human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked back upon from
the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the appearance of one
vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always in one ultimate
direction, as though guided by some controlling human intellect. But, to
the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it presented an appearance
far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, now there, by isolated
individuals and small groups, and often for what appeared small and almost
personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in common. Now it
was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract theory with
regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his
rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a
Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake because she refused to
bow her head before two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant
Calvin at Geneva; or a Spinoza cut off from his tribe and people because he
could see nothing but God anywhere; and then it was an exiled Rousseau or
Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; till, in our own day the last sounds
of the long fight are dying about us, as fading echoes, in the guise of a
few puerile attempts to enforce trivial disabilities on the ground of
abstract convictions. The vanguard of humanity has won its battle for
freedom of thought.

But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during the
long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the
majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders--most
certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to his
immortal "I can no otherwise" (the eternal justification of all reformers
and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the battlefield on
which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the issues which were
involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames shot up about him,
cried to his companion in death, "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall by