The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1889-08-24
FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.
Tho ar-Reaching and Immense Powe
OF Our Most Secret Thoughts.

! CHoio'O iunu. ~ Cdu nave no Qlrect
power over his thoughts. His actions
may be restrained, his speech may be
fettered. his body may be chained. his
life itself may be taken away, but his
thoughts no one can interfere with.
They remain his own, and, except with
his will. no one can ever guess what
they are. But does this absence of di-
rect power insure true freedom of
thought? 1t may at first sight seem to
do SO. but deeper insight into the
nature of thought will show that it is
itself subject to many influences and
conditions. Associations, circum-
stances, education, climate, race, .occu-
patton, hopes, fears, emotions-all
exert an indirect but powerful pres
sure upon thought; so powerful that if
in one sense it is always free. in an
other sense it is always controlled. If
no one else can claim authority over
our thought, neither may we exercise
an absolute and immediate dominion
over it. Is freedom of thought, then,
mere name-a sound without mean
ingP Not 80. Real freedom of any
kind involves not only the absence of
artificial restraint, but the presence
of Influences favorable to growth
and development. The infant left
without care is not free; it
has no choice but to perish. The
body can be enslaved by gout or par
alysis as surely as by prisons and
chains; both prevent the healthful
exercise which is its life. Even indo-
lence and self-indulgence may prove
equal tyrants. 1t is only where a
wholesome and active life secures for
the body that varied motion and other
salutary conditions needful to its best
development that we can say the free
dom of the body is secured. So the
freedom which thought needs is not
merely the absence of any personal
compulsory force, but the presence of
favorable influences, which shall enable
1t to grow in strength and to perform
its functions in the most perfect man.
ner. Our thoughts should be the
guides of our whole lives; their
province is to discover truth and to
reject error. to sift the just from the
unjust, the pure from the impure, the
better from the worse. and so to apply
them as to improve character and life.
How important, then, it becomes that
we should foster those conditions and
influences that will enable thought to
perform, without hindrance, SO essen
tial work! One very strong pres
sure that bears upon thought to pre-
vent its freedom and restrain its
growth is that of fancied personal in
terest. We say fancied, because the
real interest Of the individual is bound
up in the healthful advancement of his
thought. But it is not uncommon for
people to imagine that their happiness
lies in an opposite direction. They
fear the censure of their party, or the
frown of fashionable circle, or the
loss of favor or patronage, if they fol-
low out some train of thought to its
logical conclusions. Or they see that
If they accept its issues it will require OF
them certain sacrifices, which they are
not prepared to make. Thus they stiHe
or abandon thoughts that seem danger
GUS, and remain on what they sup
pose to be safe ground, forgetting that
there is no mental safety where free
dom of thought is banished. Then
there are also prejudices and antip-
athies, and even sympathies, to guard
against. 1t is impossible fully to esti-
mate how much our thinking is gov
erned by our feeling. We love one per-
son and refuse to see any defect in
him. We dislike another, and his de-
fects are SO patent to US that we see no
virtues. So with the parties we espouse
and those we oppose. Our tendency
Is to esteem the ideas and doings of !
the one as all right and those of the
other as all wrong. In general it may
be said that the desire to establish as |
true some particular conclusion, or
some special set of ideas, is u stronger
element in the investigation than the
desire to find out what really is true.
Now the desires and the emotions are
valuable parts OF our nature and deserve
full recognition. but when they tyran-
nize over the thoughts and prevent
their free action they exceed their do
main and ought to be controlled. It
should be habit of the mind to pause
and inquire why we think |
thus and 30; for the motives to thought
are as numerous and as varied as the
motives to action, and form as good a
test of its character. Perhaps few
duties are more difficult than this, yet
few are more essential to the cause of |
Justice and truth. Could we correctly
the immense power of our
most secret thoughts, their influence
upon speech and action. upon charac-