Age of Reason I. Chapter XII - The Effects of Christianism on Education; Proposed Reforms.
by Thomas Paine
As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology,
so also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which
is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does
not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of
languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives
names.
The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not
consist in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman's speaking Latin,
or a Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking
English. From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that
they knew or studied any language but their own, and this was one
cause of their becoming so learned; it afforded them more time to
apply themselves to better studies. The schools of the Greeks were
schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in
the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy teach that
learning consists.
Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from
the Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore
became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a
different language, that some among them should learn the Greek
language, in order that the learning the Greeks had might be made
known in those nations, by translating the Greek books of science and
philosophy into the mother tongue of each nation.
The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner
for the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist;
and the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it
were the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It
made no part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as
to make it exceedingly probable that the persons who had studied
Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such for instance as
Euclid's Elements, did not understand any of the learning the works
contained.
As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages,
all the useful books being already translated, the languages are
become useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning
them is wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to
the progress and communication of knowledge (for it has nothing to do
with the creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages
that new knowledge is to be found; and certain it is, that, in
general, a youth will learn more of a living language in one year,
than of a dead language in seven; and it is but seldom that the
teacher knows much of it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead
languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the
languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation
entirely lost. It would be the same thing with any other language
when it becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now exists does
not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian
milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a
milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom,
not so well as the cows that she milked. It would therefore be
advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the
dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did,
in scientific knowledge.
The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead
languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not
capable of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory. But
this is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural
disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with
it. The first and favourite amusement of a child, even before it
begins to play, is that of imitating the works of man. It builds
bouses with cards or sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl
of water with a paper boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and
contrives something which it calls a mill; and it interests itself in
the fate of its works with a care that resembles affection. It
afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed by the barren
study of a dead language, and the philosopher is lost in the linguist.
But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead
languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning
to the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore
must be sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this kind, the
best evidence that can be produced, is the internal evidence the
thing carries with itself, and the evidence of circumstances that
unites with it; both of which, in this case, are not difficult to be
discovered.
Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage
offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the
innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low
contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a
man, in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his
supposed sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as
matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called
the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account
of the creation -- the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple
-- the amphibious idea of a man-god -- the corporeal idea of the
death of a god -- the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the
christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three,
are all irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that
God has given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the
power and wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying
the structure of the universe that God has made.
The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system
of faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive
knowledge that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and
wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in
all the works of creation, would militate against, and call into
question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became
necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size less
dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the
idea of learning to the dead study of dead languages.
They not only rejected the study of science out of the christian
schools, but they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last
two centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610,
Galileo, a Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of
telescopes, and by applying them to observe the motions and
appearances of the heavenly bodies, afforded additional means for
ascertaining the true structure of the universe. Instead of being
esteemed for these discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or
the opinions resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. And prior to
that time Virgilius was condemned to be burned for asserting the
antipodes, or in other words, that the earth was a globe, and
habitable in every part where there was land; yet the truth of this
is now too well known even to be told. [NOTE: I cannot discover the
source of this statement concerning the ancient author whose Irish
name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British Museum
possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext of
the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against
Virgilius, Abbot -- bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the
rival "British" and "Roman parties, and the British champion made a
countercharge against Boniface of irreligious practices." Boniface
had to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. The
Pope, Zachary II., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against God
and his soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other
men, or sun and moon," should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should
be excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical
sanctions. Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation
with "canonicis sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century,
it did not fall on Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred,
755, and it is probable that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with
orthodoxy. The gravamen of the heresy seems to have been the
suggestion that there were men not of the progeny of Adam. Virgilius
was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He bore until his death, 789, the
curious title, "Geometer and Solitary," or "lone wayfarer"
(Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his memory until 1233,
when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside his accuser,
St. Boniface. -- Editor. (Conway)]
If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would
make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them.
There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a
trencher, any more than there was moral virtue in believing it was
round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing that
the Creator made no other world than this, any more than there was
moral virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the
infinity of space is filled with worlds. But when a system of
religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is
not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost
inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground.
It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same
mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though
otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the
criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies
by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In
this view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every
possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other
part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But
this, the supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if
dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the
sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes
lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as
they did, it is most probable they would not have lived to finish
them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same
time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for it in flames.
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but,
however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to
believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age
of ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more
knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries
afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as
already said, was only another species of mythology; and the
mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient
system of theism. [NOTE by Paine: It is impossible for us now to know
at what time the heathen mythology began; but it is certain, from the
internal evidence that it carries, that it did not begin in the same
state or condition in which it ended. All the gods of that mythology,
except Saturn, were of modern invention. The supposed reign of Saturn
was prior to that which is called the heathen mythology, and was so
far a species of theism that it admitted the belief of only one God.
Saturn is supposed to have abdicated the govemment in favour of his
three sons and one daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after
this, thousands of other gods and demigods were imaginarily created,
and the calendar of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints
and the calendar of courts have increased since.
All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in
religion have been produced by admitting of what man calls 'revealed
religion.' The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than
the christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were
supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost
all occasions.
Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern
predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the
christian sacrifice of the Creator, have been produced by admitting
of what is called revealed religion, the most effectual means to
prevent all such evils and impositions is, not to admit of any other
revelation than that which is manifested in the book of Creation.,
and to contemplate the Creation as the only true and real word of God
that ever did or ever will exist; and every thing else called the
word of God is fable and imposition. -- Author.]
It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other
cause, that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many
hundred years to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had
the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock
that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with
characters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those
Ancients we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the
background of the scene. But the christian system laid all waste; and
if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we
look back through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as
over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept
the vision to the fertile hills beyond.
It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any
thing should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be
irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe
that God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied.
The event that served more than any other to break the first link in
this long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known by the name of
the Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not appear
to have made any part of the intention of Luther, or of those who are
called Reformers, the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their
natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the
Reformation did; for, with respect to religious good, it might as
well not have taken place. The mythology still continued the same;
and a multiplicity of National Popes grew out of the downfall of the
Pope of Christendom.