nearly all important historical events bore in some way on the struggle for freedom of thought.  It would require a lifetime to calculate, and many books to describe, all the directions and interactions of the intellectual and social forces which, since the fall of ancient civilization, have hindered and helped the emancipation of reason.  All one can do, all one could do even in a much bigger volume than this, is to indicate the general course of the struggle and dwell on some particular aspects which the writer may happen to have specially studied.

[21] Chapter II

REASON FREE

(Greece and Rome)

When we are asked to specify the debt which civilization owes to the
Greeks, their

[22] achievements in literature and art naturally occur to us first of all.  But a truer answer may be that our deepest gratitude is due to them as the originators of liberty of thought and discussion.  For this freedom of spirit was not only the condition of their speculations in philosophy, their progress in science, their experiments in political institutions; it was also a condition of their literary and artistic excellence.  Their literature, for instance, could not have been what it is if they had been debarred from free criticism of life.  But apart from what they actually accomplished, even if they had not achieved the wonderful things they did in most of the realms of human activity, their assertion of the principle of liberty would place them in the highest rank among the benefactors of the race; for it was one of the greatest steps in human progress.

We do not know enough about the earliest history of the Greeks to explain how it was that they attained their free outlook upon the world and came to possess the will and courage to set no bounds to the range of their criticism and curiosity.  We have to take this character as a fact.  But it must be remembered that the Greeks consisted of a large number of separate peoples, who varied largely in temper, customs and traditions,

[23] though they had important features common to all.  Some were conservative, or backward, or unintellectual compared with others.  In this chapter “the Greeks” does not mean all the Greeks, but only those who count most in the history of civilization, especially the Ionians and Athenians.

Ionia in Asia Minor was the cradle of free speculation.  The history of European science and European philosophy begins in Ionia.  Here (in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) the early philosophers by using their reason sought to penetrate into the origin and structure of the world.  They could not of course free their minds entirely from received notions, but they began the work of destroying orthodox views and religious faiths.  Xenophanes may specially be named among these pioneers of thought (though he was not the most important or the ablest), because the toleration of