral conduct to be made in the world to come, of the sanctity of state-authority, of the necessity of private property, and others, would ever remain most revered utterances of truth. No one would be allowed to contradict this avowal of all mankind, relying on his own reasoning, which he calls science, and give the lie to the reasoning of all other men, in order to make his own reason the sole measure of truth.
But for the present let us pass over the natural authority of mankind, of its convictions and traditions. It is surpassed and replaced by the authority of faith which belongs to our Christian religion. The latter comes to us claiming to possess the only true view of the world, and laying upon us the obligation of accepting it. It has even the courage to put its anathema upon propositions which the scientist may call science; it dares write out a list of the propositions which it condemns as untenable. Against this authority the protest is raised: Where is freedom of research, if one cannot even indulge in his own ideas, if the intellect is to be cropped and fettered? What is to become of frank, unprejudiced investigation, if I am from the outset bound to certain propositions, if from the outset the result at which I must arrive is already determined? It is intellectual bondage that the man of faith is languishing in. Thus reads the indictment; thus sounds the battle-cry. Is the indictment justified? Can and shall science take faith as a guide in many instances without detriment to its own innate freedom? And where, and when?
First, the more general question: Is freedom of research compatible with the duty to believe, or do they exclude each other in principle?
What Faith is Not
What, then, is faith, and what does the duty to believe demand of us?
Here we meet at once with a false proposition which the opponents of the Christian faith will not abandon. To them faith is always a blind assent, in giving which one does not ask, nor dare ask, whether the proposition be true —a belief without personal conviction. According to them the believer holds himself “captive to the teaching of his Church. He cannot reflect personally, but follows blindly the lead of authority and force of habit.” Thus “Catholicism is the religion of bondage” (W. Wundt, Ethik, 3d ed., 1903, II, 255, 254). To them it is but an “uncritical submission to the existing authority, uninfluenced either by the testimony of the senses or the reflection of the intellect” (K. Menger, Neue Freie Presse, 24 Nov., 1907). The campaign for liberal science is denouncing those who “even to-day dare to demand blind faith,” “without proof or criticism,” faith in the “word of the Popes and men pretending to be interpreters and emissaries of God, men who have proved their incompetence and inability by the physical and religious coercion to which they have subjected mankind” (T. G. Masaryk, V boji o nábozenstvi, The Battle for Religion, 1904, p. 10, 23).
To be sure, if the Christian faith were such, it would be intellectual slavery. If I am compelled to believe something of which I cannot know the truth, this is coercion, and conflicts with the nature of the intellect and its right to truth. Infidelity would then be liberation. But faith is not that.
As a rule this view is based on a presumption, which has already been extensively discussed, viz., that faith and religion have nothing at all to do with intellectual activity, but are merely the product of the heart, a sentimental, freely acting notion; for, of metaphysical objects no human intellect can form a certain conviction. It is subjectivism that leads to this view. According to it the subject creates its own world of thought, free in action and feeling, not indeed everywhere, – in the sphere of sense-experience the evidence of the concrete is too great, – but at least in the sphere of metaphysical truth.
Such modes of expression find their way also into Catholic literature and language; even here we meet with the assertion that religion is a matter of the heart, and for that very reason has nothing to do with science. On the whole it is a remarkable fact that among believing men many expressions are current that have been coined in the mint of modern philosophy, and have there received a special significance. They are used without real knowledge of their origin and purposed meaning; but the words do not fail to colour their ideas, and to create imperceptibly a strange train of thought.
One who is of the opinion that religion and views of the world are but sentiment and feeling, which change with one's personality and individuality, can, of course, no longer understand a dogmatic Christianity and the obligation to hold fast to clearly defined dogmas as unchangeable truth. I can hold dogmas and doctrinal decisions to be unquestionably true only when I can convince myself of their credibility by the judgment of my reason. If I cannot do that, and am still bound to believe them, without the least doubt, then such obedience is compulsory repression of the reason. Then it would indeed be necessary for the Church, as Kant says, “to instil into its flock a pious dread of the least deviation from certain articles of faith based on history, and a dread of all investigation, to such a degree that they dare not let a doubt rise, even in thought, against the articles proposed for their belief, because this would be tantamount to lending an ear to the evil spirit” (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 3. Stueck, 2. Abtlg.). Fixed dogmas may then at the very most, according to the great master of modern thought, be of pedagogic value to a minor, until he be grown to maturity. But to more advanced minds must be unconditionally conceded the freedom to construct dogmas as they think best, viz., as