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                            A SHORT HISTORY
                                   OF
                              FREETHOUGHT

                           ANCIENT AND MODERN



                                   BY
                           JOHN M. ROBERTSON



                  THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED

                             IN TWO VOLUMES

                                 Vol. I

        (ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED)

                                London:
                              WATTS & CO.,
                  JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.

                                  1915







                                   TO
                          SYDNEY ANSELL GIMSON







CONTENTS


VOLUME I

                                                            PAGE

    Preface                                                   xi

    Chap. I--Introductory

        § 1. Origin and Meaning of the word Freethought        1
        § 2. Previous histories                               10
        § 3. The Psychology of Freethinking                   15

    Chap. II--Primitive Freethinking                          22

    Chap. III--Progress under Ancient Religions

        § 1. Early Association and Competition of Cults       44
        § 2. The Process in India                             48
        § 3. Mesopotamia                                      61
        § 4. Ancient Persia                                   65
        § 5. Egypt                                            69
        § 6. Phoenicia                                        78
        § 7. Ancient China                                    82
        § 8. Mexico and Peru                                  88
        § 9. The Common Forces of Degeneration                91

    Chap. IV--Relative Freethought in Israel

        § 1. The Early Hebrews                                97
        § 2. The manipulated prophetic literature            104
        § 3. The Post-Exilic Literature                      109

    Chap. V--Freethought in Greece                           120

        § 1. Beginnings of Ionic Culture                     123
        § 2. Homer, Stesichoros, Pindar, and Æschylus        126
        § 3. The Culture-Conditions                          134
        § 4. From Thales to the Eleatic School               136
        § 5. Pythagoras and Magna Graecia                    148
        § 6. Anaxagoras, Perikles, and Aspasia               152
        § 7. From Demokritos to Euripides                    157
        § 8. Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle                  168
        § 9. Post-Alexandrian Greece: Ephoros, Pyrrho,
             Zeno, Epicurus, Theodorus, Diagoras, Stilpo,
             Bion, Strato, Evêmeros, Carneades, Clitomachos;
             The Sciences; Advance and Decline of Astronomy;
             Lucian, Sextus Empiricus, Polybius, Strabo;
             Summary                                         180

    Chap. VI--Freethought in ancient Rome

        § 1. Culture Beginnings, to Ennius and the Greeks    194
        § 2. Lucretius, Cicero, Cæsar                        201
        § 3. Decline under the Empire                        207
        § 4. The higher Pagan ethics                         215

    Chap. VII--Ancient Christianity and its Opponents

        § 1. Freethought in the Gospels: contradictory
             forces                                          218
        § 2. The Epistles: their anti-rationalism            224
        § 3. Anti-pagan rationalism. The Gnostics            224
        § 4. Rationalistic heresy. Arius. Pelagius.
             Jovinian. Aerius. Vigilantius. The religious
             wars                                            229
        § 5. Anti-Christian thought: its decline. Celsus.
             Last lights of critical thought. Macrobius.
             Theodore. Photinus. The expulsion of science.
             The appropriation of pagan endowments           235
        § 6. The intellectual and moral decadence. Boethius  243

    Chap. VIII--Freethought under Islam

        § 1. Mohammed and his contemporaries.
             Early "Zendekism"                               248
        § 2. The Influence of the Koran                      252
        § 3. Saracen freethought in the East. The
             Motazilites. The Spread of Culture.
             Intellectual Collapse                           253
        § 4. Al-Ma'arri and Omar Khayyám. Sufîism            261
        § 5. Arab Philosophy and Moorish freethought.
             Avempace. Abubacer. Averroës. Ibn Khaldun       266
        § 6. Rationalism in later Islam. Sufîism. Bâbism in
             contemporary Persia. Freethinking in Mohammedan
             India and Africa                                272

    Chap. IX--Christendom in the Middle Ages                 277

        § 1. Heresy in Byzantium. Iconoclasm. Leo. Photius