22. They start with the first degree, i.e., the less severe torture. Although exceedingly severe, it is light compared to those tortures which follow. Wherefore if she confesses, they say the woman has confessed without torture!

23. Now, what prince can doubt her guilt when he is told she has confessed voluntarily, without torture?

24. She is therefore put to death without scruple. But she would have been executed even if she had not confessed; for when once the torture has begun, the die is already cast; she cannot escape, she has perforce to die.

25. The result is the same whether she confesses or not. If she confesses, her guilt is clear: she is executed. All recantation is in vain. If she does not confess, the torture is repeated - twice, thrice, four times. In exceptional crimes, the torture is not limited in duration, severity, or frequency.

26. If, during the torture, the old woman contorts her features with pain, they say she is laughing; if she loses consciousness, she is sleeping or has bewitched herself into taciturnity. And if she is taciturn, she deserves to be burned alive, as lately has been done to some who, though several times tortured, would not say what the investigators wanted.

27. And even confessors and clergymen agree that she died obstinate and impenitent; that she would not be converted or desert her incubus, but kept faith with him.

28. If, however, she dies under so much torture, they say the devil broke her neck.

29. Wherefore the corpse is buried underneath the gallows.

30. On the other hand, if she does not die under torture, and if some exceptionally scrupulous judge hesitates to torture her further without fresh proofs or to burn her without her confession, she is kept in prison and more harshly chained, there to rot until she yields, even if it take a whole year.

31. She can never clear herself. The investigating committee would feel disgraced if it acquitted a woman; once arrested and in chains, she has to be guilty, by fair means or foul.

32. Meanwhile, ignorant and headstrong priests hara.s.s the wretched creature so that, whether truly or not, she will confess herself guilty; unless she does so, they say, she cannot be saved or partake of the sacraments.

33. More understanding or learned priests cannot visit her in prison lest they counsel her or inform the princes what goes on. Nothing is more dreaded than that something be brought to light to prove the innocence of the accused. Persons who try to do so are labelled troublemakers.

34. While she is kept in prison and tortured, the judges invent clever devices to build up new proofs of guilt to convict her to her face, so that, when reviewing the trial, some university faculty can confirm her burning alive.

35. Some judges, to appear ultrascrupulous, have the woman exorcized, transferred elsewhere, and tortured all over again, to break her taciturnity; if she maintains silence, then at last they can burn her. Now, in Heaven's name, I would like to know, since she who confesses and she who does not both perish alike, how can anybody, no matter how innocent, escape? O unhappy woman, why have you rashly hoped? Why did you not, on first entering prison, admit whatever they wanted? Why, foolish and crazy woman, did you wish to die so many times when you might have died but once? Follow my counsel, and, before undergoing all these pains, say you are guilty and die. You will not escape, for this were a catastrophic disgrace to the zeal of Germany.

36. When, under stress of pain, the witch has confessed, her plight is indescribable. Not only cannot she escape herself, but she is also compelled to accuse others whom she does not know, whose names are frequently put into her mouth by the investigators or suggested by the executioner, or of whom she has heard as suspected or accused. These in turn are forced to accuse others, and these still others, so it goes on: who can help seeing that it must go on and on?

37. The judges must either suspend these trials (and so impute their validity) or else burn their own folk, themselves, and everybody else; for all sooner or later are falsely accused and, if tortured, all are proved guilty.

38. Thus eventually those who at first clamoured most loudly to feed the flames are themselves involved, for they rashly failed to see that their turn too would come. Thus Heaven justly punishes those who with their pestilent tongues created so many witches and sent so many innocent to the stake...

Von Spec is not explicit about the sickening methods of torture employed. Here is an excerpt from an invaluable compilation, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, by Rossell Hope Robbins (1959): by Rossell Hope Robbins (1959):

One might glance at some of the special tortures at Bamberg, for example, such as the forcible feeding of the accused on herrings cooked in salt, followed by denial of water - a sophisticated method which went side by side with immersion of the accused in baths of scalding water to which lime had been added. Other ways with witches included the wooden horse, various kinds of racks, the heated iron chair, leg vises [Spanish boots], and large boots of leather or metal into which (with the feet in them, of course) was poured boiling water or molten lead. In the water torture, the question de I'eau, question de I'eau, water was poured down the throat of the accused, along with a soft cloth to cause choking. The cloth was pulled out quickly so that the entrails would be torn. The thumbscrews water was poured down the throat of the accused, along with a soft cloth to cause choking. The cloth was pulled out quickly so that the entrails would be torn. The thumbscrews [gresillons] [gresillons] were a vise designed to compress the thumbs or the big toes to the root of the nails, so that the crushing of the digit would cause excruciating pain. were a vise designed to compress the thumbs or the big toes to the root of the nails, so that the crushing of the digit would cause excruciating pain.

In addition, and more routinely applied, were the strappado and squa.s.sation and still more ghastly tortures that I will avoid describing. After torture, and with the instruments of torture in plain view, the victim was asked to sign a statement. This was then described as a 'free confession', voluntarily admitted to.

At great personal risk, von Spec protested the witch mania. So did a few others, mainly Catholic and Protestant clergy who had witnessed these crimes at first hand - including Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio in Italy, Cornelius Loos in Germany and Reginald Scot in Britain in the sixteenth century; as well as Johann Mayfurth ('Listen, you money-hungry judges and bloodthirsty prosecutors, the apparitions of the Devil are all lies') in Germany and Alonzo Salazar de Frias in Spain in the seventeenth century. Along with von Spec and the Quakers generally, they are heroes of our species. Why are they not better known?

In A Candle in the Dark A Candle in the Dark (1656), Thomas Ady addressed a key question: (1656), Thomas Ady addressed a key question: Some again will object and say, If Witches cannot kill, and do many strange things by Witchcraft, why have many confessed that they have done such Murthers, and other strange matters, whereof they have been accused?

To this I answer, If Adam and Eve in their innocency were so easily overcome, and tempted to sin, how much more may poor Creatures now after the Fall, by persuasions, promises, and threatenings, by keeping from sleep, and continual torture, be brought to confess that which is false and impossible, and contrary to the faith of a Christian to believe?

It was not until the eighteenth century that the possibility of hallucination as a component in the persecution of witches was seriously entertained; Bishop Francis Hutchinson, in his Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (1718), wrote (1718), wrote Many a man hath verily believed he hath seen a spirit externally before him, when it hath been only an internal image dancing in his own brain.

Because of the courage of these opponents of the witch mania, its extension to the privileged cla.s.ses, the danger it posed to the growing inst.i.tution of capitalism, and especially the spread of the ideas of the European Enlightenment, witch burnings eventually disappeared. The last execution for witchcraft in Holland, cradle of the Enlightenment, was in 1610; in England, 1684; America, 1692; France, 1745; Germany, 1775; and Poland, 1793. In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitorial torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.

The witch mania is shameful. How could we do it? How could we be so ignorant about ourselves and our weaknesses? How could it have happened in the most 'advanced', the most 'civilized' nations then on Earth? Why was it resolutely supported by conservatives, monarchists and religious fundamentalists? Why opposed by liberals, Quakers and followers of the Enlightenment? If we're absolutely sure that our beliefs are right, and those of others wrong; that we are motivated by good, and others by evil; that the King of the Universe speaks to us, and not to adherents of very different faiths; that it is wicked to challenge conventional doctrines or to ask searching questions; that our main job is to believe and obey - then the witch mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last man. Note Friedrich von Spec's very first point, and the implication that improved public understanding of superst.i.tion and scepticism might have helped to short-circuit the whole train of causality. If we fail to understand how it worked in the last round, we will not recognize it as it emerges in the next.

'It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,' said Josef Goebbels, the n.a.z.i propaganda minister. In George Orwell's novel 1984, 1984, the 'Big Brother' state employs an army of bureaucrats whose only job is to alter the records of the past so they conform to the interests of those currently in power. the 'Big Brother' state employs an army of bureaucrats whose only job is to alter the records of the past so they conform to the interests of those currently in power. 1984 1984 was not just an engaging political fantasy; it was based on the Stalinist Soviet Union, where the re-writing of history was inst.i.tutionalized. Soon after Stalin took power, pictures of his rival Leon Trotsky - a monumental figure in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions - began to disappear. Heroic and wholly anhistoric paintings of Stalin and Lenin together directing the Bolshevik Revolution took their place, with Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, nowhere in evidence. These images became icons of the state. You could see them in every office building, on outdoor advertising signs sometimes ten storeys high, in museums, on postage stamps. was not just an engaging political fantasy; it was based on the Stalinist Soviet Union, where the re-writing of history was inst.i.tutionalized. Soon after Stalin took power, pictures of his rival Leon Trotsky - a monumental figure in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions - began to disappear. Heroic and wholly anhistoric paintings of Stalin and Lenin together directing the Bolshevik Revolution took their place, with Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, nowhere in evidence. These images became icons of the state. You could see them in every office building, on outdoor advertising signs sometimes ten storeys high, in museums, on postage stamps.

New generations grew up believing that was was their history. Older generations began to feel that they remembered something of the sort, a kind of political false-memory syndrome. Those who made the accommodation between their real memories and what the leadership wished them to believe exercised what Orwell described as 'doublethink'. Those who did not, those old Bolsheviks who could recall the peripheral role of Stalin in the Revolution and the central role of Trotsky, were denounced as traitors or unreconstructed bourgeoisie or 'Trotskyites' or 'Trotsky-fascists', and were imprisoned, tortured, made to confess their treason in public, and then executed. It their history. Older generations began to feel that they remembered something of the sort, a kind of political false-memory syndrome. Those who made the accommodation between their real memories and what the leadership wished them to believe exercised what Orwell described as 'doublethink'. Those who did not, those old Bolsheviks who could recall the peripheral role of Stalin in the Revolution and the central role of Trotsky, were denounced as traitors or unreconstructed bourgeoisie or 'Trotskyites' or 'Trotsky-fascists', and were imprisoned, tortured, made to confess their treason in public, and then executed. It is is possible - given absolute control over the media and the police - to rewrite the memories of hundreds of millions of people, if you have a generation to accomplish it in. Almost always, this is done to improve the hold that the powerful have on power, or to serve the narcissism or megalomania or paranoia of national leaders. It throws a monkey-wrench into the error-correcting machinery. It works to erase public memory of profound political mistakes, and thus to guarantee their eventual repet.i.tion. possible - given absolute control over the media and the police - to rewrite the memories of hundreds of millions of people, if you have a generation to accomplish it in. Almost always, this is done to improve the hold that the powerful have on power, or to serve the narcissism or megalomania or paranoia of national leaders. It throws a monkey-wrench into the error-correcting machinery. It works to erase public memory of profound political mistakes, and thus to guarantee their eventual repet.i.tion.

In our time, with total fabrication of realistic stills, motion pictures, and videotapes technologically within reach, with television in every home, and with critical thinking in decline, restructuring societal memories even without much attention from the secret police seems possible. What I'm imagining here is not that each of us has a budget of memories implanted in special therapeutic sessions by state-appointed psychiatrists, but rather that small numbers of people will have so much control over new stories, history books, and deeply affecting images as to work major changes in collective att.i.tudes.

We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-91, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally - granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intelligence data - to a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr Hussein, but it was striking how quickly he could be brought from someone almost no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil. These days the apparatus for generating indignation is busy elsewhere. How confident are we that the power to drive and determine public opinion will always reside in responsible hands?

Another contemporary example is the 'war' on drugs where the government and munificently funded civic groups systematically distort and even invent scientific evidence of adverse effects (especially of marijuana), and in which no public official is permitted even to raise the topic for open discussion.

But it's hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR, so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings. By the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Trotsky (Stalin's a.s.sa.s.sin had cracked Trotsky's head open with a hammer), into the USSR, so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings. By the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Trotsky (Stalin's a.s.sa.s.sin had cracked Trotsky's head open with a hammer), Izvestia Izvestia could extol Trotsky as 'a great and irreproachable* revolutionary', and a German Communist publication went so far as to describe him as could extol Trotsky as 'a great and irreproachable* revolutionary', and a German Communist publication went so far as to describe him as

fight[ing] for all of us who love human civilization, for whom this civilization is our nationality. His murderer... tried, in killing him, to kill this civilization... [This] was a man who had in his head the most valuable and best-organized brain that was ever crushed by a hammer.

Trends working at least marginally towards the implantation of a very narrow range of att.i.tudes, memories and opinions include control of major television networks and newspapers by a small number of similarly motivated powerful corporations and individuals, the disappearance of compet.i.tive daily newspapers in many cities, the replacement of substantive debate by sleaze in political campaigns, and episodic erosion of the principle of the separation of powers. It is estimated (by the American media expert Ben Bagditrian) that fewer than two dozen corporations control more than half of the global business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books and movies! The proliferation of cable television channels, cheap long-distance telephone calls, fax machines, computer bulletin boards and networks, inexpensive computer self-publishing and surviving instances of the traditional liberal arts university curriculum are trends that might work in the opposite direction.

It's hard to tell how it's going to turn out.

The business of scepticism is to be dangerous. Scepticism challenges established inst.i.tutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of sceptical thought, they will probably not restrict their scepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials and 35,000-year-old channellees. Maybe they'll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious .nsdtutions. Perhaps they'll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?

Ethnocentrism, xenophobia and nationalism are these days rife in many parts of the world. Government repression of unpopular views is still widespread. False or misleading memories are inculcated. For the defenders of such att.i.tudes, science is disturbing. It claims access to truths that are largely independent of ethnic or cultural biases. By its very nature, science transcends national boundaries. Put scientists working in the same field of study together in a room and even if they share no common spoken language, they will find a way to communicate. Science itself is a transnational language. Scientists are naturally cosmopolitan in att.i.tude and are more likely to see through efforts to divide the human family into many small and warring factions. 'There is no national science,' said the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, 'just as there is no national multiplication table.' (Likewise, for many, there is no such thing as a national religion, although the religion of nationalism has millions of adherents.) In disproportionate numbers, scientists are found in the ranks of social critics (or, less charitably, 'dissidents'), challenging the policies and myths of their own nations. The heroic names of the physicists Andrei Sakharov' in the former USSR, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard in the United States, and Fang Li-zhu in China spring readily enough to mind, the first and last risking their lives. Especially in the aftermath of the invention of nuclear weapons, scientists have been portrayed as ethical cretins. This is an injustice, considering all those who, sometimes at considerable personal peril, have spoken out against their own countries' misapplications of science and technology.

[* As a much-decorated 'Hero' of the Soviet Union, and privy to its nuclear secrets, Sakharov in the Cold War year 1968 boldly wrote - in a book published in the West and widely distributed in samizdal samizdal in the USSR - 'Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the ma.s.s myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demogogues, can be transformed into b.l.o.o.d.y dictatorships.' He was thinking of both East and West. I would add that free thought is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for democracy.] in the USSR - 'Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the ma.s.s myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demogogues, can be transformed into b.l.o.o.d.y dictatorships.' He was thinking of both East and West. I would add that free thought is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for democracy.]

For example, the chemist Linus Pauling (1901-94) was, more than any other person, responsible for the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which halted above-ground explosions of nuclear weapons by the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. He mounted a blistering campaign of moral outrage and scientific data, made more credible by the fact that he was a n.o.bel laureate. In the American press, he was generally vilified for his troubles, and in the 1950s the State Department cancelled his pa.s.sport because he had been insufficiently anti-communist. His n.o.bel Prize was awarded for the application of quantum mechanical insights - resonances, and what is called hybridization of orbitals - to explain the nature of the chemical bond that joins atoms together into molecules. These ideas are now the bread and b.u.t.ter of modern chemistry. But in the Soviet Union, Pauling's work on structural chemistry was denounced as incompatible with dialectical materialism and declared off-limits to Soviet chemists.

Undaunted by this criticism East and West - indeed, not even slowed down - he went on to do monumental work on how anaesthetics work, identified the cause of sickle cell anaemia (a single nucleotide subst.i.tution in DNA), and showed how the evolutionary history of life might be read by comparing the DNAs of various organisms. He was hot on the trail of the structure of DNA; Watson and Crick were consciously rushing to get there before Pauling. The verdict on his a.s.sessment of Vitamin C is apparently still out. 'That man is a real genius' was Albert Einstein's a.s.sessment.

In all this time he continued to work for peace and amity. When Ann and I once asked Pauling about the roots of his dedication to social issues, he gave a memorable reply: 'I did it to be worthy of the respect of my wife,' Helen Ava Pauling. He won a second n.o.bel Prize, this one in peace, for his work on the nuclear test ban, becoming the only person in history to win two unshared n.o.bel Prizes.

There were some who saw Pauling as a troublemaker. Those unhappy about social change may be tempted to view science itself with suspicion. Technology is safe, they tend to think, readily guided and controlled by industry and government. But pure science, science for its own sake, science as curiosity, science that might lead anywhere and challenge anything, that's another story. Certain areas of pure science are the unique pathway to future technologies - true enough - but the att.i.tudes of science, if applied broadly, can be perceived as dangerous. Through salaries, social pressures, and the distribution of prestige and awards, societies try to herd scientists into some reasonably safe middle ground - between too little long-term technological progress and too much short-term social criticism.

Unlike Pauling, many scientists consider their job to be science, narrowly defined, and believe that engaging in politics or social criticism is not just a distraction from but ant.i.thetical to the scientific life. As mentioned earlier, during the Manhattan Project, the successful World War Two US effort to build nuclear weapons before the n.a.z.is did, certain partic.i.p.ating scientists began to have reservations, the more so when it became clear how immensely powerful these weapons were. Some, such as Leo Szilard, James Franck, Harold Urey and Robert R. Wilson, tried to call the attention of political leaders and the public (especially after the n.a.z.is were defeated) to the dangers of the forthcoming arms race, which they foresaw very well, with the Soviet Union. Others argued that policy matters were outside their jurisdiction. 'I was put on Earth to make certain discoveries,' said Enrico Fermi, 'and what the political leaders do with them is not my business.' But even so, Fermi was so appalled by the dangers of the thermonuclear weapon Edward Teller was advocating that he co-auth.o.r.ed a famous doc.u.ment urging the United States not to build it, calling it 'evil'.

Jeremy Stone, the president of the Federation of American Scientists, has described Teller - whose efforts to justify thermonuclear weapons I described in a previous chapter - in these words: Edward Teller... insisted, at first for personal intellectual reasons and later for geopolitical reasons, that a hydrogen bomb be built. Using tactics of exaggeration and even smear, he successfully manipulated the policy-making process for five decades, denouncing all manner of arms control measures and promoting arms-race-escalating programs of many kinds.

The Soviet Union, hearing of his H-bomb project, built its own H-bomb. As a direct consequence of the unusual personality of this particular individual and of the power of the H-bomb, the world may have risked a level of annihilation that might not otherwise have transpired, or might have come later and under better political controls.

If so, no scientist has ever had more influence on the risks that humanity has run than Edward Teller, and Teller's general behavior throughout the arms race was reprehensible...

Edward Teller's fixation on the H-bomb may have led him to do more to imperil life on this planet than any other individual in our species...

Compared to Teller, the leaders of Western atomic science were frequently babes in the political woods - their leadership having been determined by their professional skills rather than by, in this case, their political skills.

My purpose here is not to castigate a scientist for succ.u.mbing to very human pa.s.sions, but to reiterate that new imperative: the unprecedented powers that science now makes available must be accompanied by unprecedented levels of ethical focus and concern by the scientific community, as well as the most broadly based public education into the importance of science and democracy.

25.

Real Patriots Ask Questions*

[* Written with Ann Druyan.]

It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1950

It is a fact of life on our beleaguered little planet that widespread torture, famine and governmental criminal irresponsibility are much more likely to be found in tyrannical than in democratic governments. Why? Because the rulers of the former are much less likely to be thrown out of office for their misdeeds than the rulers of the latter. This is error-correcting machinery in politics. The methods of science, with all its imperfections, can be used to improve social, political and economic systems, and this is, I think, true no matter what criterion of improvement is adopted. How is this possible if science is based on experiment? Humans are not electrons or laboratory rats. But every act of Congress, every Supreme Court decision, every Presidential National Security Directive, every change in the Prime Rate is an experiment. Every shift in economic policy, every increase or decrease in funding for Head Start, every toughening of criminal sentences is an experiment. Exchanging needles, making condoms freely available, or decriminalizing marijuana are all experiments. Doing nothing to help Abyssinia against Italy, or to prevent n.a.z.i Germany from invading the Rhineland was an experiment. Communism in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China was an experiment. Privatizing mental health care or prisons is an experiment. j.a.pan and West Germany investing a great deal in science and technology and next to nothing on defence - and finding that their economies boomed - was an experiment. Handguns are available for self-protection in Seattle, but not in nearby Vancouver, Canada; handgun killings are five times more common in Seattle and the handgun suicide rate is ten times greater in Seattle. Guns make impulsive killing easy. This is also an experiment. In almost all of these cases, adequate control experiments are not performed, or variables are insufficiently separated. Nevertheless, to a certain and often useful degree, such ideas can be tested. The great waste would be to ignore the results of social experiments because they seem to be ideologically unpalatable.

There is no nation on Earth today optimized for the middle of the twenty-first century. We face an abundance of subtle and complex problems. We need therefore subtle and complex solutions. Since there is no deductive theory of social organization, our only recourse is scientific experiment - trying out sometimes on small scales (community, city and state level, say) a wide range of alternatives. One of the perquisites of power on becoming prime minister in China in the fifth century BC was that you got to construct a model state in your home district or province. It was Confucius' chief life failing, he lamented, that he never got to try.

Even a casual scrutiny of history reveals that we humans have a sad tendency to make the same mistakes again and again. We're afraid of strangers or anybody who's a little different from us. When we get scared, we start pushing people around. We have readily accessible b.u.t.tons that release powerful emotions when pressed. We can be manipulated into utter senselessness by clever politicians. Give us the right kind of leader and, like the most suggestible subjects of the hypnotherapists, we'll gladly do just about anything he wants - even things we know to be wrong. The framers of the Const.i.tution were students of history. In recognition of the human condition, they sought to invent a means that would keep us free in spite of ourselves.

Some of the opponents of the US Const.i.tution insisted that it would never work; that a republican form of government spanning a land with 'such dissimilar climates, economies, morals, politics, and peoples,' as Governor George Clinton of New York said, was impossible; that such a government and such a Const.i.tution, as Patrick Henry of Virginia declared, 'contradicts all the experience of the world'. The experiment was tried anyway.

Scientific findings and att.i.tudes were common in those who invented the United States. The supreme authority, outranking any personal opinion, any book, any revelation, was - as the Declaration of Independence puts it - 'the laws of nature and of nature's G.o.d'. Dr Benjamin Franklin was revered in Europe and America as the founder of the new field of electrical physics. At the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1789 John Adams repeatedly appealed to the a.n.a.logy of mechanical balance in machines; others to William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. Late in life Adams wrote, 'All mankind are chemists from their cradles to their graves... The Material Universe is a chemical experiment.' James Madison used chemical and biological metaphors in The Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers. The American revolutionaries were creatures of the European Enlightenment which provides an essential background for understanding the origins and purpose of the United States. The American revolutionaries were creatures of the European Enlightenment which provides an essential background for understanding the origins and purpose of the United States.

'Science and its philosophical corollaries,' wrote the American historian Clinton Rossiter were perhaps the most important intellectual force shaping the destiny of eighteenth-century America... Franklin was only one of a number of forward-looking colonists who recognized the kinship of scientific method and democratic procedure. Free inquiry, free exchange of information, optimism, self-criticism, pragmatism, objectivity - all these ingredients of the coming republic were already active in the republic of science that flourished in the eighteenth century.

Thomas Jefferson was a scientist. That's how he described himself. When you visit his home at Monticello, Virginia, the moment you enter its portals you find ample evidence of his scientific interests - not just in his immense and varied library, but in copying machines, automatic doors, telescopes and other instruments, some at the cutting edge of early nineteenth-century technology. Some he invented, some he copied, some he purchased. He compared the plants and animals in America with Europe's, uncovered fossils, used the calculus in the design of a new plough. He mastered Newtonian physics. Nature destined him, he said, to be a scientist, but there were no opportunities for scientists in pre-revolutionary Virginia. Other, more urgent, needs took precedence. He threw himself into the historic events that were transpiring around him. Once independence was won, he said, later generations could devote themselves to science and scholarship.

Jefferson was an early hero of mine, not because of his scientific interests (although they very much helped to mould his political philosophy), but because he, almost more than anyone else, was responsible for the spread of democracy throughout the world. The idea - breathtaking, radical and revolutionary at the time (in many places in the world, it still is) is that not kings, not priests, not big city bosses, not dictators, not a military cabal, not a de facto de facto conspiracy of the wealthy, but ordinary people, working together, are to rule the nations. Not only was Jefferson a leading theoretician of this cause; he was also involved in the most practical way, helping to bring about the great American political experiment that has, all over the world, been admired and emulated since. conspiracy of the wealthy, but ordinary people, working together, are to rule the nations. Not only was Jefferson a leading theoretician of this cause; he was also involved in the most practical way, helping to bring about the great American political experiment that has, all over the world, been admired and emulated since.

He died at Monticello on 4 July 1826, fifty years to the day after the colonies issued that stirring doc.u.ment, written by Jefferson, called the Declaration of Independence. It was denounced by conservatives worldwide. Monarchy, aristocracy and state-supported religion - that's what conservatives were defending then. In a letter composed a few days before his death, he wrote that it was the 'light of science' that had demonstrated that 'the ma.s.s of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs', nor were a favoured few born 'booted and spurred'. He had written in the Declaration of Independence that we all must have the same opportunities, the same 'unalienable' rights. And if the definition of 'all' was disgracefully incomplete in 1776, the spirit of the Declaration was generous enough that today 'all' is far more inclusive.

Jefferson was a student of history - not just the compliant and safe history that praises our own time or country or ethnic group, but the real history of real humans, our weaknesses as well as our strengths. History taught him that the rich and powerful will steal and oppress if given half a chance. He described the governments of Europe, which he saw at first hand as the American amba.s.sador to France. Under the pretence of government, he said, they had divided their nations into two cla.s.ses: wolves and sheep. Jefferson taught that every government degenerates when it is left to the rulers alone, because rulers - by the very act of ruling -misuse the public trust. The people themselves, he said, are the only prudent repository of power.

But he worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. So he advocated safeguards, insurance policies. One was the const.i.tutional separation of powers; accordingly, various groups, some pursuing their own selfish interests, balance one another, preventing any one of them from running away with the country: the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches; the House and the Senate; the States and the Federal Government. He also stressed, pa.s.sionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over. Here's how he put it in Notes on Virginia, Notes on Virginia, stressing how the powerful and unscrupulous find zones of vulnerability they can exploit: stressing how the powerful and unscrupulous find zones of vulnerability they can exploit: In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved...

Jefferson had little to do with the actual writing of the US Const.i.tution; as it was being formulated, he was serving as American minister to France. When he read its provisions, he was pleased, but with two reservations. One deficiency: no limit was provided on the number of terms the President could serve. This, Jefferson feared, was a way for a President to become a king, in fact if not in law. The other major deficiency was the absence of a bill of rights. The citizen, the average person, was insufficiently protected, Jefferson thought, from the inevitable abuses of those in power.

He advocated freedom of speech, in part so that even wildly unpopular views could be expressed, so that deviations from the conventional wisdom could be offered for consideration. Personally he was an extremely amiable man, reluctant to criticize even his sworn enemies. He displayed a bust of his arch-adversary Alexander Hamilton in the vestibule at Monticello. Nevertheless, he believed that the habit of scepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving the government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule.

Part of the duty of citizenship is not to be intimidated into conformity. I wish that the oath of citizenship taken by recent immigrants, and the pledge that students routinely recite, included something like 'I promise to question everything my leaders tell me'. That would be really to Thomas Jefferson's point. 'I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgements.'

I also wish that the Pledge of Allegiance were directed at the Const.i.tution and the Bill of Rights, as it is when the President takes his oath of office, rather than to the flag and the nation.

When we consider the founders of our nation - Jefferson, Washington, Samuel and John Adams, Madison and Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and many others - we have before us a list of at least ten and maybe even dozens of great political leaders. They were well educated. Products of the European Enlightenment, they were students of history. They knew human fallibility and weakness and corruptibility. They were fluent in the English language. They wrote their own speeches. They were realistic and practical, and at the same time motivated by high principles. They were not checking the pollsters on what to think this week. They knew what to think. They were comfortable with long-term thinking, planning even further ahead than the next election. They were self-sufficient, not requiring careers as politicians or lobbyists to make a living. They were able to bring out the best in us. They were interested in and, at least two of them, fluent in science. They attempted to set a course for the United States into the far future - not so much by establishing laws as by setting limits on what kinds of laws could be pa.s.sed.

The Const.i.tution and its Bill of Rights have done remarkably well, const.i.tuting, despite human weaknesses, a machine able, more often than not, to correct its own trajectory.

At that time, there were only about two and a half million citizens of the United States. Today there are about a hundred times more. So if there were ten people of the calibre of Thomas Jefferson then, there ought to be 10 x 100 = 1,000 Thomas Jeffersons today.

Where are they?

One reason the Const.i.tution is a daring and courageous doc.u.ment is that it allows for continuing change, even of the form of government itself, if the people so wish. Because no one is wise enough to foresee which ideas may answer urgent societal needs -even if they're counterintuitive and have been troubling in the past - this doc.u.ment tries to guarantee the fullest and freest expression of views.

There is, of course, a price. Most of us are for freedom of expression when there's a danger that our own views will be suppressed. We're not all that upset, though, when views we despise encounter a little censorship here and there. But within certain narrowly circ.u.mscribed limits - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous example was causing panic by falsely crying 'fire' in a crowded theatre - great liberties are permitted in America: * Gun collectors are free to use portraits of the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the House, or the Director of the FBI for target practice; outraged civic-minded citizens are free to burn in effigy the President of the United States.

* Even if they mock Judaeo-Christian-Islamic values, even if they ridicule everything most of us hold dear, devil-worshippers (if there are any) are ent.i.tled to practise their religion, so long as they break no const.i.tutionally valid law.

* A purported scientific article or popular book a.s.serting the 'superiority' of one race over another may not be censored by the government, no matter how pernicious it is; the cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

* Individuals may, if they wish, praise the lives and politics of such undisputed ma.s.s murderers as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Even detestable opinions have a right to be heard.

* Individuals or groups are free to argue that a Jewish or Masonic conspiracy is taking over the world, or that the Federal government is in league with the Devil.