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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
BEN
E L M Y.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
PRICE FOURPENCE.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGII,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�tJX°7
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
CHAPTER I.
THE
DAWN OF LIFE.
All things on this earth may be roughly divided into two
classes : things which have motion, and things which have
not; in other words, things which are living, and things
which are dead. The first constitute the animal and vege
table kingdoms, and the mineral kingdom contains all the
inanimate class. Motion and life seem at once to be in
timately connected ; we recognise the vitality of any living
thing, animal or vegetable, by its power of motion; whether
from place to place, as in an animal, or in simple changes of
form or aspect, as in both animal and vegetable.
Yet we must not confound motion and life. We see
motion in even the class of inanimate things. Steam will
rise in the air, a stone will fall to the ground ; both these
are instances of motion, yet even a child scarcely considers
them as any sign of life. I propose to myself the project
of pondering how far life and motion may be assumed to be
indeed one and the same element, though they may differ in
degree as much or more than a man differs from a jelly-fish.
It will be necessary first to think what phases of motion are
readily perceptible to our senses, and then to follow up that
chain till we approach forms of motion almost as little to be
rendered account of to our senses as is the ultimate mystery,
life itself. We may at any rate prove that there is a path
advancing step by step into the unknown; we may even go
along some part of the road, and we may form a just notion
as to where that road will ultimately lead us.
I have already instanced the simplest form of motion with
which we are acquainted—the falling of a stone or other
body towards the earth. This action or motion is so gene
ral or, as it were, natural, that countless generations of men
had witnessed it and it did not even occur to them to think
of rendering a reason for it. Some of the old Greek phi
losophers gave a feeble consideration to the matter, but did
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STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
not or could not follow the question out; and there it rested till
an English philosopher, Isaac Newton, had the remembrance
of their difficulties brought to his mind by observing an
apple fall from a tree, and set himself to think why the .
apple should fall to the earth, and whether that motion
was in the apple or in the earth. The result of longthought and calculation on his part was the ascertained,
truth that every substance in the universe is attracted, or
drawn towards, or seeks to approach every other substance *
and that it will so approach if there be not forces acting in
other directions to prevent it. This attraction is called the
force of gravitation, or weight-force; and it is so called
because it is greater in proportion to the weight and density
of the body exercising that attraction.
It is this same force that accounts for the second form of
motion that I mentioned—the rising of steam through the.
air; for the particles of steam are lighter in proportion to
their size or bulk than the particles of the air; the particles
of the air are, therefore, more forcibly attracted to the earth,
and squeeze out of place or force away the steam higher up. '
into the air, i.e., farther away from the earth.
If instead of air we take water for an example, we shall
see the same series of motions repeated, for a piece of iron
will sink or drop through the water, because iron is heavier
or denser, bulk for bulk, than water; and a bubble of air or
a piece of cork will rise through water (just as steam does
through the air) because both air and cork are lighter or
less dense, bulk for bulk, than water. And now, if instead
of water we take mercury, which is also a fluid, we shall find
that a piece of gold will sink in it, but a piece of iron will
float in it; and this again for the same reason, because gold
is denser than mercury, and iron is not so dense as
mercury.
Here we may learn two things : firstly, that some solids
may be less dense than other fluids; and, secondly, that
density is after all but a comparative and conditional term,
and is proportional to the medium or atmosphere in which
the action takes place, for both iron and gold will sink in
water, or drop through the air, yet only one of them will
sink in mercury.
We all know that what is called an empty bucket, that is,
a bucket full of air, is not so heavy as a bucket full of water,
and that this again is not so heavy as a lump of iron the
same size, and this lump of iron will not be so heavy as a
�THE DAWN OF LIFE.
3
bucket full of mercury, nor this again so heavy as a similar
mass of gold.
Now the real meaning of the weight or heaviness of all
these is simply the greater or less force with which they are
•attracted towards the earth ; that force being in exact pro
portion to their density as compared with their bulk. For
'the earth is the great mass towards which all substances on
the earth are attracted, and as far as earthly things are con
sidered we may call it the centre of gravitation. It is our
. greatest and heaviest mass, and hence all earthly things pro
gress or fall towards it when not prevented by other forces
■ or obstacles. It is true that what we call celestial objects
have also an attraction for each other and the earth, and for
.all things on the earth; but distance is also an element in
..the calculation of gravitation, and the earth is so much nearer
that a stone let go at the distance of 1000 or 100,000 feet
.-.above the earth is attracted more powerfully by the earth
which is near than by the sun which is so far off, though the
sun is 1,300,000 times larger than the earth, and its attrac
tion proportionately great.
And the planets and our earth and the sun would all rush
^together but for their motion in their orbits—a circular motion
•which they have that counterbalances this attraction or
motion of gravitation and keeps them hovering at a distance.
What is the secret or cause of this circular or orbital motion
may be discovered by another Newton, but it will certainly
• be found to be but a phase of this universal force of
gravitation.
Indeed all motions and conditions seem to be but phases
or consequences of phases of this universal law. Next in
order to gravitation as generally defined, we might place
what is called the attraction of cohesion—an attraction that
does not seem quite so dependent on density, and that might
be defined as the greater attraction that substances of the
same nature have for each other under favourable circum
stances than for substances of a dissimilar nature. It is this
^attraction that causes the homogeneousness or consistency
• of t metals, or stone, or wood, &c. This attraction gives
. as its evidence the two qualities known as hardness and
tenacity. It may be exemplified by the cutting of a piece
of wood or lead with a steel knife, whereas a piece of steel
could not be cut with a wooden or leaden knife. The
mechanical explanation of this fact is that the particles of
steel have a greater attraction Of cohesion for each other
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STUDIES IN MATERIALISM
than have the particles of wood or lead; the particles off
wood or lead may be easily separated, but the particles of
steel are separable with difficulty.
This attraction of cohesion may seem to be but a passiveor defensive attraction, while gravitation is an active or
offensive power; yet the seemingly passive force of cohesion
is always really in action, for it must not be forgotten that
it is this force which at every instant holds bodies together
in resistance to the active force of gravitation which might
otherwise cause an indiscriminate mingling of their atoms,
with those of all the other bodies composing the mass of'
the earth. And some phases of this form of attraction are
palpably active, for under this head may be classed the
force of chemical affinity, and the force which produces and.
guides crystallization.
The force, chemical affinity, bears a very close resemblance?
to the attraction of cohesion, and may be roughly defined,
as the attraction which the particles of one clearly defined,
chemical clement or substance have for another of those
elements. At present these elements are known to have
certain affinities or combining powers with each other, and.
these attractions or affinities vary in each case, so that an.
element will leave one with which it is already combined to
join another for which it has a greater affinity, and will
again leave that, if one for which it has a still greater affinity
be presented to it.
And now we come to the force of crystallization, and must
give our earnest attention to this force ; for we get here the
first glimpse of a force or motion that in some of its actionsclosely resembles life. For we have here introduced de
fined growth towards a defined form. Crystals are of vary
ing sizes and shapes according to their substance, the same
substance generally following fixed and certain rules as to form. .
The growth of crystals is sometimes so rapid or vivid that
with some substances, and a strong magnifying glass, the
crystals may be seen forming themselves. In some instancesthis action of growth might well be mistaken for some part,
of the action that is seen in vegetable life. On ancient:
flint implements accretions of iron and manganese havebeen found which bear more than a casual resemblance to
various cryptogamous plants, mosses, lichens, and algae orseaweed. An example familiar to us all is that of the moss
like appearance of a frozen window-pane, the “ moss ” being,
simply water in a state of crystallization..
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
5
This last example brings us face to face with another
series of forces or attractions; the force by which bodies
may be brought to, and held in, any one of the three con
ditions : the solid, the fluid, and the gaseous—in a word,
how water may exist as ice, water, or steam, each of the
three conditions giving powers of combination, or altered
force, which would not be possible in any other condition.
As far as we know, all elements are capable of these conditions
under given circumstances, and there is, as just said, a con
siderable intrinsic difference in the conditions. Fluids seem
only compressible with intense force, while solids have a con
siderable and gases an excessive amount of compressibility.
Fluids and solids, again, have the attraction of cohesion, so
that solids retain their form, and fluids their equilibrium; yet
in gases the force of cohesion seems to be almost, if not
altogether, absent. A pound of any solid substance, or a
pint of any fluid, would retain their simple appearance in
a vacuum; but it would seem that the same measure of gas
would permeate and fill up (though in a rarefied or attenu
ated form) any vacuum however great.
Now, each of these conditions is distinctly defined and
separate, and the change from one to another seems to be
effected by some form of the most living force we have yet
spoken of—heat. And as we consider this force of heat we
find it to be as universal as gravitation, every substance
having specific, or intrinsic, or self-contained heat, just as
it has specific or self-contained weight. And specific heat
varies in different bodies just in a similar manner to what
specific weight or gravity does. And just as we may not
perceive the weight of a body till some displacement occurs
which allows the force of gravitation to come into perceptible
action, so specific heat may only become manifest or percep
tible when certain changes are brought about in the condition
of the substance containing it. When heat is thus manifest
or active, it does to the evidence of our senses change some
substances from the solid into the fluid state, and from that
again into the gaseous state, and a deprivation of heat will
act in just the reverse direction.
Chemical action or affinity, which has already been
spoken of, is very frequently attended by the evolution or
absorption of heat, and for the reason already given, z>., a
disturbance in the molecular conditions of elements which
makes manifest their specific heat. Chemical action, indeed,
is the main source of the heat with which we are acquainted,
�6
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
for the heat of the sun itself is but the result of chemical
action or combustion in or on the sun.
As with the other forms of force or motion or attraction
spoken of, heat is but a comparative condition, and our ex
perience of it on this earth has but a very limited range.
We may readily imagine a planet or world where the heat
was so great that water was only known in a gaseous state,
and their rivers might be of molten metal; or, on the other
hand, one so cold that ice might be their usual building
material, roofed with sheets of hydrogen, an element that we
only know in a gaseous state. And any bodily organism of
living creatures would have to be proportionately altered ;
yet there is nothing repugnant to the idea of a similar con
dition to mind, or soul, or life, call it what we will, existing
under the changed circumstances.
And I think this may be taken as a probable solution of
the question whether there is life on other planets or worlds;
for wherever there exist the forces that we have knowledge of
on this earth, there will life follow as a natural consequence.
I spoke just now of combustion. This word simply means
chemical action or combination so intense that heat and
light result. And in light we have reached almost the last
of the series of forces of which we have yet any clear con
ception. We have seen by now that the word force is to be
used in a somewhat different sense from that generally as
cribed to it. It is too generally confounded with “strength”
or “motion yet we see it may be existing where we have
only pictured inactivity, or rest, or death. We may see a
soldier standing “at ease.” He too is resting, yet the
muscles of his legs and back are all in action, or the man
would fall to the earth. And in speaking of light as a force
it might be thought that I was applying a false word. In
giving an instance or two of the power of light, we may
recognize that it is literally a force.
We know that a plant in comparative darkness will
hardly grow, and will at best be but pale and sickly. It is
light that gives the green colour to all vegetation, simply
because it is the initial force which gives the chemical
elements in vegetation the impulse to unite and form
healthy green flesh necessary for the plant’s full life. Again,
light is the force that draws all our photographic pictures.
In taking those pictures, where the light falls strongest the
chemical salts are destroyed or decomposed ; where the
light does not fall those salts are left untouched.
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
7
It must need force to do this, and light is that force,
light is certainly the initial force of a vast amount of
chemical action, and again it seems sometimes to be the
conseqtience of chemical action ; as with heat, which is in
turn the origin or result of such action. Some time we may
have knowledge of latent or specific light as well as of
specific heat or specific gravity.
As yet we know but little of the vast force involved in light.
George Stephenson said that a railway engine was driven by
the rays of bottled sunshine contained in the coals that fed the
furnace, and there seems no doubt that he was correct.
Coal is the buried vegetation of forests of millions of years ago.
The sun shone on those trees and on their leaves and branches
day by day in their growth, the light and warmth was
effective in working the chemical change that formed their
vegetable tissue, and when the trees fell, century by century,
their dead bodies contained and preserved the results of this
action ; this absorbed or latent light and heat lay buried in
them, is in them when they are mined and dug up, and when
they are put into the fire-box of the engine. The fire is lit,
and by combustion, the bottled sunbeams, developed into
the form of heat, are transmitted to the water in the boiler,
this heat turns the water from fluid into the gaseous state of
steam; the steam occupies vastly more space than water, and
in endeavouring to get room to spread itself to its natural
bulk is allowed to force out a piston, this piston moves a
crank which turns the wheel on which the engine rests, and
the whole engine moves on.
In this brief story we see what permutations or
changes may take place in the same force; now it appears
to us as light, now as heat, now as chemical action, now as
mechanical motion overcoming the attraction of gravitation.
Indeed there seems but one force, and the changes in it are
but changes in that they are more clearly perceived by some
one of our imperfect senses than by the others.
I have used the words initial force once or twice and
shall need to explain this somewhat, for the ultimate pur
poses of our argument. Initial force, then, is the impulse
which once given to matter or force is carried on in the
matter or force itself without need for repetition of the original
impulse. For instance, the mechanical action involved in
the striking of a match is the initial force which gives rise to
its combustion, and this combustion may be conveyed to
things innumerable without need for any repetition of
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STUDIES IN MATERIALISM
mechanical action. With a slight knowledge of chemistry,
we may remember where a single drop of sulphuric acid is
capable of initializing the same process of combustion.
In some cases the force of crystallization maybe initialized
in a similar way. A mass of salts may be in a condition
ready for crystallization, and continue in that preparatory
stage till some tiny initial mechanical impulse, such as even
the prick of a needle, is given, when the mass will at once
rush into crystals. We all know too that nitro-glycerine
may. by a slight mechanical force be driven into gas, and
possibly a frightful explosion ensue.
Any slight amount
of one kind of force may, under favourable circumstances,
be the initializer of a vastly increased mass of some widely
different phase.
And now I will only call attention to one other form of
force before endeavouring to show how all these forces, or
some combination of them, may have given the initial impulse
to the wondrous force of life. This last force to which I shall
draw attention is electricity, a force of whose knowledge we
are but yet in the infancy; and a force that seems, even as
far as our present knowledge goes, to be capable of a con
siderable number of phases. This is the force by which, to
give a simple example, a man’s words may be conveyed
almost without lapse of time from one place to another (the
electric telegraph) ; it is also the force that causes the
attraction of a magnet for iron.
Whether electricity be the cause of some of the various forms
of force already named, or simply a resultant of them, is
more than can be said at present: it sometimes appears in
the one character and sometimes in the other. It seems in
this way to add greater strength to the presumption that all
force is but some different and convertible phase of some
great and ultimate property:—the very property of being or
existing; for existence and movement or force are inalienable
and interchangeable terms. But be electricity what it may,
it is already known that all things are subject to its influence,
and that it is therefore presumably as universal and great in
its results as gravitation itself.
With all this well weighed and considered—bearing in mind the different possibilities of matter in its known con
ditions of solid, fluid, and gaseous—bearing in mind the
powers of chemical combination and the novel substances
engendered thereby—bearing in mind the power of definite
form and growth of which the force of crystallisation is an
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
9
.example—bearing in mind that an initial impulse however
slight, once communicated, may give rise to a condition so
widely differing from itself that the change is to our present
powers utterly inexplicable; and that this condition will be
perpetuated as long as there is matter favourably situated to
be affected by it—bearing in mind all this, I ask if there
is anything very inconceivable in the idea that matter has been
so acted upon by some initial impulse that has given rise to
the phase of force which we call life, with all its attendant
phenomena ?
For, after all, what is life ? Animated beings may be
traced down to a type wherein they seem little more than
inert masses of matter—masses of gelatinous substance,
or of vegetable growth scarce differing from rust—and with
little more than the power of growth or assimilation of
similar matter to that of their own substance, which they
have in common with many substances that we hold to be
but minerals with the chemical properties of cohesion and
combination.
To such a view as this the continual objection made is :
“Yes, but you never show us what is the initial force by
which inanimate matter is endowed with the property of
life.” To this I can but say: Can we yet explain any initial
impulse ? And why do you call rtvzy matter inanimate ? Is
not chemical Action itself a phase of life, just as we reason
ably presume all these other forces to be but phases of some
universal ruling principle ? And indeed to me thefe seems a
less distance between the crudest forms of living organisms
and simple chemical action, than between those same
organisnjjjRind intellectual man. This difference and pro
gress I shall make an attempt to follow in my next study,
the “ Dawn of Humanity.” And as to the question of defin
ing or pointing out the initial force which institutes the
beginning of life, that initial force is just as easy or as
difficult to point out as any other initial force of which I
have spoken : we see the results, and it is a simple matter
of comparative result on which we have arbitrarily made the
distinction of calling one phenomenon animate action, while
we stigmatize the other as inanimate.
■ Yes : the greater our power of observation, the less do wfe
see to be the distinction between life and death, between
force and matter ; death (f.e. inanimation} is but hidden life,
matter is but hidden force. Change, or rather motion, is
the one constant rule of all things; and as our senses grow,
�IO
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
and fresh capacities or organs of sensibility are developed, ,
we shall grasp at higher and still more intangible phenomena..
It is not that Nature’s workings are so mysterious, but that:
our own faculties are so small, our own eyesight so dim.
Yet if we will carefully consult and ever strive to improvethe faculties we have, and follow out and strengthen in ourbeing the perceptions of justice and truth which Nature- everywhere shows us, we shall grow to know her better, and.
to have fuller, stronger sight—we shall be worthy to know
more of the at present mysterious meaning of life. When
we are so worthy the knowledge cannot be hidden from us,.
we may become intelligent co-operators in Nature’s work
and with power in our eyes and love in our hearts weshall fulfil the poet’s golden prophecy, and become in very
deed
“ the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge ; under whose command
Is earth and earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book.”
CHAPTER II.
THE
DAWN
OF
HUMANITY.
In the previous study, I have presumed or asserted that:
matter, under certain conditions, may become a living
organism, such active life being the sequence of an initial
impulse which we may hope eventually to trace and solve..
I have further asserted that matter to which such an im
pulse has been once conveyed, may continue or even
increase that impulse under suitable conditions. . Theseassertions cover two of the most advanced theories yet
deduced from our knowledge of to-day—viz., Spontaneous.
Generation, and the Development or Origin of Species. In
plain words, the theory of Spontaneous Generation declares,
that, under certain conditions of matter, life will be initiated
and living organisms will be evolved or spontaneously geneja.ted ; and the theory of Development is that these
organisms once evolved will not only have the power of
continuing the impulse, i.e. of propagating themselves, but
also of developing further and higher capabilities under
favouring conditions, and thereby of becoming higher
organisms—organisms, in fact, such that we could no longer
j
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
II
'readily accept the supposition of their being in that condition
-spontaneously generated.
The theory of Spontaneous Generation has as yet but a
'limited acceptance, owing to the difficulty at present of
producing positive argument and irrefutable experiment in
its support, and owing, moreover, to its entire antagonism
to any biblical or other revelation, or to belief in any super
natural power. But it seems to me that the position may be
conclusively proved and justified even by negative argument;
,and it may be useful so to justify it before going further.
Evidently all primary generation (or initiation of life)
must either be spontaneous, or else the act of some creative
power foreign to the organism itself. In other words, life
is either the natural, innate, and inevitable result of certain
• conditions of matter, or it is the act of a creator external to
■ the matter. Such a presumed creator is usually styled God,
.-.and we may therefore conveniently use this term in the
1 sense specified. Nor shall we in so using the word be
-doing any wrong to the somewhat numerous class who seem
disinclined to accept the theory of spontaneity of life, while
yet rejecting the inconsistencies which become every day
more palpable in the theory of God and his creation of life.
For indeed there is no logical halting-place between the
■ two conclusions. Either all phenomena (life included) are
attributable to certain natural properties and sequences, or
■ they are due to an extra-natural power, a God.
Let us shift our questioning, then, from matter to its pre■sumed “Creator.” .Let us inquire into the origin of God.
How came he into existence? Did he' create himself? If
. so, we have a notable instance of the spontaneous generation
which his believers deny. Had God himself a creator
outside himself? If so, we may apply the same questioning
as to his creator. We only get the elephant and tortoise
fable over again.
There is but one resource left, and that is the assertion
- that God has existed for ever. This is but a begging of the
question, for no proof is given of the truth 6f the assertion ;
. and being unverified and unverifiable, it has not the least
: tangible claim to assent from our intellect.
The God theory is then placed in this dilemma: that it
' must either acknowledge spontaneity of life (which renders
i the God theory itself unnecessary), or take refuge in an
unverified assertion utterly beyond the ken of our senses
• and intellect.
�12
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
Against such a course of argument as this the constant,
objection of Theists or supernaturalists is, that there are
more things existent than can be brought to the evidence of
our senses ; but on that perfectly allowable position they
base the startling affirmation that therefore we must not
reason about God, or, at any rate, must not accept any con
clusion of our reason which leads to his rejection ! Yet in all
the assertions that they make in support of the God theory,
it is to these very senses of ours that they ultimately appeal
they have recourse with confidence to our senses and our
reason for acknowledgment of what they call the works of a
God, and thereby of a God himself, and yet they deny t(A
our senses and reason any right to evidence of, or faculty tocriticise, the hypothetical being whom they expect our reason j
to recognise !
The words reason and senses may in this connection ho
used as of the same meaning, for reason is but the collected
and developed experience of our senses. Now, if thisreason and these senses may be safely appealed to, and.
their evidence be received in the case of results, materialists
hold that the questionings of reason may be and must be
extended to causes, and that indeed the conclusions of'
reason are the only ones that can validly be accepted by the
organism that has given birth to it, and, as it were, dele
gated to it the care and power of the guidance and govern- ment of the organism.
It is to this reason and to these senses that Materialism ,
appeals, for it sees in man’s being no evidence of any
higher tribunal. Nor need it care to do so, since it also ■<
sees in the reason and the senses, and the self-responsibility of man, a faculty of development, of power, and of harmony
with nature, far beyond the feeble dreams and dulcet
cajoleries of any God theory, ancient or modern.
And Materialism claims for itself and for its evidence a ■
higher character and a greater worth of acceptance than it
holds due to any religious or supernatural or ultra-intel
lectual theory And this on several grounds. For Mate
rialism appeals to no select few, but to senses and faculties
which all possess. It does not recognise that any special
clique or class of man has received a supernatural revelation
of things in which all men have a joint and equal concern.
Its evidences are facts which have been gathered with careand painstaking by close observers and lovers of nature, not
dark fancies evolved from the tortured and ascetic brains of ‘
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
13
men who have begun their system with the assumption that
nature is an abhorrent and unholy thing. Materialism
claims the higher character, because it comes into the light
and courts the examination and aid of all, not shrouding
and hiding itself in impenetrable unintelligibleness, and
hurling threats and cursings and thunderings at those who
shall dare to deny its infallibility, analyse its inconsistency,
or despise its degrading sycophancy and terrorism.
Though I have spoken of Spontaneous Generation as not
having been to the consent of all irrefutably proved, it must
not be forgotten that there are men who decisively affirm
that they have to the evidence of the senses produced organic
life where it was previously non-existent.
The evidence
of Bastian and others is convincing that living organisms
are constantly evolved in liquids which have been her
metically sealed in flasks while boiling, or submitted to still
greater heat, and carefully preserved from all extraneous
influence of the atmosphere.
The arguments used by opponents to explain or contra
dict these experiments, is what is known as the “ germ '*
theory—an assertion that there are countless seeds of living
organisms floating in the air, and ever ready to develop
themselves into active life when favourable conditions of
matter are presented. It is true that these germs may be
invisible in even the most powerful microscope, and so im
perceptible as to elude the subtlest chemical test, yet the
theory has the convenient property of continuing to refer the
initiation of life to some primary act on the part of a creator. ’
It is to such germs, also, that many forms of disease, epi
demic or otherwise, are attributed ; so that if the theory of
the creation of germs be correct, it will follow that the ap
pearance of certain new and previously unknown forms of
disease, such as diphtheria or rinderpest, is an evidence that
the creation was not an act once accomplished and done'
with, but that the Creator still busies himself from time to
time with doubtful benefits to his creatures.
Let it be understood that Materialists do not deny that low,
organisms may propagate themselves by germs, as well as byj
other means more clearly visible to our senses. Materialism,
simply denies any extra-natural creation or origin of these'
germs, and the materialistic explanation of a new form of
parasitic disease would be that certain novel conditions of
matter had evolved or developed into a new form some low,
type of organism, which, once generated, might propagate.
�14
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM. .
itself either by cell-growth or by germs. The Germ theorists
would say, that if all the germs or spprules of small-pox,
typhoid fever, &c., could once be destroyed, we should never
see those diseases more ; the Evolutionist says that similar
unsanitary conditions to those that now exist where those dis
eases are rife, would again evolve them.
It must not be forgotten that it would be no refutation of
spontaneous generation even if men had not yet succeeded
in producing it. It is the action of nature that is in ques
tion, rather than man’s power, to evoke that action. And
certainly, whether by spontaneous generation or other
wise primitive and extremely simple organisms are,
under favourable circumstances, everywhere readily and
plentifully generated, and in an ascending scale from them
we have a series of ever higher developments.
As instances of fairly lowr (though not the lowest) animal
and vegetable organisms, I may take the amoeba and the
algae, previously referred to as “masses of gelatinous sub
stance, or of vegetable growth, scarce differing from rust.”
The amoeba is but a floating speck of jelly that absorbs or
covers other floating particles of matter which can afford
sustenance to it. It has no defined organs of nutrition, or
of any other function ; it simply lets the floating particle
sink into its jelly-like substance, and then, by a process no
more vital than chemical affinity, or even simple attraction
4|f cohesion, it absorbs what there may be in the floating
particles analogous to its own substance, and lets the re
mainder Jgain sink or drop through. Its action seems no
more a living one than is the action of the isinglass used in
“ fining ” beer. The isinglass that is there introduced falls
gradually to the bottom of the cask, enfolding in its own
substance, and bearing down with it, every floating speck of
turbid matter, and leaving the beer clear. And, undoubt
edly, any particle of isinglass or other gelatinous matter
that might previously have existed in the floating specks
would be absorbed from out them into the homogeneous
mass of the isinglass itself. Why this action of the isinglass
is to be set down as mechanical action, while that of the
amceba is to be exalted to the dignity of living action, it is
not for me to say, since I do not believer in the dis
tinction.
Some forms of the alga, are a sort of grey-green mould or
rust : they “ vegetate exclusively in water or in damp situa
tions ; they I cquire no nutriment, but such as is supplied by
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
“water and the air dissolved in it, which they absorb equally
by every part of their surface.'” These are the words of one
•of the most strenuous advocates of the God theory. Yet if
' for alga we substitute the word rust, how perfect a descrip
tion we get of .the action of moisture or water on iron. And
what is the difference between the two actions ? As far as
I can see, it is simply this, that the alga form a compound
•of three lements, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, while the
iron merely absorbs oxygen from the air or water, and so
forms a compound of only two elements, oxygen and iron.
No one disputes the spontaneous evolution of rust, that is,
■ of a compound of iron and oxygen : strange that men should
find it so hard to credit the spontaneous evolution of a
• compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen !
Two objections may here be raised : firstly, that rust will
• only appear or propagate itself where there is iron or some
other metal to feed it; and, secondly, that the action of
algae, or, at any rate, of other living organisms, is more vivid
than that of rust. To the first objection it is a sufficient
^answer that neither will algae nor any other organisms appear
■or propagate themselves where there is not suitable food for
them; and to the second, I would reply that I am not
asserting an equal degree of vital action in both the cases,
but simply that both instances are but different degrees of
the same natural and spontaneous action ; the dragging of
•one stick across another may seem to be action remote
-enough from that of combustion, yet we know that combus
tion is but an enhanced form of such action, and is, under
given circumstances, educible thereby.
In the lower living organisms, the distinction between
animal and vegetable is frequently so confused as to render
the organisms incapable of being classified with certainty;
■some motionless and apparently vegetable growths having
■ other well-defined animal properties, whilst some actively
moving organisms are, in other respects, as undoubtedly
1 vegetable. One would almost say, that on the threshold of
life the organisms are debating and undecided as to which
1 -of the two great channels they will follow. When this
choice is made, the same indecision seems extended again
somewhat to choice of species ; the mass of the primitive
■ organisms being involved in a hazy mist, to which only a
•very self-confident man could venture to assign defined
•limits and arbitrary classifications.
In these lower forms of life, the methods of extension or
�iU
STUDIES IN MATEfWCCTSSt
spreading, or repetition of both animal and vegetable,
organisms are, as might be presumed, identical; and are
visibly effected by either gemmation, or fissure, or both.
Gemmation is only another word for budding; buds form
on the original organism, which break off and become inde
pendent organisms. Fissure means that the original organ
ism, when grown, splits into two or more independent,
organisms. Some of the lowest organisms are asserted to
consist of single cells of animated organic matter, and it is,
of course, the development of further cells that renders,
practicable either gemmation or fissure. Yet we may soon
find organisms with a considerable accretion of cells not.
separating from each other, but remaining with the parent
organism, and, as it were, helping in the mutual and better
development of each; and we then begin to find special
groupings of these cells fulfilling certain definite functions,
in the economy of the organism, becoming, in point of fact,,
the organs for the support and growth and propagation of
the organism.
Here, too, we begin to come on clearer distinctions
between animal and vegetable; whose main difference has
been roughly, but fairly well-defined in the observation,
that with a vegetable the food is mainly applied to con
tinually increasing its fabric throughout its life, whereas,
with the animal, the food is only applied to growth till the
adult form is attained, and is then simply used to maintain,
that condition in efficiency.
We then go on to find special and peculiar formations,
and growths of cells for various purposes in the structure of
the organism; so that, eventually, we have cells whose
special purpose is to form the tissue or flesh of a plant,,
while others of different structure form the bark or fruit;.
and in animals we have cells which form the fibres of the
muscle, somewhat different ones forming the bone, and
others yet different forming the brain or nerve matter,.
&c., &c.
This development of different cells and functions is but
one form of the variations which are taking place, of which,
perhaps, the most important is the adaptation of the organisms
themselves to altered circumstances in which they may find
it convenient or necessary to live, and the development of
varied forms and poweis which will render that life more
acceptable and enjoyable to them. And it may fairly
be said that this variation or development is a fact in which
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
"7
»aZZ classes of observers agree, though not all are willing to
lallow to it the same great ultimate results. It is the reason
ing out of such of these results as we have undoubted
cognizance of to their possible and logical conclusions, and
the acceptance of those conclusions, that constitutes the
theory already referred to of development or origin of
species.
In the lower forms of organisms this development or
variation is, as I have previously intimated, very conspicuous,
so that fructification or generation has frequently to be
waited for and observed before the organisms can with any
certainty be assigned to a definite class. And this question
of fructification or generation brings us to one of the most
vexed and evaded questions in the whole history of physio
logy or development—that of alternate generation, which
will be presently discussed.
For a further phenomenon has manifested itself in the
< course of these developments—the difference of sexes ; and to
this I shall need to draw your careful attention, since in his
• own case man has based on that difference a series of arti
ficial and arbitrary, and therefore unjust, distinctions which
. have done more than any other act to retard the progress
. and hinder the happiness of the human race.
We noticed that in the extension or propagation of the
lower forms of life, the growth or birth of further cells was
■followed by a constant budding or splitting off from the
•parent organism, but that in somewhat higher forms we find
' cells remaining and allotting themselves to various special
functions, and forming special organs for those purposes.
As might naturally be supposed, a substitute is at once pro
vided for the superseded actions of gemmation or fissure ;
-so that among the first definite organs we find those for
the extension or propagation of the species, and with such a
• specialized function we also find, as we might anticipate, a
-more methodical manner of fulfilling that function. The cells
•or germs which will form the infant organisms are no longer
■indiscriminately severed as soon as formed ; but are stored in
■• •assigned receptacles to await what shall seem to the organism
. a fitting time for their evolvement and extrusion. To con■wey this fitness and impulse for extrusion is the function of
a further organ, which in its turn has secreted special cells.
In these two sets of organs and their difference of cells
;-We have the first glimpse of separate male and female func
tions. To distinguish the two classes of cells, the latter are
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
usually called germ cells, and the former sperm cells. Thesecretion of sperm cells, and their application, in due time,
to the germ cells, is the function of the male organs ; the
secretion of the germ cells, and the care of their develop
ment after impregnation, is the female function. For a
long time we find both these organs existing in the same
creature ; and this arrangement is very general throughout
vegetable life, from the lowest forms to the very highest. It
also extends into some fairly high grades of animal life, the
oyster being a notable instance of hermaphroditism, as this
union of the two organs in one being is termed.
At first, too, both these functions may be performed
within the one being without any extraneous aid; but pre
sently it would seem that a better result is attained by some
intermingling of possible slight variations, and we find two
individual organisms uniting in a mutual and utterly reciprocatory act of parentage, each being having fulfilled the
functions of father, and accepted the responsibilities of
mother, to an ensuing progeny. But this intermingling
does not seem an inevitable necessity, for there is evidence
that many such organisms have the capacity of both self and
reciprocal impregnation. Here, too, the strange fact may’
be noted that in some organisms the co-operation of threeindividuals is necessary to effect the generative act.
The change from gemmation to sexual generation is by
no means an invariable or fixed one, for we have here inter* vening the strange phenomenon of alternate generation just,
referred to. Various organisms may propagate a progeny by
means of sexual organs, and the members of this progenywill be of a totally different type to their parents in nature,,
appearance, and capabilities, and having no sexual organs,
but giving birth to their progeny by the primitive methods,
of gemmation or fissure; yet this further progeny will befully developed like the first set of parents, having sexual
organs, yet giving birth in turn to organisms that differ in
type, and only propagate by gemmation. It is, as it were,
an inheritance from grandparent to grandchild, with an in
tervening generation of an utterly different and inferiororganism. In some instances this descent seems to run.
through three forms of organisms before reverting to the
original type.
This phenomenon is affected to be made somewhat light
of and readily explained away by the holders of the God.
theory; apparently because it militates somewhat against.
�STUDIES in mateulwism,
I?
their idea of a creation, and is equally strong evidence in
&VOUr of the materialistic theory of development or origin
of species. If, as is the case, a stationary and, in so far,
vegetable-like polyp can give birth to an independent and
totally different swimming creature (a form of medusa),
which lives its life and gives birth again to stationary polyps,
it is easy enough to say that the one is but a latent or inter
vening form of the other; but this does not explain the
difference, nor destroy the evident fact that some organisms
under certain circumstances do evolve an utterly different
form of being. It were perhaps to “consider too curiously
to ask the God theorists which of the types was the one
originally created, and whence came the other ?
It is too much the habit of the God theorists to play fast
and loose with species ; holding, when it suits their purpose,,
to the idea of the special creation of each individual species,
and dropping that idea when the conclusions become at all
inconvenient. Yet there are only two possible ways of
accounting for species. Either they are the results of the
development of accidental or beneficial natural variations ;
or they must be the result of distinct creative acts. In the
first case the materialistic theory of development must be
accepted with all its consequent inductions (summarized
towards the end of this paper); in the second case all the
logical consequences of special creation must be accepted,,
of which consequences we may readily find an exemplifica
tion.
It is a definite and accepted fact, for instance, that
there are various species of entozoa or internal parasites find
ing a congenial habitat in the flesh and organs of special
animals and incapable of existence elsewhere. There are
also varied species of external parasites which make their
dwelling-place on the skin of animals, and live by extract
ing the grateful juices from within, nor can they exist on
other than specified animals. In the case of man, we may
instance psoriasis (as the itch is technically called), the
presence of exceedingly small but irritating animalculse,.
without troubling to refer to larger easily remembered in
sects. With the creation theory, or with the germ theory as.
propounded by non-evolutionists, we must accept the conclu
sion that the first man and animals had within and without
them all the various types of the parasitic organisms with which
their descendants are still troubled.
�20
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
II.--- THE DAWN OF HUMANITY.
Surely, none but a fabled God, the dark imagination of
•an ignorant and uncultured mind, could look upon poor
Adam or any other man, afflicted inwardly with tcenia and
ascarides, busied externally with the prolific pediculi that
enliven the solitude of the primitive savage, and having
the monotony of his consequent reflections diversified by
the chigo of the West Indies and the guinea-worm of torrid
Africa; could look too upon the sheep with a diseased liver,
owing to the fasciolae or “ flukes” therein existent; could gaze
on the pig evincing more than a suspicion of trichinae or
“ measles,” and upon the potato for the food of the same
pig already bearing the germs of the dreaded “disease,”
and pronounce such a sample of his creative powers as
“ very good 1”
Let it not be thought that these conclusions are only
ludicrous ; they are very serious indeed—for Bibliolaters
and the germ theorists. Nor let it be said that I am speak
ing of repulsive things : the man who believes that God
made all these things and called them good, must also
believe that God made what repulsiveness they have ; and it
is not my fault if the theory of creation is capable of a
reductio ad absurdam.
To return to the gradations and developments of func
tions, we find, at the stage at which we had just arrived,
individual organisms with only one set of generative organs
and functions—those of the male or those of the female
respectively; though, again, it does not follow that this is
an instant and unvarying result, since we may find forms of
the same organisms in which some individuals have only
male or female organs or functions, while others have both,
powerfully developed. This is even the case in some of the
orchids, plants bearing a very high rank in vegetable life.
In some species of gregarious insects, as ants or bees, we
find a further variation, for there are a very small number
with female organs, a larger number with male organs, and
a vast majority without any sexual organs at all; yet the
grubs, which would otherwise have become non-sexual in
sects or working bees, can be, in case of need, developed
by the other working bees themselves into perfect females or
queens.
Difference of sex is, as we all know, the rule in the
higher grades of animal life. We find, too, an increasing
�STUDIES IN MATKKIJIXIKI.
21
importance and responsibility attaching to the female func
tions. In some cases, as in fishes (which are classed very
high in animal life, being vertebrated}, the functions of both
male and female may continue to be as simple or even more
simple than in some of the primitive forms already men
tioned ; for with most fishes no congress of the sexes is
needed for the act of generation. The ova of the female
are simply extruded in some convenient locality, and the
secretion of the male is extruded in the water near by.
But with birds, and with the mammalia upwards to man,
the maternal function is one of increasing burden and
responsibility; no longer limited to the simple formation
and extrusion of germs or ova containing, as it were, latent
life, but now nourishing and cherishing the impregnated
cell or cells within their own body or otherwise, till even
tually an almost perfectly developed progeny is put forth
into the world. In this natural function and adaptability
we have a link which stretches through all remaining types
of life, in very deed “ one touch of nature ” that “ makes
the whole world kin;for in the system of development
that I have roughly sketched we have, in the incident of
separation of sex, arrived at or passed through all the phases
of living organisms of which we have any knowledge—the
lowest organisms as well as articulata, crustacese, insects,
fishes, reptiles, birds and mammalia—all therein included.
At the head of these as intelligent beings may be probably
placed the insect the ant, and the mammal zwzw.
I cannot attempt to explain in brief words all the evidence
that is adduced by materialists in favour of the assertion
that man has been eventually developed by simple natural
laws from lower organisms somewhat such as now surround
us. I will only draw attention to two inevitable conclu
sions : firstly, that if we verify any one instance in an
organism of development or adaptation to an altered con
dition of surroundings, there is no logical bar to such a
series of developments as would eventually result in man,
and might through him go on to still higher beings; and
secondly, that if we concede the spontaneous generation of
any one living organism we at once lay a sufficient basis for
such a series of developments as is just suggested.
Both these conclusions are antagonistic to and utterly do
away with any necessity for recourse to imaginary forces
outside the natural properties of matter. And this is, in brief,
the essential point of Materialism. In matter, ?.<?., in that which
�22
BTUbllS in MATERIALISM.
is perceptible to our senses, we find the basis of, and the
potentiality for, all of which those senses and their resultant
reason can give us any knowledge. We find, for example,
in the fact of man’s mind or intellect, simply a high instance
of this potentiality of matter; mind or intellect being but an
empty phrase, without the existence of brain and reason
{i.e., experience of the senses) to evolve and contain it.
Materialism does not, as is falsely assumed, degrade the
vital forces of life and thought to the level of the inert and
inanimate conditions usually attributed to matter; on the
contrary it elevates ignorantly despised matter to the capa
bilities and possibilities of the highest existence and most
subtle energies; materialism is no adding of death unto
death, but a resurrection of all things unto life. It does not
hold matter as alien or foreign to spirit, it sees in the one
but a capacity or phase of the other ; it does not say
matter is a vice, it finds no vice resultant anywhere but from
the want of knowledge of the laws of matter; it does not
look on matter as a foe to virtue and high intelligence, it sees
in matter the noble mother of all living.
I have wronged my argument somewhat by seeming to
assume that an hypothesis was necessary for the first of the
conclusions given above. But development is already more
than a theory, it has established itself in the region of in
disputable fact.
One of the most recent observations on
this point is that concerning the axolotl, a Mexican lizard,
furnished with gills, and living only in the water; but which
by accidental natural circumstances, or by such circumstances
artificially imitated, may be developed into a perfect land
salamander (hitherto considered of an entirely different genus,
which is a greater distinction than a species), breathing only
by lungs and being incapable of a life in the water; its gills
having disappeared together with the tail-fin, dorsal ridge and
other especially aquatic adaptations, and corresponding
capacities for a life on land having been developed.
Now if the variation from a life only possible in water to
one only possible in air,—if such a variation or adaptation
or development can be brought about during the brief period
of existence of one little reptile, who shall dare to assign a
limit to the variations and developments that may be
evolved in untold myriads of years ? This factor of time
is one of the most difficult to realize and grasp the full
import of, since we have but such a tiny experience of it
in our own life, or even in all the centuries during which
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
23
man has left any written or graven record of his life and
.acts. Thirty or forty centuries would seem to be the limit
of the period during which we have anything like historical
record of man, though we may grasp that there were then
many and diverse races of men, some of which had at
tained a high state of civilization. Nor does there seem to
be any indubitable change traceable in the actual bodily
framework of man during that time. But sufficient expla: nations of this at once suggest themselves. In the first
place, that, as has been already noticed, it is in the lowest
and simplest organisms that cardinal changes are most
readily evolved, and we may expect in the case of so high
.an organism as man that many generations may pass away
before any distinct and palpable development may have
manifested itself; and that indeed no change would be neces. sitated in such organs as had, during all that period, been, suffi
ciently adapted to the circumstances ; secondly, that in tracing
the record of man through prehistoric times, in such evi
dence as is afforded us by fossil implements and bones of
man himself, we do get irrefutable evidence of development
since that more distant period ; and, lastly, that if we will
consider the case of organs or faculties which have ?z<7/been
.sufficiently adapted to the circumstances, we shall get here,
too, distinct and indubitable evidence of development.
Somewhat of such development it will be my effort to
trace in the next study—the Progress of Civilization ; the
■development of the faculties by which we have reached
from the material into that which has been usually, and, we
hold, incorrectly, styled and considered the immaterial.
With more highly developed faculties we may find how all
things are material : i.e., ultimately reducible to the cogni.zance of the senses; we shall find in materialism the even
tual explanation of all that lay outside the ken of duller
senses, and was therefore attributed to ultra-intelligible and
extra-natural agency; we shall find in materialism the sure
basis and touchstone for both the outward and inward
conduct of- man—all true work, all true science, all true
morality being therefrom deducible and provable. Nought
of despondency, nought of untrust is there in Materialism,
no dark, cold, fanciful belief, but simple knowledge, full of
Nature’s warmth and life and light. Not ours
“to seek
If any golden harbour be for men
In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt,”
�24
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
for to us Doubt is not sunless, it is the very bright and'
bracing air in which we grow ever more strong, more
humble, more confident,—and we trouble about no poetical
fictions as to Death ; for we hold that, as far as man is con
cerned, Death is but the condition of non-existence, and it
is manifestly absurd to endow the sheer absence of existence
with either charms or terrors.
in.—THE PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION.
In tracing the progress of man from a simple animal condi
tion to one of high intellectual power or civilisation, twomethods of inquiry are available; firstly, such historical
record as is afforded by writings and monuments, together
with what pre-historic evidence we may gather from fossil
bones or implements, or other evidences of man; and,
secondly, such knowledge as we may deduce from the con
ditions and characteristics of existing uncivilised races. To
my mind the evidence resultant from the comparison of
present existing conditions is less open to difference of
opinion than the historic or pre-historic source. It is on this
account that I have preferred to exemplify the development
theory by reference to now existing types and conditions
from the lowest organisms up to man, and by showing a
power and action of development in those which infer a
previous course of development ere reaching their present
condition, rather than to base my position more specially on
fossil forms and types which indubitably establish such
development, according to some observers, whilst others
dispute the conclusions thus arrived at. In man, however,
with both these sources of inquiry at our command we may
adduce evidence of development which it is impossible to
controvert, and I think we may further prove that such pro
gressive development has been incessant, and will, under
given circumstances, continue to be so.
In considering man and the higher organisms by com
parison with the lower and primitive types, we may take the
greatest acquired difference as that of sex. And for this
diversity of sex the Materialist may find a ready and natural
explanation. In the lowest types of life, as we have already
seen, the beings have the powers and functions of both sexes
(?.<?., impregnation and conception) united in one body, and
these functions may presently be exercised either indepen
dently of another being, or reciprocally with another being.
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
2$
Now, it is a natural fact, and resultant from obvious reasons,
that liability to conception may and does exist before the
power of impregnation is existent. For impregnation can
only be effected by an animal already arrived at puberty,
while the capacity for reception and retention of the sperm
cells exists, and may come into operation before the actual
capacity for conception, which is also an attribute of puberty.
If, therefore, we presume a double-sexed animal at just
this stage of its existence taking part with, or being forced
to submit to an older and fully developed animal in what
should virtually be a reciprocal act, we shall find as the result
that the immature animal will receive and retain sperm cells,
with which its germ cells will in due time be vivified, while
the mature animal will have received no sperm cells from,
its partner, and its own germ cells will, therefore, remain
unimpregnated and unvivified. In plain words the first
animal will have found exercise for its female organs alone,
and the second for its male organs alone. And, supposing
no further intercourse or exercise of the organs to take place,
it is evident that the one animal will have fulfilled the func
tion of a mother only, and the other that of a father only.
It will also be seen, and I call special attention to this fact,,
that an animal might be forced or coaxed into the position
of maternity before its own impulses or capabilities would,
have prompted any such responsibility.
Another singular natural feature now comes into play.
Where an act is susceptible of repetition, the use of the
necessary organ has a tendency to cause an increased ability,
of that organ ; and the disuse of an organ has a corre
sponding tendency to produce debility or atrophy of that
organ. So that in the next acts of intercourse of the two
individuals we have presumed, there will be a tendency to?the uni-sexual function alone being exercised. Taught by
experience, too, the older individual may have learnt that by
being careful always to select young and scarcely mature
individuals it may secure what amount of gratification is
afforded by the sexual act, without any resultant burden or
incommodity of maternity to itself. It might, in fact, readily
act as a male being, with the tendency to masculinity con
tinually increasing throughout its life. And some of its progeny would inherit this tendency to be of the male sex
only; as also others of the progeny would, from the mother's
induced habit, have a corresponding tendency to be of the
female sex only. With these tendencies once developed into.-
�26
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
■fixed habits, and they certainly will so develop, the fact of
•division into separate sexes is accomplished.
Upon thp incidents mentioned in the earlier part of the
preceding paragraph two others follow almost as corollaries;
firstly, that with the idea of the evasion of the incommodity of
maternity once conceded, it would need the exercise or develop
ment of but a very slight amount of cunning or instinct to lead
an experienced mature animal to evade the maternal function
when trafficking with even a matured animal of less experi
ence ; and, secondly, that in addition to the induced
femininity of the younger animal, there would be developed
and perpetuated a sort of habit of juvenility which might
explain the seeming secondariness of development or immatury in some aspects of females generally; and further, the
general earlier capacity of parentage on the part of the female
than of the male which is now existent.
And I think it may easily be shown that maternity is an
incommodity sufficiently great to prompt to its evasion in
the manner I have suggested. For in even the lowest or
ganisms the fact of the organism being gravid, or heavy
with young, will necessarily restrain its liberty of action or
locomotion, and yet will entail on it a necessity for increased
action in order to find the extra food for the formation of its
• coming progeny.
The habit of unisexuality on the part of either male or
female, would be further established by the fact that with
many of the lower types, both of animals and vegetables, the
act of fructification once fulfilled the being dies. Those of my
readers who have kept silkworms may have noticed how the
male moth will live even for several days, should not a female
moth be present, but that the sexual act once accomplished
the male forthwith dies. And the fact of the female receiv
ing and retaining the male secretion may be well seen in the
female moth who does not begin laying eggs till two or three
days afterwards, and who has within her body, in common
with many other insects, a special cavity, called the sper■motheca, for the storing up till time of need of the secretion
received from the male. In the ant also, the instant death
of the male after the sexual act, and the long-continued
impregnation of the female, is a prominent example of this
phenomenon.
I instance these things to show that I am not drawing on
hypothesis alone, but also on facts and parallels for the
theory as to origin of sex. I hope, at least, to have shown
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
27
that there may be a perfectly intelligible and natural way of
accounting for difference in sex, and of refuting the super
natural fiction that “ male and female created he them.”
It is but one contradiction the more of the fable of creation
that primitive and even some advanced forms of animal life
are not of divided sex.
Among the evidences that can be adduced in proof of the
some time general hermaphroditism of the progenitors of
animals that are now of clearly defined sexes, is the fact that
the rudiments or survivals of the organs and characteristics
of either sex are found in animals of the opposite sex;
rudiments of specially male organs or characteristics being
traceable in every woman, as are likewise rudiments
of the female organs in every man. Man, with other
male mammals, has nipples, and there are known cases
in which a perfectly developed man has given milk in
sufficient quantity to suckle a child. It would even seem
from recent observations in Germany that this faculty and
power may be somewhat readily called into activity. In
women, when the specially female functions have lapsed
through age, the male characteristics more or less assert
themselves; there is a distinct tendency to a more masculine
type in feature, voice, &c., and not unfrequently some ap
pearance of hair on the lips or chin. In the domestic fowl,
a hen past laying will acquire spurs and comb like the male,
and the habit of crowing. Again in the human being, if
accidentally or purposely the specially sexual organs are
removed, there is an instant and persistent tendency to the
development of the stirviving organs and characteristics of
the opposite sex (as though these organs had only been
kept in a state of dormancy by the predominances of the
previous set) ; thus male eunuchs are beardless, their
muscles less firm in texture, and their breasts grow and
soften; and, conversely, in women from whom the ovaries
have been removed, the breasts shrink and disappear, and
masculinity of voice and bearing supervene.
A still stronger exemplification of this survival of double
sexuality remains. As it is in the generative organs that the
main departure from the stage of hermaphroditism has
been made, so also is it there that we must be prepared to
furnish crucial proofs if we would maintain a still existing
identity of being in male and female; such an identity, I
mean, as should do away with all distinctions other than those
really existing in Nature. And it is precisely in those organs
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
that survival can most clearly be evidenced, most celebrated
anatomists and physiologists asserting that precise analogues
or rudiments of every portion of the female economy are
to be found in the man, and vice versa.
I am calling attention at this length to the present and
real identities and differences of male and female, becau-se
in the case of the human being the natural difference has
been very much over-rated, and, as I have already said, man
has based a series of artificial and arbitrary and unjust distinc
tions on that difference. I wish it to be clearly understood
that I am but relating what seems to me a very probable
history of the origin of sex. Whether my theory be alto
gether correct or not, we shall undoubtedly, by searching,
■eventually find out that division of sex has been as simply
and naturally induced as any other phenomenon which was
at one time a mystery, but is now clear. Such a mode of
natural action as I have suggested would go far to account
for all the good and evil of existing civilisation. For the
difference of sex is certainly at the very base of civilisation
as far as man is concerned : from this difference (as I shall
-endeavour to show) have arisen all the conditions of social
and political life, all the working of men together for mutual
and common interests, all the good that has been en
gendered by reciprocity of action and sharing of benefits,
and all the social evil from which the world still groans,
and which is but the resultant of selfishness or non
reciprocity.
For I take civilisation* to mean the banding of many to
gether to do that which could not be done by one, and the more
entirely mutual and reciprocal the benefits received from
such union are, the higher and truer is the civilisation. It is
the custom to credit man alone with being civilised, but it
will be seen that under the definition I have adopted many
other animals may be included, some sorts of ants, bees
and wasps among insects, while perhaps the beaver is the
only other among mammals. It will be seen that intelligence
alone does not imply civilisation, for though the elephant, the
dog, and other animals have a high degree of intelligence,
yet the cases are rare in which they seem to combine for a
general good. And when such instances do occur, they
seem but temporary and transitory conditions, whereas, in the
beaver and the insects named the union is a permanent
one, insomuch that fixed habitations are erected for the
general welfare of the community. Indeed the word civis
�STUD IE S IN MATERIALISM.
29
means a denizen of a city or State, and in all the animals I
have classed as civilised the construction of cities or com
monwealths is an essential feature. Yet the art of building
.alone does not constitute civilisation: birds, squirrels, and
.sticklebacks build nests, though generally only for temporary
purposes ; moles dig passages and chambers, spiders make
webs, and catapillars spin cocoons.
It is in the fact of community that we find civilisation ; it
.is in what tends to and ensures the general benefit of that
community that we find the good of civilisation : it is where
the personal acts or interests of an individual are selfish,
.and, therefore, irrelevant or inimical to the general well
being that we have evil resultant. I know it is asserted by
some sophists that all actions of man spring from a selfish
motive, but we need not trouble much about such a defini
tion ; it will be sufficient for our purpose to distinguish
.between the acts in which a man may believe that his own
well-being or happiness will be an eventual result of benefitting others, and the acts in which he seeks a personal
advantage utterly irrespective of any evil consequences of
such acts to others. Few of my readers will hesitate to
call the former acts good and unselfish, and the latter
.selfish and evil.
Now, it would seem that the class of actions confined to
•.self-interest alone had their origin as a natural consequence
■ of the primitive unisexual and self-sufficient condition, and
that the wider class of feelings and actions have been the
eventual outcome of separation into sex—i.e., of the render,
ing each individual reciprocally helpful to, and more or less
•dependent on, the well-being and full life of some other.
For in looking for the primitive origin of man’s power of
feeling, passion, idea, thought, and reason, we must be ready
to recognize and accept beginnings utterly small and infini
tesimal as compared with his present powers; we must be
prepared to find that the love of a mother for her child had
.as rudimentary and material an origin as the breast and the
milk with which she suckles the babe. As we may already
.ascribe back the wondrous delicacy of finger of a Benve
nuto Cellini or a Michael Angelo to slow development
from such power as lies in the vague changes of form of the
amoeba, so may we look for the birthplace of all the pas
sions that a Shakespeare pourtrays, of all the wisdom with
* which a Socrates and a Bacon enrich the world, in the
^cravings of hunger and the sensations of heat and cold on
�the unisexual being, and then, with wonderfully increased'
impetus, in the fresh set of feelings evolved when quest for
love was added to the quest for food. For many of the
capabilities evolved and developed in either quest would
become of avail in the other, the mutual action and reaction
giving to the organs an acceleration and extent of develop
ment which they might not otherwise have attained.
In speaking of sensations of heat, cold, and hunger in the
lowest organisms, no further intellectual action is implied on
their part than is involved in the simple chemical, or even
mechanical, effects of heat and cold, moisture and dryness
some such action, for instance, as is seen in the rotifer, a
fairly advanced organism, which, in the absence of moisture,
dries up, and will lie, to all intents and purposes, as dead
matter, even for years, but will instantly revive and resume
full activity with the advent of a few drops of water.
A distinct tendency of animated matter is to accept suchconditions as are favourable to animation, the distinguishing
power of locomotion being developed and constantly exerted
to this end. Nor can it be doubted that constantly
recurring experiences of things inimical to the organism’s
well-being will cause even a mechanical tendency to the
avoidance of such evil things, and will develop a pro
vision from the remembrances of experiences, which is the step
ping-stone to an intellect. We see the pimpernel flowerclose itself when rain is coming, that its pollen may not be
injured by the moisture. Doubtless the mechanical causeof this is that some condition of the atmosphere previous
to rain causes a relaxation, and therefore a closing, as in sleep,,
of the flower. We see men and women, when rain is coming,
take an umbrella, that their clothes or their health may not
be injured. They are warned by some evidence of theirsenses: a dark cloud in the sky causes a mechanical relaxation,
in the retina of their eye analogous to the relaxation of the
corolla of the pimpernel, or they see a change in that furthermechanical contrivance, the barometer. Why are we to call,
the carrying of an umbrella an intellectual act, and the closing
ota flower a mechanical act ? Men only use a further de
veloped set of experiences and remembrances and mecha
nisms ; the base of the action and the resultant are essen
tially the same, the avoidance of a condition hurtful to thewell-being of the organism. Man’s intellectual chain may
be longer than that of the pimpernel, but the links are forged,
of the same metal.
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
31
The fact is that every experience of an organism is in
some way duly registered in the organism, just as truly as
every touch of a sculptor’s chisel has its effect in the image
he produces. One result of this law—a result that will at
some time be as clear to our understanding as it is now in
many instances to our vision—is that the accretion of experi
ences produces, as might be expected, some definite change
or growth in the organism itself, such change being, in point
of fact, an organ ; and so truly is this the case that it is by
examining the organs of any living thing that we arrive at
the knowledge of the conditions and experiences of its life.
Indeed, we should not greatly err in calling organs materi
alized experiences. In such a way we may not only clearly
explain the necessarily slow progress of development, but
we may also show the very how and why of its existence.
And so the varied necessities of food and love induced
the gradual evolution and development of the organs and
faculties of touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, locomotion,
prehension, speech; and from the experiences and remem
brances attendant on their continual use arose by similar
slow evolution all the powers that we call intelligence, or
mind, or soul. For we may find a fully sufficient basis for
mind and all its phenomena in such experiences and
remembrances, such impressions, inherited or acquiredimpressions inherited from countless ages of progenitors as
unconsciously, but just as tangibly, as our limbs are in
herited—impressions from our own smaller experiences—-im
pressions which we acquire from others by living converse,
or by bookly intercourse with the mighty dead.
It is the quest for food and the quest for love that are at
the bottom of the two laws so clearly enunciated by Charles
Darwin—Sexual Selection and the Survival of the Fittest.
It must be borne in mind that this survival of the fittest
simply means the survival of the types or animals best
capable of living under certain conditions and contingencies ;
it does not mean the survival of the animals which man
might have considered the most fitting denizens of the earth
as far as his ideas were concerned. For further considera
tion as to these two laws, I must refer the reader to the
works of the author just mentioned. I simply wish here to
note that the quest for food, coincident with the survival of
the fittest, and the quest for love, which evolved the prin
ciple of sexual selection, opened out two separate and widely
varying vistas of impulse and action.
�32
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
As already estimated, the quest of food involved feelings
mainly concerning the self of the organism, and affecting
only the inward personality of the individual; while from
the quest for love, for intercourse and companionship with
fellow-beings, have arisen the feelings concerning the larger
world outside the individual—the feelings which have their
outcome in parental affection, social relations, and civilisation.
And in the commingling and interaction of these inward and'
outer interests we may find the source of all intellectual action.
For, indeed, the reaction of these two sets of feelings on
each other has been so incessant and so multitudinous that
it is difficult, if not impossible, now to classify some of the
many varied passions of man according to their original
incentive. And the organs naturally bear evidence to this
intermingling of causes and events, for the gentle murmur
ing of words of love is as delicious to the lips and tongue as
is the most delicate fruit, and “ the warmth of hand in hand
is more tender and delightful than the sunniest glow of
summer skies.
In man, as in the male of many other animals, this inter
changeability of usage of the organs has been temporarily
used to evil ends, for the organs of prehension acquired in
the quest for food have been in some instances developed
by the quest for love into instruments of outrage; so that, as
already said, the young of the opposite sex have continually
had enforced on them the function of maternity before their
own strength or inclination would have suggested any such
burden or responsibility. In looking at the means of pre
hension used for amatory purposes by male animals gene
rally, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the maternal
office has been a matter of compulsion rather than of equal
and voluntary acceptance. In some beetles, the cruellooking specially-developed organs of prehension are repul
sively suggestive of the idea that conquest and not endear
ment is their purpose, and that it must have been a great re
pugnance on the part of the female which has necessitated
such implements of brute force in the male.
It is true that in the course of time a habit of tolerance,
or even of perfect acquiescence, has been acquired by some
females, yet the habit is far from universal, and, perhaps,
never will be so, so long as the female remains exposed to
the capacity of having maternity forced upon her despite
her own will, while the male is incapable of having the office
of paternity enforced by outrage on him.
�TUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
33;
In the primitive and savage condition of mankind we
have such evidence of the abominable treatment and out
rage of the young females as to leave us without wonder
that the result has been to make woman of a generally
more feeble type than man, and to have induced in her an
utterly abnormal and unnatural phenomenon from which
men and even female animals are exempt. At the first
glance it is pitiful to reflect that man’s vaunted superiority
over the brute, the greater activity of his brain, and thesubtler cunning of his hand have for so long lent them
selves to the oppression that has resulted in such pernicious,
consequences and in the still existent slavery, social and
physical, of the female of his own species. The function
of child-bearing has been exaggerated to an utterly dispropor
tionate degree in her life; it has been made her almost sole
claim to existence. Yet it is not the true purpose of any
intellectual organism to live solely to give birth to succeed
ing organisms; its duty is also to live for its own happiness
and well-being. Indeed, in so doing, it will be acting in
one of the most certain ways to ensure that faculty and
possession of happiness that it aims to secure for its pro
geny. But up to the present woman has scarcely been
treated as an intellectual being. In earlier history her fate
was entirely subordinated to the passions of man, nor has
our civilization yet sufficiently advanced to leave her to
choose her own life, or to develop the powers, the inclina
tions, or the individuality which lie within her nature; and
in our still feeble intellectual powers, in our narrow sym
pathies, and in our stunted capacities, we men are reaping
the natural consequences of our blindness and injustice.
Truly the tale of man’s ignorant injustice will be a bitter
one when unfolded; yet there is the bright hope and con
fidence that to know the wrong will be to redress it. And
it is by intelligent materialistic research that we can alone
assure such knowledge, and by the destruction of all reli
gions and priestcrafts. For a main basis and element in
the constitution of these is the subjugation of woman,
enunciated in tacit and open assumptions and assertions of'
her inferiority and secondariness to man, or in hideous and
insulting fables proclamatory of her innate baseness, and
exculpatory of the condition to which the wrong and selfish
ness of man has alone reduced her.
Further and very conclusive evidence in favour of develop
ment by interaction of these sets of motives and quests is.
�34
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
offered by the nervous system in organised beings. This
system comprises the organs of intellect and of action, and
divides into two main conditions having these specific func
tions. In the lowest organisms little evidence of nervous
structure is presented beyond disjected filaments, but with
■organisms of more experiences (and, therefore, develop
ment) the nervous system becomes an apparatus of filaments
combined with knots or ganglia. And with division into
sets we have the accession of a cephalic ganglion or brain,
at any rate in the more advanced organisms. The minute
ness of many intelligent organisms (such as ants, bees,
wasps, beetles, &c.) throws greater difficulty in the way of
obtaining precise statistics concerning their nervous struc
ture, but in the vertebrata we have greater facilities. That
the brain seems to be a special outcome of wider experiences
■and motives is evidenced by its greater bulk in proportion to
Average Proportion of Weight of Brain to Body :
Fishes ........................... I to 5568
Reptiles ........................ 1 ,, 1321
Birds ........................... 1 ,, 212
Mammals....................... I ,, 186
Man............................... I „ 35
The spinal system, which we are assuming to be more
-specially developed by, and connected with, the narrower
series of motives implicated in self-preservation alone, offers
a similar confirmatory result in its proportion to the amount
of brain, as in the ensuing fairly accurate table :—
Proportion of Weight of Brain to Spinal Marrow :
Fishes ............. • i£, or 2 to 1
Reptiles ......... • 2, „ 2% „ 1
Birds .............
,, 1
Mammals......... • 3> „ 4 „ 1
Man ................. • 23, >, 24 „ 1
This proportion ot brain or mental power to spinal or
active power shall be noted with the coincident sexual,
parental, and social conditions, as follows :—
Fishes.—In general there is no approach of the sexes,
and no indication of parental feeling, except in very rare
instances.
Reptiles.—Approach of the sexes, and sometimes (as in
the viper) fairly developed parental care.
Birds.—In general a greatly increased degree of parental
care, with, in some cases, a steady companionship of two
individuals of opposite sex, which may even endure through
out life.
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
35
Mammals.—Parental, or rather maternal, care has here
evolved a special organ, affording food to the young; the
degrees and conditions of parentage, and of sexual affection
and companionship, vary greatly. In many birds and mam- .
mals a power of affection, outside sexual or parental feeling,
has been developed. In animals which have been much
cared for by man, and become domesticated, this affection
may be so prominent as sometimes to override both the
quest for food, and sexual or parental affection. Instances
are not rare o*f the dog or the horse who willingly refuses a
meal in order to be with his master, or who will leave puppy
or colt at the sound of the same dear voice.
Man.—The office and issues of parentage have been ex
tended through simple paternal brute force, with subjugation
of wife and child; patriarchism, with attendant slavery ■
autocracy, with attendant servitude; limited monarchy, with
attendant subjection; to Republicanism, with recognition of
equality of individual right. And from some phase of these
have arisen the vast majority of the existent relations
between man and man. These form the subject of the
further science of materialism called Sociology, and to that
branch of the subject we must leave them, as also the wider
discussion of the development of love in man to its grand
phases of conjugal love, parental and filial affection,
patriotism, and general humanity.
I need only draw attention to one further incident before
bringing these papers to a close ; the fact that the superiority
of man’s primitive culture over that of animals is mainly
evidenced in three things—agriculture, the use of tools, and
the use of fire, each of these having contributed its quota to
the development of man’s intellect. Agriculture would seem
to be an outcome of the habit, common to many animals, of
hiding a superfluity of food till a time of need, though there
is, of course, a vast distance between the simple hiding of
food and the sowing of seeds and the preparing of land for
the purpose, yet it is not difficult to imagine that the acci
dental growth of a store of nuts or roots hidden in the
ground gave to man the idea of providing for food in that
manner.
Evidence of the origin of the use of tools is to be found
in the habit of some birds in carrying to a height and
dropping shell-fish which they have not the strength to
break or open ; monkeys, too, are known to break cocoa-nuts
by dropping them. In these cases the earth itself is used as
�36
STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
a hammer, and the unintentional dropping of a shell or a
cocoa-nut offers an easy solution for the origin of the habit,
which would readily spread by imitation and inheritance.
The next step in the scale of mechanical progress is evi
denced in some monkeys, who use a stone as a hammer, or
a stick as a lever. Then follows man, with the adaptation
of the lever (or handle) to the stone, and the use of sharp-edged stones (knives and axes), and with the advent of fire
•and the smelting of metals we gradually arrive at the whole
series of tools and machines that may be found in an inter
national exhibition.
There seems no glimpse of any approach to the creation
■of fire in any animal but man, though many animals willingly
accept its artificial warmth, and prefer the food that is
cooked by its aid. In primitive times the chipping of his
flint implements must have afforded man many instances of
sparks of fire, and possibly of undesigned conflagration, with
•attendant flame and heat. The observation of this may
well have led some thoughtful man to turn the unexpected
discovery to profit and to imitate it; and the evolution by
friction of a heat similar to that caused by fire might suggest
to him or to others the continuance and increase of that
friction till flame would be the reward of their curiosity and
perseverance. And all this would be the consequence of as
clear and simple a train of reasoning as that which led
Columbus to discover land to the west of the Atlantic, or
James Watt to foresee that the force which could raise the
lid of a teakettle could also drive mighty engines.
We do not now dignify either of these men with the title
■of gods, or suppose that they stole their knowledge from
heaven, our times are already too materialistic for that; yet in
n preceding age we have the invention of fire attributed to
■such agency, and the shrewd and patient woman who
evolved the primitive art of the culture of corn and fruit
figured as a goddess, whose name we still use when
speaking of our cereal productions.
Yet, though we no longer dream of referring such inven
tions or knowledge to supernatural power, though we no
longer place faith in fictions of the divinity of the inventors,
we, as a majority, present the pitiable spectacle of still
accepting such primitive and infantile explanations of all the
phenomena that man’s intellect has not yet had the per
severance or the opportunity to solve. The inquisitiveness
and habit of research evolved in man’s natural quests have
�STUDIES IN MATERIALISM.
led him to continually inquire into the origin and sequence
-of all the circumstances that he sees around him, and, where
-want of true knowledge has supervened there have not been
wanting those who have offered all sorts of fictitious and
baneful explanations. It is the evil of all religions, from
that of Confucius to that of Comte, that they are, in the
main, a compound of unverified assertions concerning man’s
physical and social condition, together with a series of selfstyled moral aphorisms deduced from such assertions. It is
only when the spirit of materialistic inquiry shall be carried
into the region of ethics, when every action and idea and
sequence of man’s intellect and mind shall be accredited
solely on the same terms as any other physical fact, that we
shall arrive at any true morality, at any assured knowledge
■of living to the best for ourselves and for each other. Pro
ceeding in this way we shall find that man’s intellect will
have power to find the solution of all that that intellect can
suggest, and to speak of anything further is simply to speak
■of what is for man non-existent.
It has been my purpose to indicate somewhat of the line
.and method of thought which 'may be available in this
further research, but each man must be left to travel by
himself along that road. Sect and name-following can find
no place there; open eyes for Nature’s facts, open hearts
for Nature’s love, these will be our unerring guides to the
■ever-increasing knowledge, the ever-growing happiness, the
-ever-higher potentiality of life, and love, and humanity.
Farewell.
��
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Studies in materialism
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Elmy, Ben
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 37 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Printed and published by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Tentative date of publication from KVK. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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[187-?]
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Materialism
Philosophy
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Materialism
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CIVIL & RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
WITH SOME HINTS TAKEN FROM
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
BY ANNIE BESANT,
(Second Edition).
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C,
PBICE THREEPENCE.
�LONDON
FEINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BP.ADLAUGHZ
28, STONECUTTER STREET, E. C.
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CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
« O Liberty ! how many crimes are committed in thy
name1” So exclaimed Madame Roland, one of the most
heroic and most beautiful spirits of the great French Revo
lution, when above her glittered the keen knife of the
guillotine, and below her glared the fierce faces of the
maddened crowd, who were howling for her death. But
Madame Roland, even as she spoke, bowed her fair head
to the statue of Liberty which—pure, serene, majestic—
rose beside the scaffold, and stood white and undefiled in
the sunlight, while the mob seethed and tossed round its
base. Madame Roland bent her brow before Liberty, even
as the sad complaint passed her lips; for well that noblehearted woman knew that the guillotine, by which she was
to die, had not been raised in a night with the broken
chains of Liberty, but had been slowly building up, during
long centuries of tyranny, out of the mouldering skeletons
<of the thousands of victims of despotism and misrule. The
taunt has been re-echoed ever since, and lovers of repression
have changed its words and its meaning, and they have said
what noble Madame Roland would never have said: “ O
Liberty, how many crimes are committed by thee, and
because of thee 1” They have never said, they have never
cared to ask, how many crimes have been committed against
Liberty in the past; how many crimes are daily committed
against her in the England which we boast as free. They
have never said, they have never cared to ask, whether th©
excesses which have, alas ! disgraced revolutions, whether
the bloodshed which has ofttimes stained crimson-red the
fair, white, banner of Liberty, are not the natural and the
necessary fruits, not of the freedom which is won, bu'c of
the tyranny which is crushed. Society keeps a number of
its members uneducated and degraded; it houses them
worse than brutes; it pays them so little that, if a man
would not starve, he must toil all day, without time for
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CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
relaxation or for self-culture; it withdraws from them all
softening influences ; it shuts them out from all intellectual
amusements; it leaves them no pleasures except the purely
animal ones ; it bars against them the gates of the museums
and the art galleries, and opens to them only the doors of
the beer-shop and the gin-palace; it sneers at their folly,
but never seeks to teach them wisdom; it disdains their
“ lowness,” but never tries to help them to be higher; and then,
when suddenly the masses of the people rise, maddened by
long oppression, intoxicated with a freedom for which they
are not prepared, arrogant with the newly-won consciousness
of their resistless strength, then Society, which has kept them
brutal, is appalled at their brutality; Society, which has
kept them degraded, shrieks out at the inevitable results of
that degradation. I have often heard wealthy men and
women talk about the discontent and the restlessness of the
poor; I have heard them prattle about the necessity of
“keeping the people down;” I have heard polite and
refined sneers at the folly and the tiresome enthusiasm of
the political agitator, and half-jesting wishes that “the whole
tribe of agitators ” would become extinct. And as I have
listened, and have seen the luxury around the speakers; as
I have noted the smooth current of their lives, and marked
the irritation displayed at some petty mischance which for a
moment ruffled its even flow; as I have seen all this, and then
remembered the miserable homes that I have known, the
squalor and the hideous poverty, the hunger and the pain,
I have thought to myself that if I could take the speakers,
and could plunge them down into the life which the despised
“ masses ” live, that the braver-hearted of them would turn
into turbulent demagogues, while the weaker-spirited would
sink down into hopeless drunkenness and pauperism. These
rich ones do not mean to be cruel when they sneer at the
complaints of the poor, and they are unconscious of the
misery which underlies and gives force to the agitation
which disturbs their serenity; they do not understand how
the subjects which seem to them so dry are thrilling with
living interest to the poor who listen to the “ demagogue,”
or how 'his keenest thrusts are pointed in the smithy of
human pain. They are only thoughtless, only careless,
only indifferent; and meanwhile the smothered murmuring
going on around them, and grim Want and Pain and
Despair are the phantom forms which are undermining their
palaces; and “ they eat, they drink, they marry, and are
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5
given in marriage,” heedless of the gathering river which is
beginning to overflow its banks, and which, if it be not
drained off in time, will “ sweep them all away.” If they
knew their best friends, they would bless the popular
leaders, who are striving to win social and political reforms,
and so to avert a revolution.
The French Revolution is so often flung, by ignorant
people, in the teeth of those who are endeavouring to extend
and to consolidate the reign of Freedom, that it can
scarcely be deemed out of place to linger for a moment
on the threshold of the subject, in order to draw from past
experience the lesson, that bloodshed and civil war do not
spring from wise and large measures of reform, but from the
hopelessness of winning relief except by force, from over
taxation, from unjust social inequality, from the’grinding of
poverty, from the despair and from the misery of the people.
It shows extremest folly to decline to study the causes of
great catastrophes, to reject the experience won by the
misfortunes and by the mistakes of others, and to refuse to
profit by the lessons of the past.
Of course I do not mean to say, and I should be very
sorry to persuade any one to think, that our state to-day in
England is as bad as that from which France was only
delivered through the frightful agony of the Revolution.
But we have in England, as we shall see as we go on, many
of the abuses left of that feudal system which the Revolution
destroyed for ever in France. The feudal system was spread
all over Europe in the Middle Ages, those Dark Ages when
all sense of equal justice and of liberty was dead. It con
centrated all power in the hands of the few; it took no
account of the masses of the people; it handed over the
poor, bound hand and foot, to the power of the feudal
superior, and it cultivated that haughty spirit of disdainful
contempt for labour, which is still, unfortunately, only too
widely spread throughout our middle and upper classes in
England. This system gradually lost its harsher features
among ourselves ; but in France it endured up to the time
of the Revolution; and in this system, added to the fearful
weight of taxation under which the people were absolutely
crushed and starved to death, lies the secret of the blood
shed of the Revolution.
Therefore, before passing on to the parallel between our
state and that of ante-revolutionary France, I would fain put
into the mouths of our friends an answer to those who say
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that the excesses of the French Revolution are the necessary
outcome of free thought in religion and of free action in
politics. It is perfectly true that the determination to
shake off a cruel and unjust yoke was implanted in the
bosoms of the French people by the writings of those who
are commonly called the Encyclopaedists. These men were
Freethinkers; some of them—as Holbach and Diderot—
might fairly be called Atheists ; some were nothing of the
kind. These men taught the French people to think; they
nurtured in their breasts a spirit of self-reliance; they roused
a spirit of defiance. These /men rang the tocsin which
awoke France, and so far it is true that Freethought pro
duced the Revolution, and so far Freethought may well be
proud of her work. But not to Freethought, not to Liberty,
must be ascribed the excesses which stained a revolution
that was in its beginning, that might have been throughout,
so purely glorious. For do you know what French Feudal
ism was ? Do you know what those terrible rights were,
which have branded so deeply into the French peasant’s
heart the hatred of the old nobility, that even to the present
day he will hiss out between clenched teeth the word
“ aristocrat,” with a passionate hatred which one hundred
years of freedom have not ’quenched ?
In the reign of Louis XIV. there was a Count, the Comte
de Charolois, who used to shoot down, for his amusement,
the peasants who had climbed into trees,-and the tilers who
were mending roofs. The chasse aux paysans, as it was
pleasantly termed, the “ hunt of peasants,” was remembered
by an old man who was in Paris during the Revolution as
one of the amusements of the nobility in his youth. True,
these acts were but the acts of a few; but they were done,
and the people dared not strike back Then there was
another right, a right which outraged ’ all humanity, and
which gave to the lord the first claim to the serf’s bride.
The terrible story in Charles Dickens’s “Tale of Two
Cities ” is no fiction, except in details, if we may judge from
some of the chronicles of the time. (Dufaure gives many
interesting details on French feudalism.) Then they might
harness the serfs, like cattle, to their carts; they might keep
them awake all night beating the trenches round their
castles, lest noble slumbers should be disturbed by the
croaking of the frogs. When any one throws in*lhe Radical’s
teeth the excesses of the French Revolution, let the Radical
answer him back with these rights, and ask if it is to be
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'wondered at that men struck hard, when the outrages and
the oppressions of centuries were revenged in a few wild
months ? Marvel not at the short madness that broke out
at. last; marvel rather at the cowardice which bore in
■silence for so long.
I pass from these hideous rights of feudalism to its milder
■features, as they existed in France before the Revolution,
and as they exist among us to-day in England. The laws
by which land is held and transmitted, the rights of the
first-born son, the laying-on of taxation by those who do
not represent the tax-payer, a standing army in which birth
helps promotion, the Game Laws—all these are relics of
■feudalism, relics which need to be swept away. It is on
the existence of these that I ground my plea for wider
freedom ; it is on these that I rely to prove that Civil and
Religious Liberty are still very imperfect among ourselves.
In France, before the revolution, people in general, king,
queen, lords, clergy, thought that things were going on very
■nicely, and very comfortably. True, keener-sighted men
saw in the misery of the masses the threatened ruin of the
throne. True, even Royalty itself, in the haggard faces
and gaunt forms that pressed cheering round its carriages,
■read traces of grinding poverty, of insufficient food. True,
some faint rumour even reached the court, amid its luxury,
that the houses of the people were not all they should be,
nay, that many of them were wretched huts, not fit for cattle.
But what of that ? There was no open rebellion; there
was no open disloyalty. What disloyalty there was, was
confined to the lower orders, and showed itself by a fancy
of the people to gather into Republican clubs, and other
such societies, where loyalty to the Crown was not the lesson
which they learned from the speakers’ lips. But such dis
loyalty could of course be crushed out at any moment, and
the court went gaily on its way, careless of the low, dull
growling in the distance which told of the coming storm.
We, in England, to-day, are quite at ease. True, some of
our labourers are paid starvation-wages of ios., iis., 12s.,
a week, but again I ask, what of that? Has not Mr. Fraser
Grove, late M.P., told the South Wiltshire farmers that they
had a right to reduce the labourer’s wage to ns. a week, if
he could livp upon it; and, if he did not like it, he could
take his labour to other markets ? Why should the labourer
complain, so long as he is allowed to live? Then the houses
of our people are scarcely all that they should be. I have
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been into some so-called homes, composed of two smalF
rooms, in one of which father and mother, boys and girls
growing up into manhood and womanhood, were obliged
to sleep in the one room, even in the one bed. I have seen
a room in which slept four generations, the great-grandfather
and his wife, the grandmother (unmarried), the mother (un
married), and the little child of the latter, and in addition to
these relatives, the room also afforded sleeping accommoda
tion to three men lodgers. Yet people talk about the “im
morality of the agricultural poor,” as though people could
be anything except immoral, when the lads and lasses have.
to grow up without any possibility of being even decent,
much less with any possibility of retaining the smallest
shred of natural modesty. The only marvel is how, among
our poor, there do grow up now and then fair and pure
blossoms, worthy of the most carefully-guarded homes. But
avery short time since there were worse hovels even than those
I have mentioned. Down at Woolwich there were “homes”
composed of one small room, 12 feet by 12, and 8J feet
high in the middle of the sloping roof, and the huts were
built of bad brick, the damp of which sweated slowly
through the whitewash, and the floor was made of beaten
earth, lower in level than the ground outside, and in front
of the fire they kept a plank all day baking warm and dry,
in order that at night they might put it into the bed, tokeep the sleeper next the wall from being wet through by
the drippings as he slept. And in other such huts as* these
four families lived together, with no partition put up between
them, save such poor rags as some lingering feeling of de
cency might lead them to hang up for themselves—and
these huts, these miserable huts, were the property of
Government, and in them were housed her Majesty’s married
soldiers, housed in such abodes as her Majesty would not
allow her cattle to occupy near Windsor or near
Balmoral. Yet among us there is no open rebellion; there
is no open disloyalty. Among us, too, what disloyalty there
is, is chiefly confined to the lower orders, and that, as every
one knows, can be snuffed out at a moment’s notice.
Among us, it also shows itself in that fancy of the people to
gather into Republican clubs and other such societies,
where loyalty to the Crown is not the lesson most enforced
by the speakers. The quiet, slow alienation of the people
from the Throne is going on unobserved ; a people who
are loyal to a monarchy will not form themselves into Repub
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
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lican Clubs; yet our rulers never dream that the people'are
•discontented, and. that these clubs are signs of the times.
They fancy that the agitation is only the work of the few,
and that there is no widely-spread disaffection behind the
Republican teachers; only the leaders of popular move
ments know the vast force which they can wield in case
of need, but the Government will never listen to these men,
any more than in France they would listen to Mirabeau,
until it was too late. Yet do sensible people think that a
• soUjpd and a healthy society can rest upon the misery of the
masses? and do our rulers think that palaces stand firm
when they are built up upon such hovels-as those which I
have described? It appears they do ; for our Queen
and our Princes seem to believe in the lip-loyalty of
the crowds which cheer them when they make us happy
by driving through our streets, loyalty that springs
from the thougl^essness of custom, and not from true
and manly reverence for real worth. For I would not
be thought to ' disparage the sentiment of loyalty; I
hold it to be one of the fairest blossoms' which flower
•on the emotional side of the nature of man. Loyalty
to principle, loyalty to a great cause, loyalty to some true
leader, crowned king of men by reason of his virtue, of his
» genius, of his strength—such loyalty as this it is no shame
■for a freeman to yield, such loyalty as this has, in all ages
of the world, inspired men to the noblest self-devotion,
nerved men to the most heroic self-sacrifice. But just as
•only those things which are valuable in themselves are
-thought worthy of imitation in baser metal, so is this
irue,golden loyalty imitated by the pinchbeck loyalty, which
shouts in our streets. For what true loyalty is possible from
us towards the House of Brunswick ? Loyalty to virtue ?
as enshrined in a Prince of Wales ? loyalty to liberality,
and to delicacy of sentiment ? as exemplified by a Duke of
Edinburgh ? loyalty to any great cause, whose success in
this generation is bound up with the life oi any member of
our Royal House ? «The very questions send a ripple of
, laughter through any assemblage of Englishmen, and they
•Sare beginning to feel, at last, that true loyalty can only be
paid to some man who stands head and shoulders above
his fellows, and not to some poor dwarf, whom we can only
see over the heads of the crowd, because he stands on the
artificial elevation of a throne.
The court in France was very extravagant: it spent
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^34,000,000 in eight years, while the people were starving;our princes do not spend so much ; they dare not; but that,
the spirit is the same is clearly seen when a wealthy queen
sends to Parliament to dower her sons and her daughters r.
when the scions of a family so rich as are the Brunswicks,
become beggars to the nation, and pensioners on the pockets
of the poor. However, courts are expensive things, and if.
we want them we must be content to pay for them. Now,
in France, the nobles, the clergy, the great landed proprie
tors, paid next to nothing: the heavy burden of taxation
fell upon the poor. But the poor had not much money1
which they could pay out to the State, and it is not easy toempty already empty pockets with any satisfactory results
so, in France, they hit upon the ingenious system called
indirect taxation; they imposed taxes upon the necessaries
of life; they squeezed money out of the food which the
people were obliged to buy. Also, those^who imposed the
taxes were not those who paid them : tney laid on heavy
burdens, which they themselves did not touch with one of
their fingers. We, in England, also think that it conducesto the cheerful paying of taxes that they should be laid
chiefly upon those who have no voice wherewith to com
plain of their incidence in Parliament. If you want to
knock a man down, it is very wise to choose a dumb man,
who cannot raise a cry for help. A large portion of the
working, classes, and all women, have no votes in the election
of members of Parliament, and have therefore no voice in
the imposition of the taxes which they are, nevertheless,
obliged to pay. It is a long time since Pitt told us
that “ taxation without representation is robberyit is a
yet longer time since John Hampden taught us how toresist the payment of an unjust tax, and yet we are still
such cravens, or else so indifferent, that we pay millions a
year in taxation, without determining that we will have a.
voice in the control of our own income. We are crushed
under a heavy and a yearly increasing national expenditure,
partly because of our extravagant administration, partly
because the burden falls unequally, weighing on the poor
more than upon the rich, and wholly because we have not
brotherhood enough to combine together, nor manhood
enough to say that these things shall not be. Our system
of taxation is radically vicious in principle, because it must
of necessity fall unequally. Those who impose the burdens
know perfectly well that it is impossible for the poor to
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refuse to pay indirect taxes, however onerous those taxes
may be : they must buy the necessary articles of food,
whether those articles be taxed or no; a refusal to pay is
impracticable, and no combination to abstain from buying is
possible, because the things taxed are the necessaries of life.
Yet as long as indirect taxation is permitted—and the major
part of our annual revenue is drawn from Customs and from
Excise—so long must taxation crush the poor, while it falls
lightly on the rich.
On this point I direct your attention to the following ex
tract* taken from the Liverpool Financial Reformer, and
quoted by Mr. Charles Watts in his “ Government and the
People —
“ A recent writer in the Liverpool Financial Reformer,
divided the community into three divisions—first, the aristo
cratic, represented by those who have an annual income of
^1,000 and upwards ; the middle classes were represented by
those who had incofties from ^ioo to /’i,ooo; and the artisan
or working classes were those who were supposed to have in
comes under ,£ioo per year. He then assessed their incomes
respectively at ^£208,385,000 ; ^£174,579,000; and ^149,745,000.
Towards the taxation, each division paid as follows. The
aristocratic portion contributed ff ,500,000, the middle classes
^19,513,453, and the working classes ^£32,861,474. The writer
remarks : ‘ The burden of the revenue, as it is here shown to
fall on the different classes, may not be fractionally accurate,
either on the one side or the other, for that is an impossibility
in the case, but it is sufficiently so to afford a fair representation
in reference to those classes on whom the burden chiefly falls.
Passing over the middle classes, who thus probably contribute
about their share, the result in regard to the upper and lower
classes stands thus :—Amount which should be paid to the
reveime by the higher classes (that is, the classes above
^1,000 a year), ^£23,437,688 ; amount which they do pay,
,£8,500,000; leaving a difference of ^£14.937,688, so that
the higher classes are paying nearly ^£15,000,000 less than their
fair share of taxation. Amount which should be paid by the
working classes (or those having incomes below ^£100),
^16,846,312 ; amount which they do pay, ,£32,861.474 ;
making a difference of ^16,015,162; so that the working
classes are paying about ,£16,000.000 more than their fair
share. In other words, the respective average rates paid upon
the assessable income of the two classes are—by the higher
classes, iod. per pound ; the working classes, 4s. 4d. That
is to say, the working classes are paying at a rate five times
more heavily than the wealthy classes.5 55
The whole system of laying taxes on the necessaries of life
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CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTV.
is radically vicious in principle; to tax the necessaries of
life is to sap the strength and to shorten the life of those
men and those women on whose strength and whose life
the prosperity of the country depends; it is to enfeeble the
growing generation; it is to make the children pale and
stunted; it is, in fact, to undermine the constitution of the
wealth-producers. To tax food is to tax life itself, instead
of taxing incomes; it is a financial system which is, at once,
cruel and suicidal. As a matter of fact, taxes taken off
food have not decreased the revenue, and when this policy
of taxing food shall have become a thing of the past, then
a healthier and more strongly-framed nation will bear with
ease all the necessary burdens of the State. Indirect taxa
tion is also bad, because it implies a number of small taxes
(some of which are scarcely worth the cost of collecting),
and thus necessitates the employment of a numerous staff
of officials, whereas one large direct tax would be more
easily gathered in.
It is also bad, because, with indirect taxation, it is
almost impossible for a man to know what he really
does pay towards the support of the State. It is right and
just that every citizen in a free country should consciously
contribute to the maintenance of the Government which he
has himself placed over him; but when he knows exactly
what he is paying, he will probably think it worth while to
examine into the national expenditure, and to insist on a
wise economy in the public service. I do not mean the
kind of economy which is so relished by Governments, the
economy which dismisses skilled workmen, whose work is
needed, while it retains sinecures for personages in high
places; but I mean that just and wise economy which gives
good pay for honest work, but which refuses to pay dukes,
earls, even princes, for doing nothing, This great problem
of fair and equal taxation ought to be thoroughly studied
and thought over by every citizen ; few infringements on
equal liberty are so fraught with harm and misery as arc
those which pass almost unnoticed under the head of
■* collection of the revenue few reforms are so urgently
needed as a reform of our financial system, and a fair adjust
ment of the burdens of taxation.
In France they had Game Laws. If the season were
cold the farmers might not mow their hay at the proper
time, lest the birds should lack cover; they might not hoe
the com, lest they should break the partridge eggs; the
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birds fed off the crops, and they might not shoot or trap
them; if they transgressed the Game Laws they were sent
to the galleys; herds of wild boarand red deer roamed over the
■country, and the farmers and the peasants were forbidden to
interfere with them. Englishmen! who call yourselves free,
do you imagine that these relics of barbarism, swept away
by the French Revolution in one memorable night, are
nothing but archaeological curiosities, archaic remains, fossil
ised memorials of a long-past tyranny ? On the contrary,
pur Game Laws in England are as harsh as those I have
cited to you, and the worst facts I am going to relate you
have no parallel in the history of France. These cases are
so shameful that they ought to have raised a shout of exe
cration through the land ; they have been covered up, and
hushed up, as far as possible, and I have taken them from a
Parliamentary Blue-book; and I have taken them thence
• myself, because I would not quote at second-hand deeds so
■disgraceful, that had.I not read them in the dry pages of a
Parliamentary Commission I should have fancied that they
had been either carelessly or purposely exaggerated in order
to point a tirade against the rich. I allude to the deerforests of Scotland.
But before dealing with these it is interesting to note
the curious points of similarity between our Game Laws
and those of the French. In France, they were some
times forbidden to mow the hay because of the cover
it yielded to the birds : in England, you will sometimes find
a clause inserted in the lease of a farm, binding the farmer
to reap with the sickle instead of with the sbythe, that is, to
reap with an instrument that does not cut the corn-stalks off
close to the ground, so that cover may be left for'the birds ;
thus the farmers’ profits are decreased by the amount of
straw which is left to rot in the ground for the landlord’s
amusement. In France, the game might not be touched
even if the crops were damaged;’ in England, the hares may
ruin a young plantation, and the farmer may not snare or
shoot them. In France, those who transgressed the Game
Laws were sent to the galleys; in England, we send them
to prison with hard labour, and we actually pay for the
manufacture of 10,000 criminals every year, in order that
our Princes of Wales and our landed proprietors may make
it the business of their lives “ to shoot poultry.” In France,
.. the herds of wild boar and red deer might not be molested;
in England we manage these things better; we have, un
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CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
fortunately, no wild boar, but we-clear our farmers and our
peasants out of the way in order that we may be sure that
our deer are not interfered with. As the son of a Highland
proprietor said, when planning a new deer-forest: “ the first
thing to do, you know, is to clear out the people.” The first
thing to do is to clear out the people I Yes ! clear out the
people : the people, who have lived on the land for years,,
and who have learned to love it as though they had been
born landowners ; the people who have tilled and cultivated
it, making it laugh out into cornfields which have fed hun
dreds of the poor ; the people, who have wrought on it, and
toiled with plough and spade; turn out the people and
make way for the animals; level the homes of the people
and make a hunting ground for the rich. “ It is no deerforest if the farmers are all there,” said a witness before the
Commission; and so you see the farmers must go, for of
course it is necessary that we should have deer-forests. No
less than forty families, owning seven thousand sheep,
seven thousand goats, and two hundred head of cattle,
were turned out from their homes in the time of the
present Marquis of Huntly’s grandfather, their houses were
pulled down, and their land was planted with fir-trees ;
some of the leases were bought up; in cases where they
had expired the people were bidden go. And thus it comes
to pass, according to the evidence of one witness—a witness
whom members of the Commission tried hard to browbeat,
but whose evidence they utterly failed to shake—thus it
comes to pass that “ you see in, the deer-forests the ruins,
of numerous hamlets, with the grass growing over them.”
A pathetic picture of homes laid desolate, of the fair course
of peaceful lives roughly broken into; of helpless and
oppressed people, of selfish and greedy wealth. “ From
Glentanar, thirty miles from Aberdeen, you can walk in
forests until you come to the Atlantic.” And this evil is
growing rapidly; in 1812 there were only five deer-forests
in Scotland: in 1873 there were seventy. In 1870,
1,320,000 acres of land were forest; in 1S73, there were
2,000,000 acres thus rendered useless. Under these cir
cumstances, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the popu
lation is decreasing; the population of Argyleshire in 1831
was 103,330 ; in 1871, forty years later, when it ought to
have largely increased, it had, on the contrary, decreased to
755635 > in Inverness it was 94,983 ; during the same time?
it has gone down to 87,480.
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
15-
But this is not all. While some farmers and peasants are
“ cleared out ” altogether, those who are allowed to remain
suffer much from the depredations of the deer and other
game. In Aberdeenshire alone no less than 291 farmers
complained of the enormous damage that was done to their
crops by the deer. The deer-forest is not generally fenced
in ; and as deer are very partial to turnips, it naturally follows
that the herds come out of the forest and feed off the
farmers’ crops. One proprietor graciously states that he
does his best to keep the deer away from the farms, but—
judging by the complaints of the farmers—these laudable
efforts scarcely appear to be crowned with the success
that they deserve. Not only, however, do the deer stray
out of the forests, but the farmers’ sheep stray in, and as
sheep are not game he is not permitted to follow them to
fetch them out. When such evidence as this comes out,
and we know the pressure that is put upon tenants by their
landlords, and the danger they run by giving offence to their
powerful masters, we can judge how much more remains
behind of which we know nothing. And, in the name of'
common justice; what is all this for? Why should a farmer
be compelled to keep his landlord’s game for him ? Why
should the farmer’s crops suffer to amuse a man who does
nothing except inherit land ? This wide-spread loss, these
desolated homes, these ruined lives, what mighty national
benefit have these miseries bought for England ? They all,
occur in order that a few rich men may occasionally—whenother pleasures pall on the jaded taste, and ennui becomes
insupportable—have the novel excitement of shooting at
a stag. Verily we have a right to boast of our freedom
when thousands of citizens suffer for the sake of the amuse
ment of the few.
• But these deer-forests do not only injure the unfortunatepeople who are turned out to make room for the deer, and
the farmers who lose the full profit of their labour; to turn
cultivable land into deer-forests is to decrease the food-suffly of
the country.. Some people say that only worthless land isused for this purpose; but this is not true, for pasture-ground
has been turned into forests. In one place, 800 head of'
cattle and 500 sheep were fed upon one quarter of the land
which now supports 750 red deer. That is to say, that 1,300.
animals good for food were nourished by the land which is.
now devoted to the maintenance of 187^ useless deer.
Judge then of the decrease of the food supply of the country
�1.6
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
which is implied in the fact that one-tenth part of Scotland
is now moor and forest. A baillie of Aberdeen calculates
the loss to the country at no less than 20 millions of pounds
of meat annually. In England things are not so bad; but
in England, also, the cultivation of the land wasted in game
preserving would increase to an almost incalculable extent
the food supply of the country. There is the vast estate of
Chillingworth, kept for a few wild cattle, in order that a
Prince of Wales may now and then drive about it, and from
the safe eminence of a cart may have the pleasure of shoot
ing at a bull. But at this point the question of the Game Laws
melts insensibly into that of the Land Laws, for under a
just system of Land Tenure such deeds as these would be
impossible; then, men could not, for their own selfish
amusement, turn sheep-walks into forests, and farms into
moors.
With our great and increasing population it is abso
lutely necessary that all cultivable land should be under
cultivation. To hold uncultivated, land which is capable of
producing bread and meat is a crime against the State. It
is well known to be one of the points of the “ extreme ”
Radical programme that it should be rendered penal to hold
large quantities of cultivable land uncultivated. Then,
instead of sending the cream of our peasantry abroad, to seek
in foreign countries the land which is fenced in from them
at home; instead of driving them to seek from the stranger
the work which is denied to them in the country of their
birth; we should keep Englishmen in England to make
England strong and rich, and give land to the labour which
is starving for work, and labour to the land which is barren
for the lack of it. “ Land to labour, and labour to land ”
ought to be our battle-cry, and should be the motto engraven
on our shield.
But it is impossible to throw land open to labour so long
as the laws render its transmission from seller to buyer so
expensive and so cumbersome a proceeding. It is impossible
also to effect any radical improvement so long as the land
is tied up in the hands of the few fortunate individuals who
are now permitted to monopolise it. Half the land of
England, and four-fifths of the land of Scotland, is owned by
360 families. These few own the land which ought to be
'■devoted to the good of the nation. Land, like air, and like
-all other natural gifts, cannot rightly be held as private
.property. The only property which can justly be claimed
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. '
17
in land is the improvement wrought in the soil. When a
man has put labour or money into the land he farms, then
he has a right to the advantages which accrue from his toil
and from his invested capital. But this principle is the very
contrary of that which is embodied in our Land Laws. The
great landowners do nothing for the land they own; they
spend nothing on the soil which maintains them in such
luxury. It is the farmers and the labourers who have a
right to life-tenancy in the soil, or, more exactly, to a
tenancy, lasting as long as they continue to improve
it. The farmer, whose money is put. into the land—
the labourer, whose strength enriches the soil—these are
the men who ought to be the landowners of England. As
it is, the farmer takes a farm; he invests capital in it; he
rises early to superintend his labourers ; the land rewards
him with her riches, she gives him fuller crops and fatter
cattle, and then the landlord steps in, and raises the rent,
and thus absolutely punishes the farmer for his energy and
his thrift. The idle man stands by with his hands in his
pockets, and then claims a share of the profits which accrue
from the busy man’s labour. Meanwhile the labourer—he
whose strong arms have guided the plough, and wielded the
spade, he who has made the harvest and tended the cattle
—what do our just Land Laws give to him ? They give
him a wretched home, a pittance sufficient—generally at
least—to “ keep body and soul together,” parish pay when
he is ill, the workhouse in his old age, and he sleeps at last
in a pauper’s grave. O ! just and beneficent English Law I
To the idle man, the lion’s share of the profits; to the
man who does much, a small share; to the man who
does most of all, just enough to enable him to work for
his masters. But if this gross injustice be pointed out, if
we protest against this crying evil, and declare that these
crimes shall cease in England, then these landowners arise
and complain that we are tampering with the “sacred rights
of property.” Sacred rights of property ! But what of the
more sacred rights of human life ? The life of the poor is
more holy than the property of the rich, and famished men
and women, more worthy of care than the acres of the
nobleman. If these vast estates are fenced in from us by
parchment fences, so that we cannot throw them open to
labour, so that we cannot make the desert places golden
with corn, and rich with sheep and oxen; if these vast
estates are fenced in from us by parchment fences, then I
�is
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
say that the plough must go through the parchment, in order
that the people may have bread.
The maintenance of a standing army, in which birth helps
promotion, is another blot upon our shield. A Duke of
■Cambridge, General Commanding-in-Chief, and Colonel of
four regiments, who holds these offices by virtue of his “ hi^h”
-birth, and in spite of the most palpable incapacity, is°an
absurdity which ought not to be tolerated in a country
which pretends to be free. A Prince of Wales, who has
never seen war, made a Field-Marshal; a Duke of Edinburgh,
•created a Post-Captain; such appointments as these are a
disgrace to the country, and a bitter satire on our army and
■our navy. Carpet-soldiers are useless in time of war, and
they are a burden in time of peace; and to squander
England’s money on such officers as these, simply because
they chance to be born Princes, is a distinct breach of equal
Civil Liberty.
The need of Electoral Reform is well-known to all students
•of politics. No country is free in which all adult citizens
have not a voice in the government. A representation
which is based upon a property qualification is radically
vicious in principle. But not only is our civil liberty
cramped by the fact that the majority of citizens are not
represented at all, but even the poor representation we have
is unequally and unjustly distributed. In one place 136
men return a member to Parliament; in another, 18,000
fail t(jreturn their candidate. In Parliament no members
represent 83,000 voters. The next no represent 1,080,000.
A group of 70,000 voters return 4 members ; another group
■of 70,000 return 80. In one instance, 30,000 voters out
weigh 546,000 in Parliament by a majority of 9. Hence
it follows that a minority of electors rule England, and,
however desirable it may be that minorities should be re
presented, it is surely not desirable that they should rule.
Our present system throws overwhelming power into the
hands of the titled and landowning classes, who, by means
of small and manageable boroughs, are able to outvote the
masses of the people congregated in the large towns. As long
as this is the case, as long as every citizen does not possess
a vote, as long as the few can, by means of unequal dis
tribution of electoral power, control the actions of the
many, so long England is not free, and civil liberty is not
won.
To strike at the House of Lords is to strike at a dying
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
19
institution; but dying men sometimes live long, and dying
institutions may last for centuries if only they are nursed
and tended with sufficient care. A. House in the election
-of whose members the people have no voice ; a House
whose members are born into it, instead of winning their
way into it by service to the State ; a House which is built
upon cradles and not upon merit; a House whose delibe
rations may be shared in by fools or by knaves, provided
only that the brow be coronetted—such a House is a dis
grace to a free country, and an outrage on popular liberty.
As might be expected from its constitution, this House
of Lords has ever stood in the path of every needed reform,
until it has been struck out of the way by hidden menace
or by stern command. Is there any abuse whose days are
numbered? be sure it will be defended in the House of
Lords. Is there a monopoly which needs to be abolished?
be sure it will be championed in the House of Lords. Is
there any popular liberty asked for ? be sure it will
be refused in the House of Lords.
Is there any
fetter struck from off the limbs of progress ? be sure that
some cunning smith will be found to weld the fragments
together again, under the name of an amendment, in the
House of Lords. The only use of the thing is, that
it may act as a political barometer by which to prognosticate
the coming weather; that which the House of Lords blesses
is most certainly doomed, while whatever it frowns upon is
-crowned for a speedy triumph. It has not even the merit
of courage, this craven assemblage of toy-players at legisla
tion ; however boldly it roars out its “ No,” a frown from
the House of Commons makes it tremble and yield; like a
reed, it stands upright enough in the calm weather; like a
reed, it bows before the storm-wind of a popular cry. As a
-question of practical politics, the House of'Lords should be
struck at almost rather than the Crown, because the whole
principle of aristocracy is embodied in that House, the
whole fatal notion that the accident of birth gives the right
to rule. Our puppet kings and queens are less directly
injurious to the commonwealth than is this titled House.
The gilded figure-head injures the State-vessel less than the
presence of hands on her tiller-ropes which know naught of
navigation. And with the fall of the House of Lords must
crash down the throne, which is but the ornament upon its
roof, the completion of its elevation; so that when the toy
house has fallen at the breath of the people’s lips, and we
�20
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
can see over the near prospect which it now hides from our
gaze, we shall surely see, with the light of the morning on
her face, with her golden head shining in the sun-rays, with
the day-star on her brow, and the white garments of peace
upon her limbs, with her sceptre wreathed in olive-branches,
and her feet shod with plenty, that fair and glorious
Republic for which we have yearned and toiled sb long.
Having seen the chief blots upon our Civil Liberty, let us
turn our attention to the defects in our religious freedom.
And here I plead, neither as Freethinker nor as Secularist,
but simply as a citizen of a mighty State, and member of a
community which pretends to be free. For every shade of
Nonconformity I plead, from the Roman Catholic to the
Atheist, for all whose consciences do not fit into the mould
provided by the Establishment, and whose thought refuses to
be fettered by the bands of a State religion. I crave for every
man, whatever be his creed, that his freedom of conscience be
held sacred. I ask for every man, whatever be his belief, that he
shall not suffer, in civil matters,for his faith orfor his want offaith.
I demand for every man, whatever be his opinions, that he
shall be able to speak out with honest frankness the results
of honest thought, without forfeiting his rights as citizen,
without destroying his social position, and without troubling
his domestic peace. We have not to-day, in England, the
scourge and the rack, the gibbet and the stake, by which
men’s bodies are tortured to ' improve their souls, but
we have the scourge of calumny and the rack of severed
friendship, we have the gibbet of public scorn, and the stake
of a ruined home, by which we compel conformity to
dogma, and teach men to be hypocrites that they may eat a
piece of bread. The spirit is the same, though the form of
the torture be changed; and many a saddened life,and many
a wrecked hope, bear testimony to the fact that religious
liberty is still but a name, and freedom of thought is still a '
crime. Public opinion, and social feeling, we can but strive
to influence and to improve; what I would lay stress upon
here, is the existence of a certain institution, and of certain
laws,’ which foster this one-sided feeling, and which are a
direct infringement of the rights of the individual conscience.
First and foremost, overshadowing the land by her gigantic
monopoly, is the Church as by law established. This body
—one sect among many sects—is given by law many privi
leges -which are not accorded to any other religious deno
mination. Her ministers are the State-officers of religion;
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
21
her highest dignitaries legislate for the whole Empire ;
national graveyards are the property of her clergy; and the
best parts of national buildings are owned by her rectors.
■So long as the State was Christian and orthodox, so long
might the Establishment of the State-religion be defensible,
but the moment that the Church ceased to be co-extensive
with the nation, that same moment did her Establishment
become an injustice to that portion of the nation which did
not conform to her creed. Every liberty won by the Non
conformist has been a blow struck at the reasonableness of
the Establishment. ' She is nothing now but a palpable
anachronism. Jews, Roman Catholics, even “Infidels”
(provided only that they veil their Infidelity), may sit in
the House of Parliament. They may alter the Church’s
articles, they may define her doctrines, they may change
her creed; she is only the mere creature of the State,
bought by lands and privileges to serve in a gilded slavery.
The truth or the untruth of her doctrines is nothing
to the point. I protest in principle against the establish
ment by the State of any form of religious, or of anti-religious,
belief. The State is no judge in such matters; let every
man follow his own conscience, and worship at what shrine
his reason bids him, and let no man be injured because he
differs from his neighbour’s creed. The Church Establish
ment is an insult to every Roman Catholic, to every Protes
tant dissenter, to every Freethinker, in the Empire. The
national property usurped by the Establishment might
lighten the national burdens, were it otherwise applied, so
that, indirectly, everynon-Churchman is taxed for the support
of a creed in which he does not believe, and for the main
tenance of ministrations by which he does not profit. The
Church must be destroyed, as an Establishment, before
religious equality can be anything more than an empty name.
There are laws upon the Statute Book which grievously
outrage the rights of conscience, and which subject an
“ apostate ”—that is, a person who has been educated in, or
who has professed Christianity, and has subsequently
renounced it—to loss of all civil rights, provided that the
law be put in force against him. The right of excommunica
tion, lodged in the Church, is, I think, a perfectly fair right,
provided that it carry with it no civil penalties whatsoever.
The Church, like any other club, ought to be able to exclude
an objectionable member, but she ought not to be able to call
in the arm of the law to impose non-spiritual penalties. But
�“2
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
*
the apostate loses all civil rights. The law, as laid down
is as follows : “ Enacted by statute 9 and 10, William III ’
cap 32, that if any person educated in, or having made profes’sion of, the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing,
teaching, or advised speaking, assert or maintain there are
more Gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to
be true [this Act adds to these offences, that of “denying any
one of the. persons in the Trinity to be God,” but it was
repealed quoad hoc, by 53 George III., c. 60] or the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine
authority, he shall upon the first offence be rendered in
capable to hold any ecclesiastical, civil, or military office, or
employment, and for the second, be rendered incapable of
bringing any action, or to be guardian, executor, legatee, or
grantee, and shall suffer three years’ imprisonment without
bail. To give room, however, for repentance, if within
four months after the first conviction, the delinquent will, in
open court, publicly renounce his error, he is discharged
for that once from all disabilities.” Some will say that this
law is never put in force j true, public opinion would not
allow of its general enforcement, but it is turned against
those who are poor and weak, while it lets the strong go
free. Besides, it hangs over every sceptic’s head like the
sword of Damocles, and it serves as a threat and menace in
the hand of every cruel and bigoted Churchman, who wants to
■extract any concession from an unbeliever. No law that can
be enforced is obsolete; it may lie dormant fora time, but it
is a sabre, which can at any moment be drawn from the
sheath j the “ obsolete ” law about the Sabbath closed the
Brighton Aquarium, and Rosherville Gardens, and is found
to be quite easy of enforcementj though people would have
laughed, a short time since, at the idea of anyone grumbling at
its presence on the Statute Book. Poor, harmless, half-witted,
Thomas Pooley, in 1857, found the Blasphemy Laws by no
means “a dead letter” in the mouth of Lord Justice Cole
ridge. And there are plenty of other cases of injustice
which have taken, and do take place under these laws, which
might be quoted were it worth while to fill up space with
them, and but little is needed to fan the smouldering fire of
bigotry into a flame, and to put the laws generally in force
once more. . Already threats are heard, murmurs of the old
wicked spirit of persecution, and it behoves us to see to it
that these swords be broken, so that bigots may be unable to
wield them again among us.
,
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
23
I do not, as I have said, protest now against these laws as
a Secularist; I challenge them only as unjust disabilities im
posed on men’s consciences, and I appeal to all lovers of liberty
to agitate against them, because they impose civil disabilities
on some forms of religious opinion. And to you, O Chris
tians 1 I would say : fight Freethought, if you will; oppose
Atheism, if you deem it false and injurious to humanity:
strike at us with all your strength on the religious platform ;
it is your right, nay, it is even your duty; but do not seek to
answer our questions by blows from the statute book, nor to
check our search after truth by the arm of the law. I im
peach these laws against “ infidels,” at the bar of public,
opinion, as an infraction of the just liberty of the individual,
as an insult to the dignity of the citizen, as an outrage on
the sacred rights of conscience.
I do not pretend, in the short pages of such a paper
as this, to have done more than to sketch, very briefly
and very imperfectly, the chief defects of our civil and
religious liberty. I have only laid before you a rough draft
of a programme of Reform. Each blot on English liberty
which I have pointed to might well form the sole subject of
an essay ; but I have hoped that, by thus gathering up into
one some few of the many injustices under which we suffer,
I might, perchance, lend definiteness to the aspirations after
Liberty which swell in the breasts of many, and might point,
out to the attacking army some of the most assailable points
of the fortress of bigotry and caste-prejudice, which the
soldiers of Freedom are vowed to assail. I have taken, as
it were, a bird’s-eye view of the battle-ground of the near
future, of that battle-ground on which soon will clash
together the army which fights under the banner of privileges,
and the army which marches under the standard of Liberty.
The issue of that conflict is not doubtful, for Liberty is
immortal and eternal, and her triumph is sure, however it
may be delayed. The beautiful goddess before whom we
bow is ever young with a youth which cannot fade, and
radiant with a glory which nought can dim. Hers is the
promise of the future; hers the fair days that shall dawn
hereafter on a liberated earth; and hers is also the triumph
of to-morrow, if only we, who adore her, if only we can be
true to ourselves and to each other. But they who love her
must work for her, as well as worship her, for labour is the
only prayer to Liberty, and devotion the only praise. To
her we must consecrate our brain-power and our influence
�24
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
among our fellows ; to her we must sacrifice our time, and,,
if need be, our comfort and our happiness; to her we must,
devote our efforts, and to her the fruits of our toil. And
at last, in the fair, bright future—at last, in the glad to
morrow—amid the shouts of a liberated nation, and the joy
of men and women who see their children free, we shall see
the shining goddess descending from afar, where we have
worshipped her so long, to be the sunshine and the glory of
every British home. And then, O men and women of
England, then, when you have once clasped the knees of
Liberty, and rested your tired brows on her gentle breast,
then cherish and guard her evermore, as you cherish the
bride you have won to your arms, as you guard the wife
whose love is the glory of your manhood, and whose smile
is the sunshine of your home.
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 28, Stone
cutter Street, London, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Civil & religious liberty : with some hints taken from the French Revolution; a lecture
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
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Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933]
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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[n.d.]
Identifier
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N062
Subject
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Freedom of religion
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Civil & religious liberty : with some hints taken from the French Revolution; a lecture), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Civil Rights
Freedom of Religion
French Revolution
Liberty
NSS
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Text
NATIONAL secular society
FREETIIOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY'S EPTTfO^.
80, PICCADILLY, HANLEY
COL. R. G. INGERSOLL?
l' Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do, in order
to become acceptable to God, is mere superstition and religious folly,
Kant.
Several months ago, The North, American Review asked me to write an
article, sayiDg that it would be published if some one would furnish a
reply I wrote the article that appeared in the August number, and
by me it was entitled “ Is All of the Bible Inspired ? ”1 Not until the
article was written did I know who was expected to answer. I make
this explanation for the purpose of dissipating the impression that
Mr. Black had been challenged by me. To have struck his shield with
my lance might have given birth to the impression that I was some
what doubtful as to the correctness of my position. I naturally
expected an answer from some professional theologian, and was sur
prised to find that a reply had been written by a “policeman, ” who
imagined that he had answered my arguments by simply telling me
that my statements were false. It is somewhat unfortunate that in a
discussion like this anyone should resort to the slightest personal
detraction. The theme is great enough to engage the highest faculties
of the human mind, and in the investigation of such a subject vituper
ation is singularly and vulgarly out of place. Arguments cannot be
answered with insults. It is unfortunate that the intellectual arena
should be entered by a “ policeman” who has more confidence in con
cussion than discussion. Kindness is strength. Good nature is often
mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius.
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great
and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and
calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is
not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice. Candor is the
courage of the soul. Leaving the objectionable portions of Mr. Black’s
reply, feeling that so grand a subject should not be blown and tainted
with malicious words, I proceed to answer as best I may the arguments
he has urged.
.
I am made to say that “ the universe is natural ; that “ it came into ,
being of its own accord ” ; that “ it made its own laws at the start, and
afterward improved itself considerably by spontaneous evolution.
I did say that “ the universe is natural,” but I did not say that “ it
came into being of its own accord” ; neither did I say that “it made
its own laws and afterward improved itself.” The universe, according
to my idea, is, always was, and for ever will be. It did not “come into
1 Published in this series under its later title, “ The Christian Religion.”
That article was answered by a Mr. Black, to whom the present is a reply.
�being,” it is the one eternal being,—the only thing that ever did, does,
or can exist. It did not “ make its own laws.” We know nothing of what
we call the laws of nature except as we gather the idea of law from the
uniformity of phenomena springing from like conditions. To make
myself clear. Water always runs down-hill. The theist says that
this happens because there is behind the phenomenon an active law.
As a matter of fact, law is this side of the phenomenon. Law does
not cause the phenomenon, but the phenomenon causes the idea of law
in our minds; and this idea is produced from the fact that under like
circumstances the same phenomenon always happens. Mr. Black
probably thinks that the difference in the weight of rocks and clouds
was created by law; that parallel lines fail to unite only because it is
illegal; that diameter and circumference could have been so made that it
would be a greater distance across than around a circle; that a straight
line could inclose a triangle if not prevented by law, and that a little
legislation could make it possible for two bodies to occupy the same
space at the same time. It seems to me that law cannot be the cause
of phsenomena, but is an effect produced in our minds by their succes
sion and resemblance. To put a God back of the universe, compels us
to admit that there.was a time when nothing existed except this God :
that this God had lived from eternity in an infinite vacuum, and in
absolute idleness. The mind of every thoughtful man is forced to
one of these two conclusions; either that the universe is self-existent,
or that it was created by a self-existent being. To my mind, there are
far more difficulties in the second hypothesis than in the firstr
Of course, upon a question like this, nothing can be absolutely
know’n. We live on an atom called Earth, and what we know of the
infinite is almost infinitely limited; but, little as we know, all have an
equal right to give their honest thought. Life is a shadowy, strange,
and winding road on which we travel for a little way—a few short
steps—just from the cradle, with its lullaby of love, to the low and
quiet way-side inn, where all at last must sleep, and where the only
salutation is—Good night.
I know as little as any one else about the “ plan ” of the universe ;
and as to the “design,” I know juBt as little. It will not do to say
ibat the universe waB designed, and therefore there must be a designer.
There must first be proof that it was “ designed.” It will not do to
say that the universe has a “plan,” and then assert that there must
have been an infinite maker. The idea that a design must have a
beginning and that a designer need not, is a sinople expression of human
ignorance. We find a watch, and we say : “ So curious and wonderful
a thing must have had a maker.” We find the watch-maker, and we say:
“ So curious and wonderful a thing as man must have had a maker.”
We find God, and we then say : “ He is so wonderful that he must not
have had a maker. ” In other words, all things a little wonderful must
have been created, but it is possible for a something to be so wonder
ful that it always existed. One would suppose that just as the wonder
increased the necessity for a creator increased, because it is the wonder
of the thing that suggests the idea of creation. Is it possible that a
designer exist from all eternity without design ? Was there no design
in having an infinite designer ? For me, it is hard to see the plan or
design in earthquakes and pestilences. It is somewhat difficult to dis
cern the design or the benevolence in so makins' the world that
billions of animals live only on the agonies of others. The justice of
God is not visible to me in the history of this world. When I think
�of the suffering and death, of the poverty and crime, of the cruelty
and malice, of the heartlessness of this “ design” and “plan,” where
beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering flesh of weakness
and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is the result of infinite
wisdom, benevolence, and justice.
Most Christians have seen and recognised this difficulty, and have
endeavored to avoid it by giving God an opportunity in another world
to rectify the seeming mistakes of this. Mr. Black, however, avoids
the entire question by saying: “We have neither jurisdiction nor ca
pacity to re judge the justice of God.” In other words, we have no
right to think upon this subject, no right to examine the questions
most vitally affecting human kind. We are simply to accept the ignor
ant statements of barbarian dead. This question cannot be settled by
saying that “ it would be a mere waste of time and space to enumerate
the proofs which show that the Universe was created by a preexistent
and self-conscious Being.” The time and space should have been
“ wasted,” and the proofs should have been enumerated. These
“proofs” are what the wisestand greatest are trying to find. Logic
is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the
“ great ”—nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for
the superstitions of the dead. In the world of science a fact is a legal
tender. Assertions and miracles are base and spurious coins. We have
the right to rejudge the justice even of a god. No one should throw
away his reason—the fruit of all experience. It is the intellectual capi
tal of the soul, the only light, the only guide, and without it the brain
becomes the palace of an idiot king, attended by a retinue of thieves
and hypocrites.
Of course it is admitted that most of the Ten Commandments are
wise and just. In passing, it may be well enough to say, that the com
mandment, “ Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” was the absolute
death of Art, and that not until after the destruction of Jerusalem was
there a Hebrew painter or sculptor. Surely a commandment is not
inspired that drives from earth the living canvas and the breathing
stone—leaves all walls bare and all the niches desolate. In the Tenth
Commandment we find woman placed on an exact equality with other
property, which, to say the least of it, has never tended to the amelior
ation of her condition.
A very curious thing about these Commandments is that their sup
posed author violated nearly every one. From Sinai, according to the
account, he said : “ Thou shalt not kill,” and yet he ordered the
murder of millions; “ Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and yet he gave
captured maidens to gratify the lust of captors; “ Thou shalt not
steal,” and yet he gave to Jewish marauders the flocks and herds of
others; “ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, nor his wife,” and
yet he allowed his chosen people to destroy the homes of neighbors
and to steal their wives; “ Honor thy father and thy mother,” and yet
this same God had thousands of fathers butchered, and with the sword
of war killed children yet unborn ; “ Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbor,” and yet he sent abroad “ lying spirits” to de
ceive his own prophets, and in a hundred ways paid tribute to deceit.
So far as we know, Jehovah kept only one of these Commandments—
he worshipped no other god.
The religious intolerance of the Old Testament is justified upon the
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ground that “blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance,” that
“ idolatry was an act of overt treason,” and that “ to worship the gods
of the hostile heathen was deserting to the public enemy, and giving
him aid and comfort.” According to Mr. Black, we should all have
liberty of conscience except when directly governed by God. In that
country where God is king, liberty cannot exist. In this position, I
admit that he is upheld and fortified by the “ sacred ” text. Within
the Old Testament there is no such thing as religious toleration. With
in that volume can be found no mercy for an unbeliever. For*all who
think for themselves, there are threatenings, curses, and anathemas.
Think of an infinite being who is so cruel, so unjust, that he will not
allow one of his own children the liberty of thought! Think of an in
finite God acting as the direct governor of a people, and yet not able to
command their love! Think of the author of all mercy imbruing his
hands in the blood of helpless men, women, and children, simply be
cause he did not furnish them with intelligence enough to understand
his law! An earthly father who cannot govern by affection is not fit to
be a father ; what, then, shall we say of an infinite being who resorts
to violence, to pestilence, to disease, and famine, in the vain effort to
obtain even the respect of a savage ? Read this passage, red from the
heart of cruelty:
“ If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or
the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying. Lot us go and serve other gods which thou hast not known,
thou nor thy fathers, . . . thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto
him, neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt
thou conceal him. but thou shalt'surely kill him; thine hand shall be first
upon him to put him to death, and afterwards tho hand of all the people ; and
thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.” . . .
This is the religious liberty of the Bible. If you had lived in Pales
tine, and if the wife of your bosom, dearer to you than your own soul,
had said: “ I like the religion of India better than that of Palestine/’
it would have been your duty to kill her, “ Your eye must not pity
her, your hand must be first upon her, and afterwards the hand of all
the people.” If she had said: “ Let us worship the sun—the sun that
clothes the earth in garments of green—the sun, the great fireside of
the world—the sun that covers the hills and valleys with flowers—that
gave me your face, and made it possible for me to look into the eyes
of my babe—let us worship the sun,” it was your duty to kill her.
You must throw the first stone, and when against her bosom—a bosom
filled with love for you—you had thrown the jagged and cruel rock,
and had seen the red stream of her life oozing from the dumb lips of
death, you could then look up and receive the congratulations of the
God whose commandment you had obeyed. Is it possible that a being
of infinite mercy ordered a husband to kill his wife for the crime of
having expressed an opinion on the subject of religion ? Has there
been found upon the records of the savage world anything more per
fectly fiendish than this commandment of Jehovah ? This is justified
on the ground that “ blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance,
and idolatry an act of overt treason.” We can understand how a
human king stands in need of the service of his people. We can
understand how the desertion of any of his soldiers weakens his army ;
but were the king infinite in power, his strength would still remain the
same, and under no conceivable circumstances could the enemy
triumph.
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I insist that, if there is an infinitely good and wise God, he beholds
with pity the misfortunes of his children. I insist that such a God
would know the mists, the clouds, the darkness enveloping the human
mind. He would know how few stars are visible in the intellectual sky.
His pity, not his wrath, would be excited by the efforts of his blind
children, groping in the night to find the cause of things, and endea
voring, through their tears, to see some dawn of hope. Filled with
awe by their surroundings, by fear of the unknown, he would know
that when, kneeling, they poured out their, gratitude to some unseen
power, even to a visible idol, it was, in fact, intended for him. An
infinitely good being, had he the power, would answer the reasonable
prayer of an honest savage,, even when addressed to wood and stone.
The atrocities of the Old Testament, the threatenings, maledictions,
and curses of the “ inspired book,” are defended on the ground that
the Jews had a right to treat their enemies as their enemies treated
them ; and in this connexion is this remarkable statement: “In your
treatment of hostile barbarians you not only may lawfully, you must
necessarily, adopt their mode of warfare. If they come to conquer
you, they may be conquered by you; if they give no quarter, they are
entitled to Done ; if the death of your whole population be their pur
pose, you may defeat it by exterminating theirs.”
For a man who is a “ Christian policeman,” and has taken upon him
self to defend the Christian religion; for one who follows the Master
who said that when smitten on one cheek you must turn the other, and
who again and again enforced the idea that you must overcome evil
with good, it is hardly consistent to declare that a civilized nation must
of necessity adopt the warfare of savages. Is it possible that in fight
ing, for instance, the Indians of America, if they scalp our soldiers we
should scalp theirs? If they ravish, murder, and mutilate our wives,
must we treat theirs in the same manner ? If they kill the babes in
our cradles, must we brain theirs ? If they take our captives, bind
them to trees, and if their squaws fill their quivering flesh with shar
pened faggots and set them on fire, that they may die clothed with flame,
must our wives, our mothers, and our daughters follow the fiendish
example ? Is this the conclusion of the most enlightened Christianity ?
Will the pulpits of the United States adopt the arguments of this
“ policeman ” ? Is this the last and most beautiful blossom of the Ser
mon on the Mount? Is this the echo of “ Father, forgive them; they
know not what they do ? ”
Mr..Black justifies the wars of extermination and conquest because
the American people fought for the integrity of their own country ;
fought to do away with the infamous institution of slavery ; fought to
preserve the jewels of liberty and justice for themselves and for their
children. Is it possible that his mind is so clouded by political and
religious prejudice, by the recollections of an unfortunate administra
tion, that he sees no difference between a war of extermination and one
of self-preservation ? that he sees no choice between the murder of
helpless age, of weeping women and of sleeping babes, and the defence
of liberty and nationality ?
The soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war of extermination.
They did not seek to enslave their fellow-men. They did not mur
der trembling age. They did not sheathe their swords in women’s
breasts. They gave the old men bread, and let the mothers rock their
babes in peace. They fought to save the world’s great hope—to free
•a race and put the humblest hut beneath the canopy of liberty and law.
�102
Claiming neither praise nor dispraise for the part taken by me in
the civil war, for the purposes of this argument, it is sufficient to say
that I am perfectly willing that my record, poor and barren as it is,
should be compared with his.
Never for an instant did I suppose that any respectable American
citizen could be found willing at this day to defend the institution of
slavery; and never was I more astonished than when I found Mr. Black
denying that civilized countries passionately assert that slavery is and
always was a hideous crime. I was amazed when he declared that
“ the doctrine that slavery is a crime under all circumstances and at all
times was first started by the adherents of a political faction in this
country less than forty years ago.” He tells us that “ they denounced
God and Christ for not agreeing with them,” but that “they did not
constitute the civilized world; nor were they, if the truth must be
told, a very respectable portion of it. Politically they were successful;
I need not say by what means, or with what effect upon the morals of
the country.”
Slavery held both branches of Congress, filled the chair of the Exe
cutive, sat upon the supreme bench, had in its hands all rewards, all
offices; knelt in the pew, occupied the pulpit, stole human beings in
the name of God, robbed the trundle-bed for love of Christ; incited
mobs, led ignorance, ruled colleges, sat in the chairs of professors,
dominated the public press, closed the lips of free speech, and polluted
with its leprous hand every source and spring of power.: -The abo
litionists attacked this monster. They were the bravest, grandest men
of their country and their century. Denounced by thieves, hated by
hypocrites, mobbed by cowards, slandered by priests, shunned by poli
ticians, abhorred by the seekers of office—these men “ of whom the
world was not worthy,” in spite of all opposition, in spite of poverty
and want, conquered innumerable obstacles, never faltering for one
moment, never dismayed—accepting defeat with a smile born of infinite
hope—knowing that they were right—insisted and persisted until every
chain was broken, until slavepens became school-houses, and three
millions of slaves became free men, women, and children. They did
not measure with “ the golden metewand of God,” but with “ the elas
tic cord of human feeling.” They were men the latchets of whose
shoes no believer in human slavery was ever worthy to unloose. And
yet we are told by this modern defender of the slavery of Jehovah
that they were not even respectable ; and this slander is justified be
cause the writer is assured “ that the infallible God proceeded upon
good grounds when he authorised slavery in Judea.”
Not satisfied with having slavery in this world, Mr. Black assures
us that it will last through all eternity, and that for ever and for ever
inferiors must be subordinated to superiors. Who is the superior man?
According to Mr. Black he is superior who lives upon the unpaid labor
of the inferior. With me the superior man is the one who uses his
superiority in bettering the condition of the inferior. The superior
man is strength for the weak, eyes for the blind, brains for the simple
he is the one who helps carry the burden that nature has put upon the
inferior. Any man who helps another to gain and retain his liberty is
superior to any infallible God who authorised slavery in Judea. For
my part I would rather be the slave than the master. It is better to
be robbed than to be a robber. I had rather bd stolen from than be
a thief.
According to Mr. Black there will be slavery in heaven, and fast by
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the throne of God will be the auction-block, and the streets of the
New Jerusalem will be adorned with the whipping-post, while the
music of the harp will be supplemented by the crack of the driver s
whip. If some good Republican would catch Mr. Black, “ incorporate
him into his family, tame him, teach him to think, and give him a
knowledge of the true principles of human liberty and government, he
would confer upon him a most beneficent boon.”
Slavery includes all other crimes. It is the joint product of the kid
napper, pirate, thief, murderer, and hypocrite. It degrades labor and
corrupts leisure. To lacerate the naked back, to sell wives, to steal
babes, to breed blood-hounds, to debauch your own soul—this is slavery.
This is what Jehovah “authorised in Judea.” This is what Mr. Black
believes in still. He “ measures with the golden metewand of God.”
I abhor slavery. With me liberty is not merely a means—it is an end.
Without that word all other words are empty sounds.
Mr. Black is too late with his protest against the freedom of his
fellow-man. Liberty is making the tour of the world. Russia has
emancipated her serfs; the slave trade is prosecuted only by thieves
and pirates; Spain feels upon her cheek the burning blush of shame ;
Brazil, with proud and happy eyes, is looking for the dawn of freedom s
day ; the people of the South rejoice that slavery is no more, and every
good and honest man (excepting Mr. Black), of every land and clime,
hopes that the limbs of men will never feel again the weary weight of
chains.
We are informed by Mr. Black that polygamy is neither commanded
nor prohibited in the Old Testament—that it is only “ discouraged. ’
It seems to me that a little legislation on that subject might have
tended to its “discouragement.” But where is the legislation? In the
moral code, which Mr. Black assures us “ consists of certain immutable
rules to govern the conduct of all men at all times and at all places in
their private and personal relation with others,” not one word is found
on the subject of polygamy. There is nothing “discouraging ” in the
Ten Commandments, nor in the records of any conversation Jehovah
is claimed to have had with Moses upon Sinai. The life of Abraham,
the story of Jacob and Laban, the duty of a brother to be the husband
of the widow of his deceased brother, tne life of David, taken in con
nexion with the practice of one who is claimed to have been the wisest
of men—all these things are probably relied on to show that polygamy
was at least “ discouraged.” Certainly, Jehovah had time to instruct
Moses as to the infamy of polygamy. He could have spared a few
moments from a description of the patterns of tongs and basins, for a
subject so important as this. A few words in favor of the one wife and
the one husband—in favor of the virtuous and loving home—might
have taken the place of instructions as to cutting the garments of priests
and fashioning candlesticks and ouches of gold. If he had left out
simply the order that rams’ skins should be dyed red, and in its place
had said, “ A man shall have but one wife, and the wife but one hus
band,” how much better it would have been.
All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express the filth
of polygamy. It makes man a beast, and woman a slave. It destroys
the fireside and makes virtue an outcast. It takes us back to the bar
barism of animals, and leaves the heart a den in which crawl and hiss
the slimy serpents of most loathsome lust. And yet Mr. Black insists
that we owe to the Bible the present elevation of woman. Where will
he find in the Old Testament the rights of wife, and mother, and
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daughter defined? Even in the New Testament she is told to “learn
in silence with all subjection ” ; that she “ is not suffered to teach, nor
to usurp any authority over the man, but to be in silence.” She is told
that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is
man, and the head of Christ is God.” In other words, there is the
same difference between the wife and husband that there is between
the husband and Christ.
z
The reasons given for this infamous doctrine are that “ Adam was
first formed, and then Eve
that “ Adam was not deceived,” but that
the woman being deceived, was in tbe transgression.” These childish
reasons are the only ones given by the inspired writers. We are also
told that “ a man, indeed, ought to cover his head, forasmuch as he is
the image and glory of God”; but that “the woman is the glory of
the man, and this is justified from the fact, and the remarkable fact,
set forth in the very next verse— that “ the man is not of the woman,
but the woman of the man.” And the same gallant Apostle says:
Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the
man ; “ Wives, submit, yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the
^ord;/or the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christis the
r pknrch, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as
the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be subject to their
own husbands m everything.” These are the passages that have liber
ated woman!
.
According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon, and had
to be purified, for the crime of having borne sons and daughters. If
in this world there is a figure of perfect purity, it is a mother holding
in her thrilled and happy arms her child. The doctrine that woman is
the slave, or serf, of man—whether it comes from heaven or from hell
from God or a demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem
or from the very Sodom of perdition—is savagery, pure and simple.
In no country in the world had women less liberty than in the Holy
Land, and no monarch held in less esteem the rights of wives and
mothers than Jehovah of the Jews. The position of woman was far
better in Egypt than in Palestine. Before the pyramids were built,
ihe sacred songs of Isis were sung by women, and women with pure
>ands had offered sacrifices to the gods. Before Moses was born,
women had sat upon the Egyptian throne. Upon ancient tombs the
husband and wife are represented as seated in the same chair. In
Persia women were priests, and in some of the oldest civilisations
“ they were reverenced on earth, and worshipped afterward as god
desses in heaven.” At the advent of Christianity, in all Pagan countries,
women officiated at the sacred altars. They guarded the eternal fire.
They kept the sacred books. From their lips came the oracles of fate.
Under the domination of the Christian church, woman became the
merest slave for at least a thousand years. It was claimed that through
woman the race had fallen, and that her loving kiss had poisoned all
the springs of life. Christian priests asserted that but for her crime,
the world would have been an Eden still. The ancient fathers ex
hausted their eloquence in the denunciation of woman, and repeated
again and again the slander of St. Paul. The condition of woman has
improved just in proportion that man has lost confidence in the inspi
ration of the Bible.
For the purpose of defending the character of his infallible God, Mr.
Black is forced to defend religious intolerance, wars of extermination,
human slavery, and almost polygamy. He admits that God established
�slavery; that he commanded his chosen people to buy the children of
the heathen ; that heathen fathers and mothers did right to sell their
girls and boys; that God ordered the Jews to wage wars of extermi
nation and conquest; that it was right to kill the old and young ; that
God forged manacles for the human brain; that he commanded hus
bands to murder their wives for suggesting the worship of the sun or
moon ; and that every cruel, savage passage in the Old Testament was
inspired by him. Such is a “ policeman’s ” view of God.
Will Mr. Black have the kindness to state a few of his objections to
the devil ?
Mr. Black should have answered my arguments, instead of calling
me “blasphemous” and “scurrilous.” In the discussion of these
questions I have nothing to do with the reputation of my opponent. His
character throws no light on the subject, and is to me a matter of per
fect indifference. Neither will it do for one who enters the lists as the
champion of revealed religion to say that “ we have no right to rejudge
the justice of God.” Such a statement is a white flag. The warrior
eludes the combat when he cries out that it is a “ metaphysical ques
tion.” He deserts the field and throws down his arms when he admits
that “no revelation has lifted the veil between time and eternity.”
Again I ask, why were the Jewish people as wicked, cruel, and igno
rant with a revelation from God, as other nations were without? Why
were the worshippers of false deities as brave, as kind, and generous as
those who knew the only true and living God ?
How do you explain the fact that while Jehovah was waging wars of
extermination, establishing slavery, and persecuting for opinions’ sake,
heathen philosophers were teaching that all men are brothers, equally
entitled to liberty and life ? You inBist that Jehovah believed in slavery
and yet punished the Egyptians for enslaving the Jews. Was your God
once an abolitionist? Did he at that time “denounce Christ for not
agreeing with him ” ? If slavery was a crime in Egypt, was it a virtue
in Palestine? Did God treat the Canaanites better than Pharaoh did
the Jews ? Was it right for Jehovah to kill the children of the people
because of Pharaoh’s sin ? Should the peasant be punished for the
king’s crime ? Do you not know that the worst thing that can be said
of Nero, Caligula, and Commodus is that they resembled the Jehovah
of the Jews? Will you tell me why God failed to give his Bible to
the whole world? Why did he not give the Scriptures to the Hindu,
the Greek, and Roman ? Why did he fail to enlighten the wor
shipers of “ Mammon ” and Moloch, of Belial and Baal, of Bacchus and
Venus? After all, was not Bacchus as good as Jehovah? Is it not
better to drink wine than to shed blood ? Was there anything in the
worship of Venus worfie than giving captured maidens to satisfy the
victor’s lust? Did “Mammon ” or Moloch do anything more infamous
than to establish slavery ? Did they order their soldiers to kill men,
women and children, and to save alive nothing that had breath ? Do
not answer these questions by saying that “ no veil has been lifted
between time and eternity,” and that “we have no right forejudge
the justice of God.”
If Jehovah was in fact God, he knew the end from the beginning.
He knew that his Bible would be a breastwork behind which tyranny
and hypocrisy would crouch ; that it would be quoted by tyrants;
that it would be the defence of robbers called kings, and of hypo
crites called priests. He knew that he had taught the Jewish people
but little of importance. He knew that he found them free and left
�106
them captives. He knew that he had never fulfilled the promises made
to them. He knew that while other nations had advanced in art and
science, his chosen people were savage still. He promised them the
world, and gave them a desert. He promised them liberty, and he
made them slaves. He promised them victory, and he gave them
defeat. He said they should be kings, and he made them serfs. He
promised them universal empire, and gave them exile. When one
finishes the Old Testament, he is compelled to say: Nothing can add
to the misery of a nation whose king is Jehovah!
And here I take occasion to thank Mr. Black for having admitted
that Jehovah gave no commandment against the practice of polygamy,
that he established slavery, waged wars of extermination, and perse
cuted for opinions’ sake even unto death. Most theologians endeavor
to putty, patch, and paint the wretched record of inspired crime, but
Mr. Black has been bold enough and honeBt enough to admit the truth.
In this age of fact and demonstration it is refreshing to find a man
who believes so thoroughly in the monstrous and miraculous, the im
possible and immoral—who still clings lovingly to the legends of the
bib and rattle—who through the bitter experiences of a wicked world
has kept the credulity of the cradle, and finds comfort and joy in
thinking about the Garden of Eden, the subtil serpent, the flood, and
Babel’s tower, stopped by the jargon of a thousand tongues—who
reads with happy eyes the story of the burning brimstone storm that
fell upon the cities of the plain, and Bmilingly explains the transforma
tion of the retrospective Mrs. Lot—who laughs at Egypt’s plagues and
Pharaoh’s whelmed and drowning hosts—eats manna with the wander
ing Jews, warms himself at the burning bush, sees Korah’s company
by the hungry earth devoured, claps his wrinkled hands with glee above
the heathens’ butchered babes, and longingly looks back to the patriar
chal days of concubines and slaves. How touching when the learned
and wise crawl back in cribs and ask to hear the rhymes and fables
once again ! How charming in these hard and scientific times to see
old age in Superstition’s lap, with eager lips upon her withered breast.
Mr. Black comes to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible is in exact
harmony with the New Testament, and that the two are “connected
together ” ; and “that if one is true the other cannot be false.”
If this is so, then he must admit that if one is false the other cannot
be true; and it hardly seems possible to me that there is a right-minded,
sane man, except Mr. Black, who now believes that a God of infinite
kindness and justice ever commanded one nation to exterminate
another; ever ordered his soldiers to destroy men, women, and babes;
ever established the institution of human slavery; ever regarded the
auction-block as an altar, or a blood-hound a3 an apostle.
Mr. Black contends (after having answered my indictment against
the Old Testament by admitting the allegations to be true) that the
rapidity with which Christianity spread “proves the supernatural origin
of the Gospel, or that it was propagated by the direct aid of the Divine
Being himself.”
Let us see. In his efforts to show that the “infallible God estab
lished slavery in Judea,” he takes occasion to say that “ the doctrine
that slavery is a crime under all circumstances was first started by the
adherents of a political faction in this country less than forty years
ago ’’; that “ they denounced God and Christ for not agreeing with
them ”; but that “they did not constitute the civilized world; nor
were they, if the truth must be told, a very respectable portion of it.”
/
�107
Let it be remembered that this was only forty years ago ; and yet,
according to Mr. Black, a few disreputable men changed the ideas of
nearly fifty millions of people, changed the Constitution of the United
States, liberated a race from slavery, clothed three millions of people
with political rights, took possession of the Government, managed its
affairs for more than twenty years, and have compelled the admiration
of the civilized world. Is it Mr. Black’s idea that this happened by
chance ? If not, then, according to him, there are but two ways to
account for it: either the rapidity with which Republicanism spread
proves its supernatural origin, “ or else its propagation was provided
for and carried on by the direct aid of the Divine Being himself.”
Between these two, Mr. Black may make his choice. He will at once
see that the rapid rise and spread of any doctrine does not even tend
to show that it was divinely revealed.
This argument is applicable to all religions. Mohammedans can use
it as well (as Christians. Mohammed was a poor man, a driver of
camels. He was without education, without influence and without
wealth, and yet in a few years he consolidated thousands of tribes, and
made millions of men confess that there is “ one God, and Mohammed
is his prophet.” His success was a thousand times greater during his
life than that of Christ. He was not crucified; he was a conqueror.
“ Of all men, he exercised the greatest influence upon the human race.”
Never in the world’s history did a religion spread with the rapidity of
his. It burst like a storm over the fairest portions of the globe. If
Mr. Black is right in his position that rapidity is secured only by the
direct aid of the Divine Being, then Mohammed was most certainly
the prophet of God. As to wars of extermination and slavery, Mo
hammed agreed with Mr. Black, and upon polygamy with Jehovab. As
to religious toleration, he was great enough to say that “ men holding
to any form of faith might be saved, provided they were virtuous.”
In this, he was far in advance both of Jehovah and Mr. Black.
It will not do to take the ground that the rapid rise and spread of a
religion demonstrates its divine character. Years before Gautama died,
his religion was established, and his disciples were numbered by mil
lions. His doctrines were not enforced by the sword, but by an appeal
to the hopes, the fears, and the reason of mankind ; and more than
one-third of the human race are to-day the followers of Gautama. His
religion has outlived all that existed in his time ; and according to Dr.
Draper, “there is no other country in the world, except India, that has
the religion to-day it had at the birth of Jesus Christ.” Gautama be
lieved in the equality of all men, abhorred the spirit of caste, and pro
claimed justice, mercy, and education for all.
Imagine a Mohammedan answering an infidel; would he not use the
argument of Mr. Black, simply substituting Mohammed for Christ,
just as effectually as it has been used against me ? There was a time
when India was the foremost nation of the world. Would not your
argument, Mr. Black, have been just as good in the mouth of a Brahmin
then, as it is in yours now? Egypt, the mysterious mother of mankind,
with her pyramids built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, was
once the first in all the earth, and gave to us our trinity, and our
symbol of the cross. Could not a priest of Isis and Osiris have used
your arguments to prove that his religion was divine, and could he
not have closed by saying: “ From the facts established by this evi•dence it follows irresistibly that our religion came to us from God ” ?
�108
Do you not see that your argument proves too much, and that it is
equally applicable to all the religions of the world ?
Again, it is urged that “the acceptance of Christianity by a large
portion of the generation contemporary with its founder and his
apostles was, under the circumstances, an adjudication as solemn and
authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce.” If this is true,
then “ the acceptance of Buddhism by a large portion of the generation
contemporary with its founder was an adjudication as solemn and
authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce.” The same could
be said of Mohammedanism, and, in fact, of every religion that has
ever benefited or cursed this world. This argument, when reduced to
its simplest form, is this: All that succeeds is inspired.
The old argument that if Christianity is a human fabrication its
authors must have been either good men or bad men, takes it for
granted that there are but two classes of persons—the good and the
bad. There is, at least, one other class—the mistaken, and both of the
other classes may belong to this. Thousands of most excellent people
have been deceived, and the history of the world is filled with instances
where men have honestly supposed that they had received communi
cations from angels and gods.
In thousands of instances these pretended communications contained
the purest and highest thoughts, together with the most important
truths ; yet it will not do to say that these accounts are true ; neither
can they be proved by saying that the men who claimed to be inspired
were good. What we must say is, that being good men, they were
mistaken; and it is the charitable mantle of a mistake that I throw over
Mr. Black, when I find him defending the institution of slavery. He
seems to think it utterly incredible that any “combination of knaves,
however base, would fraudulently concoct a religious system to de
nounce themselves, and to invoke the curse of God upon their own
conduct.” How did religions other than Christianity and Judaism
arise ? Were they all “ concocted by a combination of knaves” ? The
religion of Gautama is filled with most beautiful and tender thoughts,
with most excellent laws, and hundreds of sentences urging mankind
to deeds of love and self-denial. Was Gautama inspired ?
Does not Mr. Black know that thousands of people charged with
witchcraft actually confessed in open court their guilt ? Does he not
know that they admitted that they had spoken face to face with Satan,
and had sold their souls for gold and power? Does he not know that
these admissions were made in the presence and expectation of death?
Does he not know that hundreds of judges, some of them as great as
the late lamented Gibson, believed in the existence of an impossible
crime ?
We are told that “ there is no good reason to doubt that the state
ments of the Evangelists, as we have them now, are genuine.” The
fact is, no one knows who made the “ statements of the Evangelists.”
There are three important manuscripts upon which the Christian
world relies. “ The first appeared in the catalogue of the Vatican, in
1475. This contains the Old Testament. Of the New, it contains the
four gospels—the Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles, nine of the Pauline
Epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as far as the fourteenth verse
of the ninth chapter ”—and nothing more. This is known as the Vati
can Codex. “ The second, the Alexandrine, was presented to King
Charles the First, in 1628. It contains the Old and New Testaments,
with some exceptions; passages are wanting in Matthew, in John, and
�109
in II. Corinthians. It also contains the epistle of Clemens Romanus, a
letter of Athanasius, and the treatise of Eusebius on the Psalms.”
The last is the Sinaitic Codex, discovered about 1850, at the Convent
of St. Catherine’s on Mount Sinai. “ It contains the Old and New
Testaments, and in addition the entire Epistle of Barnabas, and a
portion of the Shepherd of Hermas—two books which, up to the be
ginning of the fourth century, were looked upon by many as Scrip
ture.” In this manuscript, or codex, the gospel of St. Mark concludes
with the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter, leaving out the frightful
passage: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every
creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he
that believeth not shall be damned.”
In matters of the utmost importance these manuscripts disagree, but
even if they all agreed it would not furnish the slightest evidence of
their truth. It will not do to call the statements made in the gospels
“ depositions,” until it is absolutely established who made them, and
the circumstances under which they were made. Neither can we say
that “ they were made in the immediate prospect of death,” until we
know who made them. It is absurd to say that “ the witnesses could
not have been mistaken, because the nature of the facts precluded the
possibility of any delusion about them.” Can it be pretended that the
witnesses could not have been mistaken about the relation the Holy
Ghost is alleged to have sustained to Jesus Christ ? Is there no possi
bility of delusion about a circumstance of that kind ? Did the writers
of the four gospels have “ ‘ the sensible and true avouch of their own
eyes ’ and ears ” in that behalf ? How was it possible for any one of
the four Evangelists to know that Christ was the Son of God, or that
he was God ? His mother wrote nothing on the subject. Matthew
says that an angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream, but Joseph
never wrote an account of this wonderful vision. Luke tells us that
the angel had a conversation with Mary, and that Mary told Elizabeth,
but Elizabeth never wrote a word. There is no account of Mary, or
Joseph, or Elizabeth, or the angel, having had any conversation with
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, in which one word was said about the
miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. The persons who knew did not
write, so that the account is nothing but hearsay. Does Mr. Black
pretend that such statements would be admitted as evidence in any
court? But how do we know that the disciples of Christ wrote a word
of the gospels ? ' How did it happen that Christ wrote nothing ? How
do we know that the writers of the gospels “were men of unimpeach
able character ” ?
All this is answered by saying “that nothing was said by the most
virulent enemies against the personal honesty of the Evangelists.”
How is this known ? If Christ performed the miracles recorded in the
New Testament, why would the Jews put to death a man able to raise
their dead ? Why should they attempt to kill the Master of Death ?
How did it happen that a man who had done so many miracles was so
obscure, so unknown, that one of his disciples had to be bribed to
point him out ? Is it not strange that the ones he had cured were not
his disciples ? Can we believe, upon the testimony of those about
whose character we know nothing, that Lazarus was raised from the
dead? What became of Lazarus? We never hear of him again. It
seems to me that he would have been an object of great interest.
People would have said: “ He is the man who was once dead.”
Thousands would have inquired of him about the other world ; would
�r
v’
110
have asked him where he was when he received the information that he
was wanted on the earth. His experience would have been vastly more
interesting than everything else in the New Testament. A returned
traveller from the shores of Eternity—one who had walked twice
through the valley of the shadow—would have been the most interesting
of human beings. When he came to die again, people would have
said: “ He is not afraid ; he has had experience ; he knows what death
is.” But, strangely enough, this Lazarus fades into obscurity with
“ the wise men of the East,” and with the dead who came out of their
graves on the night of the crucifixion. How is it known that it was
claimed, during the life of Christ, that he had wrought a miracle ?
And if the claim was made, how is it known that it was not denied ?
Did the Jews believe that Christ was clothed with miraculous power ?
Would they have dared to crucify a man who ‘had the power to clothe
the dead with life ? Is it not wonderful that no one at the trial of
Christ said one word about the miracles he had wrought? Nothing
about the sick he had healed, nor the dead he had raised ?
Is it not wonderful that Josephus, the best historian the Hebrews
produced, says nothing about the life or death of Christ; nothing
about the massacre of the infants by Herod; not one word about the
wonderful star that visited the sky at the birth of Christ; nothing
about the darkness that fell upon the world for several hours in the
midst of day; and failed entirely to mention that hundreds of graves
were opened, and that multitudes of Jews arose from the dead, and
visited the Holy City? Is it not wonderful that no historian ever
mentioned any of these prodigies? and is it not more amazing than all
the rest that Christ himself concealed from Matthew, Mark, and Luke
the dogma of the atonement, the necessity of belief, and the mvsterv
of the second birth ?
J
J
Of course I know that two letters were said to have been written by
Pilate to Tiberius, concerning the execution of Christ, but they have
been shown to be forgeries. I also know that “various letters were
circulated attributed to Jesus Christ,” and that one letter is said to
have been written by him to Abgarus, King of Edessa; but as there
was no king of Edessa at that time this letter is admitted to have been
a forgery. 1 also admit that a correspondence between Seneca and
St. Paul was forged.
Here in our own country, only a few years ago, men claimed to have
found golden plates upon which was written a revelation from God.
They founded a new religion, and, according to their statement, did
many miracles. They were treated as outcasts, and their leader was
murdered. These men made their “ depositions ” “ in the immediate
prospect of death ” They were mobbed, persecuted, derided, and yet
they insisted that their prophet had miraculous power, and that he,
too, could swing back the hingeless door of death. The followers of
these men have increased in these few years, so that now the murdered
prophet has at least two hundred thousand disciples. It will be hard
to find a contradiction of these pretended miracles, although this is an
age filled with papers, magazines, and books. As a matter of fact,
the claims of Joseph Smith were so preposterous that sensible people
did not take the pains to write and print denials. When we remem
ber that eighteen hundred years ago there were but few people who
could write, and that a manuscript did not become public in any
modern sense, it was possible for the gospels to have been written with
-all the foolish claims in reference to miracles without exciting comment
�Ill
or denial. There is not, in all the contemporaneous literature of the
| - world a single word about Christ or his apostles. The paragraph in
Josephus is admitted to be an interpolation, and the letters, the account
of the trial, and several other documents forged by the zeal of the early
fathers, are now admitted to be false.
Neither will it do to say that “ the statements made by the evange
lists are alike upon every important point.” if there is anything of
importance in the New Testament, from the theological stand-point,
it is the ascension of Jesus Christ. If that happened it was a miracle
great enough to surfeit wonder. Are the statements of the inspired
witnesses alike on this important point? Let us see.
Matthew says nothing upon the subject. Either Matthew was not
there, had never heard of the ascension—or, having heard of it, did
not believe it, or, having seen it, thought it too unimportant to record.
To this wonder of wonders Mark devotes one verse : “So then, after
the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and
sat on the right hand of God.’’ Can we believe that this verse was
written by one who witnessed the ascension of Jesus Christ; by one
who watched his Master slowly rising through the air till distance reft
him from his tearful sight? Luke, another of the witnesses, says:
“ And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them,
and carried up into heaven.” John corroborates Matthew by saying
nothing on the subject. Now we find that the last chapter of Mark,
after the eighth verse, is an interpolation; so that Mark really says
nothing about the occurrence. Either the ascension of Christ must be
given up, or it must be admitted that the witnesses do not agree, and
'
that three of them never heard of that most stupendous event.
Again, if anything could have left its “ form and pressure ” on the
brain, it must have been the last words of Jesus Christ. The last
words, according to Matthew, are: “Go ye, therefore, and teach all
nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you : and lo, 1 am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world.” The last words, according to the inspired witness
known as Mark, are : “And these signs shall follow them that believe :
in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new
tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly
thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and
they shall recover.” Luke tells us that the last words uttered by
Christ, with the exception of a blessing, were : “ And behold, I send
forth the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of
Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” The last
words, according to John, were: “ Peter, seeing Him, saith to Jesus :
Lord, and what shall this man do ? Jesus saith unto him, If I will
that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.”
An account of the ascension is also given in the Acts of the
Apostles; and the last words of Christ, according to that inspired
witness, are : “ But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost
is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jeru
salem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part
of the earth.” In this account of the ascension we find that two men
stood by the disciples in white apparel, and asked them : “Ye men of
Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? This same Jesus, which
is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye
have seen him go into heaven.” Matthew says nothing of the two
�112
men. Mark never saw them. Luke may have forgotten them when
writing his gospel, and John may have regarded them as optical
illusions.
,
•
Luke testifies that Christ ascended on the very day of his resurrec
tion. John deposes that eight days after the resurrection Christ ap
peared to the disciples and convinced Thomas. In the Acts we are
told that Christ remained on earth for forty days after his resurrection.
These “depositions” do not. agree. Neither do Matthew and Luke-i
agree in their histories of the infancy of Christ. It is impossible for
both to be true. One of these “witnesses” must have been mistaken.
The most wonderful miracle recorded in the New Testament, as
having been wrought by Christ, is the resurrection of Lazarug. While
all the writers of the gospels, in many instances^ record the same won
ders and the same conversations, is it not remarkable that the greatest
miracle is mentioned alone by John?
Two of the, witnesses, Matthew and Luke, give the genealogy of
Christ. Matthew says that there were forty-two generations from
Abraham to Christ. Luke insists that there were forty-two from
Christ to David, while Matthew gives the number as twenty-eight. It
may be said that this is an' old objection*. An objection remains young
until it has been answered. Is it not wonderful that Luke and Matthew
do not agree on a single name of Christ’s ancestors for thirty-seven
generations?
There is a difference of opinion among the “witnesses" as to what
the gospel of Christ is. If we take the “depositions” of Matthew,.
Mark, and Luke, then the gospel of Christ amounts simply to this:
That God will forgive the forgiving, aDd that he will be merciful to the
merciful. According to three witnesses, Christ knew nothing of the
doctrine of the atonement; never heard of the second birth ; and did
not base salvation, in whole nor in part, on belief. In the “ deposi
tion ” of John, we find that we must be born again; that we must
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; and that an atonement was made for
us. If Christ ever said theqe things to, or in the hearing of, Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, they forgot to mention them.
To my mind, the failur^/of the evangelists to agree as to what is
necessary for man to do in order to insure the salvation of his soul, is a
demonstration that they were not inspired.
Neither do the witnesses agree as to the last words of Christ when
he was crucified. Matthew says that he cried: “ My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?” Mark agrees with Matthew. Luke
testifies that his last words were: “Father, into thy hands T com
mend my spirit.” John states that he cried : “ It is finished?’*
Luke says that Christ said of his murderers: “ Father, forgive them;
for they know not what they do.” Matthew, Mark, and John do not
record these touching words. John says that Christ, on the day of his
resurrection, said to his disciples: “ Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.”
The other disciples do not record this monstrous passage. They
did not hear the abdication of God. They were not present when
Christ placed in their hands the keys of heaven and hell, and put a
world beneath the feet of priests.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
London: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh,
63, Fleet Street, E.C.—1883.
�
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Is all of the Bible inspired? Part I
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: [97]-112 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. First published [1882] in the North American Review. At head of title: 'Freethought Publishing Company's edition'. On last page: 'Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh'. No. 9i in Stein checklist.
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Bible-Criticism
Christianity-Controversial Literature
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Text
jTfte Atfreistic ^Uniform
III.
THE GOSPEL
OF
EVOLUTION.
BY
EDWARD B. AVELING, D.Sc.
LONDON:
freethought
publishing
63,_ FLEET STREET E.C.
1 8 8 4.
PRICE
ONE
PENNY.
COMPANY,
�THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
------------- ♦-------------
Under this title it is proposed to issue a fortnightly publi
cation, each number of which shall consist of a lecture
delivered by a well-known Freethought advocate. Any
question may be selected, provided that it has formed the
subject of a lecture delivered from the platform by an
Atheist. It is desired to show that the Atheistic platform
is used for the service of humanity, and that Atheists war
against tyranny of every kind, tyranny of king and god,
political, social, and theological.
Each issue will consist of sixteen pages, and will be
published at one penny. Each writer is .responsible only
for his or her own views.
\
I. “ What is the Use of Prayer ?”
By Annie Besant.
II. “ Mind considered as a Bodily’ Function.”
Alice Bradlaugh.
By
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
A new and better Gospel is now preached to men. That
which has for a long time gone by the name of Gospel
(good news) is neither news nor good. It is not news, for
it has been preached for nearly nineteen centuries. Not
that length of time alone could make it old and effete.
But the Gospel of Christianity has not within itself that
inherent and strong life of reality which makes even old
truths to have a perennial freshness, an eternal youth.
Nor is the Gospel of Christianity good. In the tales that
it tells us of the past, in the advice that it gives us for the
present,, and in the hopes and threats it holds out for the
fixture, it is a misleading guide, a poor philosopher, a false
friend.
The legends have it that on the coming of the central
figure of the discredited evangel the angels sang together :
“Peace on earth, good will to men.” It was a false
alarm. Neither peace nor good will Was forthcoming.
But with the advent of this scientific gospel, the Gospel of
Evolution, comes the possibility of “striking a universal
peace through sea and land,” the possibility of the uni
versal brotherhood of man.
Perhaps we are all of us too anxious and too hopeful in
the feeling that some one idea will save the world. The
religious creeds of different races and times are the expres
sion of this anxiety. We that have rejected all belief in
the supernatural must take care that the same fancy that
has spoilt the lives of so many does not mar our own. We
must have a care lest we make too much of some truth ?
•
�36
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
even though it be a scientific conclusion, based on scientific
observation and reasoning. And we must not forget that,
of all the great generalisations, that of Evolution is the one
most likely to be thus regarded, for it is a generalisation
of generalisations. The mind of man is always longing
for some solid resting-place. Man wants to get back and
back, to something certain. He wants to feel that, what
ever happens, some one great principle stands fast. The
children of the decrepit gospel dreamed that this was
found in God. The children of the new Gospel know that
in the indestructibility of matter and of motion, and in the
infinite nature of the transformations of matter and motion,
they have a solid fact on which to fall back when all else
fails. Only it is very important to remember that, great as
any idea may be, the mental effort needed for its under
standing and its acquisition is to the individual of as much
moment as the idea itself. The exercise of our faculties
is of as great value to us as the results attained by the
exercise. The old parental habit of asking of the school
boy or the school-girl : “What prizes have you gained ? ”
is only one form of a general error. The question is not,
‘ ‘ What prizes have you ? ’ ’ but ‘ ‘ What have you learned ? ’ ’
We are doming to recognise this in some measure in our
estimates of grown men and women. Still, however, to the
vulgar, the measure of a man is the banker’s balance.
But the thoughtful, as yet few in number, although the
number grows hourly, and even the commonplace people,
if they are in the unaccustomed atmosphere of culture, are
estimating the value of a human being by that which he
actually does and is, rather than by the magnitude of the
cheques he can draw.
What is, then, this Evolution ? In the asking this ques
tion and in the attempt to answer we see how much happier
is the position of the new gospel as compared with that of
the old. The good news of Christianity, having no scien
tific and indeed no natural basis, has been Protean in its
forms. These have been indefinitely varied according to
the taste and fancy of the age and of the individual. The
Gospel as preached by Messrs. Benson, Booth, Baldwin
Brown, Spurgeon, Liddon, Moody, is somewhat mixed.
But the new evangel is founded wholly on a natural and
scientific basis. There may be slight differences of opinion
as to matters of detail among its apostles and its disciples,
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
37
but the fundamental principles are accepted by all. Upon
these, no doubt, much less any dispute reigns.
Evolution is the name for the idea of the unity and con
tinuity of phenomena. The popular and unscientific
notion was that there was not only an original effort on the
part of the supernatural causing the natural, setting it
going, in fact, but a continual interposition of the super
natural from without, controlling the natural. Evolution
is the doctrine of non-intervention. According to this
gospel, matter and motion are all in all. Matter is the
convenient name for all that which can affect the senses of
man. Motion is change of place, whether it be of large,
palpable masses, as when the arm is raised, or of minute
impalpable molecules, as when heat or electricity is at
work.
The ordinary notion of movement is wholly confined to
that which, is called molar, that is, the motion of masses.
Moles=a mass. Thus the movements of a running man,
or of a football when kicked, or of a railway train when
the engine draws it along, are all cases of molar motion.
But a finer kind of movement has of late years come
within the ken of mankind. It has been at work probably
eternally. It is molecular movement, or movement of
small masses. But only very recently has the mind of
man been able to take cognisance of this form. The
researches of the physicists, the chemists, the biologists
have demonstrated that there is a whole world of move
ments that affect only the minute particles of bodies.
Thus heat is a mode of motion; electricity is another;
magnetism is a third. The familiar phsenomena of light
are no longer regarded as due to any actual matter that has
been thrown from a luminous body. They are the result
of waves of a fluid imponderable and universal called
ether, and there seems every reason to believe that the
phsenomena commonly called vital are of the same or of a
kindred order. Life, it would appear, is but a mode of
motion. And though we know life generally only by its
manifestations of molar motion, as in the blow of the arm,
or the stride of the leg, yet these massive movements are
but the outward representatives of a large number of
internal movements, of chemical nature in digestion, of ner
vous nature in the sense-organs and nerve tissues. Every
bodily movement visible to the ordinary eye is only the
�38
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
obverse aspect of many molecular motions, not as yet
visible to man.
The reasons why we regard matter and motion as allsufficient in the explanation of all the phenomena of the
universe are several. In the first place, no destruction of
matter has ever been witnessed. Second, no destruction of
motion has ever been witnessed. The creation of either
matter or motion has been equally unseen. Transformations
of matter from one of its infinitely many forms to some
other are constantly visible, and they are always unat
tended by the smallest increase or diminution in the actual
quantity of matter. So also with motion—transformations
without any change in quantity are continually occurring.
Thus, we see the rocks disintegrated by the action of
rain and running water, “weathered” by the action of
the air. We see the matter of which they consisted worn
away and carried down by streams and rivers to be de
posited at the mouths of rivers or on the beds of seas. Or
we set fire to a candle and watch its matter combining with
the matter of the air to form the products of combustion,
carbon, dioxide, steam, and their fellows. Or a dead
animal or plant is seen to decay slowly into these same
gases that the burning candle gives forth and into certain
inorganic salts. And these are all cases of the transforma
tion of matter without any creation or destruction.
Or we see the molar motion of a student’s hands
bringing together some acid and two metals. At once
chemical action, a form of molecular motion, is set up.
The molar motion of hands, a piece of silk, and a glass
rod results in electricity, a mode of molecular motion. Or
we apply heat, a mode of molecular motion, to a bar of
metal which expands, to a mixture of hydrogen and
oxygen which unite chemically. Or to a crystal of tourma
line, one end of which becomes positively electric, the other
negatively. These are all cases of the transformation of
motion without any creation or destruction. In all these
cases the amount of matter and the amount of motion
remain unchanged. Only the quantities of particular
kinds vary. The generalisation that the quantity of matter
and motion in the universe is the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever, appears to be thoroughly established.
More than this. Not only is there no scientific basis what
ever for the fancy of a creation or of a destruction of matter
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
39
or of motion. The fancy is unthinkable. No human mind
is capable of picturing to itself the passage from the
material to the immaterial, the moment of time in which
the non-universe began to be the universe.
Yet again. Up to the present time every explanation
of every pheenomenon of the universe has been in terms of
matter and of motion. The law of gravitation, Kepler’s
three great generalisations in astronomy, the phenomena
of attraction and repulsion in electrified and magnetised
bodies, the nature of chemical elements and compounds,
the relation between plants and animals in regard to their
effect on the air, the principles of variation, of natural
selection, of heredity, of adaptation—these and thousands
of other truths that unseal our eyes to the beautiful mean
ing of nature, are all explanations as to how certain forms
of matter are in certain states of motion. And if up to the
present hour all the explanations that have been forth
coming of natural things are in terms of the natural, we
are entitled to conclude that all explanations hereafter will
be in kindred terms.
Or we may look on the question in another way. In the
days of man’s greater ignorance everything was primarily
or ultimately referred to the supernatural. All phenomena
were at first directly due to the action of the supernatural.
But, as time and knowledge advanced, these references
grew fewer and fewer in number. They were replaced by
perfectly natural explanations of events, and we are
entitled to believe that this process of elimination has now
gone on sufficiently far for us to hold that since super
naturalism is unnecessary for the primary explanation of
phaenomena, it is also unnecessary for their ultimate
explanation.
From all that I have just said it will be understood that
the Gospel of Evolution has a wider significance than popu
lar notions imply. The general idea as to Evolution, that
it is synonymous with Darwinism, is not accurate. The
Darwinian teaching is only a part, though in one sense it
is the most important part, of the Evolution truth. Evolu
tion itself means, as we have seen, the unity of phsenomena.
All things are, according to this new principle, one huge
continuity. Whilst Darwinism shows that man is not
distinct from the lower animals, and that all species of
animals, and all species of plants are artificial groups
4
�40
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
gliding one into the other, just as in their gradual de
velopment they glided one out of the other, Evolution goes
further than this and does not fare worse. For the
evolutionist not only believes that which the works of
Darwin have made an assured truth, but he believes that
plants and animals have had a common parentage, that
living matter has originated from the non-living, that
there has been no break in the vast series of phenomena
at any point.
Some of the general grounds for this belief have been
/ven. Let us look rapidly at some of the more special.
The principle of - the conservation of energy already men
tioned indirectly is, in a sense, the starting point of
thought on this subject. Grove’s essay on the “Correla
tion of the Physical Forces,” published a few years since,
was the first clear enunciation of the generalisation towards
which so many observations had led. When he reminded
men that chemical action, electricity, heat, sound, light,
magnetism, and life were all convertible, one into the other,
and thus convertible in definite numerical proportions,
mathematically calculable, the keynote of the idea of
Evolution had been struck.
Harsh as it may seem, an idea in any branch of know
ledge has never attained a sure basis until it is expressible
in terms of mathematics. There was a time when physics
and chemistry were divorced from mathematics to a large
extent. Now even the phenomena of electricity and the
reactions one upon another of chemical bodies are expressed
in algebraical formulae. This is the result of the increased
precision of our knowledge. Following in the footsteps of
physics and chemistry the biological sciences are becoming
every day more mathematical. We have formulae to express
the manner of the arrangement of leaves upon a stem, the
manner of arrangement of the parts of a flower. One of
these days every structural and functional fact in regard
to every living thing will be related to some formula of
mathematics more or less general. We shall not all
become martinets or dryasdusts. There is a beauty in
exactness. I sometimes think that the difference between
the loveliness of our thinking and of our dreaming on
natural phenomena, as compared with that which the older
thinkers and dreamers enjoyed, will be as the difference
between the joy of a game of chess between skilled players
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
t
,
41
or between those that know not even the moves. The
child pushes the kings and queens and rooks and knights
and bishops and pawns about at random, and laughs gaily.
But the master of the game, moving them according to
definite rules, obtains a far higher enjoyment, and produces
a combination that has its poetry.
The very sciences that deal with these different modes
of matter and motion are now by no means as clearly
marked off one from another as their earlier students
thought they were. Physics, chemistry, geology, botany,
zoology, anatomy, physiology, how they all dovetail into,
or actually overlap each other. It is impossible to say
sometimes to which domain of science a particular fact
belongs. The distinctions between the physical and the
chemical properties of bodies are confessedly artificial.
Botany implies a study’of the anatomy and the physiology
of plants. Physiology in its turn becomes only a question
of chemistry; -its phenomena are becoming reduced to
mathematical expressions. We are learning to calculate
the actual amount of work done in the performance of
different functions of the living body, in the same terms
as we calculate the work done by a steam engine. The
respiratory organs or the muscular during the day do so
many foot-pounds of work. The foot-pound is the unit of
measurement employed in the study of work. Work is
done when matter is moved through space. The foot
pound is the amount of work done when the mass of a
pound is raised one foot against the gravitation attraction
of the earth. A steam-engine does per day a certain
number of foot-pounds of work. Its capacity for work is
usually expressed by saying that it is so many horse
power. One horse power is equivalent to 33,000 foot
pounds per minute. The physiologists are, by means of
very intricate and careful calculations, enabled to calculate
with ever - increasing accuracy the equivalent in foot
pounds, i.e., the mechanical equivalent, of each of the
body functions of the average man per diem.
If we turn to any of the special sciences the same dove
tailing and over-lapping appear. In chemistry it is difficult
to mark off any group of bodies from all other groups.
The three sets of bodies that chemistry is supposed to
study are elements, mixtures, and compounds. An element
such as carbon or gold, is a body which has not yet been
�42
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
decomposed. A mixture is that which results from putting
together two or more substances, without those substances
undergoing any change of properties. Thus brandy and
water, or gunpowder is a mixture. The properties of the
brandy and of the water in the one case, and of the char
coal, nitre and sulphur in the other, are unchanged. A
compound is the result of the union of two or more elements
with change of properties; thus water is a compound of
hydrogen and oxygen, and its properties are those of
neither hydrogen nor oxygen. The fundamental distinc
tion supposed to be at the basis of all chemical study,
that between elements and compounds, is found to be in
applicable when we study such bodies as cyanogen, a com
pound of the two elements carbon and nitrogen, that
behaves like an element. Ammonium, a compound of
four atoms of hydrogen and one of nitrogen, also behaves
like an element, taking the place of such metallic elements
as potassium or sodium. In fact all the so-called ‘ ‘ com
pound radicles ” which enter so largely into our study of
organic chemistry are groups of two or atoms of two or
more elements that behave as simple bodies. The metals
and the non-metals are connected by such forms as arsenic
or selenium, placed by one chemist among the metals,
by another among the non-metals. Hydrogen, usually
classed with the non-metals, has the power of replacing
metallic elements. It does this so persistently ihat, on
theoretical grounds, chemists had long spoken of hydrogen
as probably essentially a metal. When the French chemist
Pictet succeeded in liquefying hydrogen, until then only
known in the gas form, the liquid fell upon the floor of the
laboratory with a metallic ring. And who is to say posi
tively whether an alloy of copper and zinc is to be regarded
as a mixture or as a compound of the two metals ?
Still more important is the bridging over the supposed
gulf between the inorganic and the organic chemical sub
stances. A few years back this gulf was supposed to be
great, fixed, impassable. The mineral*or inorganic was
makable by man. The organic was not, and never would
be. The chemist might go on continually manufacturing
hydrogen and oxygen, carbon dioxide, ammonia. But he
was never to hope to make alcohol, sugar, urea, any of the
multitudinous substances called organic. And now all this
folly of forbidding is at an end. The organic bodies are
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
43
manufactured by man. The inorganic and the organic are
no more regarded as clearly distinguishable. Even the
chemistry books by their very titles recognise and proclaim
this fact. We have no longer works on organic chemistry.
We have volumes on the chemistry of carbon compounds.
In geology the different kinds of rocks graduate into
each other. Between the aqueous, or sedimentary, and
the igneous, or those due to the action of fire, range the
metamorphic, i.e., sedimentary rocks that have been after
wards subjected to heat. The various systems of sedi
mentary rocks are known now to be purely artificial if
convenient divisions. From the Laurentian up to the
recent rocks there has never been any real hiatus. No
where is there the slightest evidence of pause or of recom
mencement. Our groups are artificial. Nature is like
Gallio and cares for none of these things.
Whilst rocks thus glide one into the other, the fossil
remains that they contain do likewise. If the view of the
special creationist were accurate we ought to find isolated
forms of dead animals and plants, we ought to find sudden
appearances in the rocks of forms not allied to these already
encountered, we ought not necessarily to find a series of
organic remains ascending in complexity of structure. If
the view of the evolutionist is accurate, we ought to find no .
forms of dead animals or plants isolated ; we ought never
to find a form appearing without preliminary heralds of its
coming in the shape of kindred forms; we ought to find a
series of organic remains whose later members are in ad
vance of the earlier. These latter expectations are realised.
In like manner the gap supposed to exist between the
kingdoms of the non-living and living is closing up. As
long as men had only studied the higher forms of living
things there was no difficulty in defining and distinguishing
living organisms. To define and to distinguish the lowest
forms of those now known is impossible. IIow completely
this is true can only be understood by those who have
studied the protoplasmic masses that hover on the border
line between the organic and the inorganic. But even the
unskilled in microscopic work will be able to grasp some- ,
thing of the great truth if they will take the trouble to
look up the innumerable 'definitions of life that have been
given by various persons, and note how unsatisfactory,
how contradictory and often self-contradictory they are.
�44
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
If we pass up into the kingdoms of the living, and study
plants and animals, the same unity of phsenomena meets
us. Our classification terms—order, genus, species, and
so forth—are as artificial as our names for the geological
systems. No one holds to-day that any single species is
clearly marked off from all others. Connecting links
abound in our vegetable kingdom. The lichens, long
regarded as a separate class of lowly organised plants are
now known to be fungi that are parasitic upon algae. The
higher cryptogams or flowerless plants are found to be at
one in their structure and functions with the lower phsenogams or flowering plants.
The distinctions between plants and animals are found
to have vanished. Once again it is easy enough to dis
tinguish high plants from high animals.. But no man can
satisfactorily draw the line between the lower members of
the two kingdoms. The old definitions of the animal and
the plant given with a suicidal glibness in old books on
botany and zoology, when tried in the balance of criticism,
are found wanting. Even the food-distinction, supposed
to be the best distinction between the two groups, fails.
It is no longer true that plants feed on the inorganic, and
animals on organic substances. The cases of vegetable
parasites and of insectivorous plants give a direct contra
diction to this statement. And it is very interesting to notice
how gradual are the transitions in this as m all cases. A
group of plants known as saprophytes, that feed on decay
ing organic things, is the natural transition between the
ordinary plants that eat inorganic food-stuffs, and those
plants that, like animals, exist on organic substances. So
marked is this difficulty of distinguishing between the
lower plants and the lower animals, that it has been sug
gested that a third kingdom of the living should be con
structed midway .between the two generally recognised.
This is to be called Protista, and is to include all the
doubtful forms that are not clearly members either of the
Kingdom Animalia or of the Kingdom Vegetabilia.
. If the arbitrary nature of all our systems of classifica
tion is understood, this new division will do little harm.
But for the systematist the difficulty is by the establish
ment of this group only doubled. Heretofore he had only
to struggle over a particular living thing, with the view to
determine whether it were plant or animal. Now he will
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLI/TION.
45
have to struggle over it with the view of telling whether
it is Protistic or animal, or Protistic or vegetable. But
the true evolutionist will only look on the group of the
Protista as containing forms that represent the parent con
dition of both vegetables and animals.
The animal kingdom, no less than the vegetable, gives
these results. Amphioxus, the little Mediterranean fish,
links the Vertebrata, or back-boned animals, for ever on
to the Invertebrata. The classes of the Vertebrate sub
kingdom have their connecting links or intermediate forms.
These classes, adopting for popular exposition the old
■classification, are the Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves,
Mammalia.' Whilst Amphioxus at the lower end of the
class of fishes connects these with the soft-bodied animals,
or Mollusca, at the upper end of the Pisces, we have the
Lepidosiren, or mud-fish. It is impossible to say whether
this animal is more of a fish or a reptile. With limbs rather
than fins, with three cavities to its heart, and a swim
bladder that acts as a lung, it has yet so many parts of its
anatomy that are piscine as to lead Professor Huxley still
to place it as a solitary representative of the highest order
■of Pisces.
The class Amphibia is itself a confirmation of the general
truth, for its members, such as the frogs, are in their early
condition fish, and in their adult state reptiles. Ptero
dactyl of the Jurassic strata is the winged lizard.
Its name tells us that we have a form intermediate be
tween the classes Reptilia and Aves. The duck-billed
Platypus, or Ornithorhyncus, of Australia, is a furred
mammal that suckles its young, and yet has a bird’s bill,
a bird’s feet, a bird’s wishing-bone, a bird’s heart, a bird’s
alimentary canal. If we turn to the individual classes, the
same thing obtains. To take but the the highest class, the
Prosimise, or half-apes, among the Mammalia are an order,
that stands centrally to the Insectivora, Rodentia, Cheirop
tera, and Primates. There is no gap between man and
the rest of the Primates. Not a single mark of anatomy,
of physiology, or of psychology, clearly distinguishes man
from the highest apes.
If we study the individual animal, the same fact of the
unity of phsenomena is again borne in upon us. The
bodily functions are by no means so distinct in their nature
as we were wont to think. To take but an illustration.
�46
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
The sense-organs of man are all found to be only so many
modifications of the integument.
The skin or tactile organ is the integument. The tongue
or taste organ is but the integument folded inwards and a
little modified. The nasal cavities are also lined with a
modification of the same tissue, and even the most complex
sense organs that are at tho same time the most important
—that is the eye and the ear—are, as the study of develop
ment or embryology shows us, only the result of a series of
remarkable changes affecting certain parts of the epidermis
of the animal.
Those physiological functions of the human body that
appeal’ to be clearly marked off are really not completely
demarcated. Take as example the excretory action of the
skin, lungs, and the renal organs. The lungs get rid
especially of carbon dioxide; the skin of water ; the renal
organs of the products of nitrogenous decay. But each of
these organs also eliminates those products which are
eliminated by the other two. Thus the lungs, whilst they
get rid principally of carbon dioxide, also get rid of water
in the form of steam and of nitrogenous matter. The skin
gives off a certain quantity of carbon dioxide and nitrogen
excreta. And the renal organs also eliminate all three of
the chief forms of excretory matter. When any one of
these three organs is not functioning at its best, extra work
is thrown upon the others, and' in some extreme cases this
metastasis, or transference of function, is very remarkable.
Thus an ulcer in the human body has been known to
secrete milk.
Try to realise at least something of what all this means.
It is no longer possible to mark off clearly the various
domains of science. Science is one, for it is the study of
nature, and nature is one. In every branch of our know
ledge that daily grows more unified, the transitions are
found to be innumerable and the gradations infinitesimal.
Our chemical groups, our geological rocks and strata, our
inorganic and organic kingdoms, our plants and animals,
our classes, orders, genera, species, all are seen to be
artificial.
Here is then the new message that science is uttering to
man. It is in truth good news. There is no break any
where. The universe is one vast whole. It is true that
at first there seems to be a loss because of the indistinctness
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
47
that now veils the old lines of demarcation. At first some
thing of a shock is felt when we realise that the old
definitions and classifications are only matters of con
venience, and really represent nothing in nature. But our
view of the whole gains incomparably. We are led to
take a larger and more true conception of the universe.
If the subdivisions disappear the unity of the whole comes
out with wonderful clearness. We study phenomena from
below upwards, and see something more than an unbroken
series. We see that actually there is no below and no
above. The mineral kingdon of the non-living passes into
the living. This by gradual stages of ascent rises to the
loftiest forms of plants and animals yet known. But these
in their constant decay and in their death once for all as
individuals, return to the mineral kingdom again. If only
we grasp the full meaning of this new gospel founded on
science, all life acquires a new significance. Most of all
our own life, as the highest expression known to us of the
phenomena of matter in motion, becomes more solemn and
more full of hope. In it more than in any other are gathered
together the forces of the universe. The attraction of the
stone for the planet, and of the particles of rock one for
another, the loves and hates of chemical atoms, the
energies of electrified and magnetised bodies, the variations
of innumerable simpler forms of organisms, long chains of
heredity reaching back through incalculable times, myriads
of adaptations, struggles and failures, deaths and lives, all
have met in us. We, more than all others, are the heirs
of the ages. While our less fortunate brethren, the lower
animals, the plants, the minerals, are playing their good
part in the universal history, without the consciousness
in full of the meaning of it all, we read the signs of
the past and of to-day. “We know what we are, but we
know not what we may be,” in all the detail that our
children’s children will see and live. Yet we know that
the race has a future that will transcend its past, as
that past transcended the dark dumb lives of the ancestry
whence our kind has sprung.
The Gospel of Evolution is replacing that of Chris
tianity. Science is taking the place of Religion and yielding
to mankind the poetry that its forerunner missed. Nature
is our all in all. Only the whisper of a secret thought
here and there of hers has yet reached our ears. But
�48
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
every sound of her voice, faint or thunderous, tells us that
the supernatural is worse than doomed. It does not exist.
The preachers of this new gospel are nature herself and
all her children. Thus the history of man, all science, all
human lives, we that live and love, are the apostles of the
new evangel. And its temples, marred as they are in some
instances by the worship now and again of the dead god,
are the halls of universities, the state-schools, the science
classes for our young men and maidens, the laboratories
and the studies of the philosophers, the hearts of all that
seek for truth.
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, at 63, Fleet
Street, London, E.C.—1884.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The gospel of evolution
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Aveling, Edward B. [1849-1898]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: [35]-48 p. ; 18 cm.
Series title: Atheistic Platform
Series number: 3
Notes: Through-pagination with other pamphlets in Atheistic Platform series. List of other titles in the series inside front cover. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 63 Fleet Street, E.C. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1884
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N1510
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Evolution
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The gospel of evolution), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Evolution (Biology)
NSS
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THE ABSENCE OF
DESIGN IN NATURE.
fttintt
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF CHICAGO.
BY
PROF. H. D. GARRISON
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT
PUBLISHING
63, FLEET STREET, EC.
1884.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
COMPANY,
�iT is claimed by theologians that the order of Nature when
rightly interpreted proves the existence of a great contriver
or designer ; and, it is further maintained, by many that the
chief lf not the sole object in view by that great designer h
and always has been, the welfare of the human race/
exis.te?ce of »Deity, endowed with the attri
butes of infinite wisdom and power, it follows as a logical
necessity, that whatever he designs and executes muft be
faultless in plan and perfect in workmanship. In other
words, a perfect God can make no mistakes. If we find
what we believe to be mistakes in nature, we may explain
their existence m one only of two ways. First, we mav
assume that we ourselves are mistaken ; or, if this is not
possible then we must conclude that the imperfections
observed are not the product of divine wisdom and work
manship.
The first explanation, which simply assumes that in all
such cases we ourselves are in error, has proven so con
venient to theologians and so anodyne to the human intellect
tihat it is usually adopted, without question or remonstrance
We assume that what appears to be useless and purposeless
m nature will present a different aspect when we come to
more fuiiy understand the matter; and if, after prolonged
and thorough investigation, the difficulty still persists, we
hush the voice of reason by still assuming that we have not
yet gone deeply enough into the matter. We are invited
into the field of nature to observe the evidences of design
which are to prove the existence of a Great Designer but
at the very threshold of our inquiry are warned that we
must only heed evidence in favor of the proposition in
question. When difficulties appear and doubts arise we
are admonished that in times past it has often happened
�Absence of design m nature.
3
that what men have thought useless or even injurious has
been found, on further inquiry, to be useful or even
essential, and that,, therefore, a like solution of every pro
blem is certain to result from adequate investigation. We
appeal to reason to prove a proposition, and then delibe
rately reject all the adverse evidence, assuming that it must
be imperfect, misleading, and false, or it would not be
adverse. It is as if the State, which assumes all prisoners
before trial to be innocent, should refuse to receive or credit
the evidence of the prosecution, because it has often hap
pened in times past that men, esteemed guilty beyond
doubt, by the bench, the bar, and the people, have been
shown by the developments of time to be absolutely
innocent.
The alternative of this mode of disposing of the subject
on ex parte evidence is, if imperfections and purposeless
parts are found in nature, to deny that nature furnishes any
proof of design. The existence of such harmony and
adaptation of means to ends as we perceive about us, can
not be accepted as proofs of design, while there remains
even one imperfect or purposeless structure in nature ; for
we cannot conceive that a perfect God made a single
mistake, or left any work in an imperfect or unfinished
condition. Nor can we conceive that God designed some
parts of nature and neglected other parts. All is, therefore,
the product of divine plan and workmanship, or none is.
There is, however, a third method of solving this pro
blem, which, at first glance, is apparently very profound,
but which, on investigation, proves to be a transparent
sophistry. Thus, it is said that behind all matter and force
there may exist an agency or being, who created the universe,
with all its materials and forces, and who, having created
matter and the laws to which it is subject, is content to
allow nature to proceed in obedience to the original divine
plan. This is simply foreordination and predestination ap
plied to the universe. But it will be noticed that in stating
this pioposition, we are obliged to refer to an agency or
“force behind all force," which involves a contradiction of
terms. In other words, we must assume that, somewhere
behind all matter and force, there is yet another force
which is an absurd proposition.
’
Paley and others have written many volumes with a
view of proving the existence of this hypothetical being
�4
Absence of design in nature.
behind nature, using arguments which, in the main, are
analogous to the celebrated watch argument, which may be
thus briefly stated : A traveller finds a watch, and, on ex
amination of its mechanism, notes abundant evidence of
design, which induces him to believe that the watch did not
c >me by chance, but had a designer and maker. Next, the
anatomist and physiologist examine the body of the watch
maker, and, on careful inspection, find it to be more won
derful in many respects than the watch, wherefore they
conclude that it must have been designed and manufactured
by an artificer possessed of superhuman knowledge and
power. The theologian now takes up the clue and finds that
this Great Designer lives somewhere in the sky, or behind
nature ; and, although he does not frankly say as much,
evidently concludes that this mighty being is so very won
derful that he did not require either a designer or maker at
all ! For the sake of argument, however, we may neglect
the absurdity involved in the doctrine of design, that God
himself must have been designed by a greater God, and he
by another, and so on, ad infinitum, and address ourselves
at once to the facts of nature.
That there is a remarkable adaptation of living beings to
their environment, is apparent to all, and has in all ages
and among all peoples, originated and maintained the the
ory of an intelligent, designing Deity. Can this wonderful
adaptation of living beings to their environment be other
wise explained ? The doctrine of evolution—natural selec
tion—the survival of the fittest, explains all in a most
satisfactory manner. Evolution is, therefore, the designing
hand. True, steps in the development of beings of every
kind are not yet, and, perhaps never will be, made out with
certainty. It may never be known, for example, what com
bination of circumstances drove the whale—originally a land
animal—into the sea ; but conditions having that tendency
are readily conceivable. Those who refuse to accept the
doctrine of evolution, because all the steps and stages in
the evolution of animals and plants have not been observed,
and cannot be reproduced experimentally, occupy the
illogical position of rejecting the evidence of an army of
witnesses simply because of the absence of one or a few,
the testimony of whom they hope, almost against hope,
would be contradictory to those at hand. For the same
reason we might refuse to accept all the sciences, and indeed
�Absence of design in nature.
5
all knowledge, not excepting theology, which, indeed,
would be the first to fail by this test.
Since all the adaptation observed in nature is fully
and rationally accounted for by the theory of evolution—
indeed, we might say, is required by that theory—it is
plainly a violation of the fundamental laws of human reason
to attempt to explain these relations by invoking miracu
lous agency—a cause unknown to science, and of the exist
ence of which no proof can be given in this age.
Pushing aside for the time, however, all of these grave
objections, which in themselves are fatal to the doctrine of
design, let us see if the facts so much relied upon by Paley,
Lord Brougham, and others warrant, in any degree, the
inferences drawn from them. As before remarked, any
creature or organ designed and made by an omniscient and
omnipotent creator should be absolutely perfect in every
respect. What creature is perfectly adapted to its environ
ment, or what organ performs its functions perfectly ? The
eye, on which teleologists place so much stress, is very far
from perfection. The number of persons seen with eye
glasses and other devices to aid ordinary vision, shows that
this organ is, to say the least, very easily disordered in many
different ways. Optically the eye is not perfectly planned
to guard against spherical or chromatic aberration, while, in
mechanical construction, it is inferior to the cheapest optical
instrument in the market. Astigmatism, or want of sphe
ricity of the cornea, is present in a greater or less degree in
the case of every human eye, while the crystalline lens
seems to be even more imperfect than the cornea in this
respect. Moreover, these refracting media, the cornea and
crystalline lens, are not truly centered, as Helmholtz has
shown, on the optical axis of the eye. The refracting
media of the eye, as the aqueous humor, the crystalline
lens, and vitreous humor, are not uniformly transparent,
and hence, rays of light during transmission, undergo absorp
tion and refraction, giving rise to various shadows, halos,
and fringes, which fall upon the retina to the great impair
ment of vision. Even in the best of eyes there are numerous
opaque granules, or floating patches, in the humors, giving
rise to moving spots or spectres, so well observed and yet so
annoying while using the microscope, especially if the field
is well illuminated. Long-sightedness and short-sightedness
are common difficulties arising from want of proper relation
�b
Absence of design in nature.
between the refracting power of the eye and its depth, or the
antero-posterior diameter. All of these difficulties are prac
tically overcome or avoided in even the cheapest photogi aphic cameias in the market, and yet no one has ever
claimed that the camera had a miraculous origin, or that the
wonderful design manifest in its mechanism proves its de
signer to have been a god. In the inner corner of every
human eye is.seen a little mass of flesh containing a little
plate of cartilage. It is the vestige of the membrana
nictitans or third eye-lid of birds and reptiles, and is not of
the slightest use to man. Why is it there ? Its existence,
which is inexplicable on the theory of design, is not only
consistent with the theory of evolution, but is one among
the thousands of unanswerable arguments in favor of that
theory.
The ear is, in many respects, as imperfect as the eye.
There are, in the structure of the external ear, and attached
to it, ten muscles—all in a rudimentary condition, and all
absolutely useless. Indeed, all of the ear visible to the eye,
except a small shell-shaped depression immediately around
the opening, and not so large as an ordinary teaspoon, is
completely useless, and, in consequence of its liability to
freeze, is to some extent injurious. For what purpose, then,
was this mass of useless material formed ? Does its beauty
or its utility as an additional member on which jewellery
can be worn justify its existence ? The internal construction
of the ear is quite as faulty as that of the eye ; but for the
present we must content ourselves with only the observations
that we cannot hear either very high or very low tones, and
that we judge but very imperfectly of either the direction
or distance of sounds.
Turning our attention now to other structures, we find,
for example, on looking into the mouth of a child, a set of
teeth beginning to appear soon after birth, and which con
tinue to cut their way through swollen and tender gums
from time to time, during two or three years. Hardly is the
last one of these milk-teeth visible, before the whole set
begins to vanish, before the incoming, so-called “ permanent
set.” If the child is able to survive the tooth-aches and
teething-syrups and diseases of a dangerous character inci
dent to this period, and largely caused by the cutting and
shedding of one set of teeth and the appearance of another
set, it may hope, by the time it is able to vote, to have
�Absence of design in nature.
7
cut the last wisdom tooth. But, as a rule, long before
this time the service of the dentist is needed on the
new crop of teeth. As a matter of fact, the den
tist furnishes us the only strictly reliable and permanent
teeth we ever have. No one can doubt that the process of
teething, and the teeth produced, are far from bearing the
impress of perfection. Indeed, few animals having any teeth
at all are not better off in this respect than the human
race.
Looking a little further down the throat, we observe a
pair of tonsils, of no earthly use except as filling for a small
amount of space which certainly might have been filled
with some tissue not so liable to become inflamed and
swollen, as in tonsilitis or quinsy. In surveying this region
of the body, we notice that the opening into the trachea, or
windpipe, lies just below the opening into the oesophagus or
gullet, so that every breath of air through the nostrils must
cross the path of food to the stomach, and, what is worse,
every grain of food and every drop of liquid, on its way to
the stomach, must pass over the opening into the trachea,
thus endangering the life of man every time a mouthful of
food is- swallowed. That the danger is real, and not simply
imaginary, is abundantly proven by the large number of
deaths due to choking caused by the impaction of pieces of
food, often relatively small, in the glottis during meals.
Even when death does not result, the evil of the arrange
ment is apparent in the spasmodic coughing caused by the
entrance of small crumbs or drops of liquid during meals.
The arrangement of the various digestive fluids in the
alimentary canal is far from being the best one possible. In
the mouth, food meets saliva, an alkaline liquid having a
tendency to convert starch into sugar, but this process is
hardly begun before the food reaches the stomach, where it
meets an acid liquid—the gastric juice—which effectually
destroys the alkalinity of the saliva which had been swal
lowed, and thus at once and for ever prevents its action.
Even the ptyaline, the ferment principle of the saliva, is
destroyed by the action of the gastric juice. After leaving
the stomach food encounters two alkaline liquids—the bile
and pancreatic juice, the latter secretion being simply
saliva again. Here, digestion begun but not completed in
the stomach, is arrested, and the kind which began in the
mouth is again set up ! Such an arrangement is not justified
�8
Absence of design in nature.
by any principles of chemistry or of economy with which
we are acquainted.
These, and hundreds of similar defects, are wholly unac
countable by, and incompatible with any theory of Theistic
design, but they are in perfect harmony with the theory of
Evolution, which assumes that man has attained his present
degree of perfection by the gradual modification and im
provement of inferior organisms. His organisation has been
built up on the piece-upon-piece and patch-upon-patch plan,
and hence is far more complex, in many respects, than it
might have been had it been directly planned by an all-wise
architect, or even by a good physiologist.
Design implies purpose, as much as it does the existence
of a designer. With this principle in view, let us glance at
one or two sample facts in nature. For what purpose was
such an animal as the tiger designed ? This animal has
been endowed with great strength, sharp teeth and claws,
acuteness of sight and hearing, a favorable color, and
remarkable cunning—all for what purpose ? The only
possible answer is, “ to enable him to capture and kill other
animals as food.” But we find that the tiger’s food has not
been neglected. The antelope exhibits as much evidence
of design as the tiger, but the purpose is evidently dif
ferent. His acuteness of sight and hearing, and especially
his fleetness, are designed to enable him to run away from
the tiger ! Here, then, is design working against design,
and we are assured that “a house divided against itself
cannot stand.” If the antelope was designed as food for
the tiger, why was he given such desire and capacity to run
away and neglect his duty to the latter ? Less design
bestowed upon the antelope would have necessitated less
elaboration of the tiger ! It is worthy of note, however,
that of all animals on which tigers love to dine, man was
most easily captured and slain, until his own ingenuity gave
him weapons for defence. Does this fact indicate that man
was specially designed as food for tigers and lions ? But,
seriously, why should one animal have been designed to eat
up another ? What possible profit or pleasure can the
Deity derive from this world-wide and incessant slaughter ?
Every second of time records the dying agonies of thousands
of animals to whom life was, apparently, as sweet as it is to
us. Indeed, this universal butchery and murder seen on
every hand throughout the animal kingdom is one of the
�Absence of design in nature.
9
chief hindrances to the refinement of men. It is impossible
to learn mercy from nature, and yet, without mercy, man is
a brutal savage,
„
. x
„
We are aware of the fact that, but for the existence ot
carnivorous animals, there would have been, far less variety
in the animal kingdom ; but it is also evident that, with
less variety, there might have been even a greater number
of individuals in existence. If it is said that, but for car
nivorous animals—including man for this argument her
bivorous animals would soon possess the earth and crowd out
the human race, we answer, that a little design, causing
them to multiply less rapidly, would have obviated that
danger. If man was the chief object of the solicitude of the
Great Designer, those troublesome animals might have been
omitted altogether.
W© have heard the explanation that God made all the
animals, as well as everything else, “for his own glory,”
which implies that he is exceedingly fond of blood and car
nage, and further, that, before he created them, he was not
quite as glorious as he wished to be.
The old race of theologians—unfortunately not yet quite
extinct—claimed boldly that everythingin existence was
made for the use and benefit of man, directly or indirectly.
When Galileo announced the discovery of the moons of
Jupiter, the clergy asked him if they were visible to the
unaided eye ? On his replying that they were not, he was
told that, since everything was made for the use of man, and
since these alleged moons were not visible, and, therefore,
were of no use to him, it followed, as a logical consequence,
that they did not exist at all!
With the view of testing this theory, let us cull a few
sample facts bearing upon this question from.nature. There
are at a least half a million species of plants in existence, of
which man uses, directly or indirectly, about one in every
three hundred. Are the remaining two hundred and
ninety-nine simply passive and neutral ? By no means.
They drain the earth and air of the nutriment which would
otherwise go to the support of the useful plants. There can
be no neutrality in this matter. “ He that is not for us is
against us.” What shall we do with such facts as these ?
Shall we admit their logic and say that the Great Designer
fails three hundred times as often as he succeeds ? But the
whole truth is not yet told. Even in those cases in which
�Absence of design in nature.
plants evince the most evidence of design, the degree of
success attained is only partial. As articles of food, such
ruits as crab-apples, wild cherries, May-apples, paw-paws
persimmons, etc., are very defective, both in We aid
nutritive constituents ; while, as remedies, the entire vegetable-kmgdom fails to present a single perfect specimen. gIf
w?flCiina ip an S
b/en desiSned by the Great Designer,
1 mduSlgn? th? dlseases they were intended to cure,
end h°WHhiaVe rOr?d then?.to be Perfectly adapted to that
would
PerfecVemedl6S’ the Practice of medicine
Xwon gTTSJnCe ?ave beuV very simPle and certain
P.
• Having diagnosed the case, the doctor might disiss it, leaving the labor of looking up the right remedy in
friendsal°gUe
ltS administration to tbe patient or to his
nJSd 6Ven in,.the case of those plants found to be most
useful as remedies, there is no relation between their place
of growth and the use which is made of them. Thus the
cinchona tree, the most serviceable of all medicinal plants,
f°^nd m 10Y’ marshy’ malarious regions, where, as a
emedy, it is most needed. On the contrary, it is found
perched upon the top of a small area of the Andes mountains,
a locality for a long time unknown, and now almost in
accessible to human beings. If we are told that the Creator
put the cinchona in the best place for the welfare of the
plant, we reply that man has since found a score of other
locabties in which it flourishes as well, and in some cases,
better, than in its original home ; and, secondly, that a little
touch of Infinite design might have made it grow about
Peru, Illinois, as well as in Peru, South America. But who
designed the palmella or ague-plant, but for which cinchona
would have been far less necessary? Here we see an
organism, and there are hundreds of similar instances ex
quisitely designed to cause disease, and, on the other hand
we find a remedy imperfectly designed to cure it. Here is
another case of design warring against design. Nature
teems with similar instances. Evidently, less design
bestowed on actinomyces, palmellae, trichina spiralis, the
itch animalcule, tape-worms, etc., would have obviated the
necessity of designing an elaborate materia medica.
Pmmg our attention for a moment to the animal kingdom
we find that we use a score or two of animals largely and in
various ways, and that we use the skins or other parts, and
�Absence oj design in nature.
11
sometimes the fleshy of a few hundred more ; but naturalists
believe there are fully a million species of animals, great
and small, in existence. Therefore more than ninety-nine
per cent, of the species of animals in existence are not only
of no service to man, but are absolutely injurious. Here, as
in the case of plants, neutrality is an impossibility.
Hundreds of carnivorous animals infest our forests and
streams, while over three thousand kinds of snakes hiss and
snap at us as we trudge along the path of life, including the
copperheads and fifteen kinds of rattlesnakes, specially de
signed for and donated to us Americans. Oh, for a full
appreciation of the length and breadth and depth of the
beneficence manifested in the design of a rattlesnake ! To
make our earthly habitation a more perfect elysium, it has
pleased the Great Designer to make the air almost hazy with
hornets, wasps, flies, fleas and mosquitoes, giving us Ameri
cans several new kinds, as if the hornets which stung the
Moabites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and the Hittites were
not good enough or bad enough for us.
The truth is, just as it should be, according to the doctrine
of evolution, that man is simply a member of the animal
kingdom, and that, like all other subjects of that great realm,
he must struggle for his life from birth to death. He must
contend with climate, disease, and enemies of all kinds. In
this unceasing battle, he avails himself of every help and
means within his reach. He uses such animals and plants
as he caii for food and clothing and as servants, and fights,
with all his power, against the remainder. His ingenuity
enables him to turn so many things to good account, in this
contest, that his egoism prompts him to the belief that all
things were made for him. But, as a matter of fact, every
other living organism struggles for continued existence in
substantially the same manner, and might with as much
propriety set up the same claims.
There are those in every community who affect to believe
that everything that occurs is specially designed and directed
by an overruling Providence, and hence, on almost every
coin we see the motto, “ In God we trust,” and almost every
obituary notice begins, “ Whereas, it has pleased an over
ruling Providence to remove Mr. Blank,” etc., and yet, as
everyone knows, the pious and orthodox are not more exempt
from accidents, disease and death than are heretics. If an
overruling Providence is managing these matters he ought
�12
Absence of design in nature.
to, and certainly would, make some plain distinctions in the
distribution of his gifts and punishments. There are,
throughout the country, probably ten saloons and other in
famous houses for every church, and yet it is no exaggeration
to state that lightning strikes ten times as many churches as
it does saloons. Of course, the steeples and spires of churches
are very tempting to electricity, but lightning, directed by
Omnipotence, should be able to strike a basement saloon as
readily as a church-steeple. Not long since, we read of a
minister who was struck by lightning and instantly killed
while praying during the regular Sunday services, also of a
pious man who was struck and killed while reading his
bible. What shall we do with these and millions of similar
facts ? No one can harmonize them with the theory of
design and an overruling Providence, except by assuming
that, in some mysterious way, unknown to men, they are
beneficial to our race. But the propriety and reasonableness
of such an assumption are the very questions in dispute.
Recognising the fact that the good are as frequently stricken
with the “ visitations of Divine Providence ” as the bad,
theologians have evolved two explanations by which to pacify
their flocks. The first is that all of these calamities—and,
indeed, all the evil in the world—are the works of the Devil.
But who is the Devil, on whom the onus of blame is thus
shifted ? Did he, like God, create himself, or is he the
creature, the agent, the employee of God ? In the affairs of
this world, we hold the proprietor responsible for the acts of
the employee. Indeed, God himself, if correctly reported,
gave us the correct principle of action governing this matter,
when he said : “ But if the ox (which had gored some one)
were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath
been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but
that he hath killed a man or woman ; the ox shall be stoned,
and his owner also shall be put to death.” Why has not
this terribly vicious ox, the Devil, been “kept in” or
“ stoned ” to death long ago ?
The other explanation is by means of the argument of
ignorance, which is usually sanctified and sugar-coated by
the quotation, “ Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” im
plying that the evil or calamity is, after all, but a blessing
in disguise. The argument in full may be thus summa
rised : Many things and events are plainly beneficial;
others, apparently pernicious, finally prove to be advan-
�Absence of design in nature.
13
tageous j therefore, all things and events are blessings,
either openly or in disguise. If, however, we invert this
argument it will look as well, logically, and prove as much.
“ Many things and events are undoubtedly injurious ;
Other things and events which at first seem to be advanta
geous, finally prove to be inimical; therefore, all things and
occurrences are either openly or covertly hostile to mankind,
tod, therefore, essentially bad.” The argument is as cogen
in one form as in the other, and is but sophistry at best.
If God really wishes to prove to us his existence, can
he not devise some proof not susceptible of any other in
terpretation ? Can he not write ? He is credited with paint
ing all the exquisite colors and hues in nature. If so, cannot
he write a single sentence somewhere, and in some manner,
which could not be counterfeited or explained away by men ?
If he controls the winds and clouds why does he not some
times arrange the latter into significant forms, or paint on
them some words giving us some reliable information ? We
do not ask for much. Let him simply say, “ The bible is
inspired,” or, “ Obey the pope,” or, “ Follow Talmage,”
or “Believe in Joseph Cook.” Any little hint will suffice
to eradicate infidelity from the world, when we are certain
that its origin is divine. The matter in the tail of a comet
might easily be arranged into a few words which all men
could see. No matter in what language the information
came, its translation would offer no difficulties. The surface
of the moon might have been variegated with a few texts
instead of with volcanic craters. We are aware that God is
reported to have written two editions of the decalogue on
stone tablets, but unfortunately for the credibility of the
account, Moses had to wait, in each case, forty days for the
completion of the work ; and now there are those so depraved
as to suggest that in that length of time Moses might have
done the work himself.
If God is really so solicitous in regard to the welfare
of men, why does he not, at least sometimes, speak ? He
is said to have been very familiar and communicative two
or three thousand years ago. Can he not talk now ? The
clergy will of course call these queries blasphemous, as
they do everything which cannot be otherwise disposed of,
but they are candid, and are the serious thoughts of every
one who permits himself to think upon this subject. A
little four-year-old girl, belonging to an acquaintance in
�14
Absence of design in nature.
Ohio, was, some time since, heard to soliliquize thus, when
saying her evening prayer : “ Now, God, I have talked to
you often enough. If you hear me why don’t you talk
back ? ” Sure enough ! Why don’t God talk, or act in re
sponse to prayer ? It is the disgrace of wood and stone idols
that, however much they are appealed to, to speak or act
they maintain a stolid indifference ; but, in truth, does our
God behave differently ? Hundreds of millions of prayers
in the case of President Garfield, failed to evoke the slightest
sign of even the existence of a God. Had these prayers
been addressed to Bael, or Joss, the result could not have
been more disastrous. Billions of billions of prayers for the
conversion of the wicked and the heathen have been pre
sented, and yet—although this is evidently the proper thing
to do—the work is scarcely farther advanced than it was a
thousand years ago. Indeed, no one in this age, not even
the preacher, expects a prayer to be answered.
Those who have abandoned all the usual arguments in
favor of a Supreme being, based on the evidence of design,
as intrinsically bad, but who still wish to fortify their belief
in the existence of such a Being, often assert that the mere
order of harmony observable in nature, offers them sufficient
evidence. It is plain, however, that if nature exists at all,
some kind of order must exist, and that, whatever may be
the course of events, some sort of harmony is a necessary
consequence. If matter exists, it must assume some shape
and occupy some position. If, however, the matter of the
universe could be shown to be in the best possible forms,
an argument for a supreme intelligence might rest on that
basis, but he would possess a dull imagination indeed, who
could not suggest numerous improvements in this respect,
both in the form and qualities of matter, as we find it on
our planet. The climate, for example, might have been
made more genial and uniform, and the soil in many
districts richer. Fewer mountains and deserts would have
sufficed, and with less water better distributed, our world
would have been better arranged. Indeed, a small amount
of matter might have taken the form of homes, food, and
clothing, vvith evident advantage to mankind. The labor
of the human race is chiefly expended in re-arranging
nature. The convenience of photographers, for example,
would have been greatly enhanced if light had been en
dowed with such properties that it would not affect a sensitive
�Absence of design in nature.
15
plate before its passage through a lens. If we are told that
such a modification of light would unfit it for use as a
chemical agency in many other respects, we can only reply
that, while we cannot so load a gun as that it shall hit a
bear but miss a calf, this is just what is to be expected from
one with whom “ all things are possible.”
I freely admit that the arrangement of matter and its
qualities might have been much worse, but if they had been
we should not have existed at all. In the case of our moon
a worse arrangement is actually seen, and, as a consequence,
life is believed to be absent from that body. Water might
have been made to freeze at forty degrees above, or forty
degrees below zero, with some advantages in both cases.
Alcohol might have been made with a repulsive taste, or
without its intoxicating properties, with evident advantage
to mankind. Thus, we might proceed to point out changes
and possible improvements in the form and properties of
matter ad infinitum. Since it is possible, therefore, to sug
gest improvements in the properties and state of aggregation
in which we find matter, perfection in the order of nature
cannot be claimed, unless it is assumed that in some way or
other, not always manifest, everything must be for the best
as we find it, which is simply the old argument of igno
rance.
But if perfection in the order of nature is not made a part
of the argument, then the simple proposition remains, that
the existence of matter in any state of aggregation, and with
any kind of properties, is sufficient to prove the existence of
an intelligent designing Creator, who himself came into
existence without any assistance or cause whatever, and then
proceeded to create everything out of nothing ! In the apt
phraseology sometimes employed by gentlemen of the bar,
those who use this argument go into and come out of the
same hole.
So far as the doctrine of design implies the process of
reasoning on the part of God it is plainly absurd, because the
divine mind can neither reason, nor learn, nor forget.
Reasoning is that process by which finite minds glide by
easy or difficult steps from the known to the unknown ; but,
since all possible knowledge is supposed to be ever present
in the Infinite mind, this process is both unnecessary and
impossible. Therefore, while an unreasoning God may ap
pear to be a kind of theological monstrosity, it is clear that
�16
Absence of design in nature.
a God who reasons is no God at all, but worse still is a God
who reasons badly.
Finally, we may be asked if we deny the existence of
God ? Our reply is, “ By no means.” To do so, would imply
that we have positive knowledge on this point. We neither
affirm nor deny the existence of a Supreme Being, because
we have no definite and conclusive information on that
subject. We simply maintain that the evidence which has
thus far been relied upon to prove the existence of such a
Being, is insufficient and fallacious. If new evidence can
be advanced, or if the old can be made more cogent, we
shall be among the first to give the matter a full and fair
reconsideration.
London: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh,
63, Fleet Street, E.O.
�
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The absence of design in nature : a lecture delivered before the Philosophical Society of Chicago
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR
NATURAL REASON
DIVINE REVELATION:
AN
APPEAL FOR FREETHOUGHT.
By JULIAN.
EDITED BY ROBERT LEWINS, M.D.
“ Yet let us ponder boldly—’tis a base
Abandonment of reason to resign
Our Right qoThought—our last and only place
Of refuge ;^this, at least, shall still be mine ;
Though from our birth the faculty divine
Is chained and tortured—cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.”
*
Byron.
"Philosophy, Wisdom, and Liberty support each other; he who will
not reason is a bigot ; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a
slave. ”—Academical Questions.
“ Post mortem nihil est, ipsa que mors nihil.”
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�Hl-?
M4-20
PREFACE.
K
The following tract embodies an argument for the reason
ableness and all-sufficiency of Naturism, and the nullity of
Supernaturalism, as recorded by pretended divine revela
tion, in the constitution of the organic and inorganic world.
It has been written at my request, and on data of my
suggestion, by the same profound scholar and divine with
whom I was associated some years ago, in “ Replies to the
•Lectures of the Christian Evidence Society,” which lectures
obtained a wide circulation under the title “ Modern
Scepticism,” and in a-series of pamphlets “Biology versus
Theology,” in which we laboured to controvert the dominant
theology of Christendom, nowhere so fatuously rampant,
in our day, as in this country.
The theses on which is based, on this occasion, the
refutation of all spiritual superstition are twofold—ist, the
identity of thought and cerebration, or function of the brain,
•and 2nd, the identity of all vital or physiological function
—including, of course, sensation and thought, with the
-ordinary cosmical operations of the entire external universe
•—a unity attributable to the identity of the physical force
active in sentient life and inorganic motion. These theses
have been adequately elaborated in two papers I published
in 1869 and 1873, entitled “ The Identity of the Vital and
Cosmical Principle,” and “ Life and Mind on the Basis
•of Materialism,” in which I endeavoured to place on exact
�4
PREFACE.
scientific data the sublime fact that sensation and thought
have, for their production, no special spiritual factor, but
depend entirely on the same physical agency we find operative
throughout the cosmos in light, heat, and motion. I need
not, therefore, at present refer further to the subject.
Nothing can possibly be simpler or more intelligible, even
to the least-instructed mind, than the rationale of the
following pages, resolving, as it does, all objective pheno
mena, all “ the choir of heaven and furniture of earth—in a
word, all those appearances which compose the mighty
frame of the world”—to quote Bishop Berkeley in his
“Principles of Human Knowledge,” into mere subjective
or personal perception. We thus can regard everything
outside ourselves as parts, of a mighty phantom, the
actuality of which may or may not be real, and get rid of ex
perimental physics and all specialism, striking out a short and
direct path—the path of common sense and healthy feeling,
from which all self or world analysis, the habitual and
persistent attitude of scientific research, widely diverges—to
the one essential science—viz., self-knowledge, on which
alone can be based the true theory and rational, practical
conduct of human existence. In this manner we reconcile
the apparent antitheses between object and subject, the ego
and non-ego, between the microcosm of the living body
and the universe of phenomena lying beyond, or outside
that mirror and re-duplication in parvo of the macrocosm.
To repeat, in other words, the above statement, it seems
surely a self-evident proposition, as formulated more or less
clearly by early Greek philosophers, and emphatically by
Protagoras, that “ man can think nothing except himself,
and which self and its anthropomorphism must be therefore
to humanity, the sole measure and standard of all existing
and non-existing or imaginary things.” This standpoint
makes thus everything virtually ideal or anthropological,
�PREFACE.
5
nothing being tangible, perceptible, cognisable by the five
senses or by thought, except ordinary exoteric sensations or
perceptions, and those more complex, occult, esoteric ones
which we term ideas or ideation, the latter clearly recog
nisable as the special or peculiar sensations or perceptions
of what is termed in modern physiology the hemispherical
ganglia of that very complex congeries of organs, within the
head, popularly comprehended’ as one viscus, under the
name cerebrum or brain.
As, therefore, we can be only sensible of our own percep
tions, exoteric and esoteric—the first the mere reflection of
the outer world, and the latter, or ideation, the specific
function of the brain (vulgarly speaking) itself, both of
which can be ultimately traced to the cellular grey substance
of the central nervous apparatus—it is perfectly manifest
that the source of all perception and ideation is located in
the material organism of the body, and that all divine
worship and religion is a mere form of mental and moral
confusion and transparent delusion, being necessarily solely
Self-idolatry—the prostration of one portion of our feelings
and faculties before another portion—-seeing that beyond
ourselves it is, in the nature of things, impossible for our
feelings and faculties to range. Were man a dual being,
compounded of matter and spirit, as stated in our Bible and
in other records of the supernatural genesis of our race, it
is perfectly patent that Pantheism must be the rational
solution of all vital and cosmical problems.
For on the
supposition that matter is supernaturally vivified, all things
must be an emanation or efflatus of the divine spirit or
breath—one and indivisible—a position entirely reversed, and
Materialism substituted for that ancient and sublime onto
logy, as soon as we become illuminated by the conviction
that all things and all nothings, alike abstract and concrete—
in one word, all consciousness of our own personality and
�6
PREFACE.
our surroundings, including transcendental idealism and theDivine Idea itself, can be traced to the direct natural
operation of a special portion of our anatomical structure—
a structure, the functions of which are amenable, just as.
much as those of all other corporeal organs, to ordinary
natural law.
From this vantage ground, therefore, natural reason is.
seen to be the supreme judge and arbiter of all conceivable
objects, relegating all Supernaturalism and Revelation into
the realm of the imaginary and irrational, thus realizing the:
truth of the Laureate’s verse :
“ I take possession of man’s mind and deed,
I care not what the sect may bawl;
I sit as God, holding no form of creed,
But neutralizing all.”
Robert Lewins.
London, March, 1879.
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
SECTION I.
.....
BELIEF AND INFIDELITY
9
SECTION II.
ALL RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
.
.
.
II
SECTION III.
EVERY RELIGIOUS SYSTEM CLAIMS TO BE DIVINE .
.
14
SECTION IV.
TRUTH DESIRABLE
..
.
.
•
. •
•
21
.
23
.
2$
SECTION-v.
WE BELIEVE MANY THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
SECTION VI.
WHAT MAN CAN AND WHAT HE CANNOT KNOW
.
SECTION VII.
MAN
A
MATERIAL
OBJECTS
BEING
SURROUNDED
BY
MATERIAL
......
30
SECTION VIII’.
SENSIBILITY A PROPERTY OF ORGANISED MATTER .
.
31
�8
CONTENTS.
PAGE'
SECTION IX.
BRAIN
AND
BRAINWORK
ALSO
DUE
TO
MATERIAL
ORGANISM
33-
SECTION X.
MAN
CAN
THINK
OF ETERNITY,
AND
THEREFORE
IS
ETERNAL—THIS STATEMENT CONFUTED
36-
SECTION XI.
MAN IN NOWISE DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS, EXCEPT
SO FAR AS THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE OF ONE ANIMAL
MAY DIFFER FROM ANOTHER .
38
SECTION XII.
IF MAN IS NOT A DUAL BEING, COMPOUNDED OF SOUL AND
BODY, THERE CAN HAVE BEEN NO REVELATION
40-
�NATURAL REASON DIVINE
REVELATION.
“ Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind who want for day,
Though sitting girt with doubtful light.”
Tennyson.
SECTION I.
BELIEF AND INFIDELITY.
Tees world is now, and ever has been, divided into two great
parties—-those who think for themselves, and those who credu
lously accept what they are told to believe. Reformers and
infidels are the thinkers ; the orthodox and laissez aIler party
are those who believe on the authority of others, and ask no
questions. The latter are too lazy, or too interested, or too
ignorant to wish for progress; the former is the salt of the
earth, and would go from bad to good, from good to better,'
and from better to best, regardless of all interests but those
of fact and truth. The orthodox never think for them
selves, they only “think” to understand what they are told
to believe. They are the mere exponents of a routine
system consecrated by custom, which they feel themselves,
bound to support. The infidel, on the other hand, takes,
nothing upon trust, nothing on the ipse- dixit of others, and
holds nothing to be sacred which his own conviction does,
not approve. The former deify tradition, the latter would
“ prove all things, and hold fast [only] that which is good.”
If any descrepancy between reason and dogma occurs tothe orthodox, he gives up reason, experience, nature, and
clings to dogma; but the infidel pays no reverence to any
thing which stultifies his reason, contradicts general experi
ence, and does violence to the laws of nature. The one
thinks it would be better to sink with the time-honoured
ship ; the other would save his life, and persuade others to
do so likewise.
St. Paul was an infidel in Judea, so was the “ man Christ
Jesus.” It was as much for their infidelity and exposure of
priestcraft as for sedition that Jesus and his disciples were
opposed by the orthodox hierarchy, scourged, imprisoned,.
�IO
NATURAL REASON versus
and in some cases put to death. The Mahometans call
all Christians giaours—that is, infidels—because unbelievers,
in Mahomet and the Koran. In a word, a believer is not
one who believes truth, but one who slavishly pins his faith
to a creed, whether true or false.
Take our own nation, for example. There was a time:
when the Druids were the great teachers, and if any private
or public individual disobeyed their decrees, or attempted,
to question their authority, he was excommunicated and ex
cluded from the right of sacrifice. The Romans came
next, displaced the oak-worshippers, put flamens and
augurs in their sees, and Polytheism became the orthodox
creed of the land. Again the scene shifted, and the Saxons,
lorded it over England. Neither Druidism nor the Roman
mythology suited the new-comers, so Odinism was set
up, and the down-trodden islanders were told to look
forward after death to a “ feast of skulls ”; and those who
doubted or disbelieved were threatened, not. with everlasting
fire, so terrible to the dwellers in the hot east, but with am
ever-living death in thick-ribbed ice. Truth is one, it
changes not, it is wholly regardless of what men like or
loathe, believe or disbelieve; but orthodoxy, like the
chameleon, is white or black, blue or green, according to>
circumstances. In one place it is Brahmanism, in another
Buddhism, in a third Polytheism, in a fourth MumboJumboism. In England it was once the worship of oaks,
then the worship of Jupiter, then of Odin, for falsehood
can have no stability. While still the Saxons were in.
power, a band of missionaries came from Rome with censer
and crucifix, chasuble and crosier, under whose teaching
the ignorant and unlettered islanders abandoned Teutonic,
for Roman Catholic orthodoxy ; so the trinity of Odin was.
changed for the trinity of Galilee, and the old orthodoxy
became the new heterodoxy. Kings were the nursing;
fathers and queens the nursing mothers of the new faith,,
till infidelity, in the form of “ Protestantism,” taught men tobe dissatisfied with the faith and legends of the prevailing
creed, and Anglicanism was established as “ the way, the
truth, and the life.” Since then education has been at
work, and now more than ever men are beginning to think
for themselves, and to ask their own judgments if the hour
for a new departure has not struck. The infidel is always,
the movement party, which, as St. Paul says, “ forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto.
�DIVINE REVELATION.
II
those things which are before, press towards the mark of
the [only] prize” worth attaining—that is, truth. They are
the thinking minority—always a small party, because the
multitude, as a multitude, is a mere capui mortuum—always.
Unpopular, because they pay no more heed to legends, tra
dition, and creeds than to sounding brass and tinkling,
cymbals.
SECTION II.
ALL RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
There is a wonderful family likeness in all the religious
systems of the past and present. The general programmeir a self-existing Eternal Being and three working deities—a.
period of darkness and water—a creation—a golden age—
a degeneracy—and a general flood. It matters little to
what part of the world we turn, whether India or China,,
Scandinavia or Greece, America, Africa, or European.
Christendom.
It might be • difficult to account for this similarity in a
satisfactory manner,* but it would be preposterous to
suppose that all these traditions are more or less mutilated
versions of the Mosaic original, inasmuch as many of the
nations could not have known even the name of the Jewish
lawgiver, and others would know as much about him as.
Aristotle did of Britain, or Virgil of Thule, where, Ptolemy
tells us, “the days are twenty-four hours long at the
[spring] equinoxes” [w?].
What is the Hindu story ? Like the Jewish, it presupposes,
a self-existing Eternal Unit, invisible, all-potent, soul of all
created life, from whom all spring, to whom all will return,
the Altogether-all before creation, the All-in-all during
creation, and the All-of-all at the consummation.
No doubt there is great vagueness in both the Hindu
and Jewish notions of Deity, nor is the Jewish perplexity at
all relieved by the Christian dogma. All speak of the One
Eternal, but all employ in the business of creation a divinetri'ad. Thus, in the first chapter of Genesis we areintroduced to Elohim, the Logos or Word, and the spirit
* To me no difficulty whatever exists, the substantial unity of thehuman mind exhibiting itself everywhere independently in similar
forms.—R. L.
�12
NATURAL REASON versus
that moved on the face of the deep; and that there may be
no doubt on the matter, St. John tells us the Word or
Logos, which was “at the beginning,” was the Creator of all
things, and the very Deity which was “ made flesh and
dwelt among us.” So the Hindus are taught to believe in
One Only Everlasting Potentate, and yet in the trimurti, or
three operative deities, called Brahma, Vishnu, and Sheva.
The incarnations or avatars of the second person of the
Hindu triad cannot fail to bring forcibly to mind the
avatar or incarnation of the second person of the Christian
Trinity.
Going back to the cosmogony, according to Indian
mythology, we read that before creation the Eternal called
into being the sacred triad, that Brahma was the father of
spirit, that “all things were made by him, and without him
was not anything made which is made.
In him was
light, and the light was the life of man.” So Manu speaks
of Brahma, and so St. John has spoken of Jesus. Having
created the elements, Brahma next called into being the
whole animal world, together with angels and demons, the
seas, the clouds, and the host of heaven. When all was
finished, the Eternal gave Brahma the sacred volume called
the Rig-Veda, of which the Shasta is a targum. The
volume was God’s revelation to man, and contains not only
a history of creation, a code of duties, and a series of
prophecies, but also sets forth what feasts and fasts, what
rites and ceremonies, the faithful are expected to observe.
The Guebres, or ancient Persians, presupposed a One
Eternal, but they also had their working triad, Oromasdes
the principle of good, Arimanes the principle of evil, and
Mithras, the principle of beauty. Zoroaster tells us that
Oromasdes, in the character of creator, took six unequal
periods to complete his work of creation : In the ist period
he made the heavens; in the 2nd, the water; in the 3rd, dry
land; in the 4th, grass, the herb yielding seed, and the trees
after their kind whose seed is in itself; in the 5th, the fish
of the waters, the birds of the air, and the cattle of the field ;
and in the 6th, man.
The Aztecs, or ancient Mexicans, have a legend wonder
fully like that told by Moses. They say that God created a
man and a woman out of the dust of the earth, but their
offspring became so wicked that a flood destroyed the
whole race except a priest named Tezpi, with his wife and
family, who were preserved in a huge ark. In this ark
�DIVINE REVELATION.
13
Tezpi saved a vast number of animals and much seed.
When he fancied the waters were subsiding, he sent forth a
bird, called Aura, but the bird never returned; he then sent
forth others, but one only, the smallest of them all, came
back to the ark, bearing an olive-twig in its beak.
The old Virginian tribes had a mythology equally striking.
According to this legend, there is a great eternal and- two
lesser deities. Water was the first created element, and
woman was taken out of man.
• The Chipionyans, another large tribe of American
Indians, assert that at one time water covered the face of
the whole earth, but a bird (the spirit of Jewish mythology),
brooding over the water, caused dry land to appear from the
great brilliancy of its eyes, after which the same bird made
all the different parts of creation one after the other. In
the process of time the race of man became so rebellious,
that a great flood swept every living thing away. The
Hurons have a legend that there was once a time when
there was only a single man on the earth, and feeling
very desolate, he went to heaven to look for a companion.
The Eternal gave him Atahentsik as a helpmeet, and in
time the woman had two sons, who killed each other.
It would be easy to multiply these legends, but we shall
add only one more, that of the ancient Romans. Of this we
have the fullest detail in Ovid’s “ Metamorphoses,” so that
he who runs may read it. The poet tells us there was once
a time when heaven, and earth, and sea were all mixed to
gether in a.chaotic mass; there was no sun at that time, no
moon, no dry land. The Creator wished, and immediately
the heavens were lifted from the earth ; and the waters being
gathered into their bed, dry land appeared. Again the
Creator wished, and the earth was rolled into a globe, the
atmosphere separated the clouds from the earth, and the
starry host shone forth in the vault of heaven. Again the
■ Eternal wished, and the air, the sea, and the dry land were
stocked with living organisms. Last of all, man was made,
“of a larger understanding but, says the poet, “ whether
from an immediate divine germ, or whether the earth, being
fresh from the hands of God, retained a certain divine
quality, we • know not; all we know is, that Japetus
fashioned man in the image of deity, and gave him
dominion over all the earth. For a long period the newcreated race enjoyed a golden age, an Eden of innocence
and delight; but a change came over the earth, and the
�14
NATURAL REASON versus
golden age lapsed into the silver, the silver into the brazen,
■and the brazen into the age of iron. From time to time
-deity pleaded with man, but wickedness at length grew
rampant, a flood swept over the whole earth, and a new
race arose from the one pair which was alone saved.”
We are so accustomed from early childhood to regard
the Bible as an inspired book, wholly sui generis and
■entirely unique, so unlike every other book, that we are
overwhelmed with amazement when the truth first dawns
upon us that the legends and traditions there on record are
■common to every quarter of the globe, and it needed no
more inspiration for Moses to bring them together than for
the Hindus, the Guebres, the Aztecs, the North American
savages, and the hundreds of other nations or tribes which
have from time immemorial repeated them in their legendary
lore.
SECTION III.
EVERY RELIGIOUS SYSTEM CLAIMS TO BE DIVINE.
The Jews assert that their Scriptures were given by direct
inspiration, but it is by no means certain what they meant
by their Scriptures before the Babylonish captivity, pro
bably the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses. It seems,
however, that no great reverence was paid to these Books,
or care taken of them, at least in the reigns of the latter
kings. It surely must strike every one as most strange that
the High Priest should not know where to find so precious
and sacred a volume, yet it is quite certain that the Book
was mislaid or lost when Josiah succeeded to the crown.
This young king began his reign with great activity and
zeal, which diffused itself into the priesthood, for Hilkiah,
•after diligent search or some lucky accident, stumbled on
the sacred volume, and said to Shaphan, the scribe, “ I
have found the Book, the Law. I found it in the Lord’s
house.” This intelligence was thought so surprising that
:Shaphan went forthwith to the King and told him, saying,
“Hilkiah, the priest, has found the Book of the Law.”
(2 Chr. xxxiv., 14-16). How marvellous does this sound!
Here was a Book said to be inspired, said to be sacred,
said to be guarded by the Jews as the most precious of
-relics, actually lost and found. Hilkiah, although the High
�DIVINE REVELATION.
15
Priest, did not even know of its existence. It was so
unexpectedly discovered that it was told to the King as a
matter of national congratulation. Moses is said to have
-commanded that it should be kept, with Aaron’s rod and a
pot of manna, in the ark of the covenant; and had this
injunction been obeyed, the High Priest would have known
in a moment where to look for it; but, like Aaron’s rod
and the pot of manna, so little care was taken of these
. relics that all three were lost. The rod and the manna
were never found, but Hilkiah did happen to discover the
lost volume of the law. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed
the Temple, and took the Jews into captivity, the Book of the
Law was destroyed; and during the seventy years’ captivity
there seem to have been no Scripture writings at all. Some
fifty or sixty years afterwards Ezra and Nehemiah, with
three or four others, set about hunting up all fragments,
traditions, and MSS. which could be found, and these
detached pieces were collated and edited on the judgment
Of the compilers; but these compilers never thought it
worth, their while to preserve the originals, so that no one
can compare the new editions with the old. It seems
almost incredible that men like Nehemiah and Ezra should
have taken the pains to hunt up the MSS., and yet should
have taken none to preserve them. One would think they
would have guarded them with the utmost jealousy, and
taken every possible precaution to transmit them to pos
terity ; but no, Ezra’s version was thought enough, and
the originals, like the Ossian of Macpherson, the Book of
Mormon, and Rowley’s Poems, “ edited ” by Chatterton,
no one ever saw. It is now a general belief among exegists
that they never existed of an older date, or in any other
form than that in which we now possess them. All this,
however, is very different from what we are taught to believe,
that the Jews, before the captivity, always preserved their
Scriptures with such sacred and jealous care that not a letter
or point could be changed without instant detection. The
very contrary seems to have been the fact; they paid so
little heed to them, if indeed they were in existence at all,
that they were sometimes wholly lost, and that till Ezra
edited the stray MSS., and pieced them together, no authentic
copy of the whole volume anywhere existed—certainly neither
Ezra nor Nehemiah knew of one.
All that has been
said of the Old Testament applies with equal force to the
New. Assuming that our present compilation which passes
�i6
NATURAL REASON versus
under that name is the original volume, it must not be for
gotten that this canon was not established till the year 494,
which would be the same as if ten or twelve gentlemen of
the present day sat in judgment on certain writings issued
in the reign of Edward III., by authors of whom nothing is
known, and whose very names in many cases are doubtful—
these works, be it remembered, not being works of taste,
but professed records of miracles and “ historic facts,” said
to have taken place some 500 years ago.
Let us take an actual example from the reign of Edward I.
It is recorded in full in Rymer’s “Fcedera,” Vol. I., Part II.,
p. 771, Edward I. laid claim to Scotland, and preferred his
claim before a regular synod of bishops, abbots, legates,
and barons. His chief plea was that God had confirmed his
title by special miracle ; and this he made good from a book
entitled “The Life and Miracles of St. John of Beverley.”
The tenour of this extract is as follows: In the reign of
Adelstan the Scots invaded England, and committed great
devastation. Adelstan went to drive them back, and on.
reaching the Tyne, found that the foe had retreated. At
midnight St. John of Beverley appeared to the King, and
bade him cross the river at daybreak, for he “ would surely
discomfit the foe.” Adelstan obeyed the heavenly mes
senger, and reduced the whole kingdom to submission.
On reaching Dunbar on his return march, Adelstan prayed
that some sign might be vouchsafed to him to satisfy all
future ages that God, “ by the intercession of St. John of
Beverley, had given to England the kingdom of Scotland.”
Then struck he with his sword the basaltic rocks near the
■coast, and lo ! the blade sank into the solid flint (to use the
exact words) “ as if it had been butter,” cleaving it asunder
for “ an ell or more.” And the cleft remains to the present
hour, in testimony of the miracle. The wise men of the
two nations were convinced by this legend, and as the
fissure was there they could not disbelieve their eyes, so
judgment was given in favour of King Edward, and Scot
land was declared a fief of England. This miracle was
said to have been performed some 500 years before. The
wisest King of England so firmly believed it that he urges
it as an undoubted fact; and the wisest men of two realms
allowed the claim to be incontrovertible. What is the
obvious inference ? What can it be but this ? The convoca
tion called in 494 was not wiser nor more serious than the
convocation assembled by Edward I. in 1291 > both assem-
�DIVINE REVELATION.
17
blies saw no difficulty in the miraculous stories on which
they had to arbitrate, quite the reverse. The miracles
were proof with them, strong as any natural fact, and both
decided that “ no men can do such works, except God be
with them.” If a king or queen tried the same plea now,
if France laid claim to England, or England to France, on
the authority of some miracle performed 500 years ago,
and testified by a Devil’s Dyke or rock of Calpe, the
pleaders of such “ old wives’ fables ” would be thought fit
inmates for Earlswood or Colney Hatch. That a conclave
of acute lawyers, most learned prelates, calm-judging barons,
and the elite of two nations decided the miracle at Dunbar
was an undoubted fact, would not weigh a straw in any
court of justice in the present century; and that a number
of scholars, wise, honest, and discreet, accepted the
miraculous records which they thought proper to endorse
as worthy of credit, can really have no more weight with
men of unprejudiced judgment. Both synods were honest
after their lights, both judged righteous judgment according
to their conviction ; but if the cases were tried again in our
own days, no man can doubt that the sentences would be
reversed,
Allowing, however, for the sake of argument, that the
canon was wisely selected in 494, we have very little evi
dence that the compilation now called the New Testament
was the one approved of. Dr. Davidson, in his “Introduction
to the New Testament,” tells us that the fourth Gospel, like
the First Epistle of John, is notoriously doubtful. Indeed,
so doubtful is it that though the Christian Evidence Society,
in 1871, selected the then most learned Churchman toplead
for it in their course of lectures delivered in St. George’s Hall,
neither the Society nor its author, the present Bishop of Dur
ham, Dr. Lightfoot, would venture to print the lecture. In the
Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, held at West
minster, February 10th, 1870, the Bishop of Winchester
moved for a revision of the New Testament, “for everybody
knew there were in the present version parts which did not
really belong to the canonical Scriptures.” The Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol seconded the proposal, and instanced
the truth of the remark by “ the early part of St. Matthew’s
Gospel, the Book of Revelation, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and some of the Pastoral Epistles.” He next pointed out
the doxologies of Matthew and Mark in proof of the trinity
as doubtful. The Bishop of St. David’s spoke next, and
�18
NATURAL REASON versus
said that some of the prophecies pressed into the Christiancause were certainly no prophecies at all, as, for example,
the desire of all nations” applied to Christ, the “ Lord our
Righteousness,” and so on. The Bishop of Llandaff followed
m the same strain, and said the Second Epistle of Peter was
confessedly spurious, and the Epistle of James was marked
as supposititious by Eusebius and Jerome.
,we have Parts
the Gospels of Matthew
and Mark, all the Gospel of John, the Book of Revelation,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the First Epistle of John, the
Second of Peter, and the Epistle of James, all pronounced
to be forgeries—-this, be it remembered, not by foes, but
friends—-not by infidels, but prelates—so late as the year1870. Must it not force itself upon the conviction of every
one that a compilation so confessedly dishonest is wholly
worthless as an authority ? Is it not palpable that the
Church which would knowingly palm off false documents,
as true might readily tamper with genuine and authentic
books if it served their purpose ? Must it not be evident
that these prelates and scholars, when they repeat that “ all
Scripture is given by -inspiration of God,” are saying
what m their hearts they know to be false, and are with
■
6^eS °Pen deluding the people ? Orthodoxy, indeed f'
Why the very prelates of the Church are infidels of their
own Scriptures 1
Having disposed of the inspired character of our own
Scriptures, it will be an easy task to show how other religious
institutions have laid claim to a similar divine origin. Re
ference has been made already to the Vedas of Brahmanism.
Probably the oldest book in the world, older even than the
Pentateuch supposing it to be coeval with the settlement
of the Hebrews in Palestine—is the Rig-veda, reduced into
writing by Vyasa, but existing in an oral or traditional
form from the foundation of the world,” if we may trust
the statement of the Brahmans. It is divided into two parts,,
the first being prayers and hymns to be used in sacrificial
o enngs, the second being of a more diffusive characters.
Three other Vedas are based on the Rig-veda, and the wholeresemble in character the Jewish Scriptures, inasmuch as
they contain psalms, prophecies, history, together with di
rections for religious rites and ceremonies. The last of the
Vedas has incantations also, charms, and exorcisms. They
-all claim a divine origin and immemorial antiquity.
Every one read in Roman history will remember that:
�DIVINE REVELATION.
19
Numa, when he wished to organise a religious system for
the new Roman State, used to retire to the sacred grove;
and as he promulgated a law, or instituted a religious rite,
he gave out publicly that he had received instruction from
the nymph Egeria, a prophetic divinity. He knew enough
of human weakness to feel assured that the name of Egeria
would outweigh in authority a whole multitude of mere
mortals like himself. The history of Romulus his. mira
culous origin from a vestal virgin and God, his translation to
heaven in a storm of thunder and lightning in presence of
the whole Roman people, and his subsequent appearance in
a glorified form as the god Quirinus—finds an exact parallel
in the case of Christ. Mahomet adopted a similar device.
He retired from the sight of man, and the people were
taught to believe that Gabriel, the archangel, had descended
in visible shape to make a revelation. Mahomet dictated
the revelation to a scribe, it was then read to the people,
and the MS. thrown into a box. For twenty-three years
revelation after revelation was brought from heaven, and
when any moot point was to be decided, the archangel went
to the “lowest heaven” to consult the original document,
which was “ written by the rays of the sun,” and kept in a
coffer studded with inestimable jewels. Occasionally, on a
great emergency, God himself or the Holy Ghost would
resolve a doubt ; but the main body of the Koran was
revealed from time to time by Gabriel, and taken from the
sacred book, “eternal as God himself.”
The book of the “ Latter-day Saints ” is no exception to
the general rule. Joseph Smith asserts it was revealed to
him by an angel, as the Koran was revealed to Mahomet by
Gabriel. Smith says on Sept. 21st, 1823, he was in secret
prayer, when the whole house seemed to be “ one vast
consuming fire ”while he gazed in consternation at the
fire, like that of the burning bush, there came out of the
midst thereof “a personage” with a face like lightning,
who announced himself an angel sent from God. “ Thy
prayers are heard,” said the heavenly apparition, “ and God
hath chosen thee to.be a vessel unto great honour, to carry
out his divine purposes, and bring in the millenium which is
at hand.” He then gave him a roll, containing a brief sketch
of the aborigines of America. Having so done, he told
Smith where certain sacred plates were deposited. It was
on the west side of a hill about four miles from Palmyra,
Ontario. Five years rolled on from this time before Smith
�20
NATURAL REASON versus
was allowed to have the plates in his own keeping although
he was permitted occasionally to look on them. InSeptembfr
1827 the angel told him he was then sufficiently holy to be’
tested with the sacred documents, and theTecord was
P aced in his hands. The plates were eight inches bv
ZXTnXTthii? “ Shee? ? tin; the "hole "madeI
pne six inches m thickness, and they were strung on three
nngs. running through the whole of them The wrHnn
th? ch^rac™redaEm?tIan’f”anCl “ SmithcouId notdeciphe?
“ Urim end L P
»of lnlerPretlng spectacles, ciled
“m ”utodJ»Ur?m,?’”,WaS g,''Cn him' The record thus
iraculously revealed contained a history of America
“"I 0:
Mmroon"”
d Ofh lt bbel’- rtl the command Pof pta
“ ”God
till the fi]lnec.eAlP;-42IlbhBtabuned hy“ bg
ill the fulness of time had come. Smith, by the aid of his
interpreting glasses, read the plates to Oliver Cowdery who
InTci Xted " Haa‘i0”’ a"d, “ 1830 the "^“tilted
7' HavinS no longer need of the original the
trelsufy of God7
and dePosited them in’ the
rboiu 7 ? • v ’ -Of course this marvellous tale was
allenged in these infidel days, when men will not always
Se ‘ 0Bo?kSrfMno m,rac“lous s,tories ’ and “
found that
the Book of Mormon was almost a verbal copy of a MS
romance wruten m l8l6 by Solomon Spaldingflut ne^
be wearisome t0 pursue this subject further nor
would it answer any good end. If these examples do’ not
suffice to prove our point, the mere addition of twenty oJ
thirty similar ones would not avail to do so. Jew and
Soth and
beT
the worshiPPer of the sacred
Ind Cuelc tn m er.rn th£ pr°phet Mormon’ Moslem
and 41 -bu’dl affirm.their sacred laws were revealed bv
the Almighty and their Scriptures were inspired records
eternal m God s purposes, infallible, and indispensable for
treasT
Wdfa7 of “ank“d> “>
"Meh is
treason to the majesty of heaven, and the greatest crime
possible of which apostate mortality can be guilty.
�DIVINE REVELATION.
21
SECTION IV.
TRUTH DESIRABLE.
truth is desirable may seem at first sight a self-evident
■statement, but if self-evident it is rarely accepted, and still
more rarely acted on. The rule is not truth, but fashion,
prestige, the stamp of society—not what is true, but what
popular opinion and the influential part of the community
choose to countenance. Few would blush to do or think
*cvil provided they followed the multitude in so doing, but
many would blush to think or do what society pronounces
to be unconventional and of bad ton.
Truth is for the infidel, the reformer, whose conscience
revolts at untruth; the “good, easy world” runs with the
■stream. Those who think for themselves are generally con
sidered dangerous members of the community, as Julius
Caesar held Cassius, and all. who think or act differently to
the accepted formula for the time being are looked on as
mischievous and wrong-headed.
Truth has always to fight its way, and to fight hard, be
cause It is the few against the many, conviction against pre
judice, the rebellion of novelty against established custom.
It is always unpopular, because it has no direct and imme
diate rewards in its gift; neither place nor ribbon, honour
nor emolument. These prizes belong to the dominant party,
and are bestowed not on those who are most faithful to
truth, but on those who best uphold the prestige of those in
power. Truth is slow of growth, and what is more, must
spring from sober self-knowledge, an honest heart and clear
thinking head. Kings cannot command it, priests cannot
claim it as a heritage; it must be searched for diligently,
and peer or peasant can find no favouritism there.
.
Yet is truth desirable, and must in time prevail. To it the
future belongs. It fears no curious, inquisitive eye, it courts
investigation. Try it as you may, it will bear the test; weigh
it, it will never be found wanting. It asks for no sacrifice of
fact, no compromise of reason ; it requires no blind assent,
it fearg no rival, it entrenches on no neighbour-truth. As the
walnut-tree is the more fertile for being beaten, and the aro
matic leaves of the warm south the more fragrant for being
bruised, SO truth is the more brilliant when being laid bare,
.and the most spotless when exposed to the most searching
light. It asks no patron to shore it up with the prestige of a
Twat
�22
NATURAL REASON 'versus
great name. It requires no inspiration to discover it ™
revelation to announce it as “past Andino-nm- ”
n°
superscription to give it value NothfooS
’ T° • amp Or
it; it is wholly indSependen it h t u hShT
U °r mar
nations, one and the same for ever
’
ChmatCS’ a11
Although it is not of the court and hierarchy nevertheless it
its SS captivity ?'e,Z t,.10U°hl to
ns aiscovenes. Every truth becomes an axiom and n
errn^T0? tO mOre trUth> Truth leads to truth, as surely as
and virtu? t0 Crr?r’ Nay’ m°re’ truth leads t0 sincerity
and ruin
“
7“
Ieads t0 deceP‘™> hypocrisy
Take an example; take the Polytheism of old Greece
Greeks and
“T’ Phenomenon ™> ascribed by the
the sea todwiTanS ? J°Ve,’ and CTeV Phenomenon of
the sea to Neptune. Instead, therefore, of investigating
recurrence of‘the
a"d lighnin«’ da>',i£,lt and dark, th!
recurrence of the seasons, the sources of the winds the
meteors,, the waves and tides, they were content to believe
that Jupiter or Neptune willed it so, and all further investiaa
tion was arrested. Even Socrate^ thought t profan?
investigate, the works of nature; it wls presumZous
mld^hv
dlV-n£ a-Cana' Hence the s™a11 Progress
.
? these nations in all the natural sciences Their
notions of nature were wholly erroneous, and all the r
interpretations of natural operations were iiere fable So
in modern times, so long as the Church waTthe prevailing
power and the overlord of kings, investigation and progresf
were rebellion and profanity. Every fresh truth developed
i? truth6’’foTTVn
reSJSted’ and instead of “rojoidng
I”
th? th 7 hai ed lt: Wlth suspicion and hatred. Thev
f^ted whatever did not coincide with their preconceptions^
they hated whatever threw doubt or discredit on their
supremacy, based on ignorance; they hated the cur ou
inquisitive eye which would not 'accept on the r unveXed
t
�DIVINE REVELATION.
23
■authority what they pronounced to be fact and truth.
Never was a darker age of gross ignorance, never a more
-vicious age of overbearing tyranny and social impurity,
never a more heartless age of cruelty and selfishness, than
the miserable Middle Age, when kings and kaisers lord
nnd People were alike enslaved to the infallibility of
■supernatural dogma and dogmatic orthodoxy. The. on y
freedom is the freedom of truth, the only civfl^eit is; the
power of truth. The true millemum is the diffusion . ot
■ truth that noble infidelity of creeds and systems which
-would lead reason captive to the mere^ctu^ XTafon^
and stagnant opinion and custom. That, and that alone,
■will be the millenium, when system is nothing, creeds are
nothing, dictatorial authority is nothing, the haut monde 3
nothing^ mere fashion ismothing, the prestige of name and
rank is nothing, but truth is the all and all, the only creed,
the only object of search, and reason is at last exalted above
^credulity and blind faith.
SECTION V.
WE BELIEVE MANY THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
can form no judgment of anything beyond reason,
and it is plainly unreasonable to ask me to believe anything
teyo'nJ thPe region of human intelligence* It may be true
but I am not in a position to know it. Faith is a reason
able service, and belief in anything else is mere- credulity
.and imagination. Thus, if I am asked whether fairies
can change their state, and become men and women, I can
onlv answer, I do not know. I have never seen a.fairy,
.and know of no one who ever did; I know not whether
they are palpable or impalpable, flesh and blood like ou .selves or airy nothings—in. short, I know nothing about
them and can give no opinion on the subject.
_
h If ’now you demand of me to believe that a good fairy
did once lay aside its fairy nature., and take a human form,
and go in and out among men doing many wonderful thing ,
•till at ill-disposed rabble hunted and hounded it to death
all I can say is this : It may be so, I cannot tell. It is
wholly out of the pale of my experience, wholly beyond the
Man
* That is, beyond himself.—R-L.
�24
NATURAL REASON versus
limit of my intelligence; and if I once give up reason to
illusiOT.qUlt the narroff path Of truth forgthe hroad road of
“e "hether sPWt can exist indepenaently of matter, I can only answer, I do not know I
know nothing of disembodied spirit. I do not even know
whether there is such a thing, and if there is, wheto it h™
orm and feature, sensibility and motion, growth and decay
With nOthinS- 1 have nogdau to go upon'
about ? but
neither believKe nor disbelieve anything
absurd 7?
? aPPearS t0 ni£ beyond dispute, that it is
2 h on th'?1P?
auCC6pt a d°Sma’ as an ^ticle of
’ on the truth or falsehood of which it is impossible for
to bluXdJU1fmen\ ASWeU ask a blind -ntobe ieve
th?
7
yellow make green, or a deaf man to believe
that the tones of a chromatic scale are not all equal.
m?vSth-t6n UrgJd ln rei°inder that we do actually believe
many things we do not understand. Thus, we believe in
life, but no one knows what life is. We believe in identity
b, 1 ™ °ne can explam what constitutes it, or how a bodv
should be ever changing and yet remain the same. Agam
we believe that grass in the body of a sheep or ox turns
from vegetable to animal substance, and to whkh was
fZ?gHinAe 71 yeSt6rday beC0mes to-day bone of tor
bone and flesh of their flesh, but cannot explain how*
it isZ^r
Cases,are by no means parallel, and
it is a total confusion of ideas to suppose there is any
food0???
7 7 Life’ gr°Wth’ and the inversion of
sunset TammaJ substances are familiar to us as sunrise and
sunset. It is what we see every hour of our lives, and to
exner ?Ve T°n? be t0 ignore the universal observation and
experience of all men ; but to disbelieve what no one ever
7” Caf? fK-6’ What is wholly and substantially difTh 1 r?gs7e are .conversant with, is quite another
T
.i
.b® bje of an animal I see daily, its growth I see
FsiXshT h feedS °n graSS’ and grOWS> 1 canfot d°ubt it.’
Fairies I have never seen, no one has ever seen them.
Disembodied spirit I have never seen, nor any one else with
a sound mind m a sound body; and therefore I have
uotbmg to go upon, there is no evidence except the worthless
estimony of delirium, dream, or disordered imagination.
causes
4
�DIVINE REVELATION.
25
Because I have no knowledge of the composition of
water, is no reason why I should not believe in its existence ;
but because I believe what I see and do not understand, is
no reason why I should believe what I do not see, and what
contradicts everything of which I have any knowledge. Be
cause I believe in life, growth, and nutrition, although my
present knowledge cannot completely fathom the rationale
of those mysteries, is no reason why I should believe in
mysteries of a wholly different character, and wholly con
tradictory to the recorded experience of all mankind.
SECTION VI.
WHAT MAH CAM AND WHAT HE CANNOT KNOW.
We often talk of knowledge, but rarely ask ourselves what
we exactly mean by it In a strict sense man knows nothing,
or next to nothing. He cannot comprehend and explain the
very simplest question in the mighty scheme of nature—
What is matter ? how came it into being ? is it self-existing ?
what are its ultimate parts ? is it simple or compound ? how
does it move and act, how multiply, how communicate and
receive ? We know nothing of matter in the abstract; the
veriest dunce could puzzle the wisest man in such a field of
inquiry. But there is a range, and a pretty wide one too,
in which by constant or careful observation we know many
things; we know, for example, that certain changes are in
variably preceded by certain conditions, or in other words
that certain facts and phenomena are always preceded by
certain antecedents. Some persons call this sequence
** cause and effect,” but it is no more necessary for an
antecedent to be the cause of what immediately follows
than for A to be the cause of B inasmuch as it invariably
precedes it in the English and many other alphabets. The
.antecedent may or may not be the producer of the change
which follows, but it can in no wise be accepted as a general
rule; and in every case it is very dangerous ground to stand
on, dangerous especially for this reason, that future know
ledge may wholly upset many of our present conclusions,
and what we now think we know may be proved by
posterity to be radically and fundamentally wrong.
Take a very plain example : Suppose we had been living
in the days of the old Romans, we should have said with
�2.6
;|
;
I
;
NATURAL REASON versus
confidence that the cause of day and night is the motion of
the sun above or beneath our earth. When he goes to
sleep in the lap of the sea-goddess, it is night; but when he
drives in his chariot through the vault of heaven, it is day.
Plausible as this might seem to the sages of Greece and the
senators and people of Rome, we now believe that day and
night are due simply to the revolution of the earth round its
own axis.
Take another example: The ancients believed matter to
be “ absolutely inert,” hence, when material things showed
a disposition of activity or manifestations of life, this activity
or . vitality was ascribed to a spirit independent of matter,
living and growing with the material body, and using its
several organs as its instruments and slaves. Every active
■and living body was supposed to be made active and living
by this indwelling spirit. It was the wood-nymph in the
tree which made it a living plant, the water-nymph in the
river which made it flow, the rain-nymph in the clouds
which made them pour forth showers. The lakes had their
lake-nymphs, the meadows their meadow-nymphs, the hills
their oreads, and the glens their valley-goddesses. The
ocean was filled with its sea-deities, the winds and the storms,
the heavens and all the hosts thereof. It was the god in
fire which made it glow with heat; it was the god in Etna
or Vesuvius which made them active volcanoes ; it was the
■god in malaria which filled it with pestilence; it was a
nymph in the air which gave back echo, and a god that
acted on the “ spirit,” when life was to be restored.
Man, of course, was no exception to this universal rule.
The body was lifeless and motionless till the Spirit of Deity
came into it, and the living man had a dual nature. All
that is active in the brain and other organs of the body was
supposed to be energised by the divine spirit, and hence
St. Paul speaks of being “in” and “out” of the body, which
he elsewhere calls the temple of the living—z.e., actively in
terfering—God. Of course, the writers of the several Books
of the Old-and New Testaments were no wiser than the rest
of men in geology, astronomy, and other branches of natural
science. No theologian would maintain they were; indeed,
it is one of the most common apologies for the notorious
blunders of the “ sacred penmen ” that they accepted these
things as they found them, and spoke of them as they were
generally understood. They spoke of the earth as a solid,
immovable mass, of the clouds as an ocean of water similar
J
�DIVINE REVELATION.
27
to our seas, of the sun as moving round the earth, and. of
the living body as inert matter vivified by the indwelling
Spirit of Deity. Granted. How cpuld they do otherwise ?
No one pretends that they knew the Newtonian system, of
light and gravitation; no one pretends that they antici
pated the discoveries of Priestley and James Watt in air and
water; no one pretends they were wiser than their contem
poraries in any true theory of nature. But what then ?
Admit this, and the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Man
as man-god and man as material man are so widely diffe
rent, so entirely unlike, that the whole fabric of revelation
designed for the one is unsuited to the other. If the body
man is already the residence of an independent spirit,
there is no reason why it may not be the temple of two, and
the Holy Ghost may share with the divine soul the broken
tenement; but if the body is a material body only, there
Can be no indwelling of the third person of the divine
triad. Again, if the body is the temple of a “ vital spark
of heavenly flame,” the vital spark at least must be immortal;
but if not, the body must resolve into its simple elements to
recombine into other bodies, but can never be built up
again into the same individual.
We now know that matter is not “ absolutely inactive.”
We know that nerves can feel, that brain can think, that a
material- body can perform all the functions of the body,
and there is no need of a ruling spirit to give it energy and
life. Here, again, is an example of what was once assumed
to be Undeniable knowledge proved to be no more worthy of
belief than the sun-car of Apollo, or the day-god sleeping
3D the lap of Thetis.
But to return. We started with the observation that it is
always hazardous to call the immediate antecedent of a
change the “ cause ” of the new condition, inasmuch as
further knowledge may wholly upset our present notions. Of
real Cause and effect we know nothing, but careful observation
gives us a wide range of the knowledge of sequences. There
are many changes which have been observed to be preceded by
certain antecedents, and that so invariably that any one may,
with absolute certainty, calculate on the change when
cognisant of the antecedent condition. This is called an
invariable law of nature, and no conceivable power can
alter it.
How fatal is all this to the notion of cause and effect,
Cause and effect pushed back in unbroken series till we
�28
NATURAL REASON versus
come to the end of the line, and are then driven to rest in
the cause causeless ? he maintain that ordinal succession
may be and often is quite independent of cause and effect;
and if, .instead of supposing each series to be a straight line,
beginning with the last phenomenon and pushed back into
the “ cause causeless,” we conceive it working in a circle,
the difficulty no longer exists. Let us explain our meaning.
The air carries vapour to the clouds, the clouds drop rain
upon the earth, the earth from its water sheds fills the
rivers,, and rivers run into the sea, when the series begins
again in never-ending succession. This is a series working
in a circle, and needs no cause causeless to start from.
Again, animals die, and revert to their original elements;
these elements recombine into the food of animals, so that
animals turn to food and food to animals, and that in
never-ending succession also. Once more, plants absorb
carbonic acid gas, retain the carbon, and restore the oxygen
to the air; man appropriates the oxygen of the air, and
exhales with his breath the carbonic acid gas of which the
body has no need, so men feed the vegetable world, and the
vegetable the animal world, in a circular series, ever
changing, ever mixing, ever taking and giving, and never
•continuing in one stay.
. These smaller circles form parts of the series of larger
circles, and these in turn of others, enlarging and widening
till the whole universe is brought in, all being parts of every
other part, all being items in the one grand universal series,
rolling in ceaseless circles through infinite space, filling its
immensity, leaving no void, circling in mutual circles, ever
■changing, but preserving one unbroken series, the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
This, it will be perceived, is very different from the idea
of phenomena traced as it were in straight lines from effect
to cause, and each line ending in something wholly inde
pendent. The one is an infinite number of straight lines,
each having its special series, the other is a grand, sympa
thetic, universal, unbroken whole, including each minutest
item in the general scheme, and filling all space with its
eternal series. There is something unutterably sublime and
solemn in the idea that “all are but parts of one stupendous
whole,” the tiniest insect as well as the hugest mammoth,
The mole-hill no less than the planet, the daisy of the field
as well as the sun which warms it into bloom. All belong
to the great, the universal series, the dewdrop that hangs on
�DIVINE REVELATION.
29.
the leaf, as well as the thunder which shakes the mountain,
the Stars as they roll in their courses, man and his fellow
mite, the reed and the oak, the wren and the eagle, the
limpet and the whale—no matter what, no matter where, all
are essential and integral parts, all roll on in the eternal
series, each exists for each, all pass into each other,.'
circulate through the boundless universe, links in the same
endless chain as the blood in the animal body. None can.
' say, “ I have no need of thee.” Were one link broken, tenth
Or tenth thousand, no matter; not only all the system to.
which it specially belonged, “ but the whole, must fall.”
This is immortality ; this is life eternal.
Compare this with the gloomy isolation of man taught us
by the divine—man cut off from the rest of creation, sent
on the earth an exile and alien, in bondage under “ sin.” If'
he fails to fulfil certain arbitrary conditions, he is severed
for ever from the general universe by a deathless death; if'
not, he is taken from the world to which his nature is
adapted, and is placed in a sphere where he is an entire
stranger to his surroundings. Heaven is as much cut off
from the general universe as hell is. All is isolation.
Heaven is one isolation, hell another, earth another, every
Star and planet are others. Man on earth stands alone ; his
very nature is different to that of everything around. He
belongs as man neither to earth nor heaven; he is an exile,,
a bondman on his trial. Instead of all creation being linked
together in a chain of love and sympathy, each separate part
is isolated and stands alone; and when the end comes at the
great consummation, the earth is to be burnt up, and the
family of man, divided into the sheep and the goats, to be
severed by a blank, impassable gulf. All nature disorganised,,
all harmony destroyed, all systems thrown into confusion,,
nature herself assassinated, and her laws scattered to the
winds like the leaves of the ancient oracle of Dodona!
Look at this picture and at that, and tell me which is the.
more desolating and cheerless 1
�30
NATURAL REASON versus
SECTION VII.
MAN A' MATERIAL BEING SURROUNDED BY MATERIAL
OBJECTS.
Being material beings, living in' a material world, and
surrounded by material objects only, we are able to examine
only things that are material, and can know nothing else.
But it is asked, is it possible to explain a tithe of every
day phenomena without recourse to a supernatural Agent—
an Agent infinitely our superior in knowledge, power, and
forethought ? For example : Creation itself shows there
must have been a Creator, as plainly as a watch shows there
must have been a watchmaker. The preservation of nature
shows there must be a guiding and directing hand. The
mind of man, so capable of thinking above material objects,
so capable of soaring beyond the limits of time and space,
seems to demonstrate that there must be a Mind or Spirit
independent of matter.
Without doubt your knowledge and mine at present falls
short of many things. We cannot satisfy ourselves of the
why and how of a host of familiar objects. We have not
yet found the key to unlock many of the secrets of the
natural world. What then ? Is that a reason why we
should follow the example of clumsy playwrights, and bring
down a God to help us out of our difficulty ? Would it not
be wiser and more rational to wait ? Would it not be more
rational to say, probably a little patience and a little more
research may clear up these mysteries, as they have cleared
up many others ? Socrates was a wise man, pronounced by
the oracle to be the very wisest of his contemporaries; yet
Socrates believed the sun and moon to be gods, and accused
Anaxagoras of impiety, because he presumed to calculate
their motions and magnitudes. He thought it impious
madness to pry into the secrets of the material world, and
declared that the gods would be offended by such audacity.
Men, however, have dared to lift the veil which conceals the
secrets of the stars and the secrets of the earth, and have
discovered that the sun and moon are not gods, and that
light and heat are subject to fixed laws, as much so as the
impact of a Nasmyth’s hammer or the noise of a peal of
thunder. Should we not learn wisdom from all this, learn
�DIVINE REVELATION.
31
to wait with modesty and patience, to wait hopefully, that
many now occult phenomena may in time be explained, as
thou sands have already been which once were insoluble
mysteries? Surely it is only reasonable to say, I find, as far
as is known at present, laws in operation certain, constant,,
comprehensible to man; I find, since the days of Socrates,
the knowledge of these laws has very widely extended; I
find that phenomenon after phenomenon, at one timeattributed to the erratic will of some god, has been brought
into the general category of matter and motion, and there
fore it is only reasonable to suppose that all the other
secrets of nature will in time be cleared up also. Is it not
more rational, I say, to argue thus than to fly off into the
unknown, and suppose that because we cannot reduce
certain phenomena at present to known laws, they are
therefore inscrutable by reason, and must be the arbitrary
handiwork of some superhuman Agent who can make or
break his laws at pleasure, now conforming to a general
rule, and anon reversing it—now working in the unobtrusive
routine of every-day experience, and anon astounding the
world, and stultifying the patient observations of the careful
student of nature by miracles as purportless as they are
perplexing ? Such a pretended solution, I affirm, is babyish—
is more fit for a peevish schoolgirl than for men of mind,
and mature intellects.
SECTION VIII.
SENSIBILITY A PROPERTY OF ORGANISED MATTER.
Leaving the sun and moon, the tides and seasons, heat and.
light, and COming’tothe animal world, including man, we find
other energies in operation besides mechanical motion. We
find, for example, sensibility, we find moral feeling, we find,
motion directed by some ruling power within the body, or
under the control of that power, which is called the will.
Can these operations be performed by mere material
Organism also? In other words, can mere matter be so
organised that it not only moves mechanically, as a ball
struck by a bat, but can also choose to move or choose toremain at rest in obedience to a living will ? Surely choice?
must be the act of a ruling “spirit,” which controls the
material organs under its dominion, for it seems absurd to-
�32
NATURAL REASON versus
suppose that a pile of bricks should be able to choose for
themselves whether they will make a cottage or a palace, or
whether they will remain unemployed. If I stir the fire, I
make the poker obey my will; but if I use my hands or
feet, surely there must be a corresponding spiritual agent to
evoke the will, and exact obedience to its dictates. We can
conceive of a ball flying through the air either because it is
attracted towards some other object, or because it is im
pelled by blind external force; we can conceive of a flower
throwing off from itself those Subtle particles which we call
perfume, just as the ocean, under the power of the sun,
throws off vapour; but no power of choice is left to the
flower to smell sweet or withhold its odours, and none to
the wide sea either to evaporate or not, as it may think
proper.
To the unthinking mind all this may seem quite un
answerable, but to those who grasp adequately the elements
of the problem, it appears a perfect tangle of confusion.
No one credits a body constituted like a ball or brick, a
flower or. the ocean, with the power of choice. It is quite
impossible for such things to will, inasmuch as they have no
voluntary apparatus for the purpose. But tell me this : Is
it not folly to expect a common stone to smell like a rose ? Is
it not folly to expect an ordinary cricket-ball to skip like a
lamb or fly like an hawk ? And why ? Simply because
the stone has not the organs of the rose, nor the ball those
of the lamb or bird. Give them these organs, endow them
with the special apparatus, and it would be no more sur
prising for the flint to give forth a sweet odour than for the
flower, or the ball to skip or fly like the lamb and hawk.
Carry this idea one step further. No one pretends that
matter can think and will without a suitable apparatus, but
it is the veriest folly to assert that a thinking apparatus
cannot think, or a volitional apparatus perform the office
for which it was specially adapted. Given the apparatus,
and the work to be performed follows as a thing of course.
All, therefore, that remains is to show that animals which
possess the power of will have an apparatus suited to the
purpose. Rocks and seas, flowers and clay, cannot have a
will, because they have no voluntary apparatus, consequently
we ought to find in animals an apparatus which we do not
find in bodies that have no power of free choice. Just so,
and animals have this apparatus. They have what is called
a nerve-system, and this new organic machinery has of
•
�DIVINE REVELATION.
33
course its proper work. Inorganic bodies have no nerves
and inorganic bodies cannot perform the same duties. as
those which have. Surely this is reasonable. Bodies with
out nerves cannot do the work of bodies which have, and
bodies with a highly complicated nerve-system have func
tions to perform which are not expected from others that
have a less complex one, or no such apparatus at all.
Sensibility in every form, whether that called sight or that
called hearing, whether feeling or smell, is due wholly to
the nerves. Sensibility, in fact, is the mere impression of
external objects photographed on the organs of sense, or
communicated to them by actual contact. This can be proved
to demonstration. In nerveless bodies it does not exist, in
all bodies with a nerve-system it does. If a nerve is injured,
the corresponding function of that nerve is impaired also;
if all the system is sound and healthy, all the operations of
the system are carried on in a normal and healthy manner.
What further proof is required ? What further proof is even
possible ? We can see the nerves with our eyes, we can
handle them with our fingers, we can exalt or paralyse their
action by our drugs, we can repair them in many cases when
they are feeble or unsound. This is no hypothetical some
thing which is invisible and intangible, no mere shadowy
incorporeal indweller to help out a theory, no imaginary
spirit, but a visible and tangible reality. Nerve is as much
matter as wood or stone, and it is the possession of this
nerve apparatus which endows animal bodies with re
ceptive and operative powers wholly unknown to inorganic
substances.
He who sees not demonstration in all this is wholly
unable to form a correct judgment. He is not convinced
because he will not be so, not because the argument is
weak, but because he is inaccessible to argument of every
kind. With such no argument will prevail, and he must be
left to his own wilfulness. Like the deaf adder he cannot
or will not hear. He refuses to be charmed, not that the
charmer charms not well, but that he will not hearken
charm he never so wisely.
SECTION IX.
BRAIN AND BRAINWORK ALSO DUE TO MATERIAL ORGANISM.
Come we now to the brain.
This mass shut up in the
skull varies in different animals in size, shape, and texture.
�34
NATURAL REASON versus
Some of the inferior molluscs have only one ganglia, others
have two, while men may have from twenty to thirty. So
also in regard to the tubular convolutions, the brains of
fishes have none at all, those of birds only faint traces of
them, and in mammals there is a great difference in this
respect between the brain of a kangaroo and that of man.
It might, a priori, be supposed that this new organ would
have special duties to perform, and that as the brain varies so
greatly in different animals, we should discern a difference
in their brain-work. This is exactly what we find to be the
case. The brain of a common mollusc has only one
ganglia, and the intelligence of these animals corresponds;
the brain of marsupials has fewer ganglia than that of higher
animals, but the brain of man is familiarly known to be the
most powerful and complicated in structure of all the animal
creation. The intelligence of the animal is in every case en
rapport with the brain. Every slightest change in the com
position, the size, the convolutions, and the sensory ganglia of
the brain infers a corresponding difference in the work which
the brain is able to execute. It is not because Newton and
Shakespeare, Plato and Homer, had a separate genius or
Socratic demon in their heads that they were superior in
intelligence to the Hottentot, but that their brains had more
grey matter and more convolutions, and those convolutions
more distinctly pronounced.
We have already spoken of sensibility seated in the gan
glionic centres, and we now come to thought, emotion, and
consciousness, seated in the ganglia of the brain proper. We
have shown how sensibility is quickened and deadened,
destroyed and repaired, by agents applied to the nerve
tissues ; and we would now show how thought and memory,
emotion and consciousness, are perfect measures of the
state of the brain. In the first place, it is a familiar fact
that the wise man may be reduced to idiotcy, and the man
of most delicate feeling to moral insensibility, by simply
acting on the brain. By slicing away that grey matter,
stupidity and insensibility are induced, in exact proportion
to the quantity of grey matter removed. By slicing away
more or less of this brain-matter, the intelligence is more or
less impaired, the moral feelings more or less blunted, con
sciousness and judgment more or less destroyed. If we
find heat proceeding from burning fuel, and that heat
diminished or increased in exact proportion to the more or
less perfect state of the combustion, are we not justified in
�DIVINE REVELATION.
35
concluding that the heat proceeds from the burning fuel ?
If we find light issuing from a gas-jet, and find that light
more or less perfect according to the purity of the gas, are
we not justified in saying that the purity of the light dependson the purity of the burning gas ? If we find water reduced
to ice when the temperature is below 32 degrees (Fahren
heit), and gradually increasing in warmth as the temperature
is increased, till it ultimately expends itself in steam, are we
not justified in- believing that it is the increase or decrease
of temperature which is accountable for these phenomena ?
And so, by parity of argument, when we find intelligence and
judgment, consciousness and moral feeling, indicated exactly
by the state of the brain, are we not justified in concluding
that they are emanations from the brain, as much so as heat
from the glowing fuel, and light from the burning gas ? Are
we not justified in the conclusion that the grey matter of
the brain is the fount of thought and the palace of the
soul ?
...
So long as matter was thought to be passive and inert, it
was quite needful to suppose there must be some energising
agent to set it in motion and give it vitality; but now that
it has been demonstrated that matter, in the form of nerves
and brain, can feel and will, think and understand, judge
and feel conscious, remember and foresee, calculate and
analyse—do all, in fact, that was once attributed to soul—we
may eliminate the unknown power altogether, and pronounce,
with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that man
is not a dual animal of body and soul, but a material
animal only.
Need we go further? Need we show how cerebral disease
impairs the memory, impairs the intelligence, impairs the
judgment, impairs the just perception of things in general?
Need we show how cerebral disease may so far destroy the
mental and moral powers as to induce delirium or stupor,
madness or idiotcy? Need we show that in suspended
animation thought, conscience, judgment, memory,, will,
and every moral sense is suspended also, but by simply
acting on the tissues, by imparting increased circulation to
the blood, by restoring energy to the nerves and brain,
animation returns, and with it the intelligent and moral
faculties ? They come with returning energy, they go as the
activity of the bodily organs declines. They grow with our
growth, they strengthen with our strength. In the infant they
are infantine, in the child somewhat stronger, in the mature
�3^
NATURAL REASON versus
body in their greatest perfection; and though in declining
years the mental powers may outlast the physical, it only
confirms what has been proved by the results of death from
starvation, in which very little wasting of this structure is
found to take place, that the nerve-tissue is more indestruc
tible than other vital textures of the organism.
SECTION X.
OBJECTION : MAN CAN THINK OF ETERNITY, AND THERE
FORE IS ETERNAL.
“No man can think higher than himself,” or “higher than
himself can no man think.” Granted. As man can think
of eternity, eternity is not “ higher ” than man, and there
fore man is eternal. Nego majorem.
The “major” of this syllogism is false. It proves too
much in the first place, and is untrue in the second.
(*•) It proves too much. If because man can think of
eternity he is eternal, then is he omniscient, omnipresent,
and almighty, because he can think of these things in the
same way as he can think of eternity. And if thought is
the measure of man, then man is himself deity, because
there is no attribute ascribed to deity which man cannot
think.
(2.) But the statement is utterly false. Man can not think
either of eternity or of infinite space; that is, he can form
no clear conception of duration without beginning and
ending, or of space without limit. In fact, our ideas of
duration and space are extremely limited; and if they are
to be taken as the measure of man, nothing could better
prove that he is a finite mortal. Man, I say, can form no
definite idea either of eternity or of infinite space. This is
what he can do : Man has invented figures, and these
figures being employed to express the measure of time or
space, man can always add, or at least suppose, a higher
number than the one expressed. Thus, if 1,000 is deter
mined on as the limit, we can think of 1,001 ; if a million
we can think of numbers exceeding it; but that is a very
different thing indeed from forming a definite conception
of eternity or infinite space.
Let any one try to think of a straight line without begin-
�DIVINE REVELATION.
37
ning or end, and he will presently see how hopeless is the task.
His line, however far extended in his imagination, will
always be broken at both ends; and the more he tries to
lengthen it, the more he will feel convinced that his fancy
can extend it further. But so long as this can be done, his
line is neither without beginning nor without end.
This must be obvious to any thinking mind.. It.must be
obvious that eternity cannot be extended, that infinite space
is space beyond all limit j so long, therefore, as we can think
of extension to duration and space, we cannot form an idea
of duration or space which cannot be extended. It would
not be too bold to say that after a man has given the
fullest possible scope to his fancy, whether of duration or
space, when he has pushed them as far off as he is able, his
mind can always overleap the limit, and think of a beyond.
In truth, man’s idea of time and space, except when ex
pressed by figures, is extremely limited. He has the. most
vague conception of all high numbers, and when he .tries to
think of eternity or infinite space, his line of. duration and
his field of extent are wonderfully small. Think of William
the Conqueror ; he seems an immense way off, quite in
cloud-land. Think of the Flood; the distance between
William the Conqueror and the Flood is really pretty much
the same in our ideas. We know they are not; we know
that the spaces are nothing like equal; but our conception
is unable to measure the difference with any degree of
accuracy.
Take a series of unequal lengths—say the
Conquest, the Birth of Christ, the Flood, Creation, and
the several geological series. How they crowd one on the
other 1 How utterly is the mind unable to pace out with
accuracy their different lengths 1 It thinks of thern as a
series; but whether the distance between any two was
greater or less than between two others,, whether the
Devonian period was ten thousand or ten millions of years
in length, is pretty much the same.
So is it in regard to space. The moon, the sun, and
the fixed stars seem nearly equidistant to the eye, and even
to the imagination. We know they are not, but. the mind
cannot realise the different distances.
Practically, our
thought of duration is inseparable from our thought of
time. We cannot think of duration in the abstract. We
can think of sixty, seventy, or one hundred years; we can
think of years beyond any limit which figures can express;
but we cannot think of eternity. If therefore the thought
�38
NATURAL REASON verszts
of man is indeed his measure, he certainly is not for
eternity, for he cannot form the remotest idea of extent
which cannot be extended.
SECTION XI.
MAN
IN
NO
WISE
DIFFERENT
FROM
OTHER
EXCEPT SO FAR AS THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE
ANIMAL MAY DIFFER FROM ANOTHER.
ANIMALS,
OF
ONE
What, then, has been proved ? If anything, this, that
there is nothing supernatural in man—nothing but what is
attributable to organic structure. He is in perfect harmony
with his surroundings, and does not walk the earth as a
monster—part man, part god, but neither wholly of the
earth earthy, nor wholly of the heavens heavenly.
He
differs in no wise from the rest of the animal kingdom,
except so far as the organic structure of one animal or race
of animals may differ from another. If he has different
powers to inferior animals, it is only because his body is
more highly and elaborately organised. Trees are organised,
and they grow, flourish, and decay, each according to its
organic structure. ' Inferior animals have a more complex
arrangement, and being possessed of brain and nerve, they
have sensibility and volition, passion and desire. Man has
a still more complex brain, and his thoughts can be more
elaborate and complex; but from the primeval rock to man
there is a perfect unity, nothing to destroy the oneness,
nothing to remove one part from the rest. Special dif
ferences no doubt there are—such differences are the rule_
but the same general principle pervades the whole. It is
simply matter arranged in divers manners, each different
arrangement having its special character. There is no
new integer introduced from another sphere of being,
nothing from another world lent to man to supplement his
deficiency, nothing of the nature of soul, taken, like the fire
of Prometheus, from the high heavens to kindle life in the
clay image. The notion of a special loan of Deity to man,
alone and apart from the rest of creation, of a spark of the
divine essence shut up in man as a candle in a lantern, of
a breath breathed by the Eternal into the nostrils of a
mortal, is certainly the crowning delusion of visionary selfconceit. That Deity should lend man a piece of himself to
�DIVINE REVELATION.
39
help out his man-nature is a craze so absurd that it would
not be credible except we knew it to be believed.
If man really possessed this divine spirit shut up in his
body, is it likely that the anatomist would be able to cut it
away piecemeal when mutilating with his scalpel the cere
bral organ ? Is it likely it would be susceptible of inflam
mation and decay? Is it likely it could be affected by
drugs or aliment, and destroyed by poison ? Is it likely it
could be suspended by immersion in water, and restored by
friction ? Is it likely it would grow and change, strengthen
and decline, just as man’s health or age may affect his
material body ? How could a divine essence be subject to
the laws of matter ? If in the body it would not be of the
body, but would be wholly independent of matter however
organised.
Enthroned as spirit, no hand of man could
injure it; incorruptible as Deity, no vice could defile it;
unchangeable as perfection, it would shine with the same
brilliancy in sage and savage, the infant in its cradle, the
old man on his pallet, the king on his throne, and the
captive in his dungeon. What could education do to im
prove deity in man ? How could the vigilance of maternal
care guide and direct it ? How could the example of evil
companions vitiate and degrade it ? But so it is; we feel
it is so, whatever be our creed; we know it is so, however
we may strive to hide it from ourselves. We know that
every part of man is acted on alike, that every part of man
is amenable to the same laws. Man can exercise his power
on the brain as well as on the nerves. He can mutilate
and impair the thinking part as well as any other. He can
attack with his knife and with his drugs the reasoning part,
the moral part, the judging part, the conscience part, the
most subtle of the subtleties of human nature, .suspend
their operations or . restore them, play with them, or so
reduce them that the brain of a Newton shall be no more
capable than that of an idiot, and the finest conscience
shall be dulled as if it had been steeped in Lethe. But if
thought were really the product of a divine essence lent by
Deity to man, would this be possible ? Would man be
able mechanically to injure a divine essence ? Would he be
able to suspend its energies and restore them ? Would he
be able to impair and destroy the Deity in man ?
�40
SECTION xn.
IF MAN IS NOT A DUAL BEING, THERE CAN HAVE BEEN
NO REVELATION.
If body is all and all of man, as this body dies man dies,
and as it returns to its native elements, man ceases to be
man, and the notion of a resurrection or reconstruction of
the same body, after it has passed into other material forms,
is mere fable. This life is man’s be-all, and death is his
end-all, as far as his individuality is concerned. But if so,
the very notion of a revelation must be given up. There is
nothing to reveal, nothing that even Deity could tell which
would in the slightest degree affect the future of man. He
might tell him how the gases of the body would be dispersed,
how the vegetable world would banquet on the carbon and
nitrogen, how the phosphates would contribute to the bones
of other animals ; he might tell how the brain of the poet
may ultimately form a part of the nightingale, and the hand
of the painter help to arch the sky with a rainbow; he might
tell how the sulphur and hydrogen would be disposed of,
one gilding the coal with pyrites like gold, and the other
hanging as a dewdrop on the rose; this and much more
than this he might tell, and interest man intensely by re
vealing the changes of decay into the newness of fresh life,
but this is not revelation. Revelation presupposes a thou
sand absurdities, beginning in Eden and reaching into
eternity. It presupposes a man such as no man is, or ever
could be. It presupposes that God and man made a mutual
covenant together, and that each has a social interest of a
private and special nature with the other. It presupposes
that our bodies will be restored in their integrity, though
every part thereof has passed into other bodies—that they
will retain their identity, though the same identical body
contributes to the identity of a thousand others. It pre
supposes such a host of self-contradictory incoherences that
conjecture is lost in the hopeless maze, and poor bewildered
human nature is glad to seek rest in any falsehood as a refuge
from the hopeless confusion by which he is surrounded.
If this is revelation, give me the simplicity of right reason.
If this is orthodoxy, give me the logic of infidelity. If this
is the teaching of the Church, give me the teaching of
common sense. If this is the creed of the faithful, then
may the faithful few be ever few; such fidelity to dogma is
infidelity to truth, and infidelity to unreason is fidelity
to nature and to man.
-A
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Natural reason versus divine revelation : an appeal for freethought
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Julian
Lewins, Robert (ed)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 40 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. 'Julian' is the pseudonym of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-1897).
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[pref. 1879]
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N420
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Free thought
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English
Free Thought
Materialism
NSS
Reason
Revelation-Christianity
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LIBRARY
South Place Ethical Society
Rec'd.. ..... 1908...............
Ack’d.......................................
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cat. in.
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2
�REFLEXIONS
ON THE
BLASPHEMY PROSECUTION.
A better
TO
THE HON. JUSTICE NORTH
A.
HINDU.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGIIT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
63,
FLEET
STREET, E.C.
1 883.
PRICE THREEPENCE
�LONDON:
PRINTBD BY ANNIE BE8ANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
63, FLEET STREET, E.C
�REFLEXIONS ON THE BLASPHEMY PROSECUTIONS.
To
THE
Sir,
Hon. JUSTICE NORTH,
Private communications from British subjects in
the Eastern portion of her Majesty’s dominions professing
the respective faiths of Brahmanism, Parseeism, Buddhism,
Confucianism, and Islamism have recently been received in
this country, denouncing in terms of uniformly intense
indignation the despotic and fanatical bias animating your
judicial procedure, from the beginning to the end of the
trials of the three men condemned to imprisonment on
the charge of “ blasphemy.” The incoherent definition of
the law on the subject expounded by you, and the totally
inadequate legal evidence on which you demanded from
the jury the conviction—especially of Mr. Foote—has
filled many of my friends in India, and several Indian
gentlemen at present studying law in England like myself,
with blank amazement. In refusing bail for the alleged
culprits after the discharge of the first jury, and angrily
interrupting the above-mentioned gentleman in his defence,
your zeal for Christian orthodoxy completely eclipsed the
judicial dispassionateness and impartiality Indians have been
accustomed to associate with the administration of law by
a modern English Judge. Unwittingly you exchanged the
functions of a dispenser of justice for those of a vindictive
prosecutor and a bigoted theological partisan. The travesty
of biblical narratives, conscientiously believed by the defen
dants, rightly or wrongly, to be fictitious, and morally as
well as intellectually mischievous, was openly regarded by
you as a service rendered to the Christian “ devil,” and
consequently on a level with a flagrant offence against
essential morality. In the pious homilies you uttered in
“ summing up ” and delivering sentence, you confounded
theological polemics with law, and most uncharitably
�4
Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
assumed that true morality was impossible apart from
Christian belief. In so doing you prostituted your position
to the level of a vulgar and superstitious “ drum ecclesi
astic,” ignorant of the primary elements of the science of
comparative religion.
Writing of the features of the trial purely on its merits,
I have no concern with the eesthetic aspect of the carica
ture of Christian doctrines which in your judgment seemed
to constitute the gravamen of the prosecution. I have no
personal knowledge of the defendants, nor of the writings and
pictorial representations attributed to them. But it may
fairly be stated, in passing, that as the creed you so piously
championed consigns the unfortunate victims of your reli
gious malediction to the fires of an eternal hell hereafter,
some more conspicuous exhibition of commiseration with
them under the circumstances would have redounded more
signally to your credit, both as a sincere orthodox believer
and as a humane man. The Christian God, who is repre
sented in the gospel narrative as welcoming back with
fatherly tenderness his prodigal son, could, I fear, hardly
view with complacency the relentless inhumanity in which
you, a professed Christian judge, displayed such eagerness to
inflict on those you could at most regard as theological
errants condign punishment, while denying them oppor
tunities for preparing their defence which you would have
readily conceded to seducers of women or fraudulent bank
rupts. To your vision the open ridicule of what was
honestly believed to be a mythological development is a
graver crime than theft or wife-beating. The impression
conveyed to the minds of my Indian friends by this notorious
trial—to say nothing of other cases in which we heretics
think we have lately been denied justice—is that vigilance
has become quite as imperative in this country to ensure
that judges shall not abuse the prerogatives with which they
are invested as to check wanton obstruction in Parliament.
Again, your contradictory exposition of the law of blas
phemy—as if you were striving to protect from legal risk
learned and scientific sceptics while venting ill-disguised
bitterness upon a rougher type of opponents to Christianity
-■-was extremely marked. At the first trial you defined
blasphemy as a denial of the existence of God or ridicule of
the Trinity. In this you agreed with Mr. Justice Stephen,
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
5
in his “ History of the Criminal Law of England,” that
“ blasphemy consists in the character of the matter published,
and not in the manner in which it is stated.” But at the
second trial you effected a sudden and clumsy change of
front — possibly endeavoring to place yourself more in
accord with the New Criminal Code introduced by the
present Government—and represented blasphemy to be “ any
contumelious reproach or profane scoffing against the Chris
tian religion or the Holy Scriptures, and any act exposing
the Holy Scriptures and the Christian religion to ridicule,
contempt, or derision.” The latter definition evidently im
plies that the mere attacking of the sacred books and
dogmas of Christianity with elaborate argument is not in
itself blasphemous, always provided the manner in which the
controversy is conducted is free from all tendency to ridicule.
When to these shifting and incongruous definitions of the
law is added the doubtful nature of the evidence on which
the men were convicted, and the barbarous treatment they
suffered by your direction between the two trials, there is
room for the suspicion that their conviction was on your
part a foregone conclusion.
Can there be any pretence to justice in the distinction
involved in your second definition between a blow dealt to
Christianity in a cultured volume published by Longmans or
Williams and Norgate, and the same act done through an
obscure penny sheet known chiefly to a limited section of
the artisan class ? In fact, if the damage done to the
fashionable creed is to be measured by the publicity given to
the hostile opinions advanced in these respective instances,
and by the extent to which educated minds are influenced
by these opinions, it must be obvious that the prosecution of
the authors and publishers of the more scholarly works is by
far the more urgent desideratum.
Do you require to be told that the learned professions and
the thoughtful among the mercantile and trading classes
who read the more costly sceptical treatises are honey
combed with doubts and, in many cases, confirmed objec
tions to the Christian faith ? If the highest Christian
authorities are to be believed, all sections of the community
in Great Britain are already, more or less, hopelessly sunk
in unbelief. Last year the Archbishop of York, at the
annual meeting of his diocese, told his clergy that “ the
�6
Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
battle before them now was not with sects and heresy, but
one waged for the very existence of Christianity itself” In
August last Cardinal Manning declared that only 2 per cent,
of the population of London and Berlin attended any church at
all. At the Glasgow Free Church Presbytery meeting of
30th March, 1882, it was stated that “ out of a population
of 700,000 in the city and suburbs, a census showed that
only 135,932, that is, 16^ per cent., attended any place of wor
ship
and I have good reason to believe that even this
estimate is in excess of the reality. One reverend speaker
at the same meeting remarked that “ a great proportion of
the working classes in particular had no practical connexion
with the Church—not only the intemperate and depraved,
but the sober, industrious, and respectable among them.
Though fulfilling in a sort of commendable way very many
duties connected with their positions in life, they were yet un
connected with the Church of Christ.” In 1878 the Home
Mission of the same church reported that “ all the agricul
tural laborers of Scotland live in a state of heathenism.”
Another religious body in 1877 gravely asserted that “ there
were not a dozen Christians in Skye, though the population of
that island is 24,000 ! ” In the “ Journals ” of the late Dr.
Norman MacLeod we have answers to religious questions ad
dressed by him to intending participants in the membership of
his own church, illustrating the amazing ignorance prevail
ing among people otherwise exemplary, even in educated
Scotland, respecting the most elementary Biblical stories.
“ Who led the children of Israel out of Egypt ? Eve. Who
was Eve? The mother of God. What was done with
Christ’s dead body ? Laid in a manger. What did Christ
do for sinners? Gave his son. Any wonderful works
Christ did? Made the world in six days. Any others?
Buried Martha, Mary and Lazarus. What became of them
afterwards ? Angels took them to Abraham’s bosom.
What had Christ to do with that ? He took Abraham.
Who was Christ ? The Holy Spirit. Are you a sinner ?
No.” I venture to assert that there are multitudes of at
tendants upon Christian ordinances throughout England and
Europe whose acquaintance with the essentials of this faith,
if tested by similar methods, would be found not less
absurdly deficient. Yet to guard from ridicule tales and
dogmas which one large, morally-conducted section of the
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
7
community regard with absolute indifference, and another
equally large but more cultivated section regard with dis
belief, based on prolonged and serious investigation, the law
is set in motion, a judge forgets that mental equilibrium
traditionally characteristic of the Bench, and men whose
lives are reputed to be morally blameless are visited with the
loss of personal liberty!
On the other hand, when we pass into the realms of
literature and science, deliberate repudiation of the historical
and religious authority of both the Old and New Testaments
is not the exception, but the rule. The following eloquent lan
guage of Professor Huxley is endorsed by tens of thousands
of the most cultivated and eminent public writers throughout
Europe and America, despite the antagonism of the passage
with your recent decision. “ Everywhere priests have broken
the spirit of wisdom, and tried to stop human progress by
quotations from their Bibles or books of their saints. In this
nineteenth century, as at the dawn of physical science, the
cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of
the philosopher, and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who
shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth from
the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been em
bittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of
bibliolators ? Who shall count the host of weaker men,
whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to
harmonise impossibilities; whose lives have been wasted in
the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into
the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the
same strong party ? It is true that if philosophers have
suffered their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished
theologies lie about the cradle of every science, as the
strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history re
cords that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly
opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists,
bleeding and crushed if not annihilated, scotched if not slain.
But orthodoxy learns not, neither can it forget, and though
at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as
ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the
beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with such
petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those
who refuse to degrade nature to the level of primitive Judaism.”
Mr. John Morley, M.P., the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette,
�8
Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
in the revised edition of his work on Voltaire, has uttered
burning words on the same side which have lately been
quoted in a well-known weekly: “ There are times when it
may be very questionable whether, in the region of belief,
one with power and with fervid honesty ought to spare the
abominable city of the plain just because it happens to
shelter five righteous. . . . The partisans of a creed in whose
name more human blood has been violently shed than in any
other cause whatever, these, I say, can hardly find much ground
for serious reproach in a few score epigrams'' In praising
Voltaire’s protest against the popular creed, he refers to
“ its mean and fatuous and contradictory idea of an omnipotent
God, who gave us guilty hearts so as to have the right ofpunish
ing us, and planted in us a love of pleasure so as to torment vs
the more effectually by appalling ills that an eternal miracle
prevents from ever ending, who drowned the fathers in the
deluge and then died for the children, who exacts an account of
their ignorance from a hundred peoples whom he has himself
plunged helplessly into this ignorance." Defending the attacks
of Voltaire on organised Christianity, Mr. Morley (p. 236)
says: “ He saw only a besotted people led in chains by a
crafty priesthood: he heard only the unending repetition of
records that were fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain
of darkness over the understanding. Men spoke to him of
the mild beams of Christian charity, and where they pointed
he saw only the yellow glare of the stake; they talked of
the gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the
shrieks of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faith
ful Christian persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbetted,
burnt, broken on the wheel. Through the steam of inno
cent blood which Christians for the honor of their belief
had spilt in every quarter of the known world, the blood of
Jews, Moors, Indians, and all the vast holocausts of hereti
cal sects and people in eastern and western Europe, he saw
only dismal tracts of intellectual darkness, and heard only
the humming of the doctors, as they served forth to congre
gations of poor men hungering for spiritual sustenance the
draff of theological superstition.”
The conviction is rapidly gaining ground among grave and
independent inquirers that so-called historic religions are just
as legitimate a subject of critical examination, and, if mythi
cal, of banter, as the comparative merits of Tory and Liberal
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
9
politics. In the political sphere it is happily no longer
viewed as incompatible with good government and social
order to assail opinions that are deemed false and unjust by
individuals or parties in the State, and to employ unsparing
invective and ridicule when such weapons are considered
expedient, in order to discredit these opinions. A large and
growing army of scholars, after bestowing many years of
sincere study on the alleged facts and doctrines of Judaism
and Christianity, have been driven by the irresistible force
of evidence to renounce both these systems, as resting on
superstitious legends and contradictory statements which it
is impossible to reconcile with verifiable history. It is the
conscientious belief of the same class of students, that the
practical results of Jewish and Christian faiths have been
the very reverse of conducive to the intellectual, moral, and
physical advancement of our fellow-subjects. If so, what
reasonable grounds have these religions or any others to
claim immunity from the “ fierce light” of free inquiry, and
if believed to be erroneous and injurious, why should they
be shielded from the shafts of sarcasm it is esteemed not
unlawful to direct against political and social theories and
organisations supposed to be obnoxious ? The late Pro
fessor de Morgan truly said, “ Belief is a state not an act of
the mind.” “ I shall believe has no existence,” he adds,
“ except in a grammar.” To prosecute and imprison men,
therefore, for convictions—the issue of study and reasoning
—and for caricaturing the religious notions of opponents
which they honestly and intelligently hold to be adverse to
the public good, is just as monstrous as it would be for the
strongest political party in the country to institute proceed
ings against an adverse political minority for employing
comic cartoons to expose what the latter should happen to
regard as untrue and pernicious. There no longer exists
any risk of losing one’s head in England for constitutional
opposition to monarchical institutions, even by the aid of
sarcastic cartoons and the advocacy of Republicanism. The
time is not far distant when equal freedom will be allowed
in striving to put down the established faith.
Indeed, ever since the dawn of history the representatives
of rival religions have fought their battles with ridicule and
jest as well as with fire and sword; and so far as the veil
separating historic from prehistoric times can be lifted in
�10
Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
the tablet inscriptions of India, Egypt, Assyria, and Europe,
there is good reason to believe that religious passions were
displayed by the Lingaites and the Yonites, with a similar
disregard of taste and humanity, in their solemn contentions
as to whether the male or female principle in nature was
the proper object of pious veneration. It is no longer
doubted by scholars that what imparted zest in the eyes of
the cultured Greek to the sneering gibes of Aristophanes
and the profane inuendoes of Euripides—pointed at con
temporary divinities—was that the philosophers of those
days had come to look upon the mythological and cere
monial structure around them, so jealously guarded by an
ignorant, cringing, and superstitious priesthood, as simply a
huge sham to be laughed down. Much the same feeling
was doubtless present in the mind of Cicero when he
wondered how two augurs could meet and keep their gravity,
considering the puerile notions they professed, and the in
anities of the Roman temple service, from which their living
was derived. Assuming—but only for the sake of argument
—the narrative of the prophet Elijah’s contest with the
priests of Baal on Mount Carmel to be genuine, could any
attack upon the religion of the latter appear more grossly
insulting or more blasphemous to them than the insinuation
that the cause of their prayers not being answered by the
Phoenician deity was that he might either be asleep or away
on a hunting expedition? Moreover, Jesus is reported in
the gospel story to have been actually charged with blas
phemy by the Jews of his day.
But although the ultra-Protestant party, with whom you
sympathise, had no scruple, in the heat of past controver
sies with Roman Catholics, about caricaturing the Pope, his
cardinals, and their doctrines, in pictures which could not
fail to be extremely provoking to conscientious adherents
of the Catholic faith, your own co-religionists have ever be
trayed a thin-skinned sensitiveness and an air of outraged
infallibility when the lex talionis has been applied by sceptics
in a similar fashion to themselves. When any of their
beliefs have been ridiculed by pictorial squibs they have
invariably taken the highest possible ground, and posed as
the privileged recipients of heaven’s secrets, and the possessors
of a supernatural key of interpretation, of which they claim
to have a chartered monopoly. Do you forget that the
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
11
establishment of Christianity is very largely indebted indeed
to the aid of ridicule and abuse which it applied to other
faiths ? Milman, in his book on “ Latin Christianity,” says
that religious pictures with a strong dash of both these
qualities in them were used alternately with bloody perse
cution in converting the Bulgarians. It is principally
by pictures of ideal “ Holy Families,” “ Crucifixions,”
“ Madonnas,” of the burial and resurrection and ascen
sion of Jesus, of the various alleged miraculous exhibitions
of his power in turning water into wine, conversing with
Moses and Elias on the Mount of Transfiguration, prevent
ing Peter from sinking, agonising in the garden of Geth
semane, etc., etc., that the adhesion of the priest-ridden and
the credulous has been gained to the Christian faith. I
venture to believe that in the dissemination of Christianity
the art of the painter and the sculptor has played quite as
powerful a part as the preacher’s tongue. It is the con
firmed persuasion of Agnostics, Comtists, Secularists, and
men of science in our day that all the Bible representations
of miracles are the creations of superstitious ages. If, then,
the inculcation of Christian beliefs is so widely due to the
influence of pictures, can there be anything intrinsically
wrong in answering and ridiculing pictures, or the teaching
these convey, believed to have no groundwork in nature and
authentic history, by pictures designed to expose a wild
delusion, by which the minds of millions are enchained in
darkness, and their lives rendered cheerless and unprofitable ?
I may here take the opportunity of stating, from personal
knowledge, that Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries,
in India and China, spend a considerable portion of the
time redeemed from their mutual denunciation of each
other’s churches, in flagrantly misrepresenting the true sig
nificance of the ancient religions they vainly seek to displace
by their own conflicting and repulsive dogmas.
I respectfully ask, as a subject of the Queen, and as a
native of that portion of Her Majesty’s Empire which is
immeasurably the most populous, if blasphemy laws, framed
in a benighted age, are to be revived in England for the
purpose of silencing a few poor men without social import
ance, who have presented ludicrous pictures of miracles at
tributed to the days of the Hebrew patriarchs, prophets and
kings, and to the lifetime of Jesus—miracles, the incredibility
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Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
of which is proclaimed no less distinctly, if in a style more
in accord with the canons of refined taste, by scholars and
men of science—is no protection to be afl'orded by British rule
in India and Ceylon to the feelings of Brahmins, Mahometans,
Parsees and Buddhists, which are outraged daily by the vulgar
onslaughts of half-educated Christian missionaries, who so far
from having the most elementary acquaintance with Eastern
faiths, do not in any competent manner even understand their
own ? The profound intimacy of many of the natives
in India and China, according to their several creeds, with
the Vedas, Zenda-Vesta, Tripitika, Taotseekeng, Lykeng
and the Sastras, and the earnest dependence the mass of
Eastern people place on these and other sacred books for
spiritual strength and guidance, render them peculiarly sen
sitive to what they hold to be the blasphemy of true religion
in the preaching of an upstart, intolerant, and persecuting
faith like Christianity—a faith, moreover, not only the
junior of some Indian systems by thousands of years—but
only indorsed, even nominally, by a small minority of the
inhabitants of the world. To give some idea of the light in
which educated natives in India view the faith that is
guarded by the penal enactments of the blasphemy laws in
this country, it may be mentioned that many Hindus have
for years openly defied Government influence, preached
against missionary teaching, and circulated broadcast pla
cards cautioning the people against Christianity. Here are
extracts from one of these mural prints : “ Leave these
fanatics .... they cannot answer a simple question seri
ously put to them in connexion with what they say; they
SENSELESSLY ABUSE YOU AND YOUR FAITHS without having
studied them at all; they are hirelings working against truth
and common sense, and against the dictates of conscience for
a paltry piece of earthly bread. ... You know well that
their harangues cannot stand discussion. Do not waste
time with impostors ; serve the God of the universe heartily;
He alone will save all who so serve Him.”
These words exhibit an attitude of the higher order of
native mind—becoming daily more conspicuous—towards
the religion which silences those who ridicule it in England
with imprisonment; and which is at the same time impu
dently obtruded upon cultivated Hindus under the patron
age of Church of England dignitaries and Nonconformist
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
13
missionary societies. If the long-suffering Brahmins were
to show their resentment by sending propagandists to
sneer down Christianity, through the press in Lon
don, in the ribald tone often adopted with impunity
by unlearned Christian advocates in the East towards
the older faiths, the hospitality of a gaol would be
promptly provided for them. The accustomed oppo
nents of Christianity in this land of social, political, and
religious anomalies, are mostly met with an imputation of
base motives or an ebullition of unreasoning and fanatical
sentiment. Sober and honorable argument, derived from
first-hand historic sources, Christians — apparently from
conscious weakness—as a rule, studiously avoid. But in
the name of even-handed justice, if there are to be blasphemy
laws so appropriately administered by judges of your own
calibre in England against foes of Christianity, why should
my fellow-countrymen in the East be denied laws to put
down Christianity which appears to them as blasphemously
repugnant as the grotesque representations of Bible tales in
the Freethinker can possibly be to English Christians ?
Are you aware that out of a total population of 1,474
millions on the globe considerably less than one-third are in
any sense whatever Christian? After 1700 years of pro
selytism by the pulpit, the missionary, the press, by whole
sale slaughter—as in the Crusades and the Thirty Years’
War—by imprisoning, thumbscrewing, choking, quartering,
drowning, and burning enormous holocausts of martyrs
throughout Europe for the sin of sincere heresy, this is the
entire external result. General Forlong, in his recent learned
work on the faiths of mankind,1 remarking on the religious
statistics referred to above, says : “ It especially behoves
the Protestant to be undogmatic and humble, for though
assisted largely both by the secular and spiritual arm, and
with all the most approved machinery of sectarial combina
tion and discipline, only some 71 millions out of the total
1,474 millions have even nominally joined his churches, and
from none is the falling away becoming more prominent,
and in none is half-heartedness more the rule than in the
best Protestant communities.” In presence of these incontro
vertible facts the enforcement of a blasphemy law—especially
1 “Rivers of Life,” etc. (Quaritch), vol. ii., p. 590.
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Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
in a country where not more than one-eighth of the adult popula
tion attend any place of worship, where the State Church is
virtually disowned by more than half the worshipping com
munity, and where a fervent religionist is often regarded by
the multitude as one to be treated, in common worldly
transactions, with suspicion, amounts to intolerable in
solence. But your bearing as an English judge repre
senting the Inquisition spirit of the dominant faith, and
partially usurping the functions of a Protestant pope,
in lecturing and condemning the editor, publisher, and
vendor of the Freethinker, becomes still more objectionable
when it is remembered that your judgment and sentence
de facto include 1,074 millions out of 1,474 millions of the
human race, since the estimated number of Christians of
all descriptions only amounts to 400 millions. By the
definition of the English law of blasphemy you consign, in
spirit, to prison in the persons of these culprits 550 millions
Buddhists, 240 millions Mahometans, 180 millions of Hin
dus, 2 millions Seiks, 8 millions Jews, and 94 millions of
other and nondescript faiths, who reject with scorn and
contempt the special Christian doctrines fenced round by
the blasphemy laws. Nay, the dimensions of your devout
audacity have not yet been adequately measured. At least
one-third of the 400 millions set down as Christians openly
or secretly repudiate orthodoxy, and these also are poten
tially included in your judicial excommunication and sentence
of imprisonment. Even the venerable Lord Shaftesbury—
himself an acknowledged stickler for Christian “ Evangelicism ”—shows a vastly more intelligent appreciation of the
teaching of religious statistics on this head than you seem
to do. When Lord Redesdale brought forward his Bill a
year ago for the imposition of a Theistic test in the Upper
House, the former peer frankly urged in opposition : “ A
law of this kind passed in our day would be in absolute and
unqualified discord with all the opinions, feelings, and
tendencies of men around us.” He added that “ those who
allowed the existence of a First Cause, but deny his inter
vention in the affairs of men, who admit no revelation of a
future state, or any system of rewards and punishments, may be
counted by myriads.” This is strikingly attested by an
examination of Max Muller’s estimate (1871—78) of the
world’s religions, corrected to date by General Forlong.
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
15
Against 648 millions, or 44 per cent, of the population of
the earth (including Christians, Islamis, Jews, etc.), who
believe in a personal god, a soul, and immortality, there are
826 millions, or 56 per cent, of the entire population of the
earth, who deny or doubt a future life and the existence of
a soul apart from matter. Among the latter unbelieving or
agnostic element there are many millions who have reached
the convictions to which they cling after prolonged, anxious,
and learned inquiry, and all such—branded by you as blas
phemers in posse or in esse—who hear of your judgment and
the pious harangue which accompanied it, must take your
words as a personal affront, in so far as these non-Christians
concur with the victims of your judicial bias in rejecting
Christianity as a historical illusion, a philosophical ana
chronism, and a misleading scheme of morals.
By your indiscreet zeal for the faith dominant in England
because established by law, you and your co-abettors of a
resentful orthodoxy have defeated the end ordinary pru
dence would have sought to attain by totally opposite
means. You have dragged into notoriety an obscure print,
the very existence of which was only known to an extremely
restricted circle, who had already been long alienated from
popular creeds and churches. The Freethinker was never
advertised, as learned sceptical works usually are, in the
great publishers’ lists, in the daily press, and in the cultured
weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies, sold at railway book
stalls and obtainable in public reading rooms. This illstarred prosecution, with which your name will be as imperishably associated as that of Jeffreys with the “ bloody
assize,” has done for the spread of the Freethinker precisely
what the malicious and unconstitutional persecution of Mr.
Bradlaugh by Mr. Newdegate, Sir Henry Tyler and other
morbid religionists in the House of Commons, has done for
the victimised junior member for Northampton, in increasing
his power as a teacher and his popularity as a leader among
the toiling millions of the land.
Again, the most deplorable aspect in the exposure of
Bible faith to scorn by the three defendants immediately in
question is not only the supposed discord between unsophisti
cated reason and many of the contents of the Christian
sacred books on the one hand, and the evidence in sup
port of the authenticity on the other, but it is the melan
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Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
choly and senseless inconsistencies in the creeds and prac
tices of Christians themselves.
In one of the opening “ sentences” of the Morning Ser
vice of the Church of England Prayer Book the clergyman
reads: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteous
ness.” But as the same Service proceeds reason is staggered
by the unexpected announcement that confession of sin is
not enough to secure forgiveness: “ Whosoever will be
saved before all things [i.e., notwithstanding above, beyond
and before repentance, confession, and the turning away
from evil ways] it is necessary that he hold the Catholic
faith, which faith except everyone do keep whole and un
defiled without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” And what
is this faith ? The bewildered penitent must believe that
“ the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost
is God yet “ we are forbidden by the Catholic religion to
say there be three Gods or three Lords ” ! If these meta
physical propositions were found dissociated from religion
they would be looked upon by the bulk of sane men as
simply nonsense. Again, one of the articles informs
us that the true God is “ without body, parts, or
passions,” while the Church commands that Christ, who
was a man with “ body, parts, and passions,” is to be
worshipped as God. A passage in the Old Testament,
adopted by the Prayer Book, tells us that “ the Lord is a
man of war,” and in another place the same book declares
Him to be “ the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
Jesus is referred to in the New Testament as the son of
Joseph, and almost in the same breath is represented as owing
his physical existence solely to conception in the womb of
a virgin, “ by the power of the Holy Ghost.” How a spirit
could possibly be the parent of a human being, brought into
the world by the ordinary parturition of a pregnant woman,
however, remains totally incomprehensible. The prayer
perpetually ascends from Anglican priests : “ Give peace in
our time, O Lord.” Nevertheless, the Church is incorpo
rated with the State, and the state is engaged at intervals in
sanguinary encounters with foreign tribes and governments,
and is most frequently actuated by flagrant worldly ambition
in making war. But the flexible and accommodating piety of
the clergy and their credulous followers, who do not pause
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
17
to contemplate the iniquitous inconsistency thus practised, is
ever ready to petition the Christian deity, whenever war is
declared, to destroy and “confound” the foes of their
sovereign, whether these foes be Christians or Pagans. In
seasons of excessive drought, “ bishops and curates ” with a
preposterously selfish, ungrateful and unscientific disregard
of the unalterable laws of nature, implore God to interfere—
he can only do so by a miracle—and, at more than a risk of
the serious disturbance of natural forces, and of inconveni
ence to dwellers in other parts of the globe (which an answer
to prayer renders inevitable) pray that sufficient moisture
should fall to nourish the crops. A corresponding violation
of physical law is similarly demanded by the ecclesias
tical authorities when the watery element in the sky un
duly preponderates, and fair weather is asked for. The
same line of remark applies with equal appropriateness to
“ prayers for the sick.” These irrational proceedings might
be excusable in times before the principles of science were
understood. But for a body of instructed men to continue
so ludicrous an outrage on reason, looks very much, in these
days of popular scientific education, like the deliberate and
hypocritical perpetuation on their part, from interested
motives, of a childish delusion. The mummeries connected
with “ baptismal regeneration,” “ partaking of the body and
blood of Christ,” with the rites of “ Confirmation,” and the
“ Burial of the Dead,” are only fit to be relegated to the
same category of effete superstitions. The mystery-monger
ing forms gone through in “consecrating” bishops with
nolo episcopari on the lips of the candidates for office, and
the passionate hankering after palaces, princely incomes,
and episcopal dignities, in their hearts, constitute the most
revolting form of sacrilege and blasphemy that could well be
imagined. We are taught that God “ before the founda
tion of the world hath constantly decreed, by his counsel
secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those
whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to
bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels
made to honor.” At the same time, with transcendent theo
logical incongruity, the Christian preacher charges upon his
unbelieving hearers the entire responsibility for not comply
ing with the invitations proffered to them, to enter the
“ kingdom of God,” and to cultivate a spiritual and moral
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Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
life. The inference deducible from these contradictory
dogmas is, that God is either unable or unwilling to over
come the obstacles of salvation presented by the declared in
disposition of the human will. If he is unable, he obviously
cannot be omnipotent. If, on the contrary, he be omnipo
tent and is unwilling, he is chargeable with cruelty in not
devising suitable means to ensure the adoption by mankind
of the appointed course leading to eternal happiness. But
the injustice of the supreme being in permitting a single
member of the human family to perish, is rendered still
more apparent by the consideration that a complete “ atone
ment” has been actually made for the express purpose of
propitiating divine justice, and removing the moral barriers
said to be opposed, by the governmental character and rela
tions of the deity, to the deliverance of transgressors from
the penal consequences of sin. There is here involved, con
sequently, a further imputation on the divine perfections.
Although a vicarious substitute has been provided and
accepted for sinners of all time, a certain indispensable con
dition of mind is, nevertheless, required on their part. To
the attainment of this condition the vast majority seem
utterly unequal, and heavenly wisdom has strangely omitted
to make the necessary provision for supplying this lack of
moral power in those who die unsaved, to enable them to
take practical advantage of the sacrificial merits of the in
nocent victim—the second person of the godhead—who
underwent the full measure of suffering needed to expiate
their sins. I defy any reasonable person to ponder these
repellent doctrines without feeling contempt and disgust
for the tyrannical and capricious character in which they
exhibit the Almighty. For the honor of those very idea
lised attributes of justice, kindness, and truth, to which all
rightly constituted minds instinctively do homage, we are
bound to loathe and scout the portraiture of an immoral
God enforced by orthodox Christianity, and even the coarsest
caricatures are not to be despised, if by their aid reverence
for so odious a deity can be dislodged from people’s minds
and aversion inspired instead.
The highest accredited authority on Christian morals,
Jesus himself, forbids swearing under all circumstances
whatsoever: “ swear not at all.” Yet the clergy and ad
herents of the National Church are at the present moment
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
19
moving heaven and earth to obtain signatures to memorials
addressed to Parliament, begging that the un-Christian
method of swearing allegiance, by members preliminary to
taking their seats, shall be retained. In the fervor of
clerical zeal to enforce a religious test—for the sole purpose
of excluding a certain legally-elected representative who
happens to disbelieve in the unintelligible tenet of “ a per
sonal God,” but who in preferring affirmation to an oath is
more Christian than Christians themselves—they are madly
Aying in the face of the plainest Christian precepts, and jus
tifying their conduct in so doing as promoting the “ greater
glory of God ” 1
The three leading sections composing the Church and the
clergy profess, in public ceremonial, to be members of one
happy Christian family, whose motto is, according to the
prayer of their Master, “ forgive us our trespasses as we for
give them that trespass against us.” But if a Ritualist like
Mr. Green should trespass on “LowChurch” notions of the
rubrics, and multiply altar decorations, even though with
the avowed object of exalting the commonly acknowledged
founder of Christianity, the boasted charity and brotherly
love of that religion, loudly maintained in theory, is sum
marily set aside in practice, and the well-meaning trans
gressor is compelled to expiate his offence in the same abode
with felons and murderers. “ High,” “ Low,” and “ Broad”
pastors alike pray for spiritual guidance, to understand the
one revelation given in the Bible, and respectively believe
the solicited boon to be attainable. But no sooner do they
rise from their supplications than they appear to forget the
most elementary amenities of civilised life, and indulge in
bitter mutual objurgations against each other, as possessed
by deadly error. What shall we say of the congregations
which statedly worship in churches and chapels throughout
Christendom? Heaven forbid that those associated with
them who are thoughtful, generous, and true-hearted should
be ignored; but what are these bodies, as a rule, except
centres of bigotry, nests of scandal, hotbeds of envy, malice,
worldliness, and all uncharitableness? The history of
Christianity has been almost one unvarying recoi’d of
priestly ambition, division, jealousy, heartburning, and
strife, alternating with brutal cruelty. Christian sects have
largely degenerated in this country into boundary-lines of
�20
Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
social distinction. People of ancient family, and others of
the British Philistine type, who vulgarly aspire to the imitation of the external trappings of social greatness, conform
to popular religious appointments rather to escape the sus
picion of being odd than from any intelligent conception of
the meaning of religion, which has been long since buried
from the multitude in dogmatic Shibboleths and the dreary
routine of ecclesiastical forms. The time was when, under
the Roman Empire, to exchange fashionable Paganism for
a religion then despised by statesmen and philosophers
afforded some guarantee for earnestness and sincerity. But
churches and sects have long been refuges for semi-imbeciles,
fanatics, and hypocrites, who suffer grievously in mental
strength and noble aim when compared with those elevated
and wholesome natures outside psalm-singing institutions,
who view Christianity as a huge excrescence abnormally
superinduced upon real human interests, and who are per
fectly satisfied in following the dictates of physical and
moral law written upon the constitution of the universe.
The class of blasphemers most potent for evil to orthodox
creeds and churches is not the candid, though sneering,
sceptic. The true foes of Christendom are the traitors in
the. Christian camp. It is the insincere formalists—and
their name is legion in all Christian bodies—who openly
avow with a light heart most stupendous beliefs which really
serious thinkers would deem it appalling to conceive or
utter, and who persistently belie their faith by a tortuous
and sensual life. How many tens of thousands every Sun
day, including the highest ranks in wealth and social position,
confess themselves “ miserable sinners ” not only with a total
absence of becoming emotion, but with the fixed intention
of returning, when their hollow forms of devotion have been
decently gone through, to their gluttony, whoredoms, cheattying, their grinding down of the poor, their fighting
for unjust “ vested interests,” their fluttering amidst the
jewelled shams of fashionable society, their participation in
the organised tricks of finance and trade. The real blas
phemers, who are fast undermining the Christian faith, are
those shameless self-deceivers who assent to the doctrine
that the deity omits from his perpetual and faultless record
no thought, word, feeling, purpose, or action attributable to
them, who believe in a quenchless hell for heartless wrong
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
21
doers, and who nevertheless live from day to day as if their
repetitions of creeds and prayers were an unblushing false
hood, as if God, heaven, and hell were visionary phantoms,
and as if their real aim was to draw down the scorn and
hatred of rational minds upon the whole fabric of their
faith and practice. This is the canker to be chiefly feared,
and the one that is ceaselessly gnawing at the root of Chris
tianity. By this insidious influence within its own pale it
is destined ultimately to crumble and decay. But the great
dignitaries of the church are too busy in warding off the
imaginary earthquakes and thunderstorms of Atheism by
which they fancy the ark to be endangered, to watch the rapid
progress of dry-rot, of intellectual supineness, spiritual
insensibility, and moral turpitude, in the very pillars and
foundations of the structure. With infatuated blindness
the clergy and those who echo their feeble whine of
distress about “ infidelity,” vainly suppose they can avert
the impending decomposition of creeds and rituals by
sending to prison obscure inventors of lampoons against
the faith, by reiterating holy catchwords about “ the pro
fanation of the oath,” and “ blotting the name of God out
of the statute-book,” by memorialising Parliament to commit
the injustice of refusing his seat to a man who has honestly
tried, without success, to believe in the Yaveh of the Jews
and the Trinity of the Christians. The spectacle, though
sad, has its ludicrous aspect, reminding one somewhat of the
Laputan philosophers on their floating island, soaring in
ether above the solid earth, lost in profitless abstractions
which bore no practical relation to the sublunary realities
beneath them. But the day of reckoning is on the wing,
when the laity and clergy alike will be roused, nolens nolens,
from the swoon of delusion into which they have been
lulled by a stupifying orthodoxy. They will then be
abundantly convinced that, instead of prints like the Free
thinker deriving their power to make Christianity ridiculous
from any profane love in their editors of bringing exalted
realities into contempt, the sting was given to atheistic sneers
—whether expressed in words or in caricatures—by the
awaking sense of doubt in the heart of Christendom itself
as to whether there is not after all something unsound and
grotesque in its whole system of doctrine and practice
answering to the dreaded homethrusts of the “infidel.”
�22
Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
I have but touched the fringe of the tangled mass of
Christian incoherencies. Many volumes might be written,
setting forth the “ pious frauds,” forgeries, inventions, and
interpolations in classic and patristic writings resorted to by
those concerned under Constantine, as well as before his day,
in bolstering up the hollow pretensions of Christianity to be
a supernatural revelation. The accumulation of proof in
respect of these extensive and varied lying machinations has
become, during the last half-century, simply overwhelming,
as those who will take the trouble to study the right books
on the subject without prejudice may easily discover for
themselves. It is now found just as impossible for students
who^have given the requisite amount of time and attention
to the question to believe in the miraculous stories of the
Old and New Testament as to believe in the Olympian
gods or in the suckling of Romulus and Remus by a
wolf. Let the blasphemy laws do their worst, and let their
penalties be equitably extended, as they ought to be, to
cultivated and University-bred “infidel” writers; the sooner
will the disestablishment and downfall of Christianity be
accomplished. Let the clergy and the more bigoted among
the laity try with redoubled effort to stamp out Atheism at
the cost of Atheists being denied their just political rights,
and the numbers will be the more rapidly swelled who
execrate the fanaticism, oppression, and injustice for which
ecclesiastical authorities of every grade and of every age
have been notorious. Unbelievers look in vain in the
statute-book of this “ Christian nation ” for any law the
protection of which they can invoke against the malicious
and wilful misrepresentations of their conscientious convic
tions by Christian priests and their votaries. But as those
enslaved by the popular faith are in so far incapacitated
from impartially seeking truth and doing justice, the gross
unfairness of this one-sided arrangement is never acknow
ledged by them.
I only wish to say in conclusion that the blasphemy laws
—as every intelligent reader of history knows—are but the
relics of a superstitious age. They belong to a time when
the doctrine was enforced by rulers on the people at the
point of the bayonet, that kingcraft and priestcraft were
equally sacred, mutually dependent on each other for sup
port, and must stand or fall together as God-given institu-
�Reflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
23
lions. Christianity, in some form most plastic to the
political aims of the monarch, was adopted and sustained by
the State. Ranks of priests, from the curate to the Arch
bishop, were developed—corresponding to the graduated
positions of the people in the social scale—for the purpose of
making “ the divine right ” of sovereigns and their claims
upon the absolute obedience of their subjects religiously felt
in every class, from the beggar to the peer. Heirs of
hereditary titles and estates have always been loudest in
upholding Christianity, but particularly that phase of it
which happened to form a buttress to the recognised social
distinctions in the country. Hence the bitterness with
which every description of Nonconformity has—until the
power of the latter became a strong political factor—been
ostracised and hunted down. The sovereign, for expedient
political reasons, assumed the august function of “ by the
Grace of God Defender of the Faith,” and it became indis
pensable that those rubrics and modes of service should be
appointed by the State best fitted to exalt the monarch in
the eyes of the people as pre-eminently “the servant of
God,” born to rule and to be obeyed. The alliance between
the State and the Church became so inextricably close that
it was regarded as equally sinful to cast ridicule upon the
monarchy and upon the State faith. The suppression of
reproachful criticism, in reference to the political adminis
tration of the country, was carried to the last pitch of in
tolerance by the Stuarts. But now-a-days it appears to be
possible for persons of avowed Republican principles to
discharge creditably official duties as Cabinet ministers.
Proportionate freedom, however, is still withheld by law in
opposing the State religion. Monarchy may be jeered at
with impunity, but the religion of the State is still guarded
from infidel taunts by blasphemy laws, and hard penalties en
forced by pious judgesenflamed with superstitious and partisan
acrimony against jesting critics of the faith. Nevertheless, I
make bold to predict, sir, that the days of Christianity as a
religion credited by independent thinkers are numbered.
It has already been mortally “ wounded in the house of its
friends,” and the occasional offence of outsiders is that they
now and then betray their undisguised satisfaction at the
accelerated progress of its dissolution. The resuscitation of
your superannuated and expiring religion cannot be effected
�24
lieflexions on the Blasphemy Prosecution.
by heavy sentences, and sermonic platitudes directed from
the judicial bench against rank sceptics, as if such men could
or would destroy any true thing in the earth. The convulsed
rancor you displayed through the trial in question, and the
harsh punishment you inflicted, were alike an unconscious
tribute on your part to power in the culprits which you
foolishly exaggerated, a painful confession that Christianity
was too weak to withstand the sarcasm of its foes without
the aid of the secular arm, and without a glaring violation
of that charity towards the erring which Christians are
never weary of extolling as the crown and glory of their
religion. I commend to you the sentiment of Carlyle, at
the close of his essay on Voltaire: “It is unworthy a reli
gious man to view an irreligious one with alarm or aver
sion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and
brotherly commiseration. If he seek truth is he not our brother,
and to be pitied? If he do not seek truth is he not
STILL OUR BROTHER, AND TO BE PITIED STILL MORE ? ”
Ra Mohun Bhotgee.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Reflexions on the blasphemy prosecution : a letter to the Hon. Justice North by a Hindu
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Bhoygee, Ra Mohun
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical reference. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The prosecution of G.W. Foote and others over the Christmas issue of The Freethinker. Signed Ra. Mohum Bhoygee.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1883
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N076
CT74
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Blasphemy
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Blasphemy
Conway Tracts
-
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Text
PUBLISHING CO
NY'S EDITION.
A lecture
DELIVERED TO IMMENSE AUDIENCES IN THE
METHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
63, FLEET STREET, E.O.
1883.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�[“A brilliant, gonial gentleman; a man of brains, and a heart as tender as a
woman's; a man greatly respected and admired by all who know him, greatly
detested by many among those who do not, and who do not agree with him in
opinion; a man who does his own thinking, and who says what he thinks, and
thinks before he says, is about to address you in review of a great historical
character. He will do this from his own standpoint, and in his own way. Had
he lived one hundred years ago, and succeeded in doing this, he would, under the
forms of law, had been imprisoned — if, indeed, he were suffered to live —his
children taken from him, his property confiscated, his name traduced and his
memory vilified. Times have changed. The world of thought and opinion moves
as well as the world of matter. He may speak to you here to-day, freely and
without reserve. He may give his honest thought. You have come to hear him
and not me. Let me introduce him—Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll.” ]
�MISTAKES OF MOSES.
Ladies and Gentlemen : Now and then some one
asks me why I am endeavoring to interfere with the
religious faith of others, and why I try to take from
the world the consolation naturally arising from a
belief in eternal fire. And I answer, I want to do
what little I can to make my country truly free. I
want to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people.
I want it so that we can differ upon all these questions,
and yet grasp each other’s hands in genuine friend
ship. I want, in the first place, to free the clergy. I
am a great friend of theirs, but they don’t seem to
have found it out generally. I want it so that every
minister will not be a parrot, not an owl sitting upon
a ‘dead limb of the tree of knowledge, and hooting the
hoots that have been hooted for 1800 years. But I
want it so that each one can be an investigator, a
thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand
enough so that they will not only allow him to think,
but will demand that he shall think, and give to them
the honest truth of his thought. As it is now, ministers
are employed like attorneys—for the plaintiff or the
defendant. If a few people know of a young man in
the neighborhood, maybe, who has not had a good con
stitution—he may not be healthy enough to be wicked
—a young man who has shown no decided talent—
it occurs to them to make him a minister. They con
tribute and send him to some school. If it turns out
that that young man has more of the man in him
than they thought, and he changes his opinion, every
one who contributed will feel himself individually
swindled, and they will follow that young man to the
grave with the poisoned shafts of malice and slander.
�4
Mistakes of Moses.
I want it so that every one will be free—so that a
pulpit will not be a pillory. They have in Massachussetts, at a place called Andover, a kind of minister fac
tory, and every professor in that factory takes an oath
once in five years—that is as long as an oath will last
—that not only has he not during the last five years,
but so help him God, he will not during the next five
years, intellectually advance, and probably there is no
oath he could easier keep. Since the foundation of
that institution there has not been one case of perjury.
They believe the same creed they first taught when the
foundation stone was laid, and now when they send
out a minister they brand him, as hardware from Shef
field and Birmingham. And every man who knows
where he was educated knows his creed, knows every
argument of his creed, every book that he reads, and
just what he amounts to intellectually, and knows he
will shrink and shrivel, and become solemnly stupid,
day after day, until he meets with death. It is all
wrong; it is cruel. Those men should be allowed to
grow. They should have the air of liberty and the
sunshine of thought.
I want to free the schools of our country. I want it
so that when a professor in a college finds some fact
inconsistent with Moses, he will not hide the fact, that
it will not be the worse for him for having discovered
the fact. I wish to see an eternal divorce and separa
tion between church and schools. The common school
is the bread of life; but there should be nothing taught
in the schools except what somebody knows ; and any
thing else should not be maintained by a system of
general taxation. I want its professors so that they
will tell everything they find; that they will be free
to investigate in every direction, and will not be tram
melled by the superstitions of our day. What has
religion to do with facts ? Nothing. Is there any
such thing as Methodist mathematics, Presbyterian
botany, Catholic astronomy, or Baptist biology ? What
has any form of superstition or religion to do with a
fact or with any science? Nothing but to hinder,
delay, or embarrass. I want, then, to free the schools;
and I want to free the politicians, so that a man will
�Mistakes 0/ Moses.
5
not have to pretend that he is a Methodist, or his wife
a Baptist, or his grandmother a Catholic; so that he
can go through a campaign, and when he gets through
will find none of the dust of hypocrisy on his knees.
I want the people splendid enough that when they
desire men to make laws for them, they will take
one who knows something, who has brain enough to
prophesy the destiny of the American Republic, no
matter what his opinions may be upon any religious
subject. Suppose we are in a storm out at sea, and
the billows are washing over our ship, and it is
necessary that some one should reef the topsail, and
a man presents himself. Would you stop him at the
foot of the mast to find out his opinion on the five
points of Calvinism ? What has that to do with it ?
Congress has nothing to do with baptism or any par
ticular creed, and from what little experience I have
had of Washington, very little to do with any kind
of religion whatever. Now, I hope this afternoon
this magnificent and splendid audience will forget
that they are Baptists or Methodists, and remember
that they are men and women. These are the highest
titles humanity can bear—man and woman ; and every
title you add belittles them. Man is the highest ;
woman is the highest. Let us remember that we are
simply human beings, with interests in common. And
let us all remember that our views depend largely
upon the country in which we happen to live. Sup
pose we were born in Turkey, most of us would have
been Mohammedans ; and when we read in the book
that when Mohammed visited heaven he became ac
quainted with an angel named Gabriel, who was so
broad between his eyes that it would take a smart
camel three hundred days to make the journey, we
probably would have believed it. If we did not,
people would say: “ That young man is dangerous ;
he is trying to tear down the fabric of our religion.
What do you propose to give us instead of that angel ?
We cannot afford to trade off an angel of that size
for nothing.” Or if we had been born in India, we
would have believed in a god with three heads. Now,
we believe in three gods with one head. And so we
�6
Mistakes oj Moses.
might make a tour of the world and see that every
superstition that could be imagined by the brain of
man has been in some place held to be sacred.
Now, some one says: “The religion of my father
and mother is good enough for me.” Suppose we all
said that, where would be the progress of the world ?
We would have the rudest and most barbaric religion,
which no one could believe. I do not believe that
it is showing real respect to our parents to believe
something simply because they did. Every good
father and every good mother wish their children to
find out more than they knew ; every good father
wants his son to overcome some obstacle that he could
not grapple with ; and if you wish to reflect credit
on your father and mother, do it by accomplishing
more than they did, because you live in a better time.
Every nation has had what you call a sacred record,
and the older the more sacred, the more contradictory
and the more inspired is the record. We, of course,
are not an exception, and I propose to talk a little
about what is called the Pentateuch, a book, or a
collection of books, said to have been written by Moses.
And right here in the commencement let me say that
Moses never wrote one word of the Pentateuch—not
one word was written until he had been dust and
ashes for hundreds of years. But as the general
opinion is that Moses wrote these books, I have entitled
this lecture “ The Mistakes of Moses.” For the sake
of this lecture, we will admit that he wrote it. Nearly
every maker of religion has commenced by making
the world ; and it is one of the safest things to do,
because no one can contradict as having been present,
and it gives free scope to the imagination. These
books, in times when there was a vast difference be
tween the educated and the ignorant, became inspired,
and people bowed down and worshipped them.
I saw a little while ago a Bible with immense oaken
covers, with hasps and clasps large enough almost for
a penitentiary, and I can imagine how that book would
be regarded by barbarians in Europe when not more
than one person in a dozen could read and write. In
imagination I saw it carried into the cathedral, heard
�Mistakes of Moses.
7
the chant of the priest, saw the swinging of the censer
and the smoke rising; and when the Bible was put
on the altar I can imagine the barbarians looking at
it and wondering what influence that black book could
have on their lives and future. I do not wonder that
they imagined it was inspired. None of them could
write a book, and consequently when they saw it
they adored it ; they were stricken with awe ; and
rascals took advantage of that awe.
Now they say that the book is inspired. I do not
care whether it is or not; the question is, is it true ?
If it is true it does not need to be inspired. Nothing
needs inspiration except a falsehood or a mistake. A
fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth
scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every
other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell
whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit any
thing except another lie made for the express purpose ;
and, finally, someone gets tired of lying, and the last
lie will not fit the next fact, and then there is a chance
for inspiration. Right then and there a miracle is
needed. The real question is : In the light of science,
in the light of the brain and heart of the nineteenth
century, is this book true ? The gentleman who wrote
it begins by telling us that God made the universe out
of nothing. That I cannot conceive ; it may be so, but
I cannot conceive it. Nothing, in the light of raw
material, is, to my mind, a decided and disastrous
failure. I cannot imagine of nothing being made into
something, any more than I can of something being
changed back into nothing. I cannot conceive of force
aside from matter, because force, to be force, must be
active, and unless there is matter there is nothing for
force to act upon, and consequently it cannot be active.
So I simply say I cannot comprehend it. I cannot
believe it. I may roast for this, but it is my honest
opinion. The next thing he proceeds to tell us is that
God divided the darkness from the light; and right
here let me say when I speak about God I simply mean
the being described by the Jews. There may be in
immensity some being beneath whose wing the uni
verse exists, whose every thought is a glittering star,
�8
Mistakes of Moses.
but I know nothing about him—not the slightest—and
this afternoon I am simply talking about the being
described by the Jewish people. When I say God, I
mean him. Moses describes God dividing the light
from the darkness. I suppose that at that time they
must have been mixed. You can readily see how light
and darkness can get mixed. They must have been
entities. The reason I think so is because in that same
book I find that darkness overspread Egypt so thick
that it could be felt, and they used to have on exhihition in Rome a bottle of -the darkness that once over
spread Egypt. The gentleman who wrote this in
imagination saw God dividing light from the darkness.
I am sure the man who wrote it believed darkness to
be an entity, a something, a tangible thing that can be
mixed with light.
The next thing that he informs us is that God divided
the waters above the firmament from those below the
firmament. The man who wrote that believed the
firmament to be a solid affair. And that is what the
Gods did. You recollect the Gods came down and made
love to the daughters of men—and I never blamed
them for it. I have never read a description of any
heaven I would not leave on the same errand. That is
where the Gods lived. That is where they kept the
water. It was solid. That is the reason the people
prayed for rain. They believed that an angel could
take a lever, raise a window, and let out the desired
quantity. I find in the Psalms that “ he bowed the
heavens and came down ; ” and we read that the chil
dren of men built a tower to reach the heavens and
climb into the abode of the Gods. The man who wrote
that believed the firmament to be solid. He knew
nothing of the laws of evaporation. He did not know
that the sun wooed with amorous kiss the waves of
the sea, and that, disappointed, their vaporous sighs
changed to tears and fell again as rain. The next
thing he tells us is that the grass began to grow, and
the branches of the trees laughed into blossom, and
the grass ran up the shoulder of the hills, and yet not
a solitary ray of light had left the eternal quiver of the
sun. Not a blade of grass had ever been touched by a
�Mistakes of Moses.
9
gleam of light. And I do not think that grass will
grow to hurt without a gleam of sunshine. I think
the man who wrote that simply made a mistake, and
is excusable to a certain degree. The next day he
made the sun and moon—the sun to rule the day, and
the moon to rule the night. Do you think the man
who wrote that knew anything about the size of the
sun ? I think he thought it was about three feet in
diameter, because I find in some book that the sun
was stopped a whole day to give a general named
Joshua time to kill a few more Amalekites; and the
moon was stopped also. Now, it seems to me the sun
would give light enough without stopping the moon ;
but as they were in the stopping business they did it
just for devilment. At another time, we read, the sun
was turned ten degrees backward to convince Heze
kiah that he was not going to die of a boil. How
much easier it would have been to cure the boil! The
man who wrote that thought the sun was two or three
feet in diameter, and could be stopped and pulled
around like the sun and moon in a theatre. Do you
know that the sun throws out every second of time as
much heat as could be generated by burning eleven
thousand millions tons of coal ? I don’t believe he
knew that, or that he knew the motion of the earth.
I don’t believe he knew that it was turning on its axis
at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, because, if he'
did, he would have understood the immensity of heat
that would have been generated by stopping the world.
It has been calculated by one of the best mathemati
cians and astronomers that to stop the world would
cause as much heat as it would take to burn a lump of
solid coal three times as big as the globe. And yet we
find in that book that the sun was not only stopped,
but turned back ten degrees, simply to convince a gen
tleman that he was not going to die of a boil! They
may say I will be damned if I do not believe that, and
I tell them I will if I do.
Then he gives us the history of astronomy, and he
gives it to us in five words. “ He made the stars also.”
He came very near forgetting the stars. Do you be
lieve that the man who wrote that knew that there are
�10
Mistakes of Moses.
stars as much larger than this earth as this earth is
larger than the apple which Adam and Eve are said to
have eaten ? Do you believe that he knew that this
world is but a speck in the shining, glittering universe
of existence ? I would gather from that that he made
the stars after he got the world done. The telescope,
in reading the infinite leaves of the heavens, has ascer
tained that light travels at the rate of 192,000 miles per
second, and it would require millions of years to come
from some of the stars to this earth. Yet* the beams of
those stars mingle in our atmosphere, so that if those
distant orbs were fashioned when this world began,
we must have been whirling in space not six thousand,
but many millions of years. Do you believe the man
who wrote that as a history of astronomy really knew
that this world was but a speck compared with mil
lions of sparkling orbs ? I do not. He then proceeds
to tell us that God made fish and cattle, and that man
and woman were created male and female. The first
account stops at the second verse of the second chapter.
You see the Bible originally was not divided into
chapters; the first Bible that was ever divided into
chapters in our language was made in the year of grace
1550. The Bible was originally written in the Hebrew
language, and the Hebrew language at that time had
no vowels in writing. It was written entirely with
consonants, and without being divided into chapters
or into verses, and there was no system of punctuation
whatever. After you go home to-night write an
English sentence or two with only consonants close
together, and you will find that it will take twice as
much inspiration to read it as it did to write it. When
the Bible was divided into verses and chapters, the
divisions were not always correct, and so the division
between the first and second chapter of Genesis is not
in the right place. The second account of the creation
commences at the third verse, and it differs from the
first in two essential points. In the first account man
is the last made; in the second, man is made before
the beasts. In the first account man is made “ male
and female ; ” in the second only a man is made, and
there is no intention of making a woman whatever.
�Mistakes of Moses.
11
You will find by reading that second chapter that
■God tried to palm off on Adam a beast as his helpmeet.
Everybody talks about the Bible, and nobody reads it:
that is the reason it is so generally believed. I am
probably the only man in the United States who has
read the Bible through this year. I have wasted that
time, but I had a purpose in view. Just read it, and
you will find, about the twenty-third verse, that God
caused all the animals to walk before Adam in order
that he might name them. And the animals came
like a menagerie into town, and as Adam looked at
all the crawlers, jumpers, and creepers, this God stood
by to see what he would call them. After this proces
sion passed, it was pathetically remarked : “ Yet was
there not found any helpmeet for Adam.” Adam
didn’t see anything that he could fancy. And I am
glad he didn’t. If he had, there would not have been
a Freethinker in this world; we should have all died
orthodox. And finding Adam was so particular, God
had to make him a helpmeet; and, having used up the
nothing, he was compelled to take part of the man to
make the woman with, and he took from the man a
rib. How did he get it ? And then imagine a God
with a bone in his hand, and about to start a woman,
trying to make up his mind whether to make a blonde
or a brunette. Right here it is only proper that 1
should warn you of the consequences of laughing at
any story in the Holy Bible. When you come to die,
your laughing at this story will be a thorn in your
pillow. As you look back upon the record of your
life, no matter how many men you have wrecked and
ruined, and no matter how many women you have de
ceived and deserted—all that may be forgiven you;
but if you recollect that you have laughed at God’s
book you will see, through the shadows of death, the
leering looks of fiends and the forked tongues of
devils. Let me show you how it will be. For in
stance, it is the day of judgment. When the man is
•called up by the recording secretary, or whoever does
the cross-examining, he says to his soul: “ Where are
you from ? ” “ I am from the world.” “ Yes, sir.
What kind of a man were you ? ” “ Well, I don’t like
�12
Mistakes of Moses.
to talk about myself.” “ But you have to. What kind
of a man were you?” “Well, I was a good fellow; I
loved my wife, I loved my children. My home was
my heaven ; my fireside was my paradise, and to sit
there and see the lights and shadows falling on the
faces of those I love, that to me was a perpetual joy.
I never gave one of them a solitary moment of pain.
I don’t owe a dollar in the world, and I left enough
to pay my funeral expenses, and keep the wolf of
want from the door of the house I loved. That is
the kind of man I am.” “Did you belong to any
church ? ” “I did not. They were too narrow for me.
They were always expecting to be happy simply be
cause somebody else was to be damned.” “Well, did
you believe that rib story ? ” “ What rib story ? Do
you mean that Adam and Eve business ? No, I did not.
To tell you the God’s truth, that was a little more than
I could swallow ” “ To hell with him ! Next. Where
are you from?” “I’m from the world, too.” “ Do1
you belong to any church?” “Yes, sir, and to the
Young Men’s Christian Association.” “ What is your
business ? ” “ Cashier in a bank.” “ Did you ever run
off with any of the money ? ” “ I don’t like to tell, sir.”
“Well, but you have to.” “Yes, sir, I did.” “What
kind of a bank did you have ? ” “ A savings’ bank.”
“ How much did you run off with ?” “ One hundred
thousand dollars.” “ Did you take anything else along
with you?” “Yes, sir.” “What?” “I took my
neighbor’s wife.” “ Did you have a wife and children
of your own?” “Yes, sir.” “And you deserted
them ? ” “ Oh, yes ; but such was my confidence in
God that I believed he would take care of them.”
“ Have you heard of them since?” “No, sir.” “Did
you believe that rib story ? ” “ Ah, bless your soul,,
yes! I believed all of it, sir; I often used to be sorry
that there were not harder stories yet in the Bible, so
that I could show what my faith could do.” “ You
believed it, did you?” “Yes, with all my heart.”
“ Give him a harp.”
I simply wanted to show you how important it is to
believe these stories. Of all the authors in the world
God hates a critic the worst. Having got this woman
�Mistakes of Moses.
13
done he brought her to the man, and they started
housekeeping, and a few minutes afterwards a snake
came through a crack in the fence and commenced to
talk with her on the subject of fruit. She was not
acquainted with the neighborhood, and she did not know
whether snakes talked or not, or whether they knew
anything about the apples or not. Well, she was
misled, and the husband ate some of those apples and
laid it all on his wife; and there is where the mistake
was made. God ought to have rubbed him out at once.
He might have known that no good could come of
starting the world with a man like that. They were
turned out. Then the trouble commenced, and people
got worse and worse. God, you must recollect, was
holding the reins of government, but he did nothing for
them. He allowed them to live 669 years without
knowing their A. B. C. He never started a school, not
even a Sunday school. He didn’t even keep his own
boys at home. And the world got worse every day,
and finally he concluded to drown them. Yet that
same God has the impudence to tell me how to raise
my own children. What would you think of a neigh
bor who had just killed his babes, giving you his views
on domestic economy ? God found that he could do
nothing with them, and he said : “ I will drown them
all except a few.” And he picked out a fellow by the
name of Noah, that had been a bachelor for 500 years.
If I had to drown anybody, I would have drowned
him. I believe that Noah had then been married
something like 100 years. God told him to build a
boat, and he built one 500 feet long, 80 or 90 feet
broad, and 55 feet high, with one door shutting on the
outside, and one window 22 inches square. If Noah
had any hobby in the world it was ventilation. Then
into this ark he put a certain number of all the animals
in the world. Naturalists have ascertained that at
this time there were at least 100,000 insects necessary
to go into the ark, about 40,000 mammalia, 1,600 reptilla, to say nothing about the mastodon, the elephant
and the animalculae, of which thousands live upon a
single leaf, and which cannot be seen by the naked
eye. Noah had no microscope, and yet he had to pick
�14
Mistakes of Moses.
them out by pairs. You have no idea the trouble that
man had. Some say that the flood was not universal,
that it was partial. Why, then, did God say: “ I will
destroy every living thing beneath the heavens ?” If
it was partial, why did Noah save the birds ? An ordi
nary bird, tending strictly to business, can beat a
partial flood. Why did he put the birds in there—the
eagles, the vultures, the condors—if it was only a
partial flood ? And how did he get them in there ?
Were they inspired to go there, or did he drive them
up ? Did the polar bear leave his home of ice and
start for the tropics inquiring for Noah ; or could the
kangaroo come from Australia unless he was inspired,
or somebody was behind him ? Then there are animals
on this hemisphere, not on that. How did he get them
across ? And there are some animals which would be
very unpleasant in an ark unless the ventilation was
very perfect.
When he got the animals in the ark, God shut the
door and Noah pulled down the window. And then
it began to rain, and it kept on raining until the water
went 29 feet over the highest mountain. Chimborazo,
then as now, lifted its head above the clouds, and then
as now, there sat the condor. And yet the water rose
and rose over every mountain in the world—29 feet
above the highest peaks, covered with snow and ice.
How deep were these waters ? About 5-g- miles. How
long did it rain ? Forty days. How much did it have
to rain a day ? About 800 feet. How is that for
dampness ? No wonder they said the windows of the
heavens were open. If I had been there I would have
said the whole side of the house was out. How long
were they in this ark ? A year and ten days, floating
around with no rudder, no sail, nobody on the outside
at all. The window was shut, and there was no door,
except the one that shut on the outside. Who ran this
ark—who took care of it ? Finally it came down on
Mount Ararat, a peak 17,000 feet above the level of the
sea, with about 3,000 feet of snow, and it stopped there
simply to give the animals from the tropics a chance.
Then Noah opened the window and got a breath of
fresh air, and he let out all the animals ; and then
�Mistakes of Moses.
15
Noah took a drink, and God made a bargain with him
that he would not drown us any more, and he put a
rainbow in the clouds and said : “ When 1 see that I
will recollect that I have promised not to drown you.”
Because if it was not for that, he is apt to drown us at
any moment. Now, can anybody believe that that is
the origin of the rainbow ? Are you not all familiar
with the natural causes which bring those beautiful
arches before our eyes ? Then the people started out
again, and they were as bad as before. Here let me
ask why God did not make Noah in the first place ?
He knew he would have to drown Adam and Eve and
all his family. Then another thing, why did he want
to drown the animals ? What had they done ? What
crime had they committed ? It is very hard to answer
these questions—that is, for a man who has only been
born once. After a while they tried to build a tower
to get into heaven, and the Gods heard about it and
said : “ Let’s go down and see what man is up to.”
They came and found things a great deal worse than
they thought, and thereupon they confounded the
language to prevent them succeeding, so that the fellow
up above could not shout down “mortar ” or “ brick ”
to the one below, and they had to give it up. Is il
possible that anyone believes that that is the reason
why we have the variety of languages in the world ?
Do you know that language is born of human expe
rience, and is a physical science ? Do you know that
every word has been suggested in some way by the
feelings or observations of man—that there are words
as tender as the dawn, as serene as the stars, and others
as wild as the beasts ? Do you know that language is
dying and being born continually—that every language
has its cemetery and cradle, its bud and blossom, and
withered leaf ? Man has loved, enjoyed, and suffered,
and language is simply the expression he gives those
experiences.
Then the world began to divide, and the Jewish
nation was started. Now, I want to say that at one
time your ancestors, like mine, were barbarians. If
the Jewish people had to write these books now they
would be civilised books, and I do not hold them
�16
Mistakes of Moses,.
responsible for what their ancestors did. We find the
Jewish people first in Canaan, and there were seventy
of them, counting Joseph and his children, already
in Egypt. They lived 215 years, and they then went
down to Egypt and stayed there 215 years. They
were 430 years in Canaan and Egypt. How many
did they have when they went to Egypt ? Seventy.
How many were they at the end of 215 years ? Three
millions. That is a good many. We had at the time
of the Revolution in this country 3,000,000 of people.
Since that time there have been four doubles, until
we have 48,000,000 to-day. How many would the
Jews number at the same ratio in 215 years ? Call
it eight doubles, and we have 40,000. But instead
of 40,000 they had 3,000,000. How do I know they
had 3,000,000 ? Because they had 600,000 men of war.
For every honest voter in the State of Illinois there
will be five other people, and there are always more
voters than men of war. They must have had, at
the lowest possible estimate, 3,000,000 of people. Is
that true ? Is there a minister in the city of Chicago
that will certify to his own idiocy by claiming that
they could have increased to 3,000,000 by that time ?
If there is, let him say so. Do not let him talk about
the civilizing influence of a lie.
When they got into the desert they took a census
to see how many first-born children there were. They
found they had 22,273 first-born males. It is reason
able to suppose there was about the same number
•of first-born girls, or 45,000 first-born children. There
must have been about as many mothers as first-born
children. Dividing 3,000,000 by 45,000 mothers, and
you will find that the women in Israel had to have
on the average sixty-eight children apiece. Some
stories are too thin. This is too thick. Now, we
know that among 3,000,000 people there will be about
300 births a-day ; and according to the Old Testament
whenever a child was born the mother had to make
a sacrifice—a sin offering for the crime of having been
a mother. If there is in this universe anything that
is infinitely pure, it is a mother with her child in
her arms. Every woman had to have a sacrifice of
�Mistakes of Moses.
17
a couple of doves, a couple of pigeons, and the priests
had to eat those pigeons in the most holy place. At
that time there were at least 300 births a day, and the
priests had to cook and eat those pigeons in the most
holy place ; and at that time there were only three
priests. Two hundred birds apiece per day ! I look
upon them as the champion bird-eaters of the world.
Then where were these Jews ? They were upon
the desert of Sinai; and Sahara compared to that is
a garden. Imagine an ocean of lava, torn by storm
and vexed by tempest, suddenly gazed at by a Gorgon,
and changed to stone. Such was the desert of Sinai.
The whole supplies of the world could not maintain
3,000,000 of people on the desert of Sinai for forty
years. It would cost one hundred thousand millions
of dollars, and would bankrupt Christendom. And
yet there they were with flocks and herds—so many
that they sacrificed over 150,000 first-born lambs at
one time. It would require millions of acres to sup
port those flocks, and yet there was no blade of grass,
and there is no account of it raining bailed hay. They
sacrificed 150,000 lambs, and the blood had all to be
sprinkled on the altar within two hours, and there
were only three priests. They would have to sprinkle
the blood of 1,250 lambs per minute. Then all the
people gathered in front of the tabernacle eighteen
feet deep. Three millions of people would make a
column six miles long. Some reverend gentlemen
say they were ninety feet deep. Well, that would
make a column of over a mile.
Where were these people going ? They were going
to the Holy Land. How large was it ? Twelve
thousand square miles—one-fifth the size of Illinois—
a frightful country, covered with rocks and desolation.
There never was a land agent in the city of Chicago
that would not have blushed with shame to have
described that land as flowing with milk and honey.
Do you believe that God Almighty ever went into
partnership with hornets ? Is it necessary unto salva
tion ? God said to the Jews : “ I will send hornets
before you to drive out the Canaanites.” How would
a hornet know a Canaanite ? Is it possible that God
�18
Mistakes of Moses.
inspired the hornets—that he granted letters of marque
and reprisals to hornets ? I am willing to admit that
nothing in the world would be better calculated to
make a man leave his native country than a few hor
nets attending strictly to business. God said : “ Kill
the Canaanites slowly.” Why ? “ Lest the beasts of
the field increase upon you.” How many Jews were
there ? Three millions. Going to a country, how
large ? Twelve thousand square miles. But were
there nations already in this Holy Land ? Yes, there
were seven nations “mightier than the Jews.” Say
there would' be 21,000,000 when they got there, or
24,000,000 with themselves. Yet they were told to kill
them slowly, lest the beasts of the field increased upon
them. Is there a man in Chicago that believes that ?
Then what does he teach it to little children for ? Let
him tell the truth.
So the same God went into partnership with snakes.
The children of Israel lived on manna—one account
says all the time, and another only a little while. That
is the reason there is a chance for commentaries, and
you can exercise faith. If the book was reasonable
everybody could go to heaven in a moment. But
whenever it looks as if it could not be that way, and
you believe, you are almost a saint, and when you
know it is not that way and believe, you are a
saint. He fed them on manna. Now manna is
very peculiar s'tuff. It would melt in the sun, and
yet they used to cook it by seething and baking. I
would as soon think of frying snow or boiling icicles.
But this manna had other peculiar qualities. It shrunk
to an omer, no matter how much they gathered, and
swelled up to an omer, no matter how little they
gathered. What a magnificent thing manna would be
for the currency, shrinking and swelling according to
the volume of business ! There was not a change in
the bill of fare for forty years, and they knew that
God could just as well give them three square meals
a day. They remembered about the cucumbers, and
the melons, and the leeks and the onions of Egypt, and
they said : “ Our souls abhorreth this light bread.”
Then this God got mad—you know cooks are always
�Mistakes of Moses.
19
touchy—and thereupon he sent snakes to bite the men,
women and children. He also sent them quails in
wrath and anger, and while they had the flesh between
their teeth, he struck thousands of them dead. He al
ways acted in that way, all of a sudden. People had no
chance to explain—no chance to move for a new trial—
nothing. I want to know if it is reasonable he should kill
people for asking for one change of diet in forty years.
Suppose you had been boarding with an old lady for
forty years, and she never had a solitary thing on her
table but hash, and one morning you said : “ My soul
abhorreth hash.” What would you say if she let a
basketful of rattlesnakes upon you ? Now is it possible
for people to believe this ? The Bible says that their
clothes did not wax old—they did not get shiny at the
knees or elbows—and their shoes did not wear out.
They grew right along with them. The little boy
starting out with his first pants grew up, and his pants
grew with him. Some commentators have insisted
that angels attended to their wardrobes. I never could
believe it. Just think of one angel hunting another
and saying : “ There goes another button.” I cannot
believe it.
There must be a mistake somewhere or somehow. Do
you believe the real God—if there is one—ever killed
a man for making hair oil ? And yet you find in
the Pentateuch that God gave Moses a recipe for
making hair oil to grease Aaron’s beard ; and said
if anybody made the same hair oil he should be killed.
And he gave him a formula for making ointment,
and he said if anybody made ointment like that he
should be killed. I think that is carrying patent laws
to excess. There must be some mistake about it. I
cannot imagine the infinite Creator of all the shining
worlds giving a recipe for hair oil. Do you believe
that the real God came down to Mount Sinai with
a lot of patterns for making a tabernacle—patterns
for tongs, for snuffers, and such things ? Do you
believe that God came down on that mountain and
told Moses how to cut a coat, and how it should be
trimmed ? What would an infinite God care on which
side he cut the breast, what color the fringe was, or
�20
Mistakes of Moses.
how the buttons were placed ? Do you believe God
told Moses to make curtains of fine linen ? Where
did they get their flax in the desert ? How did they
weave it ? Did he tell him to make things of gold,
silver, and precious stones when they hadn’t them?
Is it possible that God told them not to eat any fruit
until after the fourth year of planting the trees ? You
see all these things were written hundreds of years
afterwards, and the priests, in order to collect tithes,
dated the laws back. They did not say: “This is our
law,” but: “Thus said God to Moses in the wilderness.”’
Now, can you believe that ? Imagine a scene : The
eternal God tells Moses, “ Here is the way I want you
to consecrate my priests. Catch a sheep and cut his
throat.” I never could understand why God wanted
a sheep killed just because a man had done a mean
trick ; perhaps it was because his priests were fond
of mutton. He tells Moses further to take some of
the blood and put it on his right thumb, a little on
his right ear, and a little on his right big toe. Do
you believe God ever gave such instructions for the
consecration of his priests ? If you should see the
South Sea Islanders going through such a performance'
you could not keep your face straight. And will you
tell me that it had to be done in order to consecrate a
man to the service of the infinite God! Supposing the
blood got on the left toe !
Then we find in this book how God went to work
to make the Egyptians let the Israelites go. Supposewe wish to make a treaty with the Mikado of Japan,,
and Mr. Hayes sent a commissioner there ; and sup
pose he should employ Hermann, the wonderful Ger
man, to go along with him; and when they came in
the presence of the Mikado Hermann threw down an
umbrella, which changed into a turtle, and the com
missioner said : “ That is my certificate.” You would
say the country is disgraced. You would say the
president of a Republic like this disgraces himself'
with jugglery. Yet we are told God sent Moses and
Aaron before Pharaoh, and when they got there Moses
threw, down a stick, which turned into a snake. That
God is a juggler—he is the infinite prestidigitator..
�Mistakes of Moses.
21
Is that possible ? Was that really a snake, or was it
the appearance of a snake ? If it was the appearance
■of a snake, it was a fraud. Then the necromancers of
Egypt were sent for, and they threw down sticks,
which turned into snakes, but those were not so
large as Moses’ snake, which swallowed them. I
tain that it is just as hard to make small snakes
.as it is to make large ones ; the only difference is, that
.to make large snakes either larger sticks or more prac
tice is required.
Do you believe that God rained hail on the innocent
■cattle, killing them in the highways and in the field ?
Why should he inflict punishment on cattle for some
thing their owners had done ? I could never have any
respect for a God that would so inflict pain upon a
brute beast simply on account of the crime of its owner.
Is it possible that God worked miracles to convince
Pharaoh that slavery was wrong ? Why did he not
tell Pharaoh that any nation founded on slavery could
not stand ? Why did he not tell him: “ Your govern
ment is founded on slavery, and it will go down, and
the sands of the desert will hide from the view of man
your temples, your altars, and your fanes ? ” Why ,
did not he speak about the infamy of slavery ? Be
cause he believed in the infamy of slavery himself.
Oan we believe that God will allow a man to give his
wife the right of divorcement, and make the mother
•of his children a wanderer and a vagrant ? There is
not one word about women in the Old Testament ex
cept the word shame and humiliation. The God of the
Bible does not think woman is as good as man. She
was never worth mentioning. It did not take the pains
to recount the death of the mother of us all. I have no
respect for any book that does not treat woman as the
equal of man. And if there is any God in this uni
verse who thinks more of me than he thinks of my wife,
he is not well acquainted with both of us. And yet
they say that that was done on account of the hardness
of their hearts; and that was done in a community
where the law was so fierce that it stoned a man to
death for picking up sticks on Sunday. Would it not
have been better to stone to death every man who
�Mistakes of Moses.
abused his wife, and to allow them to pick up stickson account of the hardness of their hearts ? If God
wanted to take those Jews from Egypt to the land of
Canaan, why didn’t he do it instantly? If he wasgoing to do a miracle, why didn’t he do one worth
talking about ?
After God had killed all the first-born in Egypt, after
he had killed all the cattle, still Egypt could raise an
army that could put to flight 600,000 men. And be
cause this God overwhelmed the Egyptian army, he
bragged about it for a thousand years, repeatedly
calling the attention of the Jews to the fact that heoverthrew Pharaoh and his hosts. Did he help mucin
with their 600,000 men ? We find by the records of theday that the Egyptian standing army at that time was
never more than 100,000 men. Must we believe all
these stories in order to get to heaven when we die ?
Must you judge of a man’s character by the number of
stories he believes ? Are we to get to heaven by creed
or by deed ? That is the question. Shall we reason,,
or shall we simply believe? Ah, but they say the
Bible is not inspired about those little things. The
Bible says the rabbit and the hare chew the cud, but
they do not. They have a tremulous motion of the'
lip. But the being that made them says they chew
the cud. The Bible, therefore, is not inspired in na
tural history. Is it inspired in its astrology? No..
Well, what is it inspired in? In its law? Thousands
of people say that if it had not bee.n for the ten com
mandments we would not have known any better than
to rob and steal. Suppose a man planted an acre of
potatoes, hoed them all summer, and dug them in the
fall; and suppose a man had sat upon the fence all thetime and watched him, do you believe it would benecessary for that man to read the ten commandmentsto find out who, in his judgment, had a right to take
those potatoes ? All laws against larceny have been
made by industry to protect the fruits of its labor.
Why is there a law against murder ? Simply because
a large majority of people object to being murdered.
That is all. And all these laws were in force thou
sands of years before that time.
�Mistakes of Moses.
23
One of the commandments said they should not
make any graven images, and that was the death of art
in Palestine. No sculptor has ever enriched stone with
the divine forms of beauty in that country; and any
commandment that is the death of art is not a good
commandment. But they say the Bible is morally in
spired, and they tell me there is no civilisation without
this Bible. Then God knows that just as well as you
do. God always knew it, and if you can’t civilise a
nation without a Bible, why didn’t God give every
nation just one Bible to start with? Why did God
allow hundreds of thousands and billions of billions to
go down to hell just for the lack of a Bible ? They
say that it is morally inspired. Well, let us examine
it. I want to be fair about this thing, because I am
willing to stake my salvation or damnation on this
question, whether the Bible is true or not. I say it is
not; and upon that I am willing to wager my soul. Is
there a woman here who believes in the institution of
polygamy ? Is there a man here who believes in that
infamy? You say : “No, we do not.” Then you are
better than your God was 4,000 years ago. Four thou
sand years ago he believed in it, taught it, and upheld
it. I pronounce it and denounce it the infamy of in
famies. It robs our language of every sweet and
tender word in it. It takes the fireside away for ever.
It takes the meaning out of the words father, mother,
sister, brother, and turns the temple of love into a vile
den, where crawl the slimy snakes of lust and hatred.
I was in Utah a little while ago, and was on the moun
tain where God used to talk to Brigham Young. He
never said anything to me. I said it was just as rea
sonable that God in the nineteenth century would talk
to a polygamist in Utah as it was that 4,000 years ago,
on Mount Sinai, he talked to Moses upon that hellish
and damnable question.
I have no love for any God who believes in poly
gamy. There is no heaven on this earth save where
the one woman loves the one man, and the one man
loves the one woman. I guess it is not inspired on the
polygamy question. Maybe it is inspired about reli
gious liberty. God says that if anybody differs with
�24
Mistakes of Moses.
you about religion, “ kill him.” He told his peculiar
people: “ If anyone teaches a different religion, kill
him! ” He did not say : “ Try and convince him that
he is wrong,” but “ kill him.” He did not say : “ I
am in the miracle business, and I will convince him,”
but “ kill him.” He said to every husband : “ If your
wife, that you love as your own soul, says, 1 Let us go
and worship other gods,’ then ‘ Thy hand shall be first
upon her, and she shall be stoned with stones until
she dies.’ ” Well, now, I hate a God of that kind, and
I cannot think of being nearer heaven than to be away
from him. A God tells a man to kill his wife simply
because she differs with him on religion 1 If the real
God were to tell me to kill my wife, I would not do it.
If you had lived in Palestine at that time, and your
wife—the mother of your children—had woke up at
night and said : “ I am tired of Jehovah. He is always
turning up that board bill. He is always telling about
whipping the Egyptians. He is always killing some
body. I am tired of him. Let us worship the sun.
The sun has clothed the world in beauty; it has
covered the earth with green and flowers ; by its
divine light I first saw your face; its light has enabled
me to look into the eyes of my beautiful babe. Let us
worship the sun, father and mother of light and love
and joy.” Then what would it be your duty to do—
kill her ? Do you believe any real God ever did that ?
Your hand should be first upon her, and when you
took up some ragged rock and hurled it against the
white bosom filled with love for you, and saw running
away the red current of her sweet life, then you would
look up to heaven and receive the congratulations of
the infinite fiend whose commandments you had to
obey. I guess the Bible was not inspired about reli
gious liberty. Let me ask you right here. Suppose, as
a matter of fact, God gave those laws to the Jews, and
told them : “ Whenever a man preaches a different
religion, kill him,” and suppose that afterwards that
same God took upon himself flesh and came to the
world and taught and preached a different religion,
and the Jews crucified him, did he not reap exactly
what he sowed ?
�Mistakes of Moses.
25
Maybe this book is inspired about war. God told
the Israelites to overrun that country, and kill every
man, woman, and child for defending their native
land. Kill the old men? Yes. Kill the women?
Certainly. And the little dimpled babes in the cradle
that smile and coo in the face of murder—dash out
their brains ? That is the will of God. Will you tell
me that any God ever commanded such infamy ? Kill
the men and the women, and the young men and the
babes! “What shall we do with the maidens?”
“Give them to the rabble murderers!” Do you be
lieve that God ever allowed the roses of love and the
violets of modesty that shed their perfume in the heart
of a maiden to be trampled beneath the brutal feet of
lust ? If there is any God, I pray him to write in the
book of eternal remembrance, opposite to my name,
that I denied that lie. Whenever a woman reads a
Bible and comes to that passage she ought to throw the
book from her with contempt and scorn. Do you tell
me that any decent God would do that ? What would
the devil have done under the same circumstances ?
Just think of it; and yet that is the God that we wish
to get into the Constitution. That is the God we teach
our children about, so that they will be sweet and
tender, amiable and kind ! That monster—that fiend!
I guess the Bible is not inspired about religious liberty,
nor about war.
Then, if it is not inspired about these things, may
be it is inspired about slavery. God tells the Jews to
buy up the children of the heathen round about, and
they should be servants for them. What is a “ser
vant” ? If they struck a “servant” and he died imme
diately, punishment was to follow; but if the injured
man lingered a while there was no punishment,
because the servant represented their money! Do you
believe that it is right—that God made one man to
work for another and to receive pay in rations ? Do
you believe God said that a whip on the naked back
was the legal tender for labor performed ? Is it possi
ble that the real God ever gave such infamous blood
thirsty laws ? What more does he say ?
When the time of a married slave expired, he could
�26
Mistakes of Moses.
not take his wife and children with him. Then if the
slave did not wish to desert his family, he had his ears
pierced with an awl, and became his master’s property
for ever. Do you believe that God ever turned the
dimpled cheeks of little children into iron chains to
hold a man in slavery ? Do you know that a God like
that would not make a respectable devil! I want
none of his mercy. I want no part and no lot in the
heaven of such a God. I will go to perdition where
there is human sympathy. The only voice we have
ever had from either of those other worlds came from
hell. There was a rich man who prayed his brothers
to attend to Lazarus, so that they might “ not come to
this place.” That is the only instance, so far as we
know, of souls across the river having any sympathy..
And I would rather be in hell asking for water than
in heaven denying that petition. Well, what is this
book inspired about? Where does the inspiration
come from ? Why was it that so many animals were
killed ? It was simply to make atonement for man—
that is all. They killed something that had not com
mitted a crime, in order that the one who had com
mitted a crime might be acquitted. Based upon that
dea is the atonement of the Christian religion. That
is the reason I attack this book; because it is the basis
of another infamy—viz., that one man can be good for
another, or that one man can sin for another. I deny
it. You have got to be good for yourself; you have
got to sin for yourself. The trouble about the atone
ment is, that it saves the wrong man. For instance, I
kill some one. He is a good man. He loves his wife
and children, and tries to make them happy ; but he is
not a Christian, and he goes to hell. Just as soon as I
am convicted and cannot get a pardon, I get religion,,
and I go to heaven. The hand of mercy cannot reach
down through the shadows of hell to my victim.
There is no atonement for the saint—only for the
sinner and the criminal. The atonement saves the
wrong man. I have said that I would never make a
lecture at all without attacking this doctrine. I did
not care what I started out on. I was always going to
attack this doctrine. And in my conclusion I want to
�Mistakes of Moses.
27
draw you a few pictures of the Christian heaven. But
before I do that I want to say the rest I have to say
about Moses. I want you to understand that the Bible
was never printed until 1488. I want you to know
that up to that time it was in manuscript, in possession
of those who could change it if they wished ; and they
did change it, because no two ever agreed. Much of
it was in the waste basket of credulity, in the open
mouth of tradition, and in the dull ear of memory. I
want you also to know that the Jews themselves neveragreed as to what books were inspired, and that therewere a lot of books written that were not incorporated
in the Old Testament. I want you to know that twoor three years before Christ, the Hebrew manuscript
was translated into Greek, and that the original from,
which the translation was made has never been seen
since. Some Latin Bibles were found in Africa, but
no two agreed ; and then they translated the Septua. gint into the languages of Europe, and no two agreed..
Henry VIII. took a little time between murdering his
wives to see that the Word of God was translated cor
rectly. You must recollect that we are indebted tomurderers for our Bibles and our creeds. Constantine,
who helped on the good work in its early stage, mur
dered his wife and child, mingling their blood with
the blood of the Savior.
The Bible that Henry VIII. got up did not suit, and
then his daughter, the murderess of Mary Queen of
Scots, got up another edition, whichfalso did not suit
and, finally, that philosophical idiot, King James, pre
pared the edition which we now have. There are at
least 100,000 errors in the Old Testament, but every
body sees that it is not enough to invalidate its claim
to infallibility. But these errors are gradually being
fixed, and hereafter the prophet will be fed by Arabs
instead of “ ravens,” and Samson’s 300 foxes will be
300 “sheaves” already bound, which were fired and
thrown into the standing wheat. I want you all toknow that there was no contemporaneous literature at
the time the Bible was composed, and that the Jews
were infinitely ignorant in their day and generation—
that they were isolated by bigotry and wickedness
�.28
Mistakes of Moses.
from the rest of the world. I want you to know that
there are 1,400,000,000 of people in the world; and that
with all the talk and work of the societies, only
120,000,000 have got Bibles. I want you to understand
that not one person in 100 in this world ever read the
Bible, and no two ever understood it alike who did
read it, and that no person probably ever understood it
-aright. I want you to understand that where this Bible
has been man has hated his brother—there have been
dungeons, racks, thumbscrews and the sword. I want
you to know that the cross has been in partnership
with the sword, and that the religion of Jesus Christ
was established by murderers, tyrants, and hypocrites.
I want you to know that the church carried the black
flag. Then talk about the civilizing influence of this
religion.
Now, I want to give an idea or two in regard to the
Christian’s heaven. Of all the selfish things in this
world, it is one man wanting to get to heaven caring
nothing what becomes of the rest of mankind. “ If I *
can only get my little soul in.” I have always noticed
that the people who have the smallest souls make the
most fuss about getting them saved. Here is what we
are taught by the Church to-day. We are taught
by it that fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters
can all be happy in heaven, no matter who may be in
hell ; that the husband can be happy there with the
wife that would have died for him at any moment
of his life, in hell. But they say : “We don’t believe
in fire. What we believe in now is remorse.”
What will you have remorse for ? For the mean
things you have done when you are in hell ? Will
.you have any remorse for the mean things you have
done when you are in heaven ? Or will you be so good
then that you won’t care how you used to be ? Don’t
.you see what an infinitely mean belief that is ? I tell
you to-day that, no matter in what heaven you may be,
no matter in what star you are spending the summer,
if you meet another man you have wronged you will
drop a little behind in the tune. And no matter in
what part of hell you are, and you meet some one
whom you have succored, whose nakedness you have
�Mistakes of Moses.
29'
clothed, and whose famine you have fed, the fire will
cool up a little. According to this Christian doctrine,
when you are in heaven you won’t care how mean you
were once.
What must be the social condition of a gentleman in
heaven who will admit that he never would have been
there if he had not got scared ? What must be the
social position of an angel who will always admit that
if another had not pitied him he ought to have been
damned ? Is it a compliment to an infinite God to say
that every being he ever made deserved to be damned
the minute he got him done, and that he will damn
everybody he has not had a chance to make over ? Is
it possible that somebody else can be good for me, and'
that this doctrine of the atonement is the only anchor
for the human soul ?
For instance, here is a man seventy years of age,,
who has been a splendid fellow and lived according to'
the laws of nature. He has got about him splendid'
children, whom he has loved and cared for with all
his heart. But he did not happen to believe in this
Bible ; he did not believe in the Pentateuch. He did
not believe that because some children made fun of a
gentleman who was short of hair, God sent two bears
and tore the little darlings to pieces. He had a tender
heart, and he thought about the mothers who would
take the pieces, the bloody fragments of the children,
and press them to their bosoms in a frenzy of grief ;
he thought about their wails and lamentations, and
could not believe that God was such an infinite mon
ster. That was all he thought, but he went to hell..
Then, there is another man who made a hell on earth
for his wife, who had to be taken to the insane asylum,
and his children were driven from home and were
wanderers and vagrants in the world. But just be
tween the last sin and the last breath, this fellow got
religion, and he never did another thing except to take
his medicine. He never did a solitary human being a
favor, and he died and went to heaven. Don’t you
think he would be astonished to see the other man
in hell, and say to himself: “ Is it possible that
such a splendid character should bear such fruit,.
�30
Mistakes of Moses.
and that all my rascality at last has brought me next
to God ? ”
Or, let us put another case. You were once alone in
in the desert—no provisions, no water, no hope. Just
when your life was at its lowest ebb, a man appeared,
gave you water and food and brought you safely out.
How you would bless that man. Time rolls on. You
die and go to heaven; and one day you see through
the black night of hell, the friend who saved your life,
begging for a drop of water to cool his parched lips. He
cries to you : “ Remember what I did in the desert—
give me to drink.” How mean, how contemptible you
would feel to see his suffering and be unable to relieve
him. But that is the Christian heaven. We sit by the
fireside and see the flames and the sparks fly up the
•chimney —everybody happy, and the cold wind and
sleet are beating on the window, and out on the door
step is a mother with a child on her breast freezing.
How happy it makes a fireside, that beautiful con
trast. And we say “ God is good,” and there we sit, and
she sits and moans, not one night but for ever. Or we
are sitting at the table with our wives and children,
everybody eating, happy and delighted, and Famine
•comes and pushes out its shrivelled palms, and with
hungry eyes, implores us for a crust; how that
would increase the appetite ! And yet that is the
Christian heaven. Don’t you see that these infamous
doctrines petrify the human heart. And I would have
every one who hears me, swear that he will never con
tribute another dollar to build another church, in which
are taught such infamous lies. I want every one of you
to say that you never will, directly or indirectly, give a
dollar tetany man to preach that falsehood. It has done
harm enough. It has covered the world with blood.
It has filled the asylums with the insane. It has cast
a shadow in the heart, in the sunlight, of every good
and tender man and woman. I say, let us rid the
heavens of this monster, and write upon the dome :
“ Liberty, love, and law.”
No matter what may come to me or what may come to
you, let us do exactly what we believe to be right, and
let us give the exact thought in our brains. Rather
�Mistakes of Moses.
31
than have this Christianity true, I would rather all the
'Gods would destroy themselves this morning. I would
rather the whole universe would go to nothing, if such
a thing were possible, this instant. Rather than have
the glittering dome of pleasure reared on the eternal
abyss of pain, I would see the utter and eternal destruc
tion of this universe. I would rather see the shining
fabric of our universe crumble to unmeaning chaos
and take itself where oblivion broods and memory for
gets. I would rather the blind Samson of some im
prisoned force, released by thoughtless chance, should
so rack and strain this world that man in stress and
straint, in astonishment and fear, should suddenly fall
back to savagery and barbarity. I would rather that
this thrilled and thrilling globe, shorn of all life, should
in its cycles rub the wheel, the parent star, on which the
light should fall as fruitlessly as falls the gaze of love
on death, than t@ have this infamous doctrine of eter
nal punishment true ; rather than have this infamous
selfishness of a heaven for a few and a hell for the
many established as the word of God !
One world at a time is my doctrine. Let us make
someone happy here. Happiness is the interest that a
decent action draws, and the more decent actions you
do the larger your income will be. Let every man try
to make his wife happy, his children happy. Let every
man try to make every day a joy, and God cannot afford
to damn such a man. I cannot help God ; I cannot
injure God. I can help people. I can injure people.
Consequently humanity is the only real religion.
I cannot better close this lecture than by quoting
four lines from Robert Burns :
“ To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,
That’s the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.”
��
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Mistakes of Moses : a lecture delivered to immense audiences in the United States
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Inscription on front flyleaf half title page: Mr R.M. Elliott, 9 Henry St [?], Deptford, to be returned to the owner, not forgotten. No. 69k (1883 ed.) in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1883
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N375
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Bible
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Bible. O.T. Pentateuch
Moses
NSS
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The myth of the resurrection
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Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 133-144 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Atheistic Platform
Series number: No. 9
Notes: Extensive annotations in ink. Short pieces from other journals or pamphlets cut out and stuck in. Donated by Mr Garvey. Publisher's series list on preliminary pages. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 63 Fleet Street, London.
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1884
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G5084
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Christianity
Atheism
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Atheism
Resurrection
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1
'4
NATIONAL SEOUL/
Rome
WTOTY
Reason
or
p
<
A REPLY TO
MANNING.
CARDINAL
BY
COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
Reprinted from
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
October and November, 1888.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
London:
1 THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD.,
2 Newcastle Street, Farringdgn Street, E.C.
1903.
I
41
�PRINTED BY
THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD,,
2 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�ROME OR REASON?
A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.
PART I.
Superstition “ has ears more deaf than adders to the voice oj
any true, decision."
Cardinal Manning has stated the claims of the Roman
Catholic Church with great clearness, and apparently
without reserve. The age, position, and learning of this
man give a certain weight to his words, apart from their
worth. He represents the oldest of the Christian
Churches. The questions involved are among the most
important that can engage the human mind. No one
having the slightest regard for that superb thing known
as intellectual honesty will avoid the issues tendered, or
seek in any way to gain a victory over truth.
Without candor, discussion, in the highest sense, is
impossible. All have the same interest, whether they
know it or not, in the establishment of facts. All have
the same to gain, the same to lose. He loads the dice
against himself who scores a point against the right.
Absolute honesty is to the intellectual perception what
light is to the eyes. Prejudice and passion cloud the
mind. In each disputant should be blended the advocate
and judge.
In this spirit, having in view only the ascertainment
of the truth, let us examine the arguments, or rather the
statements and conclusions, of Cardinal Manning.
The proposition is that “ The Church itself, by its
marvellous propagation, its eminent sanctity, its inex
haustible fruitfulness in all good things, its catholic
�4
ROME OR REASON ?
unity and invincible stability, is a vast and perpetu?
motive of credibility, and an irrefragable witness of its
own divine legation.”
The reasons given as supporting this proposition are:-—
That the Catholic Church interpenetrates all the
nations of the civilised world; that it is extra-national
and independent in a supernational unity ; that it is the
same in every place; that it speaks all the languages in
the civilised world ; that it is obedient to one head ; that
as many as seven hundred bishops have knelt before the
Pope ; that pilgrims from all nations have brought gifts
to Rome, and that all these things set forth in the most
self-evident way the unity and universality of the Roman
Church.
It is also asserted that “ men see the Head of the
Church year by year speaking to the nations of the
world, treating with empires, republics, and govern
ments ” that “ there is no other man on earth that can
so bear himself,” and that “ neither from Canterbury nor
from Constantinople can such a voice go forth to which
rulers and people listen.”
It is also claimed that the Catholic Church has
enlightened and purified the world ; that it has given us
the peace and purity of domestic life; that it has
destroyed idolatry and demonology; that it gave us a
body of law from a higher source than man ; that it has
produced the civilisation of Christendom ; that the popes
were the greatest of statesmen and rulers; that celibacy
is better than marriage, and that the revolutions and
reformations of the last three hundred years have been
destructive and calamitous.
We will examine these assertions as well as some
others.
No one will dispute that the Catholic Church is the
best witness of its own existence. The same is true of
everything that exists ; of every Church, great and
small; of every man, and of every insect.
But it is contended that the marvellous growth or
propagation of the Church is evidence of its divine
origin. Can it be said that success is supernatural ?
All success in this world is relative. Majorities are not
�ROME OR REASON ?
5
necessarily right. If anything is known—if anything
can be known—we are sure that very large bodies of
men have frequently been wrong. We believe in what
is called the progress of mankind. Progress, for the
most part, consists in finding new truths and getting rid
of old errors—that is to say, getting nearer and nearer
in harmony with the facts of nature, seeing with greater
clearness the conditions of well-being.
There is no nation in which a majority leads the way.
In the progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest
right. There have been centuries in which the light
seemed to emanate only from a handful of men, while
the rest of the world was enveloped in darkness. Some
great man leads the way—he becomes the morning star,
the prophet of a coming day. Afterwards, many millions
accept his views. But there are still heights above and
beyond; there are other pioneers, and the old day, in
comparison with the new, becomes a night. So, we cannot
say that success demonstrates either divine origin or
supernatural aid.
We know, if we know anything, that wisdom has often
been trampled beneath the feet of the multitude. We
know that the torch of science has been blown out by
the breath of the hydra-headed. We know that the whole
intellectual heaven has been darkened again. The truth
or falsity of a proposition cannot be determined by
ascertaining the number of those who assert, or of those
who deny.
If the marvellous propagation of the Catholic Church
proves its divine origin, what shall we say of the mar
vellous propagation of Mohammedanism ?
Nothing can be clearer than that Christianity arose out
of the ruins of the Roman Empire—-that is to say, the
ruins of Paganism. And it is equally clear that Moham
medanism arose out of the wreck and ruin of Catholicism.
After Mohammed came upon the stage, “ Christianity
was for ever expelled from its most glorious seat—from
Palestine, the scene of its most sacred recollections ; from
Asia Minor, that of its first churches; from Egypt,
whence issued the great doctrine of Trinitarian Ortho
doxy, and from Carthage, who imposed her belief on
�6
ROME OR REASON ?
Europe.” Before that time “the ecclesiastical chiefs of
Rome, of Constantinople, and of Alexandria were
engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy, carrying
out their purposes by weapons and in ways revolting to
the conscience of man. Bishops were concerned in
assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, blindings, riots,
treasons, civil war. Patriarchs and primates were
excommunicating and anathematising one another in
their rivalries for earthly power ; bribing eunuchs with
gold and courtesans and royal females with concessions
of episcopal love. Among legions of monks who carried
terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great
cities arose hideous clamors for theological dogmas, but
never a voice for intellectual liberty or the outraged
rights of man.
“ Under these circumstances, amid these atrocities and
crimes, Mohammed arose, and raised his own nation from
Fetichism, the adoration of the meteoric stone, and from
the basest idol worship, and irrevocably wrenched from
Christianity more than half—and that by far the best
half—of her possessions, since it included the Holy Land,
the birth-place of the Christian faith, and Africa, which
had imparted to it its Latin form ; and now, after a lapse
of more than a thousand years, that continent, and a very
large part of Asia, remain permanently attached to the
Arabian doctrine.”
It may be interesting in this connection to say that the
Mohammedan now proves the divine mission of his
Apostle by appealing to the marvellous propagation of
the faith. If the argument is good in the mouth of a
Catholic, is it not good in the mouth of a Moslem ? Let
us see if it is not better.
According to Cardinal Manning, the Catholic Church
triumphed only over the institutions of men, triumphed
only over religions that had been established by men, by
wicked and ignorant men. But Mohammed triumphed
not only over the religions of men, but over the religion
of God. This ignorant driver of camels, this poor,
unknown, unlettered boy, unassisted by God, unen
lightened by supernatural means, drove the armies of the
true cross before him as the winter’s storm drives
�ROME OR REASON ?
7
withered leaves. At his name, priests, bishops, and
cardinals fled with white faces, popes trembled, and the
armies of God, fighting for the true faith, were conquered
on a thousand fields.
If the success of a church proves its divinity, and after
that another church arises and defeats the first, what does
that prove ?
Let us put this question in a milder form : Suppose
the second church lives and flourishes in spite of the
first, what does that prove ?
As a matter of fact, however, no Church rises with
everything against it. Something is favorable to it, or
it could not exist. If it succeeds and grows, it is abso
lutely certain that the conditions are favorable. If it
spreads rapidly, it simply shows that the conditions are
exceedingly favorable, and that the forces in opposition
are weak and easily overcome.
Here, in my own country, within a few years, has
arisen a new religion. Its foundations were laid in an
intelligent community, having had the advantages of
what is known as modern civilisation. Yet this new
faith—founded on the grossest absurdities, as gross as
we find in the Scriptures—in spite of all opposition
began to grow, and kept growing. It was subjected to
persecution, and the persecution increased its strength.
It was driven from State to State by the believers in
universal love, until it left what was called civilisation,
crossed the wide plains, and took up its abode on the
shores of the Great Salt Lake. It continued to grow.
Its founder, as he declared, had frequent conversations
with God, and received directions from that source.
Hundreds of miracles were performed, multitudes upon
the desert were miraculously fed, the sick were cured,
the dead were raised, and the Mormon Church continued
to grow, until now, less than half a century after the
death of its founder, there are several hundred thousand
believers in the new faith.
Do you think that men enough could join this Church
to prove the truth of its creed ?
Joseph Smith said that he found certain golden plates
that had been buried for many generations, and upon
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ROME OR REASON ?
these plates, in some unknown language, had been
engraved this new revelation, and I think he insisted
that by the use of miraculous mirrors this language was
translated. If there should be Mormon bishops in the
countries of the world eighteen hundred years from now,
do you think a cardinal of that faith could prove the
truth of the golden plates simply by the fact that the
faith had spread and that seven hundred bishops had
knelt before the head of that Church ?
It seems to me that a “supernatural” religion—that
is to say, a religion that is claimed to have been divinely
founded and to be authenticated by miracle—is much
easier to establish among an ignorant people than any
other, and the more ignorant the people, the easier such
a religion could be established. The reason for this is
plain. All ignorant tribes, all savage men, believe in
the miraculous, in the supernatural. The conception
of uniformity, of what may be called the eternal con
sistency of nature, is an idea far above their compre
hension. They are forced to think in accordance with
their minds, and as a consequence they account for all
phenomena by the acts of superior beings—that is to
say, by the supernatural. In other words, that religion
having most in common with the savage, having most
that was satisfactory to his mind, or to his lack of mind,
would stand the best chance of success.
It is probably safe to say that at one time, or during
one phase of the development of man, everything was
miraculous. After a time, the mind slowly developing,
certain phenomena, always happening under like con
ditions, were called “ natural,” and none suspected any
special interference. The domain of the miraculous
grew less and less—the domain of the natural larger ;
that is to say, the common became the natural, but the
uncommon was still regarded as the miraculous. I he
rising and setting of the sun ceased to excite the wonder
of mankind—there was no miracle about that; but an
eclipse of the sun was miraculous. Men did not then
know that eclipses are periodical, that they happen with
the same certainty as the sun rises. It took many
observations through many generations to arrive at this
�ROME OR REASON ?
(J
conclusion. Ordinary rains became “ natural,” floods
remained “ miraculous.”
But it can all be summed up in this: The average
man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as
supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean
the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are
natural, and that the supernatural does not and cannot
exist.
As a rule, an individual is egotistic in the proportion
that he lacks intelligence. The same is true of nations
and races. The barbarian is egotistic enough to suppose
that an Infinite Being is constantly doing something, or
failing to do something, on his account. But as man
rises in the scale of civilisation, as he becomes really
great, he comes to the conclusion that nothing in Nature
happens on his account—that he is hardly great enough
to disturb the motions of the planets.
Let us make an application of this : To me, the success
of Mormonism is no evidence of its truth, because it has
succeeded only with the superstitious. It has been
recruited from communities brutalised by other forms of
superstition. To me, the success of Mohammed does not
tend to show that he was right—for the reason that he
triumphed only over the ignorant, over the superstitious.
The same is true of the Catholic Church. Its seeds were
planted in darkness. It was accepted by the credulous,
by men incapable of reasoning upon such questions. It
did not, it has not, it cannot, triumph over the intellectual
world. To count its many millions does not tend to
prove the truth of its creed. On the contrary, a creed
that delights the credulous gives evidence against itself.
Questions of fact or philosophy cannot be settled
simply by numbers. There was a time when the Coper
nican system of astronomy had but few supporters—the
multitude being on the other side. There was a time
when the rotation of the earth was not believed by the
majority.
Let us press this idea further. There was a time when
Christianity was not in the majority, anywhere. Let us
suppose that the first Christian missionary had met a
prelate of the Pagan faith, and suppose this prelate had
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RoSiE OR REASON ?
used against the Christian missionary the Cardinal’s
argument—how could the missionary have answered if
the Cardinal’s argument is good?
But, after all, is the success of the Catholic Church a
marvel ? If this Church is of divine origin, if it has
been under the special care, protection, and guidance of
an Infinite Being, is not its failure far more wonderful
than its success ? For eighteen centuries it has perse
cuted and preached, and the salvation of the world is
still remote. This is the result, and it may be asked
whether it is worth while to try to convert the world to
Catholicism.
Are Catholics better than Protestants ? Are they nearer
honest, nearer just, more charitable ? Are Catholic
nations better than Protestant ?
Do the Catholic
nations move in the van of progress ? Within their
jurisdiction are life, liberty, and property safer than
anywhere else ? Is Spain the first nation of the world ?
Let me ask another question : Are Catholics or Pro
testants better than Freethinkers ? Has the Catholic
Church produced a greater man than Humboldt ? Has
the Protestant produced a greater than Darwin ? Was
not Emerson, so far as purity of life is concerned, the
equal to any true believer ? Was Pius IX., or any
other Vicar of Christ, superior to Abraham Lincoln ?
But it is claimed that the Catholic Church is universal,
and that its universality demonstrates its divine origin.
According to the Bible, the Apostles were ordered to
go into all the world to preach the gospel—yet not one of
them, nor one of their converts at any time, nor one of
the Vicars of God, for fifteen hundred years afterward,
knew of the existence of the Western Hemisphere.
During all that time, can it be said that the Catholic
Church was universal ? At the close of the fifteenth
century, there was one half of the world in which the
Catholic faith had never been preached, and in the other
half not one person in ten had ever heard of it, and of
those who had heard of it, not one in ten believed it.
Certainly the Catholic Church was not then universal.
Is it universal now ? What impression has Catholicism
made upon the many millions of China, of Japan, of
�ROME OR REASON ?
II
India, of Africa ? Can it truthfully be said that the
Catholic Church is now universal ? When any church
becomes universal, it will be the only church. There
cannot be two universal churches, neither can there be
one universal church and any other.
The Cardinal next tries to prove that the Catholic
Church is divine, “ by its eminent sanctity and its inex
haustible fruitfulness in all good things.”
And here let me admit that there are many millions of
good Catholics—that is, of good men and women who
are Catholics. It is unnecessary to charge universal
dishonesty or hypocrisy, for the reason that this would
be only a kind of personality. Many thousands of heroes
have died in defence of the faith, and millions of Catholics
have killed, and been killed, for the- sake of their religion.
And here it may be well enough to say that martyrdom
does not even tend to prove the truth of a religion. The
man who dies in flames, standing by what he believes to
be true, establishes, not the truth of what he believes,
but his sincerity.
Without calling in question the intentions of the
Catholic Church, we can ascertain whether it has been
“ inexhaustibly fruitful in all good things,” and whether
it has been “ eminent for its sanctity.”
In the first place, nothing can be better than goodness.
Nothing is more sacred, or can be more sacred, than the
well-being of man. All things that tend to increase or
preserve the happiness of the human race are good—
that is to say, they are sacred. All things that tend to
his unhappiness, are bad, no matter by whom they are
taught or done.
It is perfectly certain that the Catholic Church has
taught, and still teaches, that intellectual liberty is dan
gerous—that it should not be allowed. It was driven to
take this position because it had taken another. It
taught, and still teaches, that a certain belief is necessary
to salvation. It has always known that investigation
and inquiry led, or might lead, to doubt; that doubt leads,
or may lead, to heresy, and that heresy leads to hell. In
other words, the Catholic Church has something more
important than this world, more important than the well
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ROME OR REASON ?
being of man here. It regards this life as an oppor
tunity for joining that Church, for accepting that creed,
and for the saving of your soul.
If the Catholic Church is right in its premises, it is
right in its conclusion. If it is necessary to believe the
Catholic creed in order to obtain eternal joy, then, of
course, nothing else in this world is, comparatively
speaking, of the slightest importance. Consequently,
the Catholic Church has been, and still is, the enemy of
intellectual freedom, of investigation, of inquiry—in
other words, the enemy of progress in secular things.
The result of this was an effort to compel all men to
accept the belief necessary to salvation. This effort
naturally divided itself into persuasion and persecution.
It will be admitted that the good man is kind, merciful,
charitable, forgiving, and just. A Church must be
judged by the same standard. Has the Church been
merciful ? Has it been “ fruitful in the good things ” of
justice, charity, and forgiveness ? Can a good man,
believing a good doctrine, persecute for opinion’s sake ?
If the Church imprisons a man for the expression of an
honest opinion, is it not certain, either that the doctrine
of the Church is wrong or that the Church is bad ?
Both cannot be good. “ Sanctity ” without goodness is
impossible. Thousands of “ saints ” have been the most
malicious of the human race. If the history of the world
proves anything, it proves that the Catholic Church was
for many centuries the most merciless institution that
ever existed among men. I cannot believe that the
instruments of persecution were made and used by the
eminently good ; neither can I believe that honest people
were imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake by a
Church that was “ inexhaustibly fruitful in all good
things.”
And let me say here that I have no Protestant pre
judices against Catholicism, and have no Catholic
prejudices against Protestantism. I regard all religions
either without prejudice or with the same prejudice.
They were all, according to my belief, devised by men,
and all have for a foundation ignorance of this world
and fear of the next. All the gods have been made by
�ROME OR REASON ?
*3
men. They are all equally powerless and equally use
less. I like some of them better than I do others, for
the same reason that I admire some characters in fiction
more than I do others. I prefer Miranda to Caliban,
but have not the slightest idea that either of them existed.
So I prefer Jupiter to Jehovah, although perfectly satisfied
that both are myths. I believe myself to be in a frame
of mind to justly and fairly consider the claims of
different religions, believing as I do that all are wrong,
and admitting as I do that there is some good in all.
When one speaks of the “ inexhaustible fruitfulness in
all good things ” of the Catholic Church we remember
the horrors and atrocities of the Inquisition—the rewards
offered by the Roman Church for the capture and murder
of honest men. We remember the Dominican Order,
the members of which, upheld by the Vicar of Christ,
pursued the heretics like sleuth-hounds, through many
centuries.
The Church, “ inexhaustible in fruitfulness in all good
things,” not only imprisoned and branded and burned
the living, but violated the dead. It robbed graves, to
the end that it might convict corpses of heresy—to the
end that it might take from widows their portions and
from orphans their patrimony.
We remember the millions in the darkness of dungeons
-—the millions who perished by the sword-—the vast
multitudes destroyed in flames—those who were flayed
alive—those who were blinded—those whose tongues
were cut out—those into whose ears were poured molten
lead—those whose eyes were deprived of their lids—
those who were tortured and tormented in every way by
which pain could be inflicted and human nature over
come.
And we remember, too, the exultant cry of the Church
over the bodies of her victims : “ Their bodies were
burned here, but their souls are now tortured in hell.”
We remember that the Church, by treachery, bribery,
perjury, and the commission of every possible crime, got
possession and control of Christendom, and we know the
use that was made of this power—that it was used to
brutalise, degrade, stupefy, and “ sanctify ” the children
�14
ROME OR REASON ?
of men. We know also that the Vicars of Christ were
persecutors for opinion’s sake—that they sought to
destroy the liberty of thought through fear—that they
endeavored to make every brain a Bastille in which the
mind should be a convict—that they endeavored to make
every tongue a prisoner, watched by a familiar of the
Inquisition—and that they threatened punishment here,
imprisonment here, burnings here, and, in the name of
their God, eternal imprisonment and eternal burnings
hereafter.
We know, too, that the Catholic Church was, during
all the years of its power, the enemy of every science. It
preferred magic to medicine, relics to remedies, priests to
physicians. It thought more of astrologers than of
astronomers. It hated geologists, it persecuted the
chemist, and imprisoned the naturalist, and opposed
every discovery calculated to improve the condition of
mankind.
It is impossible to forget the persecutions of the Cathari,
the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Hugue
nots, and of every sect that had the courage to think just
a little for itself. Think of a woman—the mother of a
family—taken from her children and burned, on account
of her view as to the three natures of Jesus Christ. Think
of the Catholic Church—an institution with a Divine
Founder, presided over by the agent of God—punishing
a woman for giving a cup of cold water to a fellow being
who had been anathematised. Think of this Church,
“ fruitful in all good things,” launching its curse at an
honest man—not only cursing him from the crown of
his head to the soles of his feet with a fiendish
particularity, but having at the same time the impudence
to call on God, and the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ,
and the. Virgin Mary, to join in the curse ; and to curse
him not only here, but for ever hereafter; calling upon
all the saints and upon all the redeemed to join in a
hallelujah of curses, so that earth and heaven should
reverberate with countless curses launched at a human
being simply for having expressed an honest thought.
This Church, so “fruitful in all good things,” invented
crimes that it might punish. This Church tried men for
�ROME OR REASON?
15
a “ suspicion of heresy ”—imprisoned them for the vice
of being suspected—stripped them of all they had on
earth and allowed them to rot in dungeons, because they
were guilty of the crime of having been suspected.
This was a part of the Canon Law.
It is too late to talk about the “ invincible stability ”
of the Catholic Church.
It was not invincible in the seventh, in the eighth, or
in the ninth centuries. It was not invincible in Germany
in Luther’s day. It was not invincible in the Low
Countries. It was not invincible in Scotland, or in
England. It was not invincible in France. It is not
invincible in Italy. It is not supreme in any intellectual
centre of the world. It does not triumph in Paris, or
Berlin ; it is not dominant in London, in England;
neither is it triumphant in the United States. It
has not within its fold the philosophers, the statesmen,
and the thinkers, who are the leaders of the human
race.
It is claimed that Catholicism “ interpenetrates all the
nations of the civilised world,” and that “ in some it
holds- the whole nation in its unity.”
I suppose the Catholic Church is more powerful in
Spain than in any other nation.
The history of this
nation demonstrates the result of Catholic supremacy,
the result of an acknowledgment by a people that a
religion is too sacred to be examined.
Without attempting in an article of this character to
point out the many causes that contributed to the adop
tion of Catholicism by the Spanish people, it is enough
to say that Spain, of all nations, has been and is the
most thoroughly Catholic, and the most thoroughly inter
penetrated and dominated by the spirit of the Church of
Rome.
Spain used the sword of the Church. In the name of
religion it endeavoured to conquer the infidel world. It
drove from its territory the Moors, not because they
were bad, not because they were idle and dishonest, but
because they were infidels. It expelled the Jews, not
because they were ignorant or vicious, but because they
were unbelievers. It drove out the Moriscoes, and
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ROME OR REASON ?
deliberately made outcasts of the intelligent, the industri
ous, the honest and the useful, because they were not
Catholics. It leaped like a wfild beast upon the Low
Countries, for the destruction of Protestantism.
It
covered the seas with its fleets, to destroy the intellec
tual liberty of man. And not only so—it established
the Inquisition within its borders. It imprisoned the
honest, it burned the noble, and succeeded after many
years of devotion to the true faith, in destroying the
industry, the intelligence, the usefulness, the genius, the
nobility and the wealth of a nation. It became a wreck,
a jest of the conquered, and excited the pity of its former
victims.
In this period of degradation, the Catholic Church
held “ the whole nation in its unity.”
At last Spain began to deviate from the path of the
Church. It made a treaty with an infidel power. In
1782 it became humble enough, and wise enough, to be
friends with Turkey. It made treaties with Tripoli and
Algiers and the Barbary States. It had become too
poor to ransom the prisoners taken by these powers. It
began to appreciate the fact that it could neither conquer
nor convert the world by the sword.
Spain has progressed in the arts and sciences, in all
that tends to enrich and ennoble a nation, in the pre
cise proportion that she has lost faith in the Catholic
Church. This may be said of every other nation in
Christendom. Torquemada is dead ; Castelar is alive.
The dungeons of the Inquisition are empty, and a little
light has penetrated the clouds and mists—not much,
but a little. Spain is not yet clothed and in her right
mind. A few years ago the cholera visited Madrid and
other cities. Physicians were mobbed. Processions of
saints carried the host through the streets for the pur
pose of staying the plague.
The streets were not
cleaned ; the sewers were filled. Filth and faith, old
partners, reigned supreme. The Church, “ eminent for
its sanctity,” stood in the light and cast its shadow on
the ignorant and the prostrate. The Church, in its
“ inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things,” allowed
its children to perish through ignorance, and used the
�ROME OR REASON ?
I?
diseases it had produced as an instrument to further
enslave its votaries and its victims.
No one will deny that many of its priests exhibited
heroism of the highest order in visiting the sick and
administering what are called the consolations of religion
to the dying, and in burying the dead. It is necessary
neither to deny nor disparage the self-denial and good
ness of these men. But their religion did more than all
other causes to produce the very evils that called for the
exhibition of self-denial and heroism. One scientist in
control of Madrid could have prevented the plague. In
such cases, cleanliness is far better than “ godliness ” ;
science is superior to superstition ; drainage much better
than divinity; therapeutics more excellent than theology.
Goodness is not enough—intelligence is necessary. Faith
is not sufficient, creeds are helpless, and prayers fruitless.
It is admitted that the Catholic Church exists in many
nations ; that it is dominated, at least in a great degree,
by the Bishop of Rome—that it is international in that
sense, and that in that sense it has what may be called
a “ supernational unity.” The same, however, is true of
the Masonic fraternity. It exists in many nations, but
it is not a national body. It is in the same sense extra
national, in the same sense international, and has in the
same sense a supernational unity. So the same may be
said of other societies. This, however, does not tend to
prove that anything supernational is supernatural.
It is also admitted that in faith, worship, ceremonial,
discipline and government, the Catholic’ Church is
substantially the same wherever it exists. This estab
lishes the unity, but not the divinity of the institution.
The church that does not allow investigation, that
teaches that all doubts are wicked, attains unity through
tyranny—that is, monotony by repression. Wherever
man has had something like freedom, differences have
appeared, heresies have taken root, and the divisions
have become permanent. New sects have been born,
and the Catholic Church has been weakened. The
boast of unity is the confession of tyranny.
It is insisted that the unity of the Church substantiates
its claim to divine origin, This is asserted over and over
�i8
ROMS OR REASON ?
again, in many ways ; and yet in the Cardinal’s article is
found this strange mingling of boast and confession:
“ Was it only by the human power of man that the
unity, external and internal, which for fourteen hundred
years had been supreme, was once more restored in the
Council of Constance, never to be broken again ?”
By this it is admitted that the internal and external
unity of the Catholic Church has been broken, and that
it required more than human power to restore it. Then
the boast is made that it will never be broken again.
Yet it is asserted that the internal and external unity of
the Catholic Church is the great fact that demonstrates
its divine origin.
Now if this internal and external unity was broken,
and remained broken for years, there was an interval
during which the Church had no internal or external
unity, and during which the evidence of divine origin
failed. The unity was broken in spite of the Divine
Founder. This is admitted by the use of the word
“ again.” The unbroken unity of the Church is asserted,
and upon this assertion is based the claim of divine
origin ; it is then admitted that the unity was broken.
The argument is then shifted, and the claim is made that
it required more than human power to restore the internal
and external unity of the Church, and that the restora
tion, not the unity, is proof of the divine origin. Is there
any contradiction beyond this ?
Let us state the case in another way. Let us suppose
that a man has a sword which he claims was made by
God, stating that the reason he knows that God made
the sword is that it never had been, and never could be,
broken. Now if it was afterwards ascertained that it had
been broken, and the owner admitted that it had been,
what would be thought of him if he then took the ground
that it had been welded, and that the welding was the
evidence that it was of divine origin?
A prophecy is then indulged in, to the effect that the
internal and external unity of the Church can never be
broken again. It is admitted that it was broken, it is
asserted that it was divinely restored,? and^ then it. is
declared that it is never to be broken again. No reason
�ROME OR REASON ?
19
is given for this prophecy ; it must be born of the facts
already stated, Put in a form to be easily understood, it
is this :—
We know that the unity of the Church can never be
broken, because the Church is of divine origin.
We know that it was broken ; but this does not weaken
the argument, because it was restored by God, and it has
not been broken since.
Therefore, it never can be broken again.
It is stated that the Catholic Church is immutable, and
that its immutability establishes its claim to divine origin,
Was it immutable when its unity, internal and external,
was broken ? Was it precisely the same after its unity
was broken that it was before ? Was it precisely the same
after its unity was divinely restored that it was while
broken ? Was it universal while it was without unity ?
Which of the fragments was universal—which was im
mutable ?
The fact that the Catholic Church is obedient to the
Pope, establishes, not the supernatural origin of the
Church, but the mental slavery of its members. It estab
lishes the fact that it is a successful organisation ; that it
is cunningly devised; that it destroys the mental inde
pendence, and that whoever absolutely submits to its
authority loses the jewel of his soul.
The fact that Catholics are, to a great extent, obedient
to the Pope, establishes nothing except the thoroughness
of the organisation.
How was the Roman Empire formed ? By what means
did that great Power hold in bondage the then known
world ? How is it that a despotism is established ? How
is it that the few enslave the many ? How is it that the
nobility live on the labor of the peasants ? The answer
is in one word—Organisation. The organised few
triumph over the unorganised many. The few hold the
sword and the purse. The unorganised are overcome in
detail—terrorised, brutalised, robbed, conquered.
We must remember that when Christianity was estab
lished the world was ignorant, credulous, and cruel.
The Gospel, with its idea of forgiveness, with its heaven
and hell, was suited to the barbarians among whom it
�ao
ROME OR REASON ?
was preached. Let it be understood, once for all, that
Christ had but little to do with Christianity. The people
became convinced—being ignorant, stupid, and credulous
—that the Church held the keys of heaven and hell.
■ The foundation for the most terrible mental tyranny that
has existed among men was in this way laid. The
Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power. It
resorted to every possible form of fraud ; it perverted
every good instinct of the human heart; it rewarded
every vice; it resorted to every artifice that ingenuity
could devise, to reach the highest round of power. It
tortured the accused to make them confess ; it tortured
witnesses to compel the commission of perjury; it tor
tured children for the purpose of making them convict
their parents; it compelled men to establish their own
innocence; it imprisoned without limit; it had the
malicious patience to wait; it left the accused without
trial, and left them in dungeons until released by death.
There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not
commit, no cruelty that it did not practise, no form of
treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did
not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful
enemy of human rights. It did all that organisation,
cunning, piety, self-denial, heroism, treachery, zeal, and
brute force could do to enslave the children of men. It
was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of liberty, and
the destroyer of progress. It loaded the noble with
chains and the infamous with honors. In one hand it
carried the alms-dish, in the other a dagger. It argued
with the sword, persuaded with poison, and convinced
with the faggot.
It is impossible to see how the divine origin of a
Church can be established by showing that hundreds of
bishops have visited the Pope.
Does the fact that millions of faithful visit Mecca
establish the truth of the Koran? Is it a scene for
congratulation when the bishops of thirty nations kneel
before a man ? Is it not humiliating to know that man
is willing to kneel at the feet of man ? Could a noble
man demand, or. joyfully receive, the humiliation of his
fellows?
�ROME OR REASON '?
21
As a rule, arrogance and humility go together. .He
who in power compels his fellow-man to kneel, .will him
self kneel when weak. The tyrant is a cringer in power ,
a cringer is a tyrant out of power. Great men stand
face to face. They meet on equal terms. The cardinal
who kneels in the presence of the Pope, wants the bishop
to kneel in his presence; and the bishop who kneels
demands that the priest shall kneel to. him; and the
priest who kneels demands that they in lower orders
shall kneel; and all, from Pope to the lowest—that is to
say, from Pope to exorcist, from Pope to the one in
charge of the bones of saints all demand that the
people, the laymen, those upon whom they live, shall
kneel to them.
The man of free and noble spirit will not kneel.
Courage has no knees. Fear kneels, or falls upon its
ctsh-di
The Cardinal insists that the Pope is the Vicar of
Christ, and that all Popes have been. What is a Vicar
of Jesus Christ ? He is a substitute, in office. He
stands in the place, or occupies the position in relation
to the Church, in relation to the world, that Jesus Christ
would occupy were he the Pope at Rome. In other
words, he takes Christ’s place; so that, according to the
doctrine of the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ himself is
present in the person of the Pope.
We all know that a good man may employ a bad
agent. A good king might leave his realm and put in
his place a tyrant and a wretch. The good man and the
good king cannot certainly know what manner of man
the agent is-—what kind of person the vicar is; conse
quently the bad may be chosen. But if the king
appointed a bad vicar, knowing him to. be bad, knowing
that he would oppress the people, knowing that he would
imprison and burn the noble and generous, what excuse
can be imagined for such a king ?
. .
Now, if the Church is of divine origin, and if each
Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, he must have been
chosen by Jesus Christ", and when he was chosen
Christ must have known exactly what his Vicar would
do. Can we believ^xthat an infinity wise and good
�22
ROME OR REASON r1
Being would choose immoral, dishonest, ignorant,
malicious, heartless, fiendish, and inhuman Vicars ?
The Cardinal admits that “ the history of Christianity
is the history of the Church, and that the history of the
Church is the history of the Pontiffs,” and he then de
clares that “ the greatest statesmen and rulers that the
world has ever seen are the Popes of Rome.”
Let me call attention to a few passages in Draper’s
History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,
“ Constantine was one of the Vicars of Christ. After
wards, Stephen IV. was chosen. The eyes of Constan
tine were then put out by Stephen, acting in Christ’s
place. 1 he tongue of the Bishop Theodorus was
•
amputated by the man who had been substituted for
God. This bishop was left in a dungeon to perish of
thirst. Pope Leo III. was seized in the street and
forced into a church, where the nephew's of Pope Adrian
attempted to put out his eyes and cut off his tongue.
His successor, Stephen V., was driven ignominiously
from Rome. His successor, Paschal I., was accused of
blinding and murdering twro ecclesiastics in the Lateran
Palace. John VIII.,unable to resist the Mohammedans,
was compelled to pay them tribute.
“At this time, the Bishop of Naples was in secret
alliance with the Mohammedans, and they divided with
this Catholic bishop the plunder they collected from
other Catholics. This bishop was excommunicated by
the Pope; afterwards he gave him absolution because
he betrayed the chief Mohammedans, and assassinated
others. There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to mur
der the Pope, and some of the treasures of the Church
were seized, and the gate of St. Pancrazia was opened
with false keys to admit the Saracens. Formosus, who
had been engaged in these transactions, who had been
excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of Pope
John, was himself elected Pope in 891. Boniface VI.
was his successor. He had been deposed from the
diaconate and from the priesthood for his immoral and
lewd life. Stephen VII. was the next Pope, and he had
the dead body of Formosus taken from the grave,
clothed in papal habiliments, propped up in a chair and
tried before a Council. The corpse w'as found guilty,
three fingers were cut off, and the body cast into the
Tiber. Afterwards Stephen VII.. this Vicar of Christ,
was thrown into prison and strangled.
�ROME OR REASON ?
23
“ From 896 to 900, five popes were consecrated.
Leo V., in less than two months after he became Pope,
was cast into prison by Christopher, one of his chaplains.
This Christopher usurped his place, and in a little while
was expelled from Rome by Sergius III., who became
Pope in 905. This Pope lived in criminal intercourse
with the celebrated Theodora, who with her daughters
Marozia and Theodora, both prostitutes, exercised an
extraordinary control over him. The love of Theodora
was also shared by John X. She gave him the Arch
bishopric of Ravenna, and made him Pope in 915. The
daughter of Theodora overthrew this Pope. She sur
prised him in the Lateran Palace. His brother, Peter,
was killed; the Pope was thrown into prison, where he
was afterwards murdered. Afterward, this Marozia,
daughter of Theodora, made her own son Pope, John XI.
Many affirmed that Pope Sergius was his father, but his
mother inclined to attribute him to her husband Alberic,
whose brother Guido she afterwards married. Another
of her sons, Alberic, jealous of his brother, John the
Pope, cast him and their mother into prison. Alberic s
son was then elected Pope as John XII.
“John was nineteen years old when he became the
Vicar of Christ. His reign was characterised by the
most shocking immoralities, so that the Emperor Otho I.
was compelled by the German clergy to inteifere. He
was tried. It appeared that John had received bribes
for the consecration of bishops; that he had ordained
one who was only ten years old; that he was charged
with incest, and with so many adulteries that the Lateran
Palace had become a brothel. He put out the eyes of
* one ecclesiastic; he maimed another—both dying in
consequence of their injuries. He was given to drunken
ness and to gambling. He was deposed at last, and
Leo VII. elected in his stead. Subsequently he got the
upper hand. He seized his antagonists ; he cut off the
hand of one, the nose, the finger, and the tongue of
others. His life was eventually brought to an end by
the vengeance of a man whose wife he had seduced.”
And yet,I admit that the most infamous Popes, the
most heartless and fiendish bishops, friars, and priests
were models of mercy, charity, and justice when com
pared with the orthodox God—with the God they wor
shipped. These popes, these bishops, these priests could
persecute only for a few years—they could burn only for
�24
kOME OR REASON ?
a few moments—but their God threatened to imprison
and burn for ever; and their God is as much worse than
they were, as hell is worse than the Inquisition.
“John XIII, was strangled in prison. Boniface VII.
imprisoned Benedict VII., and starved him to death.
John XIV. was secretly put to death in the dungeons of
the castle of St. Angelo. The corpse of Boniface was
dragged by the populace through the streets.”
It must be remembered that the popes were assassin
ated by Catholics—murdered by the faithful; that one
Vicar of Christ strangled another Vicar of Christ, and
that these men were “ the greatest rulers and the
greatest statesmen of the earth.”
“ Pope John XVI. was seized, his eyes put out, his
nose cut off, his tongue torn from his mouth, and he was
sent through the streets mounted on an ass, with his
face to the tail. Benedict IX., a boy of less than
twelye years of age, was raised to the apostolic throne.
One of his successors, Victor III., declared that the life
of Benedict was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that
he shuddered to describe it. He ruled like a captain of
banditti. The people, unable to bear longer his
adulteries, his homicides and his abominations, rose
against him, and in despair of maintaining his position,
he put up his papacy to auction, and it was bought by a
Presbyter named John, who became Gregory VI., in the
year of grace 1045. Well may we ask, Were these the
Vicegerents of God upon earth—these, who had truly
reached that goal beyond which the last effort of human
wickedness cannot pass?”
It may be sufficient to say that there is no crime that
man can commit that has not been committed by the
Vicars of Christ. They have inflicted every possible
torture, violated every natural right. Greater monsters
the human race has not produced.
Among the “some two hundred and fifty-eight”
Vicars of Christ there were probably some good men.
This would have happened even if the intention had
been to get all bad men, for the reason that man reaches
perfection neither in good nor in evil; but if they were
selected by Christ himself, if they were selected by a
Church with a divine origin and under divine guidance,
then there is no way to account for the selection of a
�roMe or
Reason?
25
bad one. If one hypocrite was duly elected Pope—one
murderer, one strangler, one starver—this demonstrates
that all the Popes were selected by men, and by men
only, that the claim of divine guidance is born of zeal
and uttered without knowledge.
But who were the Vicars of Christ ? How many
have there been ? Cardinal Manning himself does not
know. He is not sure. He says : “ Starting from St.
Peter to Leo. XIII., there have been some two hundred
and fifty-eight Pontiffs claiming to be recognised by the
whole Catholic unity as successors of St. Peter and
Vicars of Jesus Christ.” Why did he use the word
“some”? Why “claiming”? Does he positively
know ? Is it possible that the present Vicar of Christ is
not certain as to the number of his predecessors ? Is
he infallible in faith and fallible in fact ?
PART II.
“ If we live thus tamely—
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet—
Farewell nobility.”
No one will deny that “ the Pope speaks to many people
in many nations; that he treats with empires and
governments,” and that “neither from Canterbury nor
from Constantinople such a voice goes forth.”
How does the Pope speak ? What does he say ?
He speaks against the liberty of man—against the
progress of the human race. He speaks to calumniate
thinkers, and to warn the faithful against the discoveries
of science. He speaks for the destruction of civilisa
tion.
Who listens ? Do astronomers, geologists, and
scientists put the hand to the ear, fearing that an accent
�26
Rome or reason ?
may be lost ? Does France listen ? Does Italy hear ?
Is not the Church weakest at its centre ? Do those
who have raised Italy from the dead, and placed her
again among the great nations, pay attention ? Does
Great Britain care for this voice—this moan, this groan
—of the Middle Ages? Do the words of Leo XIII.
impress the intelligence of the Great Republic ? Can
anything be more absurd than for the Vicar of Christ to
attack a demonstration of science with a passage of
Scripture, or a quotation from one of the “ Fathers ” ?
Compare the popes with the kings and queens of
England. Infinite wisdom had but little to do with the
selection of these monarchs, and yet they were far better
than any equal number of consecutive popes. This is
faint praise, even for kings and queens ; but it shows
that chance succeeded in getting better rulers for England
than “ Infinite Wisdom ” did for the Church of Rome.
Compare the popes with the presidents of the Republic
elected by the people. If Adams had murdered
Washington, and Jefferson had imprisoned Adams, and
if Madison had cut out Jefferson’s tongue, and Monroe
had assassinated Madison, and John Quincey Adams had
poisoned Monroe, and General Jackson had hung Adams
and his Cabinet, we might say that presidents had been
as virtuous as popes. But if this had happened the
verdict of the world would be that the people are not
capable of selecting their presidents.
But this voice from Rome is growing feeble day by
day ; so feeble that the Cardinal admits that the Vicar
of God and the supernatural Church “are being tor
mented by Falck laws, by Mancini laws, and by Crispi
laws.” In other words, this representative of God, this
substitute of Christ, this Church of divine origin, this
supernatural institution—pervaded by the Holy Ghost—
are being “ tormented ” by three politicians. Is it pos
sible that this patriotic trinity is more powerful than the
other ?
It is claimed that if the Catholic Church “ be only a
human system, built up by the intellect, will, and energy
of men, the adversaries must prove it—that the burden
is upon them.”
�ROME OR REASON ?
As a general thing, institutions are natural. If this
Church is supernatural, it is the one exception. The
affirmative is with those who claim that it is of divine
origin. So far as we know, all governments and all
creeds are the work of man. No one believes that Rome
was a supernatural production, and yet its beginnings
were as small as those of the Catholic Church. Com
mencing in weakness, Rome grew, and fought, and con
quered, until it was believed that the sky bent above a
subjugated world. And yet all was natural. For every
effect there was an efficient cause.
The Catholic asserts that all other religions have been
produced by man—that Brahminism and Buddhism, the
religion of Isis and Osiris, the marvellous mythologies
of Greece and Rome, were the work of the human mind.
From these religions Catholicism has borrowed. Long
before Catholicism was born it w’as believed that women
had borne children whose fathers were gods. The Trinity
was promulgated in Egypt centuries before the birth of
Moses. Celibacy was taught by the ancient Nazarenes
and Essenes, by the priests of Egypt and India, by
mendicant monks, and by the piously insane of many
countries long before the Apostles lived. The Chinese
tell us that “ when there were but one man and one
woman upon the earth, the woman refused to sacrifice
her virginity even to people the globe ; and the gods,
honoring her purity, granted that she should conceive
beneath the gaze of her lover’s eyes, and a virgin mother
became the parent of humanity.”
The founders of many religions have insisted that it
was the duty of man to renounce the pleasures of sense,
and millions before our era took the vows of chastity,
poverty, and obedience, and most cheerfully lived upon
the labor of others.
The sacraments of baptism and confirmation are far
older than the Church of Rome. The Eucharist is
Pagan. Long before Popes began to murder each
other, Pagans ate cakes—the flesh of Ceres, and drank
wine—the blood of Bacchus. Holy water flowed in the
Ganges and Nile, priests interceded for the people, and
anointed the dying.
It will not do to say that every successful religion that
�28
ROME OR REASON ?
has taught unnatural doctrines, unnatural practices, must
of necessity have been of divine origin. In most reli
gions there has been a strange mingling of the good and
bad, of the merciful and cruel, of the loving and
malicious. Buddhism taught the universal brotherhood
of man, insisted on the development of the mind ; and
this religion was propagated, not by the sword, but by
preaching, by persuasion, and kindness ; yet in many
things it was contrary to the human will, contrary to the
human passions, and contrary to good sense. Buddhism
succeeded. Can we, for this reason, say that it is a super
natural religion ? Is the. unnatural the supernatural ?
It is insisted that, while other Churches have changed,
the Catholic Church alone has remained the same, and
that this fact demonstrates its divine origin.
Has the creed of Buddhism changed in three thousand
years ? Is intellectual stagnation a demonstration of
divine origin ? When anything refuses to grow, are we
certain that the seed was planted by God ? If the
Catholic Church is the same to-day that it has been for
many centuries, this proves that there has been no intel
lectual development. If men do not differ Upon religious
subjects, it is because they do not think.
Differentiation is the law of growth, of progress.
Every Church must gain or lose ; it cannot remain the
same ; it must decay or grow. The fact that the Catholic
Church has not grown—that it has been petrified from
the first—does not establish divine origin ; it simply
establishes the fact that it retards the progress of man.
Everything in nature changes ; every atom is in motion;
every star moves. Nations, institutions, and individuals
have youth, manhood, old age, death. This is, and will
be, true of the Catholic Church. It was once weak; it
grew stronger ; it reached its climax of power ; it began
to decay ; it can never rise again. It is confronted by
the dawn of Science. In the presence of the nineteenth
century it cowers.
It is not true that “ All natural causes run to disinte
gration.”
Natural causes run to integration as well as to dis
integration. All growth is integration, and all growth is
natural.
All decay is disintegration, and all decay is
�ROME OR REASON ?
29
natural. Nature builds and nature destroys. When
the acorn grows—when the sunlight and rain fall upon
it, and the oak rises—so far as the oak is concerned “all
natural causes” do not “run to disintegration.” But
there comes a time when the oak has reached its limit,
and then the forces of nature run towards disintegration,
and finally the. old oak falls. But if the Cardinal is
right, if “ all natural causes run to disintegration,” then
every success must have been of divine origin, and
nothing is natural but destruction. This, is Catholic
science: “All natural causes run to disintegration.’
What do these causes find to disintegrate? Nothing
that is natural. -The fact that the thing is not disinte
grated shows that it was, and is, of supernatural origin.
According to the Cardinal, the only business of nature
is to disintegrate the supernatural. To prevent this, the
supernatural needs the protection of the Infinite. Accord
ing to this doctrine, if anything lives and grows, it does
so in spite of nature. Growth, then, is not in accord
ance with, but in opposition to, nature. Every plant is
supernatural—it defeats the disintegrating influences of
rain and light. The generalisation of the Cardinal is
half the truth. It would be. equally true to say : All
natural causes run to integration.” But the whole truth
is that growth and decay are equal.
The Cardinal asserts that “ Christendom was created
by the world-wide Church as we see it before our eyes
at this day. Philosophers and statesmen believe it to
be the work of their own hands; they did not make it,
but they have for three hundred years been unmaking it
by reformations and revolutions.”
The meaning of this is that Christendom was far better
three hundred years ago than now ; that during these
three centuries Christendom has been going towards
barbarism. It means that the supernatural Church of
God has been a failure for three hundred years; that it
has been unable to withstand the attacks of philosophers
and statesmen, and that it has been helpless in the midst
of “ reformations and revolutions.”
What was the condition of the world three hundred
years ago, the period, according to the Cardinal, in which
the Church reached the height of its influence and since
�3°
ROME OR REASON ?
which it has been unable to withstand the rising tide of
reformation and the whirlwind of revolution ?
In that blessed time Phillip II. was King of Spain—he
with the cramped head and the monstrous jaw. Heretics
were hunted like wild and poisonous beasts ; the Inquisi
tion was firmly established, and priests were busy with
rack and fire. With a zeal born of the hatred of man
and the love of God, the Church with every instrument
of torture, touched every nerve in the human body.
In those happy days the Duke of Alva was devasta
ting the homes of Holland ; heretics were buried alive;
their tongues were torn from their mouths, their lids
from their eyes; the Armada was on the sea for the
destruction of the heretics of England, and the
Moriscoes, a million and a half of industrious people,
were being driven by sword and flame from their homes.
The Jews had been expelled from Spain. This Catholic
country had succeeded in driving intelligence and industry
from its territory; and this had been done with a cruelty,
with a ferocity, unequalled in the annals of crime.
Nothing was left but ignorance, bigotry, intolerance,
credulity, the Inquisition, the seven sacraments and the
seven deadly sins. And yet a Cardinal of the nine
teenth century, living in the land of Shakespeare, regrets
the change that has been wrought by the intellectual
efforts, by the discoveries, by the inventions and heroism
of three hundred years.
Three hundred years ago, under Charles IX., in France,
son of Catherine de Medici, in the year of grace 1572—
after nearly sixteen centuries of Catholic Christianity—
after hundreds of vicars of Christ had sat in St. Peter’s
chair—after the natural passions of man had been
“softened” by the creed of Rome—came the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, the result of a conspiracy between the
Vicar of Christ, Philip II., Charles IX., and his fiendish
mother. Let the Cardinal read the account of this massacre
once more, and after reading it, imagine that he sees the
gashed and mutilated bodies of thousands of men and
women, and then let him say that he regrets the revolu
tions and reformations of three hundred years.
About three hundred years ago Clement VIII., Vicar
of Christ, acting in God’s place, substitute of the
�ROME OR REASON ?
31
Infinite, persecuted Giordano Bruno even unto death,
This great, this sublime man, was tried for heresy. He
had ventured to assert the rotary motion of the earth ;
he had hazarded the conjecture that there were in the
fields of infinite space worlds larger and more glorious
than ours. For these low and groveling thoughts, for
this contradiction of the word and Vicar of God, this
man was imprisoned for many years. But his noble
spirit was not broken, and finally in the year 1600, by
the orders of the infamous Vicar, he was chained to the
stake. Priests believing in the doctrine of universal
forgiveness; priests who when smitten upon one cheek
turned the other ; carried with a kind of ferocious joy
faggots to the feet of this incomparable man. These
disciples of “ Our Lord ” were made joyous as the
flames, like serpents, climbed around the body of Bruno.
In a few moments the brave thinker was dead, and the
priests who had burned him fell upon their knees and
asked the infinite God to continue the blessed work for
ever in hell.
There are two things that cannot exist in the same
universe—an infinite God and a martyr.
Does the Cardinal regret that kings and emperors are
not now engaged in the extermination of Protestants ?
Does he regret that dungeons of the Inquistion are no
longer crowded with the best and bravest ? Does he
long for the fires of the auto da fe ?
In coming to a conclusion as to the origin of the
Catholic Church ; in determining the truth of the claim
of infallibility, we are not restricted to the physical
achievements of that Church, or to the history of its
propagation, or to the rapidity of its growth.
This Church has a creed ; and if this Church is of
divine origin ; if its head is the Vicar of Christ, and, as
such, infallible in matters of faith and morals, this creed
must be true. Let us start with the supposition that
God exists, and that he is infinitely wise, powerful and
good—-and this is only a supposition. Now, if the creed
is foolish, absurd and cruel, it cannot be of divine origin.
We find in this creed, the following:
“ Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the Catholic faith,”
�32
ROME OR REASON ?
It is not necessary, before all things, that he be good,
honest, merciful, charitable and just. Creed is more
important than conduct. The most important of all
things is, that he hold the Catholic faith. There were
thousands of years during which it was not necessary to
hold that faith, because that faith did not exist; and yet
during that time the virtues were just as important as
now, just as important as they ever can be. Millions of
the noblest of the human race never heard of this
creed. Millions of the bravest and best have heard of
it, examined, and rejected it. Millions of the most
infamous have believed it, and because of their belief, or
notwithstanding their belief, have murdered millions of
their fellows. We know that men can be, have been,
and are just as wicked with it as without it. We know
that it is not necessary to believe it to be good, loving,
tender, noble, and self-denying.
We admit that
millions who have believed it have also been self
denying and heroic, and that millions, by such belief,
were not prevented from torturing and destroying the
helpless.
Now if all who believed it were good, and all who
rejected it were bad, then there might be some propriety
in saying that “whosoever will be saved,before all things
it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.” But as
the experience of mankind is otherwise, the declaration
becomes absurd, ignorant and cruel.
There is still another clause :
“ Which faith, except everyone do keep entire and
inviolate, without doubt he shall everlastingly perish.”
We now have both sides of this wonderful truth:
The believer will be saved, the unbeliever will be lost.
We know that faith is not the child or servant of the
will. We know that belief is a conclusion based upon
what the mind supposes to be true. We know that it is
not an act of the will. Nothing can be more absurd
than to save a man because he is not intelligent enough
to accept the truth, and nothing can be more infamous
than to damn a man because he is intelligent enough to
reject the false. It resolves itself into a question of
intelligence. If the creed is true, then a man rejects it
because he lacks intelligence. Is this a crime for which
�ROME
or reason
?
33
a man should everlastingly perish ? If the creed is
false, then a man accepts it because he lacks intelligence.
In. both cases the crime is exactly the same. If a man
is to be damned for rejecting the truth, certainly he
should not be saved for accepting the false. _ This one
clause demonstrates that a being of infinite wisdom and
goodness did not write it. It also demonstrates that it
was the work of men who had neither wisdom nor a
sense of justice.
.
What is this Catholic faith that must be held ? It is
this:
’
...
„ . .
u That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity m
Unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the
substance.”
Why should an Infinite Being demand worship ?
Why should one God wish to be worshipped as three ?
Why should three Gods wish to be worshipped as
one ? Why should we pray to one God and think of
three, or pray to three Gods and think of one ? Can
this increase the happiness of the one or of the three ?
Is it possible to think of one as three, or of three as one ?
If you think of three as one, can you think of one as
none, or of none as one ? When you think of three as
one, what do you do with the other two? You must not
“ confound the persons ”—they must be kept separate.
When you think of one as three, how do you get the
other two ? You must not “ divide the substance.
Is
it possible to write greater contradictions than these ?
This creed demonstrates the human origin of the
Catholic Church. Nothing could be more unjust than to
punish man for unbelief—for the expression of honest
thought—for having been guided by his reason for
having acted in accordance with his best judgment.
Another claim is made, to the effect “ that the Catholic
Church has filled the world with the true knowledge of
the one true God, and that it has destroyed all idols by
light instead of by fire.”
The Catholic Church described the true God as a being
who would inflict eternal pain on his weak and erring
children ; described him as a fickle, quick-tempered, un
reasonable deity, whom honesty enraged, and whom
flattery governed; one who loved to see fear upon its
�34
Rome or reason ?
knees, ignorance with closed eyes and open mouth ; one
who delighted in useless self-denial, who loved to’hear
the sighs and sobs of suffering nuns, as they lay prostrate
on dungeon floors; one who was delighted when the
husband deserted his family and lived alone in some cave
in the far wilderness, tormented by dreams and driven
to insanity by prayer and penance, by fasting and faith.
According to the Catholic Church, the true God enjoyed
the agonies of heretics. He loved the smell of their
burning flesh, he applauded with wide palms when
philosophers were flayed alive, and to him the auto da fc
was a divine comedy. The shrieks of wives, the cries
of babes, when fathers were being burned, gave contrast,
heightened the effect, and filled his cup with joy. This
true God did not know the shape of the earth he had
made, and had forgotten the orbits of the stars. “ The
stream of light which descended from the beginning ”
was propagated by faggot to faggot, until Christendom
was filled with the devouring fires of faith.
It may also be said that the Catholic Church filled the
world with the true knowledge of the one true Devil. It
filled the air with malicious phantoms, crowded innocent
sleep with leering fiends, and gave the world to the
domination of witches and wizards, spirits and spooks,
goblins and ghosts, and butchered and burned thousands
for the commission of impossible crimes.
It is contended that: “ In this true knowledge of the
Divine Nature was revealed to men their own relation
to a Creator as sons to a Father.”
This tender relation was revealed by the Catholics to
the Pagans, the Arians, the Cathari, the Waldenses, the
Albigenses, the heretics, the Jews, the Moriscoes, the
Protestants—to the natives of the West Indies, of
Mexico, of Peru—to philosophers, patriots, and thinkers.
All these victims were taught to regard the true God as
a loving Father, and this lesson was taught with every
instrument of torture—with branding and burnings,
with flayings and flames. The world was filled with
cruelty and credulity, ignorance and intolerance, and the
soil in which all these horrors grew was the true know
ledge of the one true God, and the true knowledge of
the one true Devil. And yet we are compelled to say
�ROME OR REASON ?
35
that the one true Devil described by the Catholic Church
was not as malevolent as the one true God.
Is it true that the Catholic Church overthrew idolatry ?
What is idolatry ? What shall we say of the worship
of popes, of the doctrine of the Real Presence, of divine
honors paid to saints, of sacred vestments, of holy water,
of consecrated cups and plates, of images and relics, of
amulets and charms ?
.
The Catholic Church filled the world with the spirit of
idolatry. It abandoned the idea of continuity in nature,
it denied the integrity of cause and effect. The govern
ment of the world was the composite result of the caprice
of God, the malice of Satan, the prayers of the faithful—
softened, it may be, by the charity of Chance. Yet the
Cardinal asserts, without the preface of a smile, that
“ Demonology was overthrown by the Church, with the
assistance of forces that were above nature
and in the
same breath gives birth to this enlightened statement:
“ Beelzebub is not divided against himself.” Is a belief
in Beelzebub a belief in demonology ? Has the Cardinal
forgotten the Council of Nice, held in the year of grace
787, that declared the worship of images to be lawful ?
Did that infallible Council, under the guidance of the
Holy Ghost, destroy idolatry ?
The Cardinal takes the ground that marriage is a
sacrament, and therefore indissoluble, and he also insists
that celibacy is far better than marriage—holier than a
sacrament—that marriage is not the highest state, but
that “the state of virginity unto death is the highest
condition of man and woman.”
The highest ideal of a family is where all are equal—
where love has superseded authority—where each seeks
the good of all, and where none obey—where no religion
can sunder hearts, and with which no church can
interfere.
The real marriage is based on mutual affection—the
ceremony is but the outward evidence of the inward
flame. To this contract there are but two parties. The
Church is an impudent intruder. Marriage is made
public to the end that the real contract may be known,
so that the world can see that the parties have been
actuated by the highest and holiest motives that find
�36
ROME OR REASON?
expression in the acts of human beings. The man and
woman are not joined together by God, or by the
Church, or by the State. The Church and State may
prescribe certain ceremonies, certain formalities; but all
these are only evidence of the existence of a sacred fact
in the hearts of the wedded. The indissolubility of
marriage is a dogma that has filled the lives of millions
with agony and tears. It has given a perpetual excuse
for vice and immorality. Fear has borne children
begotten by brutality. Countless women have endured
the insults, indignities and cruelties of fiendish husbands,
because they thought that it was the will of God. The
contract of marriage is the most important that human
beings can make ; but no contract can be so important
as to release one of the parties from the obligation of
performance; and no contract, whether made between
man and woman, or between them and God, after a
failure of consideration caused by the wilful act of the man
or woman, can hold and bind the innocent and honest.
Do the believers in indissoluble marriage treat their
wives better than others ? A little while ago a woman
said to a man who had raised his hand to strike her,
“ Do not touch me; you have no right to beat me ; I
am not your wife.”
About a year ago a husband, whom God in his infinite
wisdom had joined to a loving and patient woman in
the indissoluble sacrament of marriage, becoming en
raged, seized the helpless wife and tore out one of her
eyes. She forgave him. A few weeks ago he deliber
ately repeated this frightful crime, leaving his victim
totally blind. Would it not have been better if man,
before the poor woman was blinded, had put asunder
whom God had joined together ?
Thousands of
husbands, who insist that marriage is indissoluble, are
beaters of wives.
The law of the Church has created neither the purity
nor the peace of domestic life. Back of all Churches is
human affection. Back of all theologies is the love of
the human heart. Back of all your priests and creeds is
the adoration of the one woman by the one man, and of
the one man by the one woman. Back of your faith is
the fireside, back of your folly is the family ; and
�ROME OR REASON ?
37
back of all your holy mistakes and your sacred ab
surdities is the love of husband and wife, and of parent
and child.
It is not true that neither the Greek nor the Roman
world had any true conception of a home. The splendid
story of Ulysses and Penelope, the parting of Hector and
Andromache, demonstrate that a true conception, of
home existed among the Greeks. Before the establish
ment of Christianity the Roman matron commanded the
admiration of the then known world. She was free and
noble. The Church degraded woman, made her the
property of the husband, and trampled her beneath its
brutal feet. The “fathers” denounced woman as a
perpetual temptation, as the cause of all evil. The
Church worshipped a God who had upheld polygamy,
and had pronounced his curse on woman, and had
declared that she should be the serf of the husband.
This Church followed the teachings of St. Paul. It
taught the uncleanliness of marriage, and insisted that
all children were conceived in sin. This Church pre
tended to have been founded by one who offered a
reward in this world, and eternal joy in the next, to
husbands who would forsake their wives and children
and follow him. Did this tend to the elevation of
woman ? Did this detestable doctrine “ create the purity
and peace of domestic life ? ” Is it true that a monk is
purer than a good and noble father ? that a nun is holier
than a loving mother ?
Is there anything deeper and stronger than a mother s
love ? Is there anything purer, holier than a mother
holding her dimpled babe against her billowed breast ?
The good man is useful, the best man is the most
useful. Those who fill the nights with barren prayers
and holy hunger, torture themselves for their own good
and not for the benefit of others. They are earning
eternal glory for themselves ; they do not fast for their
fellow-men, their selfishness is only equalled by their
foolishness. Compare the monk in his selfish cell,
counting beads and saying prayers for the purpose, of
saving his barren soul, with a husband and father sitting
by his fireside with wife and children. Compare the
nun with the mother and her babe.
�38
ROME OR REASON ?
Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity. It tries to put a
stain upon motherhood, upon marriage, upon love_ that
is to say, upon all that is holiest in the human heart.
Take love from the world, and there is nothing left
worth living for. The Church. has treated this great,
this sublime, this unspeakably holy passion, as though it
polluted the heart. They have placed the love of God
above the love of woman, above the love of man.
Human love is generous and noble. The love of God is
selfish, because man does not love God for God’s sake
but for his own.
Yet the Cardinal asserts “ that the change wrought
by Christianity in the social, political, and international
relations of the world the root of this ethical change,
private and public, is the Christian home.” A moment
afterwards, this prelate insists that celibacy is far
better than marriage. If the world could be induced
to live, in accordance with the “highest state,” this
generation would be the last. Why were men and
women created ? Why did not the Catholic God com
mence with the sinless and sexless ? The Cardinal
ought to take the ground that to talk well is good, but
that to be dumb is the highest condition ; that hearing
is a pleasure, but that deafness is ecstasy ; and that to
think, to reason, is very well, but that to be a Catholic
is far better.
Why should we desire the destruction of human
passions ? Take passions from human beings, and
what is left? The great object should be, not to
destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the
intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form
of intemperance, to destroy passion is another. The
reasonable gratification of passion under the domination
of the intellect is true wisdom and perfect virtue.
The goodness, the sympathy, the self-denial of the
nun, of the monk, all come from the mother instinct, the
father instinct; all were produced by human affection—
by the love of man for woman, of woman for man. Love
is a transfiguration. It ennobles, purifies, and glorifies.
In true marriage two hearts burst into flower. Two
lives unite. They melt in music. Every moment is a
�KOi\iE OR REASON '?
39
melody. Love is a revelation, a creation. From love
the world borrows its beauty and the heavens their glory.
Justice, self-denial, charity, and pity are the children of
love. Lover, wife, mother, husband, father, child, home
—these words shed light; they are the gems of human
speech. Without love all glory fades, the noble falls
from life, art dies, music loses meaning and becomes
mere motions of the air, and virtue ceases to exist.
It is asserted that this life of celibacy is above and
against the tendencies of human nature; and the Car
dinal then asks: “ Who will ascribe this to natural
causes, and, if so, why did it not appear in the first four
thousand years ?”
If there is in a system of religion"a doctrine, a dogma,
or a practice against the tendencies of human nature
if this religion succeeds, then it is claimed by the
Cardinal that such religion must be of divine origin. Is
it 11 against the tendencies of human nature for a
mother to throw her child into the Ganges to please a
supposed god ? Yet a religion that insisted on that
sacrifice succeeded, and has, to-day, more believers than
the Catholic Church can boast.
Religions, like nations and individuals, have always
gone along the line of least resistance. Nothing has
“ ascended the stream of human license by a power
mightier than nature.” There is no such power. There
never was, there never can be, a miracle. We know
that man is a conditioned being. We know that he is
affected by a change of conditions. If he is ignorant he
is superstitious—that is natural. If his brain is developed,
if he perceives clearly that all things are naturally pro
duced, he ceases to be superstitious and becomes scien
tific. He is not a saint, but a savant—not a priest, but
a philosopher. He does not worship, he works; he inves
tigates ; he thinks; he takes advantage, through
intelligence, of the forces of nature. He is no longer
the victim of appearances, the dupe of his own ignorance,
and the persecutor of his fellow-men.
He then knows that it is far better to love his wife
and children than to love God. He then knows that the
love of man for woman, of woman for man, of parent
for child, of child for parent, is far better, far holier, than
�4°
fear10^
ROME OR REASON ?
phantom born of ignorance and
It is illogical to take the ground that the world was
cruel and ignorant and idolatrous when the Catholic
Church was established, and that because the world is
better now than then, the Church is of divine origin.
.What was the world when science came ? What was
it in the days of Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler ? What
was it when printing was invented ? What was it when
the Western World was found ? Would it not be much
easier to prove that science is of divine origin ?
. Science does not persecute. It does not shed blood—
it fills the world with light. It cares nothing for heresy;
it develops the mind, and enables man to answer his
own prayers.
Cardinal Manning takes the ground that Jehovah
practically abandoned the children of men for four
thousand years, and gave them over to every -abomina
tion. He claims that Christianity came “ in the fulness
of time,” and it is then admitted that “ what the fulness
of time may mean is one of the mysteries of times and
seasons that it is not for us to know.” Having declared
that it is a mystery, and one that we are not to know,
the Cardinal explains it: “One motive for the long
delay of four thousand years is not far to seek—it gave
time, full and ample, for the utmost development and
consolidation of all the falsehood and evil of which the
intellect and will of man is capable.”
Is it possible to imagine why an infinitely good and
wise being “ gave time full and ample for the utmost
development and consolidation of falsehood and evil ”?
Why should an infinitely wise God desire this develop
ment and consolidation ? What would be thought of a
father who should refuse to teach his son and deliberately
allow him to go into every possible excess, to the end
that he might “ develop all the falsehood and evil of
which his intellect and will were capable ”? If a super
natural religion is a necessity, and if without it all men
simply develop and consolidate falsehood and evil, why
was not a supernatural religion given to the first man ?
The Catholic Church, if this be true, should have been
founded in the garden of Eden. Was it not cruel to
�ROME OR REASON ?
4*
drown a world just for the want of a supernatural
religion ; a religion that man, by no possibility, could
furnish ? Was there “ husbandry in heaven ?
But the Cardinal contradicts himself by not only
admitting, but declaring, that the world had never seen
a legislation so just, so equitable, as that of Rome. Is
it possible that a nation in which falsehood and evil had
reached their highest development was, after all, so wise,
so just, and so equitable ? Was not the civil law far
better than the Mosaic—more philosophical, nearer just?
The civil law was produced without the assistance of God.
According to the Cardinal, it was produced by men in
whom all the falsehood and evil of which they were
capable had been developed and consolidated, while the
cruel and ignorant Mosaic code came from the lips of
infinite wisdom and compassion.
It is declared that the history of Rome shows what
man can do without God, and I assert that the history
of the Inquisition shows what man can do when assisted
by a church of divine origin, presided over by the
infallible vicars of God.
The fact that the early Christians not only believed
incredible things, but persuaded others of their truth, is
regarded by the Cardinal as a miracle. This is only
another phase of the old argument that success is the
test of divine origin. All supernatural religions have
been founded in precisely the same way. The credulity
of eighteen hundred years ago believed everything
except the truth.
A religion is a growth, and is of necessity adapted in
some degree to the people among whom it grows. It is
shaped and moulded by the general ignorance, the
superstition and credulity of the age in which it lives.
The key is fashioned by the lock. Every religion that
has succeeded has in some way supplied the wants of its
votaries, and has to a certain extent harmonised with
their hopes, their fears, their vices, and their virtues.
If, as the Cardinal says, the religion of .Christ is in
absolute harmony with nature, how can it be super
natural ? The Cardinal also declares that “ the religion
of Christ is in harmony with the reason and moral
nature in all nations and all ages to this day.” What
�42
Rome
or reason
?
becomes of the argument that Catholicism must be of
divine origin because “ it has ascended the stream of
human license, contra ictum fluminis, by a power mightier
than nature ? If “ it is in harmony with the reason and
moral nature of all nations and ages to this day,” it
has gone with the stream, and not against it. If “ the
religion of Christ is in harmony with the reason and
moral nature of all nations,” then the men who have
rejected it are unnatural, and these men have gone
against the stream. How then can it be said that
Christianity has been in changeless opposition to nature
as man has marred it? To what extent has man
marred it ? In spite of the marring by man, we are
told that the reason and moral nature of all nations in all
aqres to this day is ip harmony with, the religion of Jesus
Christ.
J
Are we justified in saying that the Catholic Church is
of divine origin because the Pagans failed to destroy it
by persecution ?
We will put the Cardinal’s statement in form :
Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution,
therefore Catholicism is of divine origin.
Let us make an application of this logic:
Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution;
therefore, Catholicism is of divine origin.
Catholicism failed to destroy Protestantism by per
secution ; therefore, Protestantism is of divine origin.
Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to
destroy Infidelity ; therefore, Infidelity is of divine
origin.
Let us make another application :
Paganism did not succeed in destroying Catholicism ;
therefore, Paganism was a false religion.
Catholicism did not succeed in destroying Protestant
ism ; therefore, Catholicism is a false religton.
Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to
destroy Infidelity ; therefore, both Catholicism and Pro
testantism are false religions.
The Cardinal has another reason for believing the
Catholic Church of divine origin. He declares that the
“ Canon Law is a creation of wisdom and justice to
which no statutes at large or imperial pandects can
�ROME OR REASON ?
43
bear comparison ” ; that “ the world-wide and secular
legislation of the -Church was of a higher character, and
that as water cannot rise above its source, the Church
could not, by mere human wisdom, have corrected and
perfected the imperial law, and therefore its source must
have been higher than the sources of the world.”
When Europe was the most ignorant, the Canon Law
was supreme. As a matter of fact, the good in the
Canon Law was borrowed—the bad was, for the most
part, original. In my judgment, the legislation of the
Republic of the United States is in many respects
superior to that of Rome, and yet we are greatly indebted
to the Common Law; but it never occurred to me that
our Statutes at Large are divinely inspired.
If the Canon Law is, in fact, the legislation of infinite
wisdom, then it should be a perfect code. Yet the
Canon Law made it a crime next to robbery and theft
to take interest for money. Without the right to take
interest the business of the world would, to a large
extent, cease and the prosperity of mankind end. There
are railways enough in the United States to make six
tracks around the globe, and every mile was built with
borrowed money on which interest was paid or promised.
In no other way could the savings of many thousands
have been brought together and a capital great enough
formed to construct works of such vast and continental
importance.
It was provided in this same wonderful Canon Law
that a heretic could not be a witness against a Catholic.
The Catholic was at liberty to rob and wrong his fellow
man, provided the fellow man was not a fellow Catholic,
and in a court established by the Vicar of Christ, the
man who had been robbed was not allowed to open his
mouth. A Catholic could enter the house of an un
believer, of a Jew, of a heretic, of a Moor, and before
the eyes of the husband and father murder his wife and
children and the father could not pronounce in the hear
ing of a judge the name of the murderer. The world is
wiser now, and the Canon Law, given to us by infinite
wisdom, has been repealed by the common sense of man.
In this divine code it was provided that to convict a
�44
ROME OR REASON ?
cardinal bishop, seventy-two witnesses were required ; a
cardinal presbyter, forty-four; a cardinal deacon, twentyfour . a sub-deacon, acolyth, exorcist, reader, ostiarus,
seven ; and in the purgation of a bishop, twelve wit
nesses were invariably required; of a presbyter, seven ;
of a deacon, three. These laws, in my judgment, were
made, not by God, but by the clergy.
So, too, in this cruel code it was provided that those
who gave aid, favor, or counsel to excommunicated
persons should be anathema, and that those who talked
with, consulted, or sat at the same table with, or gave
anything in charity to the excommunicated, should be
anathema.
Is it possible that a being of infinite wisdom made
hospitality a crime ? Did he say: “Whoso giveth a cup
of cold water to the excommunicated shall wear forever
a garment of fire ? ” Were not the laws of the Romans
much better ? Besides all this, under the Canon Law
the dead could be tried for heresy, and their estates con
fiscated that is to say, their widowsand orphans robbed.
The most brutal part of the common law of England is
that in relation to the right of woman—all of which was
taken from the Corpus Juris Canonici, “ the law that
came from a higher source than man.”
The only cause of absolute divorce as laid down by
the pious canonists was propter infidelitatem, which was
when one of the parties became Catholic, and would
not live with the other who continued still an unbe
liever. Under this divine statute, a pagan wishing to be
rid of his wife had only to join the Catholic Church,
provided she remained faithful to the religion of her
fathers. Under this divine law, a man marrying a
widow was declared to be a bigamist.
It would require volumes to point out the cruelties,
absurdities, and inconsistencies of the Canon Law. It
has. been thrown away by the world. Every civilised
nation has a code of its own, and the Canon Law is of
interest only to the historian, the antiquary, and the
enemy of theological government.
Under the Canon Law, people were convicted of
being witches and wizards, of holding intercourse with
�ROME OR REASON ?
45
devils. Thousands perished at the stake, having been
convicted of these impossible crimes. Under the Canon
Law, there was such a crime as the suspicion of heresy.
A man or woman could be arrested, charged with being
suspected, and under this Canon Law, flowing from the
intellect of infinite wisdom, the presumption was in favor
of guilt. The suspected had to prove themselves inno
cent. In all civilised courts, the presumption of inno
cence is the shield of the indicted ; but the Canon Law
took away this shield, and put in the hand of the priest
the sword of presumptive guilt.
If the real Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the true
shepherd of the sheep, this fact should be known not
only to the vicar, but to the sheep. A divinely-founded
and guarded church ought to know its own shepherd,
and yet the Catholic sheep have not always been certain
who the shepherd was.
The Council of Pisa, held in 1409, deposed two popes
—rivals—Gregory and Benedict—that is to say, deposed
the actual Vicar of Christ and the pretended. This
action was taken because a council, enlightened by the
Holy Ghost, could not tell the genuine from the counter
feit. The council then elected another Vicar, whose
authority was afterwards denied. Alexander V. died,
and John XXIII. took his place; Gregory XII. insisted
that he was the lawful pope ; John resigned, then he
was deposed, and afterwards imprisoned ; then Gregory
XII. resigned, and Martin V. was elected. The whole
thing reads like the annals of a South American Revo
lution.
The Council of Constance restored, as the Cardinal
declares, the unity of the Church, and brought back the
consolation of the Holy Ghost. Before this great
council John Huss appeared and maintained his own
tenets. The council declared that the Church was not
bound to keep its promise with a heretic. Huss was
condemned and executed on the 6th of July, 1415. His
disciple, Jerome of Prague, recanted; but, having
relapsed, was put to death, May 30, 1416. This cursed
council shed the blood of Huss and Jerome.
The Cardinal appeals to the author of Eccc Homo for
�46
ROME OR REASON ?
the purpose of showing that Christianity is above nature,
and the following passages, among others, are quoted
“ Who can describe that which unites men ? Who
has entered into the formation of speech, which is the
symbol of their union ? Who can describe exhaustively
the origin of civil society ? He who can do these things
can explain the origin of the Christian Church.”
These passages should not have been quoted by the
Cardinal. The author of these passages simply says
that the origin of the Christian Church is no harder to
find and describe than that which unites men ; than
that which has entered into the formation of speech, the
symbol of their union ; no harder to describe than the
origin of civil society, because he says that one who can
describe these can describe the other.
Certainly none of these things are above nature. We
do not need the assistance of the Holy Ghost in these
.matters. We know that men are united by common
interests, common purposes, common dangers—by race,
climate, and education. It is no more wonderful that
people live in families, tribes, communities, and nations,
than that birds, ants, and bees live in flocks and swarms.
If we know anything, we know that language is
natural-—that it is a physical science. But if we take
the ground occupied by the Cardinal, then we insist that
everything that cannot be accounted for by man is
supernatural. Let me ask, by what man ? What
man must we take as the standard ?
Cosmos or
Humboldt, St. Irenaeus or Darwin ? If everything that
we cannot account for is above nature, then ignorance is
the test of the supernatural. The man who is mentally
honest stops where his knowledge stops. At that point
he says that he does not know. Such a man is a philo
sopher. Then the theologian steps forward, denounces
the modesty of the philosopher as blasphemy, and pro
ceeds to tell what is beyond the horizon of the human
intellect.
Could a savage account for the telegraph or the tele
phone by natural causes ? How would he account for
these wonders ? He would account for them precisely
as the Cardinal accounts for the Catholic Church.
�ROME OR REASON ?
47
Bek nping to no rival Church, I have not the slightest
interest in the primacy of Leo XIII., and yet it is to be
regretted that this primacy rests upon such a narrow
■and insecure foundation.
The Cardinal says that “ it will appear almost certain
that the original Greek of St. Irenaeus, which is unfortu
nately lost, contained either rd —pun-eca, or some inflection
of 7rpwT€t'w, which signifies primacy.”
From this it appears that the primacy of the Bishop
of Rome rests on some “inflection” of a Greek word,
and that this supposed inflection was in a letter supposed
to have been written by St. Irenaeus, which has certainly
been lost. Is it possible that the vast fabric of papal
power has this, and only this, for its foundation ? To
this “ inflection ” has it come at last ?
The Cardinal’s case depends upon the intelligence and
veracity of his witnesses. The Fathers of the Church
were utterly incapable of examining a question of fact.
They were all believers in the miraculous. The same is
true of the apostles. If St. John was the author of the
Apocalypse, he was undoubtedly insane. If Polycarp
said the things attributed to him by Catholic writers, he
was certainly in the condition of his master. What is
the testimony of St. John worth in the light of the fol
lowing ? “ Cerinthus, the heretic, was in a bath-house.
St. John and another Christian were about to enter. St.
John cried out : ‘ Let us run away, lest the house fall
upon us while the enemy of truth is in it.’ ” Is it pos
sible that St. John thought that God would kill two
eminent Christians for the purpose of getting even with
one heretic ?
Let us see who Polycarp was. He seems to have
been a prototype of the Catholic Church, as will be seen
from the following statement concerning this Father :
“When any heretical doctrine was spoken in his
presence he would stop his ears.” After this, there can
be no question of his orthodoxy. It is claimed that
Polycarp was a martyr—that a spear was run through
his body, and that from the wound his soul, in the shape
of a bird, flew away. The history of his death is just
as true as the history of his life.
Irenaeus, another witness, took the ground that there
�48
ROME OR REASON’ ?
was to be a millennium, a thousand years of enjoyment
in which celibacy would not be the highest form of
virtue. If he is called as a witness for the purpose of
establishing the divine origin of the Church, and if one
of his “ inflections ” is the basis of papal supremacy, is
the Cardinal also willing to take his testimony as to the
nature of the millennium ?
All the Fathers were infinitely credulous. Every one
of them believed, not only in the miracles said to have
been wrought by Christ, by the apostles, and by other
Christians, but every one of them believed in the Pagan
miracles. All of these Fathers were familiar with
wonders and impossibilities. N othing was so common
with them as to work miracles-, and on many occasions
they not only cured diseases, not only reversed the order
of nature, but succeeded in raising the dead.
It is very hard, indeed, to prove what the apostles
said, or what the Fathers of the Church wrote. There
were many centuries filled with forgeries, many genera
tions in which the cunning hands of ecclesiastics erased,
obliterated, and interpolated the records of the past,
during which they invented books, invented authors, and
quoted from works that never existed.
The testimony of the “Fathers” is without the
slightest value. They believed everything, they examined
nothing. They received as a waste-basket receives.
Whoever accepts their testimony will exclaim with the
Cardinal: “ Happily, men are not saved by logic.”
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Victorian Blogging
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Rome or reason? : a reply to Cardinal Manning
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 48 p. ; 19 p.
Notes: Reprinted from the North American Review, Oct. and Nov. 1888. First published: London: Progressive Publishing Company, 1888. No. 65b in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1903
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N391
Subject
The topic of the resource
Catholic Church
Rationalism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Rome or reason? : a reply to Cardinal Manning), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Catholic Church-Controversial Literature
Henry Edward Manning
Marriage
NSS