FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
In ancient times, civil liberties did not include freedom of thought. Censorship, in varying degrees of rigorousness, has, in fact, been a worldwide phenomenon in all periods of history. And whether communities have been large or small has made no difference. The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics devotes no less than 25 pages to showing, under the heading of ‘persecution.’ how at all stages of ancient history, people all over the world have been denied this basic freedom. “Ancient society was essentially intolerant” (p. 743). This meant that the thinking of the common man had; of necessity, to bow to the thinking of the ruling classes.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica also devotes eight pages to the intellectual censorship, which was universally prevalent in antiquity. As a case in point, it cites the notorious example of how Chinese citizens were denied freedom of thought by Shin Huang Ti, the Emperor who built the Great Wall of China. In the year 213, he ordered all books to be burnt, saving those dealing with harmless subjects such as medicine and agriculture. Five hundred scholars were executed, and thousands were banished. The punishment for failure to burn proscribed books within 30 days was branding and condemnation to forced labour.
Other peoples who suffered similar oppression were the Spartans, and the early Romans, Jews and Christians. According to Plutarch, in The Ancient Customs of the Spartans, the Spartans learned to read and write for purely practical reasons, and all other educational influences—books and treatises as well as meetings with learned men—were banned. The arts and philosophy flourished in democratic Athens, but many artists and philosophers, among them Aeschylus, Euripides, Phidias, Socrates, and Aristotle, were exiled, imprisoned, executed, or took flight.
The office of Censor was established in Rome in 443 B.C. Criticism of the Roman authorities was akin to treason. The article says, “Treason included allusion, statement, and criticism. Philosophers and rhetoricians were twice banished by law, and the political rights of actors were curtailed by edicts of the censors. Many prominent citizens were persecuted for having made critical comments on the ruling class.”
For almost three centuries after Christ, the Jews and Christians remained hostile to one another only because of differences in their religious beliefs. First the Jews persecuted the Christians. When in the fourth century Christianity became the religion of the empire, Christian officials persecuted the Jews.
One reason for the constraint on freedom of thought in the past was that an atmosphere of intellectual freedom would have jeopardized the whole social hierarchy, based as it was on religions which had been tainted by human interpolations. Had free enquiry been fostered, the rulers would have been unable to maintain the veracity of such man-made beliefs as served their purpose. Those who attempted free and scientific enquiry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe were, therefore, subjected by the Church to severe persecution. It was fear on the part of the religious authorities of being overthrown, which led to the persecution of these would-be scientists. Drapier has given details of these persecutions in his book entitled Conflict between Science and Religion. A more precise tide would have been, ‘Conflict between Science and Christianity.’
