A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
illustration of that collective predilection of men to a gregarious
iniquity which is no less noteworthy in the psychology of groups
than their profession of high moral standards. And such proclivities
are always to be reckoned with in such episodes. Anytos, the leading
prosecutor, seems to have been a typical bigot, brainless, spiteful,
and thoroughly self-satisfied. Not only party malice, however, but
the individual dislikes which Sokrates so industriously set up,
[660] must have counted for much in securing the small majority
of the dikastery that pronounced him guilty--281 to 276; and his
own clear preference for death over any sort of compromise did the
rest. [661] He was old, and little hopeful of social betterment;
and the temperamental obstinacy which underlay his perpetual and
pertinacious debating helped him to choose a death that he could easily
have avoided. But the fact remains that he was not popular; that the
mass of the voters as well as of the upper class disliked his constant
cross-examination of popular opinion, [662] which must often have led
logical listeners to carry on criticism where he left off; and that
after all his ratiocination he left Athens substantially irrational, as
well as incapable of justice, on some essential issues. His dialectic
method has done more to educate the later world than it did for Greece.
Upon the debate as to the legal punishability of Sokrates turns
another as to the moral character of the Athenians who forced
him to drink the hemlock. Professor Mahaffy, bent on proving
the superiority of Athenian culture and civilization to those
of Christendom, effectively contrasts the calm scene in the
prison-chamber of Sokrates with the hideous atrocities of the
death penalty for treason in the modern world and the "gauntness
and horror of our modern executions" (Social Life in Greece,
3rd. ed. pp. 262-69); and Mr. Bleeckly (Socrates and the Athenians,
1884, pp. 55-63) similarly sets against the pagan case that of the
burning of heretics by the Christian Church, and in particular the
auto da fé at Valladolid in 1559, when fifteen men and women--the
former including the conscientious priests who had proposed to
meet the hostility of Protestant dissent in the Netherlands by
reforms in the Church: the latter including delicately-nurtured
ladies of high family--were burned to death before the eyes of
the Princess Regent of Spain and the aristocracy of Castile. It
is certainly true that this transaction has no parallel in the
criminal proceedings of pagan Athens. Christian cruelty has been as
much viler than pagan, culture for culture, as the modern Christian
environment is uglier than the Athenian. Before such a test the
special pleaders for the civilizing power of Christianity can
but fall back upon alternative theses which are the negation of
their main case. First we are told that "Christianity humanizes
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