This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 6, Issue 3, from 1992.
It was good to see the name of Chapman Cohen mentioned in the recent article (The Skeptic, 5.4) celebrating the 110th annivertsary of The Freethinker, but he deserves more than just a mention. He was one of the great crusading skeptics of this century, and far more than simply the successor of The Freethinker’s founder, G W Foote. Part of a long iconoclastic tradition, he was a prolific writer and speaker, witty and human, and formidably well-read.
Skeptical periodicals tend to perish with their founders, but on Foote’s death in 1915 Chapman Cohen, who had been writing for The Freethinker since 1897, took over and continued as editor for almost forty years, producing a torrent of books and pamphlets and articles. Most of what he wrote was in support of freedom of thought in the face of established religion, but as he said himself, ‘That is an accident of a situation. The larger and wider description of Freethought is that it is a denial of authority in all matters of opinion. It is because the world’s greatest enemy to Freethought has been, from the earliest times, religion, that it has become associated with the narrower significance.’
On taking over the editorship he was immediately faced with all the problems arising from Britain’s involvement in The Great War. Not only the shortages of paper and money and manpower, but also the difficulty – no, the necessity – of challenging popular attitudes in a war when government propaganda and restrictions were far more severe than in, say, World War Two. He got the paper out every week, often writing almost the whole of an issue single-handedly. His basic line was that the idea was not to hate and kill Germans but to learn how to co-exist with Germany after the war.
This approach was not popular with the authorities. At one time, military officials called on him and demanded his subscription list. He refused to give it, saying that if the Kaiser himself ordered a copy, it would be sent. And if it was allowed to reach him, would probably do him good. At another, two mysterious agents came offering financial support and asking if the paper was for sale. Yes it is, said Cohen. Twopence a copy.
In 1868, when he was born, his Jewish family had lived in England for some two hundred years. He was born at just the right time to absorb the Theory of Evolution without finding it a shock to long-established opinions. Mostly self-taught, he was an omnivorous reader, to an extent hard to conceive today. Among historians, for instance, he casually mentions reading in his youth Prescot, Milman, Macaulay, Motley and Hallam. And these were solid thoughtful books. Writing in 1939 in praise of James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, he says: ‘[Readers] will, if these books do them any good, appreciate the careful, detailed way in which a proposition was examined in 1873.’
Major influences on his thought were Spinoza, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill and George Henry Lewes. As he later wrote: ‘My teachers made me realise that truth was many-sided. They taught me that philosophy began in doubting, not in believing, and that he who would attain wisdom must question assiduously’.
In his early years there was also an amazing amount of serious public debate, growing out of the establishment of state education and the Victorian urge for self-improvement. Figures like Shaw and Chesterton debated in town halls and working-men’s clubs and public parks.
In 1889, on a Sunday walk in Victoria Park, Hackney, he intervened to defend a crowd-member with a speech defect who was being mocked by a speaker for the Christian Evidence Society. His obvious debating ability led to him being asked to become a speaker there himself for the National Secular Society. Too idle to refuse, he accepted, and thus entered the Freethought movement. For the rest of his life he spoke and debated all over Britain. In one year alone he lectured 280 times, ranging from Plymouth to Aberdeen and, at least in the early years, often had to survive systematic attempts to break up his meetings. Twice he saw strongly-built platforms completely smashed.
This brings out one great difference between his work and most skeptical activity today. He was attacking superstition and ‘magical thinking’ enforced, as far as possible, by an established church and endorsed by a majority of public opinion; in a day when Reith asked every applicant for a BBC post, ‘Do you accept the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ?’. By contrast, expressing skepticism about UFOs or poltergeists or iridology, no matter how valuable, is generally attacking the beliefs of a powerless lunatic fringe. Not that this is not essential. Who can doubt that if the New Age became the state religion it would be liable to become as vicious and intolerant as any other. When those who reject critical thinking gain power they use that power to suppress it.
An interesting argument Cohen adduces regarding New Age-type beliefs is that ‘no competent observer would expect to find spiritualistic experiences differing in substance from the main course of religious history in general… There is a point in scientific development at which the general nature of the phenomena under examination is taken for granted.’
From this he argues that investigating each new marvel for fraud only stimulates believers. ‘If fraud is detected, the Spiritualist is as ready to denounce it as a parson is to denounce one who falsely claims to be in ‘holy orders’.’ And if not, then ‘it is counted as at least prima facie evidence of spirit activity… I know of no body of people who do more to stimulate belief in this flourishing superstition than those regular “investigators” of Spiritualism.’
To do more here than dip into his writings is impossible. Perhaps his greatest contribution was in the field of comparative religion, tracing the evolution of supernatural belief in such books as Primitive Survivals in Modern Thought, from the multiple gods and spirits of early man to a single personal god to an ineffable impersonal one. The important thing, as he pointed out repeatedly, is to find out not so much what people believe as why they feel the need to believe it. ‘We do not discuss the truth of a demonstrated illusion; all we discuss are the conditions that led to its being accepted as reality… The question, instead of being an evidential one, has become a psychological one.’
Although he died only as recently as 1954, he is now almost forgotten, a fate he ruefully pointed out is common among crusading iconoclasts and skeptics, instancing ‘brave old Richard Carlile,’ missing from almost all books on social history. Living from 1790 to 1843, Carlile, one of the great fighters to establish freedom of the press, was imprisoned for a total of nine years and four months of his life for publishing offences under the blasphemy laws.
Writing in 1939, Chapman Cohen said that he felt he had led an adventurous life, not physically but in the world of ideas. ‘One of the German philosophers said that if an angel of the Lord met him with perfect truth in his right hand and the search for truth in his left, he would choose the left hand. And I agree with him.’ And on the subject of skepticism: ‘I hold that disbelief has duties and responsibilities that are certainly not less than those of belief. Freedom of expression should be not only a legal right which a man may or may not exercise as he pleases, it should be regarded as a social act which no man may neglect without falling short of his duty as a citizen.’
And finally: ‘Truth is registered by agreement, but is mainly discovered through disagreement. The conception of a community where everyone lives in complete agreement is horrible. One would feel like the man in the train who, when the other fellow agreed with everything he said, suddenly blurted out, “For God’s sake contradict me and let me know there are two of us here”.’
I would say ‘rest in peace’ if I were not sure that that is exactly the last thing he would want.
