The New York Times Magazine Dec. 16, 1951 Drawing by Bertrand Zadig "The essence of the liberal outlook is a belief that men should be free to question anything if-they can support their questioning by solid arguments." The Best Answer to Fanaticism-Liberalism T HE more I see of other countries Its calm search for truth, viewed as dangerous tries he is put in prison, and in Amer- the more persuaded I become ica he is thought unfit to perform any that the English are a very odd in many places, remains the hope of humanity. public function. What you are to be people. Their virtues are due to their sure of depends, of course, upon your vices, and their vices to their virtues. longitude. East of the Elbe, it is ab- They are tolerant-more so I think By BERTRAND RUSSELL solutely certain that capitalism is than any other large nation-because tottering; west of the Elbe, it is ab- they consider ideas unimportant. In persecution would be a more sincere and Cavaliers and thought the impor- solutely certain that capitalism is the other countries ideas are thought im- compliment. tant thing was to learn to live at peace salvation of mankind. The good citizen There is, in the present day, a very with one's neighbor, even if there were portant and therefore dangerous; in is not the man who attempts to be general decay of liberalism, even in matters about which one did not agree England ideas are thought negligible guided by the evidence but the man countries where there has been an in- with him. Locke based this attitude of and therefore not worth persecuting. who never resists longitudinal inspira- crease of democracy. Liberalism is not live-and-let-live on the fallibility of all This was not always the case. In the tion. so much a creed as a disposition. It is, human opinion. He thought nothing seventeenth century, England had a indeed, opposed to creeds. It began in indubitable. He held that everything is A spate of ideologies leading to civil wars MERICA, which imagines itself and executions and thumbscrews, but the late seventeenth century as a re- open to question. He maintained that the land of free enterprise, will not action from the futile wars of religion there is only probable opinion, and that in 1688 the country decided that it had permit free enterprise in the world of had enough of earnestness and that which, though they killed immense the person who feels no doubt is stupid. ideas. In America, almost as much as numbers of people, left the balance of Such an outlook, we are now assured, anybody who believed anything at all in Russia, you must think what your power unchanged. I suppose that if is a great drawback in battle, and is, fervently was no gentleman. This de- neighbor thinks, or rather what your America and Russia were to fight each therefore, to be decried. But the Eng- cision was made all the easier by the neighbor thinks that it pays to think. other for a hundred and thirty years lish, while they held this attitude, fact that the most fanatical fanatics Free enterprise is confined to the ma- without either of them gaining any ad- acquired their empire, defeated the had gone to America. Ever since, Eng- terial sphere. This is what Americans lishmen who have beliefs are treated vantage, there might, at the end of French and the Spaniards and were mean when they say that they are op- that time, be a few people who would as licensed buffoons or court jesters. only defeated by the Americans, who posed to materialism. wonder whether the fighting was serv- had the same attitude in an even more There are no civil wars and nobody's Those for whom free use of the intelli- head is cut off. This is convenient, ing any purpose. This is what happened marked degree. gence has made intellectual submission in the second half of the seventeenth but one sometimes feels that a little T difficult find themselves, wherever the century. happy days are past. Nowa- government is persecuting, led into op- BERTRAND RUSSELL, British philosopher, The great apostle of liberalism was days, the man who has any doubt position to authority. But the liberal won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Locke, who disliked both Roundheads whatever is despised; in many coun- attitude does (Continued on Page 40) 9