In actual modern Europe, a freethinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself. It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions—the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality, and so on. And none of these ideas are particularly liberal. Nay, indeed, almost all these ideas are definitely illiberal, as it is the purpose of this chapter to show.
