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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
GHOSTS
BY
COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their Flesh
less Hands and fade for ever from the imagination
of Men.
Price Threepence.
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.O.
1893.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY
G. W. FOOTE,
AT 11 CLERK F KWELL GREEN, E.C.
�THE GHOSTS.
Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their Fleshless Hands
and fade for ever from the imagination of Men.
There are three theories by which men. account for all phe
nomena, for everything that happens : First, the Supernatural; second, the Supernatural and Natural; third, the
Natural. Between these theories there has been, from the
dawn of civilisation, a continual conflict. In this great war
nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the super
natural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter
is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without;
while naturalists maintain that Nature acts from within;
that Nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is; that Nature with infinite arms embraces everything that
exists, and that all supposed powers beyond the limits of the
material are simply ghosts. You say, “ Oh, this is material
ism!” What is matter? I take in my hand some earth
—in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light from the
quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the rain fall upon it;
the seeds will grow and a plant will bud and blossom. Do
you understand this ? Can you explain it better than you
can the production of thought ? Have you the slightest con
ception of what it really is ? And yet you speak of matter as
though acquainted with its origin, as though you had torn
from the clenched hands of the rocks the secrets of material
existence. Do you know what force is ? Can you account
for molecular action ? Are you really familiar with chem
istry, and can you account for the loves and hatreds of the
atoms ? Is there not something in matter that for ever
eludes? After all, can you get beyond, above, or below
appearances ? Before you cry “ materialism !” had you not
better ascertain what matter really is? Can you think even
of anything without a material basis ? Is it possible to
imagine the annihilation of a single atom ? Is it possible for
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you to conceive of the creation of an atom ? Can you have a
thought that was not suggested to you by what you call
matter ?
Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all
phenomena by the caprice of gods and devils.
For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
and bad, benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful, in
some mysterious way, produced all phenomena; that disease
and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misfortune,
peace and war, life and death, success and failure, were but
arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that shadowy
phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that they were
pleased and displeased by the actions of men; that they sent
and withheld the snow, the light, and the rain; that they
blessed the earth with harvests or cursed it with famine;
that they fed or starved the children of men; that they
crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took sides in war ;
that they controlled the winds; that they gave prosperous
voyages, allowing the brave mariner to meet his wife and
child inside the harbor bar, or sent the storms, strewing the
sad shore with wrecks of ships and the bodies of men.
Formerly, these ghosts were believed to be almost innu
merable. Earth, air, and water were filled with these phan
tom hosts. In modern times they have greatly decreased
in number, because the second theory—a mingling of the
supernatural and natural—has generally been adopted. The
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to perform the same
offices as the hosts of yore.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some
way be appeased; that they could be flattered by sacrifices,
by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples and
cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms and
ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations, by
flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of home,
by living alone in a wide desert, by the practice of celibacy,
by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying men,
women, and children, by covering the earth with dungeons,
by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts
and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing things
without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving and
denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating reason,
by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by slandering
the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by
discouraging investigation, by worshipping a book, by the
cultivation of credulity, by observing certain times and days,
by counting beads, by gazing at crosses, by hiring others to
repeat verses and prayers, by burning candles, and ringing
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bells, by enslaving each, other, and putting out the eyes of
the soul. All this has been done to appease and flatter this
monster of the air.
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been,
omitted, no infamy has been left undone by the believers in
ghosts,—by the worshippers of these fleshless phantoms.
And yet these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity.
They were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of
ignorance by that artist called superstition.
From these ghosts our fathers received information. They
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the
scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators, astro
nomers, physicians, metaphysicians, and historians of the
past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the only
source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write
books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were
found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the worse
for the facts, and especially for their discoverers. It was then,
and still is, believed that these books are the basis of the
idea of immortality; that to give up these volumes, or rather
the idea that they are inspired, is to renounce the idea of
immortality. This I deny.
The idea of immortality that like a sea has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of
hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time
and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of
any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
It is the rainbow of hope shining-upon the tears of grief.
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last
ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which
we live. . Did they know anything about the next? Upon
every point where contradiction is possible, they have been
contradicted.
By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs of
government were administered; all authority to govern
came from. them. The emperors, kings, and potentates all
had commissions from these phantoms. Man was not con
sidered as the source of any powei’ whatever. To rebel
against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing
less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible
phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper
position to be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate
were the good. Those who stood erect were infidels and
traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts,
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many
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toiled wearily in the storm and sun that the few favorites of
the ghosts might live in idleness. The many lived in huts,
and caves, and dens, that the few might dwell in palaces.
The many covered themselves with rags, that the few might
robe themselves in purple and in gold. . The many crept, and
cringed, and crawled, that the few might tread upon their
flesh with iron feet.
From the ghosts men received, not only authority, but
information of every kind. They told us the form of this
earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the
sins of man; that the universe was made in six days;
that astronomy and geology were devices of wicked men,
instigated by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a
telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into the earth
was sinful curiosity ; that trying to be wise above what
they had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent
spirit.
They told us there was no virtue like belief, and no crime
like doubt ; that investigation was pure impudence, and the
punishment therefore, eternal torment. They not only told
us all about this world, but about two others ; and if their
statements about the other world are as true as about this,
no one can estimate the value of their information.
For countless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and
they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human intel
lect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous
purpose ; to drive the love of truth from the human heart ;
to prevent the advancement of mankind ; to shut out from
the world every ray of intellectual light; to pollute every
mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning
and cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were
exhausted.
During these years of persecution, ignorance, superstition,
and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers, doctors,
the learned and the unlearned, believed in that frightful
production of ignorance, fear and faith, called witchcraft.
They believed that man was the sport and prey of devils.
They really thought that the very air was thick with
these enemies of man. With few exceptions, this hideous
and infamous belief was universal. Under these conditions,
progress was almost impossible.
Fear paralyses the brain. Progress is born of courage.
Fear believes—courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth
and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats
--courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilisa
tion. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts.
Fear is religion—courage is science.
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The facts, upon which this terrible belief rested, were
proved over and over again in every court of Europe.
Thousands confessed themselves guilty—admitted that they
had sold themselves to the Devil. They gave the particulars
of the sale; told what they said and what the Devil replied.
They confessed this, when they knew that confession was
death; knew that their property would be confiscated, and
their children left to beg their bread. This is one of the
miracles of history—one of the strangest contradictions of
the human mind. Without doubt, they really believed
themselves guilty. In the first place, they believed in
witchcraft as a fact, and when charged with it they probably
became insane. In their insanity they confessed their guilt.
They found themselves abhorred and deserted—charged
with a crime that they could not disprove. Like a man in
quicksand, every effort only sunk them deeper. Caught in
this frightful web, at the mercy of the spiders of superstition,
hope fled, and nothing remained but the insanity of confession.
The whole world appeared to be insane.
In the time of James the First, a man was executed for
causing a storm at sea with the intention of drowning one of
the royal family. How could he disprove it ? How could
he show that he did not cause the storm ? All storms were
at that time generally supposed to be caused by the Devil—<
the prince of the power of the air—and by those whom he
assisted.
I implore you to remember that the believers in such
impossible things were the authors of our creeds and con
fessions of faith.
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew
Hale, one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for
having caused children to vomit crooked pins. She was
also charged with having nursed devils. The learned judge
charged the intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to
the existence of witches; that it was established by all
history, and expressly taught by the Bible.
The woman was hanged and her body burned.
Sir Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was
to throw away the sacred scriptures. In my judgment he
was right.
John.Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches,
and insisted upon it, years after all laws upon the subject
had been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember
that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church.
In New England, a woman was charged with being a
witch, and with having changed herself into a fox. While
in that condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs.
�( 8)
A committee of three men, by order of the court, examined
this woman. They removed her clothing and searched for
“ witch spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles
could be thrust without giving her pain. They reported to
the court that such spots were found. She denied, however,
that she ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the
report of the committee she was found guilty and actually
executed. This was done by our Puritan fathers, by the
gentlemen who braved the dangers of the deep for the sake
of worshipping God and persecuting their fellow men.
In those days people believed in what was known as
lycanthropy—that is, that persons, with the assistance of the
Devil, could assume the form of wolves. An instance is
given where a man was attacked by a wolf. He defended
himself, and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s
paws. . The wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw,
put it in his pocket and carried it home. There he found his
wife with one of her hands gone. He took the paw from
his pocket.. It had changed to a human hand. He charged
his wife with being a witch. She was tried. She confessed
her guilt, and was burned.
People were burned for causing frosts in summer—for
destroying crops with hail—for causing storms—for making
cows go dry, and even for souring beer. There was no im
possibility for which someone was not tried and convicted.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged, was to be
convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every other.
This infamous belief was so firmly seated in the minds of
the people, that to express a doubu as to its truth was to be
suspected. Whoever denied the existence of witches 'and
devils was denounced as an infidel.
They believed that animals were often taken possession of
by devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy
the devil. They absolutely tried, convicted, and executed
dumb beasts.
At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge of
having laid an egg. .Rooster eggs were used only in making
witch ointment—this everybody knew. The rooster was
convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the
public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having
killed and. partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted,
but the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth,
were acquitted. As late as 1740, a cow was tried and con
victed of being possessed by a devil.
They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes, and vermin.
They used to go through the alleys, streets, and fields, and
warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In
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case they disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and
penalties.
But let us be careful how we laugh at these things. Let us
not pride ourselves too much on the progress of our age. We
must not forget that some of our people are yet in the same
intelligent business. Only a little while ago, the Governor
of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer, to see if
some power could not be induced to kill the grasshoppers, or
send them into some other state.
About the close of the fifteenth century, so great was the
excitement with regard to the existence of witchcraft, that
Pope Innocent VII. issued a bull directing the inquisitors to
be vigilant in searching out and punishing ail guilty of this
crime. Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in a
book or pamphlet called the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer
of Witches), which was issued by the Roman See. Popes
Alexander, Leo, and Adrian, issued like bulls. For two
hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing
the impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and
torturing men, women, and children. Protestants were as
active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were
burned at the stake in a period of three months. About one
thousand were executed in one year in the diocese of Como.
At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany
alone: the last execution (in Wurtzburg) taking place as
late as 1749. Witches were burned in Switzerland as late
as 1780.
In England the same frightful scenes were enacted.
Statutes were passed from Henry VI. to James I., defining
the crime and its punishment. The last Act passed by the
feritish Parliament was when Lord Bacon was a member of
the House of Commons; and this Act was not repealed
until 1736.
Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
of England, says : “ To deny the possibility, nay, actual
existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to con
tradict the Word of God in various passages both of the Old
and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which
every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony,
either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory
laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce
with evil spirits.”
In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at Edin
burgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that: “ A witch is a
woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons are
among men is abundantly plain from scripture, and that they
ought to be put to death.”
�( 10 )
This work was re-published in Albany, New York, in 1816.
No wonder the clergy of that city are ignorant and bigoted
even unto this day.
In 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age,
were hanged for selling their souls to the Devil, and raisin«a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of
soap.
In England it has been estimated that at least thirty thou
sand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed in
Scotland perished in 1722. “ She was an innocent old woman,
who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the
sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She
had a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet—a circum
stance attributed to the witch having been used to transform
her daughter into a pony and getting her shod by the Devil.”
In 1692, nineteen persons were executed and one pressed
to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witch
craft.
It was thought, in those days, that men and women made
compacts with the Devil, orally and in writing. That they
abjured God and Jesus Christ, and dedicated themselves
wholly to the Devil. The contracts were confirmed at a
general meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the Devil
himself presided; and the persons generally signed the
articles of agreement with their own blood. These contracts
were, in some instances for a few years; in others, for life.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a
year,.at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with
an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptised infants.
“ To these meetings they rode from great distances on broom
sticks, pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs. Here they did homage
to the prince of hell, and offered him sacrifices of young
children, and practised all sorts of license until the break of
day.”
“ As late as 1815, Belgium was disgraced by a witch trial;
and guilt was established by the water ordeal.” “ In 1836,
the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the
sea a woman reputed to be a sorceress ; and as the miserable
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was pronounced
guilty, and beaten to death.”
“ It was believed that the bodies of devils are not like
those of men and animals, cast in an unchangeable mould.
It was thought they were like clouds, refined and subtle
matter, capable of assuming any form and penetrating into
any orifice. The horrible tortures they endured in their place
of punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to suffer
ing, and they continually sought a temperate and somewhat
�(11)
moist warmth in. order to allay their pangs. It was for this
reason they so frequently entered into men and women.”
The Devil could transport men, at his will, through the
gjy. He could beget children; and Martin Luther himself
had come in contact with one of these children.. He. recom
mended the mother to throw the child into the river,inorder
to free their house from the presence of a devil.
It was believed that the Devil could transform people into
any shape he pleased.
Whoever denied these things was denounced as an infidel.
All the believers in witchcraft confidently appealed to the
Bible. Their mouths were filled with passages demonstrating
the existence of witches and their power over human .beings.
By the Bible they proved that innumerable evil spirits were
ranging over the world endeavoring to ruin mankind; that
these spirits possessed a power and wisdom far transcending
the limits of human faculties ; that they delighted in. every
misfortune that could befall the world; that their malice was
superhuman. That they caused tempests was proved by the
action of the Devil toward Job; by the passage in the book of
Revelation describing the four angels who held the four winds,
and to whom it was given to afflict the earth. They believed
this, because they knew that Christ had been carried by the
Devil in the same manner and placed on a pinnacle of the
temple. “ The prophet Habakkuk had been transported.by
a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and Philip, the evangelist,
had been the object of a similar miracle; and in the same
way St. Paul had been carried in the body to the third
heaven.”
“ In those pious days, they believed that. Incubi and
Succubi were for ever wandering among mankind, alluring,
by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction,
and laying plots, which were too often successful, against the
virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People, told, with
bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman,
four successive abbots in a German monastery had been
wasted away by an unholy flame.”
An instance is given in which the Devil not only assumed
the appearance of a holy man, in order to pay his addresses
to a lady, but when discovered, crept under the bed, suffered
himself to be dragged out, and was impudent enough to
declare that he was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had
he assumed the form and features of the prelate that those
Who knew the bishop best were deceived.
One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human
mind during these long centuries of darkness and supersti-
�()
tion. To them, these things were awful and frightful realities.
Hovering about them in the open air, in their houses, in the
bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the darkness of
i* everywhero, around, above and below, were innumer
able hosts of unclean and malignant devils.
From the malice of those leering and vindictive vampires
ot the air, the Church pretended to defend mankind. Pursued
by those phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their
theft aD<* imPl°red
of robed hypocrisy and sceptered
Take from the orthodox Church of to-day the threat and
tear ot hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano.
Take from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural,
the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the
unknowable and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum
remains.
Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly laid to the
charge of the Church, we are told that the civilisation of
to-day is the child of what we are pleased to call the super
stition of the past.
1
Religion has not civilised man—man has civilised religion.
God improves as man advances.
Ca^ your attention to what we have received from
the followers of the ghosts. Let me give you an outline of
" a sciences as taught by these philosophers of the clouds.
j diseases were produced, either as a punishment by the
good ghosts, or out of pure malignity by the bad ones,
lhere were, properly speaking, no diseases. The sick were
possessed by ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in
knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises,
kor thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs.
.Everything was. done to make the visit of the ghost as un
pleasant as possible, and they generally succi-eded in making
things so disagreeable that if the ghost did not leave, the
patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of different
rank, power and dignity. Now and then a man pretended
to have won the favor of some powerful ghost, and that gave
him power oyer the little ones. Such a man became an
eminent physician.
It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that
produced by burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a
serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were
i 3gly offeQsive ,t0 the nostrils of an ordinary ghost.
With this smoke the sick room would be filled until the ghost
vanished or the patient died.
”
�It was also believed that certain words—the names of the
most powerful ghosts—when properly pronounced, were
very effective weapons. It was for a long time thought that
Isatin words were the best—Latin being a dead language,
and known by the clergy. Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before the wicked ghost
Would cause it instantly to flee in dread away.
For thousands of years the practice of medicine consisted
in driving these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.
In some instances bargains and compromises were made
with the ghosts. One case is given where a multitude of
devils traded a man for a herd of swine. In this transaction
the devils were the losers, as the swine immediately drowned
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.
The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings of
those afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams,
trances, and the numberless frightful phenomena produced
by diseases of the nerves, were all seized upon as so many
proofs that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and
malignant ghosts.
Whoever endeavored to account for these things by natural
causes, whoever attempted to cure diseases by natural means,
was denounced by the Church as an infidel. To explain
anything was a crime. It was to the interest of the priest
that all phenomena should be accounted for by the will and
bower of gods and devils. The moment it is admitted that
all phenomena are within the domain of the natural, the
necessity for a priest has disappeared. Religion breathes
the air of the supernatural. Take from the mind of man the
idea of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist. For
this reason, the Church has always despised the man who
explained the wonderful. Upon this principle, nothing was
left undone to stay the science of medicine. As long as
plagues and pestilences could be stopped by prayer, the priest
was useful. The moment the physician found a cure, the
¡priest became an extravagance. The moment it began to be
apparent that prayer could do nothing for the body, the
priest shifted his ground and began praying for the soul.
Long after the devil idea was substantially abandoned in
the practice of medicine, and when it was admitted that God
had nothing to do With ordinary coughs and colds, it was
»till believed that all the frightful diseases were sent by him
as punishments for the wickedness of the people. It was
thought to be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any
Natural means, to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly,
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the arro
�( 14 )
gance of the priest was boundless. He told the people that
they had slighted the clergy, that they had refused to pay
tithes, that they had doubted some of the doctrines of the
Church, and that God was now taking his revenge. The
people for the most part believed this infamous tissue of
priestcraft. They hastened to fall upon their knees; they
poured out their wealth upon the altars of hypocrisy; they
abased and debased themselves; from their minds they
banished all doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very
dust of humility.
The Church never wanted disease to be under the control
of man. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, preached
a sermon against vaccination. His idea was, that if God had
decreed from all eternity that a certain man should die with
the small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and annul that
decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox being regarded
as one of the heaviest guns in the arsenal of heaven, to
spike it was the height of presumption. Plagues and
pestilences were instrumentalities in the hands of God with
which to gain the love and worship of mankind. To find
a cure for a disease was to take a weapon from the Church.
No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. Quinine has
been found altogether more reliable. Just as soon as a
specific is found for a disease, that disease will be left out
of the list of prayer. The number of diseases with which
God from time to time afflicts mankind is continually decreas
ing. In a few years all of them will be under the control of
man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the threats of their
priests will excite only a smile.
The science of medicine has had but one enemy—religion.
Man was afraid to save his body for fear he might lose his
soul.
Is it any wonder that the people in those days believed in
and taught the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment—a
doctrine that makes God a heartless monster and man a slimy
hypocrite and slave ?
The ghosts were historians, and their histories were the
grossest absurdities. “ Tales told by idiots, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” In those days the histories were
written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as super
stitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though they
had been witnesses of every occurrence they related. They
wrote the history of every country of importance. They told
all the past and predicted all the future with an impudence
that amounted to sublimity. “ They traced the order of St.
Michael, in Prance, to the archangel himself, and alleged that
�( 15 )
he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself. They
said that Tartars originally came from hell, and that they
were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the names of
perdition. They declared that Scotland was so named after
Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in Ireland, invaded
Scotland, and took it by force of arms. This statement was
made in a letter addressed to the Pope in the fourteenth
century, and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The letter
was written by some of the highest dignitaries, and by direc
tion of the King himself.”
These gentlemen accounted for the red on the breasts of
robins from the fact that these birds carried water to unbap
tised infants in hell.
Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the fourteenth
century, gave the world the following piece of information :
“ It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and
became a heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected
Popeand that, having drank to excess, he fell by the road
side, and in this condition was killed by swine. “ And for
that reason his followers abhor pork even unto this day.”
Another eminent historian informs us that Nero was in the
habit of vomiting frogs. When I read this I said to myself:
Some of the croakers of the present day against Progress
would be the better for such a vomit.
The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of
Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures us that the walls of
a city fell down in answer to prayer. That there were giants
in those days who could take fifty ordinary men under their
arms and walk away with them. “ With the greatest of these,
a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando had a theological
discussion, and that in the heat of the debate, when the giant
was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando rushed forward
and inflicted a fatal stab.”
The history of Britain, written by the archdeacons of
Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According
to them, Brutus conquered England and built the city of
London. During his time it rained pure blood for three days.
At another time a monster came from the sea, and, after
having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the
king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was
not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical
contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that
he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating
some thirty men a.day. That this giant had clothes woven
of the beards of kings he had devoured. To cap the climax,
one of the authors of this book was promoted for having
w ri tten the only reli able history of his country.
�( 16 )
In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single
truth. Facts were considered unworthy of preservation.
Anything that really happened was not of sufficient interest
or importance to be recorded. The great religious historian,
Eusebius, ingeniously remarks that in his history he carefully
omitted whatever tended to discredit the Church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to by
all the historians of that time.
They wrote, and the people believed, that the tracts of
Pharaoh’s chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red
Sea, and that they had been miraculously preserved from the
winds and waves as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle
there performed.
It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those
times is the result of accident or mistake.
They accounted for everything as the work of good and
evil spirits. With cause and effect they had nothing to do.
Facts were in no way related to each other. God governed
by infinite caprice, filled the world with miracles and discon
nected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence and death..
The moment that the idea is abandoned that all is
natural; that all phenomena are the necessary links in
the endless chain of being, the conception of history
becomes impossible. With the ghosts the present is not
the child of the past, nor the mother of the future. In the
domain of religion all is chance, accident and caprice.
Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written by
the co-temporaries of these historians.
The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by our
intelligent ancestors that all law derived its sacredness and
its binding force from the fact that it had been communi
cated to man by the ghosts. Of course it was not pretended
that the ghosts told everybody the law ; but they told it to
a few, and the few told it to the people, and the people, as a
rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble. It was
thousands of ages before the people commenced making
laws for themselves, and strange as it may appear, most of
these laws were vastly superioi’ to the ghost article. Through
the web and woof of human legislation began to run and
shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.
During these years of darkness it was believed that rather
than see an act of injustice done ; rather than see the
innocent suffer ; rather than see the guilty triumph, some
ghost would interfere. This belief, as a rule, gave great
�( 17 )
Satisfaction to the victoi’ious party, and as the other man was
dead, no complaint was heard from him.
This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and
chance. They had trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by
lot. Persons were made to grasp hot iron, and if it burnt
them their guilt was established. Others, with tied hands
and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they sank, the verdict
of guilty was unanimous—if they did not sink, they were in
league with devils.
So in England, persons charged with erime could appeal
to the corsned. The corsned was a piece of the sacramental
bread. If the defendant could swallow this piece he went
acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the
Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow
it and was choked to death.
The ghosts and their followers always took delight in
torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infrac
tion of most of their laws, death was the penalty—death
produced by stoning and by fire. Sometimes, when man
committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some
city of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. But for
saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines,_ or for
picking up sticks on certain days, or for worshipping the
wrong ghost, or for failing to pray to the right one, or for
laughing at a priest, or for saying that wine was not blood,
or that bread was not flesh, or for failing to regard ram’s
horns as artillery, or for insisting that a dry bone was
scarcely sufficient to take the place of water works, or that
a raven, as a ru e, made a poor landlord ¡—Death, produced
by all the ways that the ingenuity of hatred could devise,
was the penalty.
Law is a growth—it is a science. Right and wrong exist
in the nature of things. Things are not right because they
are commanded, nor wrong because they are prohibitedThere are real crimes enough without creating artificial
ones. All progress in legislation has for centuries consisted
in repealing the laws of the ghosts.
The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s capacity to
enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not
inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor
inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have
entered his brain. But for this, the word “ conscience ” never
would have passed the lips of man.
There is one good—happiness. There is but one sin—
selfishness. All law should be for the preservation of the
one and the destruction of the other.
�( 18 )
Under the regime of the.ghosts, laws were not supposed toexist m the nature of things. They were supposed to be
simply the irresponsible command of a ghost. These commands were not supposed to rest upon reason, they were the
product of arbitrary will.
The penalties for the violation of these laws were as cruel
a0 the laws were senseless and absurd. Working on the
Sabbath and murder were both punished with death. The
tendency of . such laws is to blot from the human heart the
sense of justice.
To show you how perfectly every department of know
ledge, or ignorance rather, was saturated with superstition, I
will for a moment refer to the science of language.
It. was thought by our fathers, that Hebrew was the
°^jnal lan"ua#e 5 that it was taught to Adam in the Garden
of Eden by the Almighty, and that consequently all languages
came from, and can be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact
inconsistent with that idea was discarded. According to the
ghosts, the trouble of the Tower of Babel accounted for the
fact, that all people did. not. speak Hebrew. The Babel
business settled all questions in the science of language.
After a time, so many facts were found to be inconsistent
with the Hebrew idea that it began to fall into disrepute,
and other languages began to compete for the honor of beiii0the original.
°
Andre Kemp, in 1569, published a work on the language of
Paradise,111 which he maintained that God spoke to A d am in
Swedish; that Adam answered in Danish; and that the
serpent—which appears to me quite probable-spoke to Eve
in French. Erro, m a work published at Madrid, took the
Basque was the.language spoken in the Garden
of Eden.; but in 1580 Goropius published his celebrated work
at Antwerp, m which he put the whole matter at rest by
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language spoken in
Paradise was neither more nor less than plain Holland Dutch.
The real founder of the science of language was Leibnitz,
a cotemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea
that all languages could be traced to one language. He
maintained that language was a natural growth. Experience
teaches us that this must be so. Words are continually dying
out and continually being born. Words are naturally and
necessarily produced. Words are the garments of thought,
the robes of ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and gold They
have been born of hatred and revenge; of love and self
sacrifice ; of hope and fear, of agony and joy. These words
are born of the terror and beauty of nature. The stars have
�(ly)
fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness and the dawn.
From everything they have taken something. Words are the
crystalisations of human history, of all that man has enjoyed
and suffered—his victories and defeats—all that he has lost
and won. Words are the shadows of all that has been—the
mirrors of all that is.
The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in astronomy and
geology. According to them the earth was made out of
nothing, and a little more nothing having been taken than
was used in the construction of this world, the stars were
made out of what was left over. Cosmos, in the sixth century,
taught that the stars were impelled by angels, who either
carried them on their shoulders, rolled them in front of them,
or drew them after. He also taught that each angel that
pushed a star took great pains to observe what the other
angels were doing, so that the relative distances between the
stars might always remain the same. He also gave his idea
as to the form of the world.
He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram; that on
the outside was a strip of land, like the frame of a common
slate; that then there was a strip of water, and in the middle
a great piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the outer
strip; that their descendants, with the exception of the Noah
family, were drowned by a flood on this outer strip; that the
ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where we now
are. He accounted for night and day by saying that on the
outside strip of land there was a high mountain, around which
the sun and moon revolved, and that when the sun was on the
other side of the mountain it was night; and when on this
side it was day.
He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved
by many passages from the Bible. Among other reasons for
believing the earth to be flat he brought forward the follow
ing : We are told in the New Testament that Christ shall
come again in glory and power, and all the world shall see
him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people on the
other side going to see Christ when he comes ? That settled
the question, and the Church, not only endorsed the book,
but declared that whoever believed less or more than stated
¡by Cosmos, was a heretic.
In those blessed days, Ignorance was a king and Science an
outcast.
They knew the moment this earth ceased to be the centre
of the universe, and became a mere speck in the starry heaven
of existence, that their religion would become a childish fable
of the past.
�( 20 )
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, men
enslaved their fellow men; they trampled upon the rights of
women and children. In the name and by the authority of
the ghosts, they bought and sold and destroyed each other;
they filled heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the
present with despair and the future with horror. In the name
and by the authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned the
human mind, polluted the conscience, hardened the heart,
subverted justice, crowned robbery, sainted hypocrisy, and
extinguished for a thousand years the torch of reason.
I have endeavored, in some faint degree, to show you what
has happened, and what will always happen when men are
governed by superstition and fear; when they desert the
sublime standard of reason; when they take the words of
others and do not investigate for themselves.
Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak in
this matter as the most ignorant. Kepler, one of the greatest
men of the world, an astronomer second to none, although
he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe, was an
astrologer, and really believed that he could predict the
career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant
at his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the
atmosphere of his time. He believed in the music of the
spheres, and assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain
stars.
Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose
disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down,
and then put them together in such mannei’ as to make
prophecies, and then waited patiently to see them fulfilled.
Luther believed that he had actually seen the Devil, and had
discussed points of theology with him. The human mind
was in chains. Every idea almost was a monster. Thought
was deformed. Eacts were looked upon as worthless. Only
the wonderful was worth preserving. Things that actually
happened were not considered worth recording—real occur
rences were too common. Everybody expected the miraculous.
The ghosts were supposed to be busy; devils were thought
to be the most industrious things in the universe, and with
these imps every occurrence of an unusual character was in
someway connected. There was no order, no serenity, no
certainty in anything. Everything depended upon ghosts
and phantoms. . Man was, for the most part, at the mercy of
malevolent spirits. He protected himself as best he could
with holy water, and tapers, and wafers, and cathedrals. He
made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he
made music to charm them. He used smoke to choke them,
and incense to please them. He wore beads and crosses.
�( 21 )
He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted
when he was hungry, and feasted when he was not. He
believed everything that seemed unreasonable, just to
appease the ghosts. He humbled himself. He crawled in
the dust. He shut the doors and windows, and excluded
every ray of light from the temple of the soul. He debauched
and polluted his own mind, and toiled night and day to
repair the walls of his own prison. From the garden of his
heart he plucked and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity.
The priests revelled in horrible descriptions of hell. Con
cerning the wrath of God, they grew eloquent. They
denounced man as totally depraved. They made reason
blasphemy, and pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as
painting the torments and sufferings of the lost. Over the
worm that never dies they grew poetic; and the second
death filled them with a kind of holy delight. According
to them, the smoke and cries ascending from hell were the
perfume and music of heaven.
At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have to
show you the productions of the human mind, when enslaved;
the effects of widespread ignorance—the results of fear. I
want to convince you that every form of slavery is a viper,
that, sooner or later, will strike its poison fangs into the
bosoms of men.
The first great step towards progress is, for man to cease
to be the slave of man ; the second, to cease to be the slave
of the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and
phantoms of the air.
For ages the human race was imprisoned. Through the
bars and grates came a few struggling rays of light. Against
these grates and bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful
face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.
Men found that the real was the useful; that what a man
knows is better than what a ghost says; that an event is
more valuable than a prophesy. They found that diseases
were not produced by spirits, and could not be cured by
frightening them away. They found that death was as
natural as life. They began to study the anatomy and
chemistry of the human body, and found that all was natural
and within the domain of law.
The conjnror and sorcerer were discarded, and the phy
sician and surgeon employed. They found that the earth
was not flat; that the stars were not mere specks. They
found that being born undei’ a particular planet had nothing
to do with the fortunes of men.
The astrologer was discharged and the astronomer took
his place.
�( ¿2 )
# They found that the earth had swept through the constella
tions for millions of ages. They found that good and evil
were produced by natural causes, and not by ghosts; that
man could not be good enough or bad enough to stop or cause
a rain; that diseases were produced as naturally as grass,
and were not sent as punishments upon man for failing
to believe a certain creed. They found that man, through
intelligence, could take advantage of the forces of nature—
that he could make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the
lightnings of heaven do his bidding and minister to his
wants. They found that the ghosts knew nothing of benefit
to man; that they were utterly ignorant of geology—of
astronomy—of geography;—that they knew nothing of
history;—that they were poor doctors and worse surgeons ;
—that they knew nothing of law and less of justice;—that
they were without brains, and utterly destitute of hearts;—
that they knew nothing of the rights of men;—that they
were despisers of women, the haters of progress, the enemies
of science, and the destroyers of liberty.
The condition of the world during the Dark Ages shows
exactly the result of enslaving the bodies and souls of men.
In those days there was no freedom. Labor was despised,
and a laborer was considered but little above a beast.
Ignorance, like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world,
and superstition ran riot with the imagination of man. The
air was filled with angels, with demons and monsters.
Credulity sat upon the throne of the soul, and Reason was
an exiled king. A man to be distinguished must be a
soldier or a monk. War and theology, that is to say, murder
and hypocrisy, were the principal employments of man.
Industry was a slave, theft was commerce; murder was war,
hypocrisy was religion.
Every Christian country maintained that it was no robbery
to take the property of Mohammedans by force, and no
murder to kill the owners. Lord Bacon was the first man
of note who maintained that a Christian country was bound
to keep its plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading
and writing were considered dangerous arts. Every layman
who could read and write was suspected of being a heretic.
All thought was discouraged. They forged chains of super
stition for the mind, and manacles of iron for the bodies of
men. The earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the
mitre and sceptre, by the altar and throne, by Fear and Foroe,
by Ignorance and Faith, by ghouls and ghosts.
In the fifteenth century the following law was in force in
England:
�( 23 )
“ That whosoever reads the scriptures in the mother
tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their
heirs for ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God,
enemies to the Crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”
During the first year this law was in force, thirty-nine
were hanged for its violation and their bodies burned.
In the sixteenth century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks.
The slightest word uttered against the superstition of the
time was punished with death.
Even the reformers, so-called, of those days, had no idea
of intellectual liberty—no idea even of toleration. Luther,
Knox, Calvin, believed in religious liberty only when they
were in the minority. The moment they were clothed with
power they began to exterminate with fire and sword.
Castellio was the first minister who advocated the liberty
of the soul. He was regarded by the reformers as a
criminal, and treated as though he had committed the crime
of crimes.
Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same time, wrote a
few words in favoi’ of the freedom of conscience, but
public opinion was overwhelmingly against him. The
people were ready, anxious, and willing, with whip, and
chain, and fire, to drive from the mind of man the heresy
that he had a right to think.
Montaigne, a man blest with so much common sense that
he was the most uncommon man of his time, was the first to
raise a voice against torture in France. But what was the
voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, superstitious and malevolent millions? It was
the cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel sea.
In spite of the efforts of the brave few the infamous war
against the freedom of the soul was waged until at least one
pundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers,
brothers, sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like
ourselves, were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant
faith. They perished in every way by which death can be
broduced. Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched
by the believers in ghosts.
For my part I glory in the fact, that here in the new
world—in the United States—liberty of conscience was first
guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United
•States was the first great decree entered in the high court of
human equity for ever divorcing Church and State—the
first injunction granted against the interference of the
ghosts. This was one of the grandest steps ever taken by
ijhe human race in the direction of Progress.
�( 24 )
You will ask what has caused this wonderful change in
three hundred years. And I answer—the inventions and
discoveries of the few ; the brave thoughts, the heroic utter
ances of the few—the acquisition of a few facts.
Besides, you must remember that every wrong in some way
tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a lie stand always.
A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another lie made for
the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question of time.
Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and kings quar
relled: the priests began to dispute ; the ideas of government
began to change.
In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past
was a vast cemetery with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of
men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them.
The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave
pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible
for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain, the
wealth of his soul. At first, it was used to flood the world
with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has
been flooding the world with light.
When people read they begin to reason, and when they
reason they progress. This was another grand step in the
direction of Progress.
The discovery of powder, that put the peasant almost upon
a par with the prince; that put an end to the so-called age of
chivalry; that released a vast number of men from the
armies; that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute
strength.
The discovery of America, whose shores were trod by the
restless feet of adventure; that brought people holding every
shade of superstition together ; that gave the world an oppor
tunity to compare notes, and to laugh at the follies of each
other. Out of this strange mingling of all creeds, and super
stitions, and facts, and theories, and countless opinions, came
the Great Republic.
Every fact has pushed a superstition from the brain and a
ghost from the clouds. Every mechanic art is an educator.
Every loom, every reaper and mower, every steamboat, every
locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is a
missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress. Every
mill, every furnace, every building with its wheels and levers,
in which something is made for the convenience, for the use,
and for the comfort and elevation of man, is a church, and
every school house is a temple.
Education is the most radical thing in the world.
To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution.
To build a school house is to construct a fort.
�(25)
Every library is an arsenal filled with the weapons and
ammunition of Progress, and every fact is a monitor with
fades of iron and a turret of steel.
T
I thank the inventors,., the discoverers, the thinkers. 1
thank Columbus and Magellan. I thank Galileo, and Coper
nicus, and Kepler, and Des Cartes, and Newton, and La
Place. I thank Locke, and Hume, and Bacon, and pbake'
speare, and Kant, and Fichte, and Liebmtz, and Goethe. 1
thank Fulton, and Watts, and Volta, and Galvani, and
Franklin, and Morse, who made lightning the messenger of
man. I thank Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. 1
thank Crompton and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped
the looms and spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther
for protesting against the abuses of the Church, and I
denounce him because he was the enemy of liberty. 1 thank
Calvin for writing a book in favor of religious freedom, and 1
abhor him because he burned Servetus. I thank Knox for
resisting episcopal persecution, and I hate him because he
persecuted in his turn. I thank the Puritans for saying,
“ Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and yet 1 am
compelled to say that they were tyrants themselves. 1 thank
Thomas Paine because he was a believer m liberty, and because
he did as much to make my country free as any other human
being. I thank Voltaire, that great man who, for halt a
century, was the intellectual emperor of Europe, and who,
from his throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of
scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin,
Haeckel and Biichner, Spencer, Tyndall and Huxley, Draper,
Lecky and Buckle.
,, ....
I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the
scientists, the explorers. I thank the honest millions who
have toiled.
,
,,
_ ..
I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are the
Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests the
grand fabric of civilisation. They are the men who have
broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superstition.
They are the Titans who carried Olympus by assault, ana
who will soon stand victors upon Sinai’s crags.
We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake or
the truth—a superstition for a fact—to ascertain the real is
t0Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends to
the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that
tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives
us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures,
grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that
�( 26 )
makes us better husbands and wives, better children, better
citizens—all these things combined produce what I call
Progress.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of
Nature, and this can be done only by labor and by thought.
Labor is the foundation of all. Without labor, and without
great labor, progress is impossible. The progress of the
world depends upon the men who talk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and
reap; upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of
furnace fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers
in shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous
billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon
the brave thinkers.
. From the surplus produced by labor, schools and univer
sities are built and fostered. From this surplus the painter
is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor for
chiselling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and
the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and
the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the
books in which we converse with the dead and living kings
of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty, of
elegance, and of refined happiness.
I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to
what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of
to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know
that there are many worshippers of the past. They venerate
the ancient because it is ancient. They Bee no beauty in
anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with
the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old; no
religion, no governments like the ancient; no orators, no
poets, no statesmen like those who have been dust for two
thousand years. Others love the modern simply because it
is modern.
We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the
obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity,
and independence enough not to believe what they said
simply because they said it.
With the idea that labor is the basis of progress goes the
truth that labor must be free. The laborer must be a free man.
The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head
and hands in partnership.
To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of
time, is the problem of free labor.
Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.
�( 27 )
Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will give us
truth.
Slowly, but surely, man is freeing his imagination of these
sexless phantoms, of the cruel ghosts. Slowly, but surely,
he is rising above the superstitions of the past. He is
learning to rely upon himself. He is beginning to find that
labor is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that
hoping, toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of
more importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered
through the fenceless fields of space.
The believers in ghosts claim still, that they are the only
wise and virtuous people upon the earth; claim still, that
there is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast,
that they will be infinitely rewarded, and the others infinitely
punished.
I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the
theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth
century p
Have the churches the confidence of mankind ?
Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs
to a church ?
Does the banker loan money to a man because he is a
Methodist or Baptist P
Will a certificate of good standing in any church be taken
as collateral security for one dollar ?
Will you take the word of a church member, or his note, or
his oath, simply because he is a church member.
Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder and more generous
to their families—to their fellow-mem—than doctors, lawyers,
merchants and farmers P
Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily
•make people honest ?
When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people
lose confidence in him ?
Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance
in sin ?
Why send missionaries to other lands while every peni
tentiary in ours iB filled with criminals ?
Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a
-cross ?
Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destinaon of nearly all of the children of men ?
Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin—when there
is so much copy ?
Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity, and
predestination, and apostolic succession, and the infallibility
�( 28 )
of churches, of popes, and of books ? Does all this do anv
good ?
J
Are the theologians welcomers of new truths ? Are they
noted for their candor? Do they treat an opponent with
common fairness? Are they investigators? Do they pull
forward or do they hold back ?
Is science indebted to the Church for a solitary fact ?
What Church is an asylum for a persecuted truth ?
What great reform has been inaugurated by the Church ?
Did the Church abolish slavery ?
Has the Church raised its voice against war ?
. I used to think that there was in religion no real restrain
ing force. Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion
will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and
offences.
A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusivethat he confessed his guilt.
He was asked why he killed his fellow man.
He replied: “Formoney.”
“Did you get any?”
“Yes.”
“ How much ?”
“ Fifteen cents.”
<< What did you do with this money ?”
li
Spent it.”
“ What for ?”
“ Liquor.”
“ What else did you find upon the dead man ?”
“ He had his dinner in a bucket—some meat and bread.”
“ What did you do with that ?”
“ I ate the bread.”
“ What did you do with the meat ?”
“ I threw it away.”
“ Why ?”
“ It was Friday.”
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from thehe has advanced. Just to the extent
that he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation
he has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investi. £or himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent acquiescence.
It is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the understood
in the known is the act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It
ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order"
to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a
slave; that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that-
�( 29 )
■governments should be founded and administered by man
■and for man; that the rights of all are equal; that the
powers that be are not ordained by God ; that woman is at
least the equal of man; that men existed before books; that
relig'on is one of the phases of thought through which the
world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that
everything is natural; that a miracle is an impos-ibility;
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concerning
the unknown we are equally ignorant; that the pew has a
right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man is
responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that all
have a right to think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of
the mind there can be no true religion, Without liberty the
brain is a dungeon—the mind a convict. The slave may
bow and cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot
love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart.
True religion is a subordination of the passions to the per
ceptions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory—it
is a practice. It is rot a creed—it is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a
place in the human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not
pretend- to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on
outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought.
I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the cruelties and
horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls of
men. I say, take off those chains—break those manacles—
free those limbs—release that brain ! I plead for the right to
think—-to reason—to investigate. I ask that the future may
be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore every
human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right
to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You
have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and
strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of
ghosts Believe what you may; preach what you desire;
have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your
liberty in your own way; but extend to all others the same
right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they
accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous,
if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one
$nd all, because they enslave the minds of men.
�( 30 )
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination thathave ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room
room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one
we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why
should we forge fetters for our own hands ? Why should we
be the slaves of phantoms ? The darkness of barbarism was
the womb of the shadows. In the light of science they'
cannot cloud the sky for ever. They have reddened thehands of man with innocent blood. They made the cradle a
curse, and the grave a place of torment.
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human
race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite
rewards for. finite virtues, and threatening infinite punish—i
ment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with
the shining peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of flame.
For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe, in want
and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and
of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghostsgo—justice remains. Let them disappear—men and women
and children are left. Let the monsters fade away—the
world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its
summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream ; its
autumn with laden boughs, when the withered banners of
the corn are still, and gathered fields are growing strangely
wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color what
they touch, weaves in the autumn wood her tapestries of
gold and brown.
The world remains with its winters and homes and firesides,
where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All these
are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice, and all
there is of art and song and hopo and love and aspiration
high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we will worship
them no more.
Manis greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander
than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the
great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions, are but
the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions
and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds
changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and igno
rance, cannot endure. In the religion of the future there
�( 31 )
will be men and women and children, all the aspirations of
the soul, and all the tender1 humanities of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let
them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands,
and fade for ever from the imaginations of men.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
...
...
...
Superior edition, in cloth ...
..
...
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
Five Hours’ Speech at the Trial of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy. ...
...
. .
REPLY TO GLADSTONE
With a Biography by
J. M. Wheeler ...
...
...
...
ROME OR REASON ? Reply to Cardinal Manning
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
...
...
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN...
...
ORATION ON VOLTAIRE ...
...
...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
...
...
...
PAINE THE PIONEER
...
...
...
HUMANITY’S DEBT TO THOMAS PAINE
...
ERNEs 1' RENAN AND JESUS CHRIST
..
THE THREE PHILANTHROPISTS
...
...
TRUE RELIGION
...
...
...
...
FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
...
GOD AND MAN.Second Reply to Dr. Field
...
SKULLS ...
...
...
...
...
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
...
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count Tolstoi
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert ...
THE DYING CREED
...
...
...
DO I BLASPHEME ?
...
...
...
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
...
SOCIAL SALVATION
...
...
...
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
...
...
GOD AND THE STATE
...
...
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ?
...
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ? Part II.
...
ART AND MORALITY
...
...
...
CREEDS AND SPIRITUALITY
...
...
CHRIST AND MIRACLES
...
...
...
THE GREAT MISTAKE
...
...
...
LIVE TOPICS
...
.
...
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
...
...
REPAIRING THE IDOLS
...
...
...
MYTH AND MIRACtE
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The ghosts
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "Works by Col. R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 26f in Stein checklist. Printed by G.W. Foote. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1893
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Spiritualism
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Ghosts
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Supernatural
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32
Pa m p h Iets for the Million—No» 10
THE GHOSTS
By R. G. INGERSOLL
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED.
Chairman :
Edward Clodd
Honorary Associates :
Alfred William Benn
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
Sir Edward Brabrook, C.B.
George Brandes
Dr. Charles Callaway
Dr. Paul Carus
Prof. B. H. Chamberlain
Dr. Stanton Coit
W. W. Collins
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
Leonard Huxley
'Joseph McCabe
Eden Phillpotts
John M. Robertson
Dr. W. R. Washington Sullivan
Prof. Lester F. Ward
Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck
Secretary and Registered Offices:
Charles E. Hooper, Nos. 5 & 6 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
How to Join and Help the R.P. A.
The minimum subscription to constitute Membership is 5s., renewable in January of
each year.
A form of application for Membership, with full particulars, including latest Annual
Report and specimen copy of the Literary Guide (the unofficial organ of the Associa
tion), can be obtained gratis on application to the Secretary.
Copies of new publications are forwarded regularly on account of Members’sub
scriptions, or a Member can arrange to make his own selection from the lists of
new books which are issued from time to time.
To join the Association is to help on its work, but to subscribe liberally is of course
to help more effectually. As Subscribers of from 5s. to 10s. and more are entitled to
receive back the whole value of their subscriptions in books, on which there is little
if any profit made, the Association is dependent, for the capital required to carryout
its objects, upon subscriptions of a larger amount and upon donations and bequests.
Ube Xiterar^ Guide
(the unofficial organ of the' R. P. A.)
is published on the 1st of each month, price 2d., by post 2W. Annual subscrip
tion : 2S. 6d. post paid.
The contributors comprise the leading writers in the Rationalist Movement,
including Mr. Joseph McCabe, Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner, Mr. F. J. Gould
Mr. Charles T. Gorham, Dr. C. Callaway, Mr. A. W. Benn, and “ Mimnermus
SPECIMEN COPY POST FREE.
London : Watts & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�'B U <
Pamphletsfor the Million.—No. io
national secular society
R. G. INGERSOLL
THE GHOSTS
ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST
PRESS
ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED
WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. — 1912
�PUBLISHERS ’ NOTE
This famous Lecture of Colonel Ingersoll is taken from the
Dresden edition of his works (12 vols.; £6 net), which was
published in America shortly after his death. In this country
nearly all his principal lectures and essays, apart from his
legal addresses, are included in the series of Lectures and
Essays issued in three parts at 6d. each (by post 8d.; the
three parts is. iod.), or in one handsome cloth volume at
2s. 6d. net (by post 2s. nd.).
PAMPHLETS FOR THE MILLION
ALREADY ISSUED
1. Why I Left the Church.
6. Liberty of Man, Woman,
By Joseph McCabe.
48
and Child.
By Colonel
PP-; id.
R. G. Ingersoll. 48 pp.; id.
2. Why Am I An Agnostic?
7. The Age of Reason. By
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
Thomas Paine. 124 pp. ; 2d.
24 PP-; id.
8. Last Words on Evolu
3. Christianity’s Debt to
TO
tion. By Prof. Haeckel.
Earlier Religions.
By
64 pp.; id.
P. Vivian. (A Chapter from
9. Science and the Purpose
The Churches and Modern
OB' Life.
By Fridtjof
Thought.} 64 pp.; id.
Nansen. 16 pp.; £d.
4. How to Reform Mankind. 10. The Ghosts. By Colonel
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
R. G. Ingersoll. 32 pp.; id.
24 pp.; ¿d.
11. The Passing of Histo
5. Myth or History in the
rical Christianity.
By
■Old Testament? By S.
Rev. R. Roberts. 16 pp.;
Laing. 48 pp.; id.
id.
�THE GHOSTS
let them cover their eyeless sockets with their flesh
less HANDS AND FADE FOREVER FROM THE IMAGINATION OF MEN.
HERE are three theories by which men account for all
phenomena, for everything that happens: first, the
supernatural; second, the supernatural and natural; third, the
natural. Between these theories there has been, from the
dawn of civilisation, a continual conflict. In this great war
nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the super
natural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter
is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without;
while naturalists maintain that nature acts from within;
that nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is * that nature with infinite arms embraces everything that
exists, and that all supposed powers beyond the limits of
the material are simply ghosts.
You say,
Oh, this is
materialism 1 ” What is matter? I take in my hand some
earth—in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light from
the quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the rain fall upon it.
The seeds will grow, and a plant will bud and blossom.
Do you understand this? Can you explain it better than
you can the production of thought? Have you the slightest
conception of what it really is?
And yet you speak of
matter as though acquainted with its origin, as though you
had torn from the clenched hands of the rocks the secrets
of material existence. Do you know what force is? Can
you account for molecular action? Are you really familiar
with chemistry, and can you account for the loves and hatre s
of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever
-eludes?
After all, can you get beyond, above, or below
appearances? Before you cry “Materialism! ” had you not
better ascertain what matter really is? Can you think even
of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to
imagine annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you
to conceive of the creation of an atom? Can you have a
thought that was not suggested to you by what you call
matter ?
T
�4
THE GHOSTS
Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all
phenomena by the caprice of gods and devils.
For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
and bad, benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful
in some mysterious way, produced all phenomena: that
disease and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misortune, peace and war, life and death, success and failure
were but arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that
shadowy phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that
they were pleased and displeased by the actions of men;
that they sent and withheld the snow, the light, and the
rain ; that they blessed the earth with harvests or cursed
it with famine; that they fed or starved the children of men;
that they crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took
sides in war; that they controlled the winds; that they
gave prosperous voyages, allowing the brave mariner to
meet his wife and child inside the harbour bar, or sent
the storms, strewing the sad shores with wrecks of ships
and the bodies of men.
Formerly these ghosts were believed to be almost innumer
able. Earth, air, and water were filled with these phantom
hosts.
In modern times they have greatly decreased in
number, because the second theory—a mingling of the super
natural and natural—has generally been adopted.
The
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to perform the same
offices as the hosts of yore.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in
some way be appeased ; that they could be flattered by
sacrifices, by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples
and cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms
and ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations,
by flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of
home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the practice of
celibacy, by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying
men, women, and children, by covering the earth with
ungeons, by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the
thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing
things without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving
and denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating
reason,, by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by
slandering the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel
creeds, by discouraging investigation, by worshipping a book,
by the cultivation of credulity, by observing certain times
�THE GHOSTS
F
5
and days, by counting beads, by gazing at crosses, by hiring
others, to repeat verses and prayers, by burning candles and
ringing bells, by enslaving each other and putting out the
eyes of the soul. All this has been done to appease and
flatter these monsters of the air.
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been omitted,
no infamy has been left undone, by the believers in ghosts
by the worshippers of these fleshless phantoms.. And yet
these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity. They
were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of ignorance
by that artist called superstition.
.
From these ghosts our fathers received information. They
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors.. They were the
scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators,
astronomers, physicians, metaphysicians, and historians of
the past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the
only source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write
books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were
found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the
worse tor the facts, and especially for their discoverers. It
was then, and still is, believed that these books are the
basis of the idea of immortality; that to give up these volumes,
or, rather, the idea that they are inspired, is to renounce
the idea of immortality. This I deny.
The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope
and fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and
fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any
religion.
It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
It is the rainbow—Hope shining upon the tears of grief.
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last
ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which
we live. Did they know anything about the next? Upon
every point where contradiction is possible they have been
contradicted.
By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs
of government were administered; all authority to govern
came from them. The emperors, kings, and potentates all
had commissions from these phantoms.
Man was not
considered as the source of any power whatever. T<? rebel
against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing
�6
THE GHOSTS
less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible
phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper
position to ,be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate
were thé good. Those who stood erect were infidels and
traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts,
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many toiled
wearily in the storm and sun that the few favourites of the
ghosts might live in idleness. The many lived in huts, and
caves, and dens, that the few might dwell in palaces. The
many covered themselves with rags, that the few might
robe themselves in purple and in gold. The many crept, and
cringed, and crawled, that the few might tread upon their
flesh with iron feet.
From the ghosts men received, not only authority, but
information of every kind. They told us the form of this
earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the
sins of man ; that the universe was made in six days ; that
astronomy and geology were devices of wicked men,
instigated by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a
telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into the earth
was sinful curiosity ; that trying to be wise above what they
had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent spirit.
They told us there was no virtue like belief, and no crime
like doubt ; that investigation was pure impudence, and the
punishment therefor eternal torment. They not only told
us all about this world, but about two others ; and, if their
statements about the other worlds are as true as about this,
no one can estimate the value of their information.
For counless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and
they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human
intellect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous
purpose ; to drive the love of truth from the human heart ;
to prevent the advancement of mankind ; to shut out from
the world every ray of intellectual light ; to pollute every
mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and
cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were exhausted.
During these years of persecution, ignorance, superstition,
and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers, doctors,
the learned and the unlearned, believed in that frightful
production of ignorance, fear, and faith, called witchcraft.
They believed that man was the sport and prey of devils.
They really thought that the very air was thick with these
enemies of man.
With few exceptions, this hideous and
�i
/
/
THE GHOSTS
7{
infamous belief was universal.
Under these conditions
progress was almost impossible.
Fear paralyses the brain. Progress is born of courage.
Fear_ believes courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth
and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats__
courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilisa
tion. _ Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts.
Fear is religion—courage is science.
The facts upon which this terrible belief rested were proved
over and over again in every court of Europe. Thousands
confessed themselves guilty—admitted that they had sold
themselves to the devil. They gave the particulars of the
sale; told what they said and what the devil replied. They
confessed this, when they knew that confession was death;
their property would be confiscated, and their
children left to beg their bread. This is one of the miracles
of history—one of the strangest contradictions of the human
mind Without doubt, they really believed themselves guilty.
In the first place they believed in witchcraft as a fact, and
when charged with it they probably became insane. In their
insanity they confessed their guilt. They found themselves
abhorred and deserted—charged with a crime that they could
not disprove. Like a man in quicksand, every effort only
sank them deeper.
Caught in this frightful web, at the
mercy of the spiders of superstition, hope fled, and nothing
remained but the insanity of confession. The whole world
appeared to be insane.
In the time of James the First a man was executed for
causing a storm at sea with the intention of drowning one
of the royal family. How could he disprove it? How could he
snow that he did not cause the storm? All storms were at
that time generally supposed to be caused by the devil—the
prince of the power of the air—and by those whom he assisted.
. 1 implore you to remember that the believers in such
impossible things were the authors of our creeds and
confessions of faith.
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale
one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for having
caused children to vomit crooked pins. She was also charged
with having nursed devils. The learned judge charged the
intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the existence
teujht by the’ Kfe’ eStabHshed by a11 llis,or-v- “d exPr“sl>-
�THE GHOSTS
The woman was hanged and her body burned.
Sir Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was to
throwaway the sacred Scriptures. In my judgment, he was right.
John Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches,
and insisted upon it, years after all laws upon the subject had
been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember that
John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church..
In New England a woman was charged with being a. witch,and with having changed herself into a fox. While in that
condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs. A
committee of three men, by order of the court, examined this
woman. They removed her clothing and searched for witch
spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles could be
thrust without giving her pain. They, reported to the court
that such spots were found. She denied, however, that she
ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the report of the
committee she was found guilty and actually executed. 1 his
was done by our Puritan fathers, by the gentlemen who
braved the dangers of the deep for the sake of worshipping
God and persecuting their fellow-men.
In those days people believed in what was known as
lycanthrophy—that is, that persons, with the assistance of. the
devil, could assume the form of wolves. An instance is. given
where a man was attacked by a wolf. He defended himself,
and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s paws. . lne
wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw, put it in his
pocket, and carried it home. There he found his wife with one '
of her hands gone. He took the paw from his pocket. It had
changed to a human hand. He charged his wife with being a
witch. She was tried. She confessed her guilt, and was burned.
People were burned for causing frosts in summer-tor
destroying crops with hail—for causing storms for making
cows go dry, and even for souring beer. There was no
impossibility for which someone was not tried and convicted.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged was to be
convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every, other
This infamous belief was so firmly seated in the minds ot
the people that to express a doubt as to its truth, was to be
suspected. Whoever denied the existence of witches and
devils was denounced as an infidel.
.
They believed that animals were often taken possession ot by
devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy the
devil. They absolutely tried, convicted, and executed dumb beasts.
�THE GHOSTS
9
At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge
of having laid an egg. Rooster eggs were used only in
making witch ointment—this everybody knew. The rooster
was convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the
public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having
killed and partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted,
but the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth,
were acquitted. As late as 1740 a cow was tried and
convicted of being possessed by a devil.
They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes, and vermin.
They used to go through the alleys, streets, and fields, and
warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In case
they disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and penalties.
But let us be careful how we laugh at these things. Let
us not pride ourselves too much on the progress of our age.
We must not forget that some of our people are yet in the
same intelligent business.
Only a little while ago the
Governor of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer,
to see if some power could not be induced to kill the grass
hoppers, or send them into some other State.
About the close of the fifteenth century, so great was the
excitement with regard to the existence of witchcraft that
Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull directing the inquisitors
to be vigilant in searching out and punishing all guilty of
this crime. Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in
a book or pamphlet called the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer
of Witches), which was issued by the Roman See. Popes
Alexander, Leo, and Adrian issued like bulls.
For two
hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing
the impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and
torturing men, women, and children. Protestants were as
active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were
burned at the stake in a period of three months. About one
thousand were executed in one year in the diocese of Como.
At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany
alone, the last execution (in Wurzburg) taking place as late
as 1739. Witches were burned in Switzerland as late as 1780.
In England the same frightful scenes were enacted.
Statutes were passed from Henry VI. to James I. defining
the crime and its punishment. The last Act passed by the
British Parliament was when Lord Bacon was a member of
theHouseof Commons; and this Act was not repealed until 1736*
Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
�IO
THE GHOSTS
of England, says: “ To deny the possibility, nay, actual
existence, of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to
contradict the word of God in various passages both of the
Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to
which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testi
mony, either by examples seemingly well attested or by
prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a
commerce with evil spirits.”
In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at
Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that “A witch is a
woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons
are among men is abundantly plain fr.om Scripture, and that
they ought to be put to death.”
This work was' republished in Albany, New York, in 1816.
No wonder the clergy of that city are ignorant and bigoted
even unto this day.
In 1716 Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age,
were hanged for selling their souls to the devil, and raising
a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather
of soap.
In England it has been estimated that at least thirty
thousand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed
in Scotland perished in 1722. “She was an innocent old
woman, who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice
at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her.
She had a daughter, lame of both hands and of feet—a
circumstance attributed to the witch having been used to
transform her daughter into a pony and getting her shod
by the devil.”
In 1692 nineteen persons were executed and one pressed
to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witchcraft.
It was thought in those days that men and women made
compacts with the devil, orally and in writing; that they
abjured God and Jesus Christ, and dedicated themselves
wholly to the devil.
The contracts were confirmed at a
general meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the
devil himself presided; and the persons generally signed the
articles of agreement with their own blood. These contracts
were, in some instances, for a few years; in others, for life.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a
year, at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with
an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptised infants. “To
these meetings they rode from great distances on broomsticks,
�THE GHOSTS
ii
pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs. Here they did homage to the
prince of hell, and offered him sacrifices of young children,
and practised all sorts of license until the break of day.”
“As late as 1815 Belgium was disgraced by a witch trial;
and guilt was established by the water ordeal.” “ In 1836
the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the
sea a woman reputed to be a sorceress; and as the miserable
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was
pronounced guilty and beaten to death.”
“ It was believed that the bodies of devils are not, like those
of men and animals, cast in an unchangeable mould. It
\Vas thought they were like clouds, refined and subtle matter,
capable of assuming any form and penetrating into any
orifice. The horrible tortures they endured in their place
of punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to suffering,
and they continually sought a temperate and somewhat moist
warmth in order to allay their pangs. It was for this reason
they so frequently entered into men and women.”
The devil could transport men, at his will, through the
air. He could beget children; and Martin Luther himself
had come into contact with one of these children. He
recommended the mother to throw the child into the river,
in order to free their house from the presence of the devil.
It was believed that the devil could transform people into
any shape he pleased.
Whoever denied these things was denounced as an infidel.
All the believers in witchcraft confidently appealed to the
Bible. Their mouths were filled with passages demonstra
ting the existence of witches and their power over human
beings. By the Bible they proved that innumerable evil
spirits were ranging over the world endeavouring to ruin
mankind; that these spirits possessed a power and wisdom
far. transcending the limits of human faculties; that they
delighted in every misfortune that could befall the world;
that their malice was superhuman.
That they caused
tempests was proved by the action of the devil towards Job;
by the passage in the' book of Revelation describing the four
angels who held the four winds, and to whom it was given
to afflict the earth. They believed the devil could carry
persons hundreds of miles, in a few seconds, through the
air. They believed this, because they knew that Christ had
been carried by the devil in the same manner and placed on
a pinnacle of the temple. “The prophet Habakkuk had been
�12
THE GHOSTS
transported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and Philip,
the evangelist, had been the object of a similar miracle;
and in the same way St. Paul had been carried in the body
into the third heaven.”
“ In those pious days they believed that Incubi and Succubi
were forever wandering among mankind, alluring, by more
than human charms, the unwary to their destruction, and
laying plots, which were too often successful, against the
virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People told, with
bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman,
four successive abbots in a Germian monastery had been
wasted away by an unholy flame.”
An instance is given in which the devil not only assumed
the appearance of a holy man, in order to pay his addresses
to a lady, but, when discovered, crept under the bed, suffered
himself to be dragged out, and was impudent enough to
declare that he was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had
he assumed the form and features of the prelate that those
who knew the bishop best were deceived.
One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human
mind during these long centuries of darkness and super
stition.
To them these things were awful and frightful
realities. Hovering above them in the air, in their houses,
in the bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the
darkness of night, everywhere, around, above, and below,
were innumerable hosts of unclean and malignant devils.
From the malice of those leering and vindictive vampires
of the air the Church pretended to defend mankind. Pursuedby these phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their
faces and implored the aid of robed hypocrisy and sceptred
theft.
Take from the orthodox Church of to-day the threat and
fear of hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano.
Take from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural,
the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the un
knowable, and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly laid to
the charge of the Church, we are told that the civilisation of
to-day is the child of what we are pleased to call the super
stition of the past.
Religion has not civilised man—man has civilised religion.
God improves as man advances.
�THE GHOSTS
13
Let me call your attention to what we have received from
the followers of the ghosts. Let me give you an outline of
the sciences as taught by these philosophers of the clouds.
All diseases were produced either as a punishment by the
good ghosts or out of pure malignity by the bad ones. There
were, properly speaking, no diseases. The sick were
possessed by ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in
knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises.
For thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs.
Everything was done to make the visit of the ghost as
unpleasant as possible, and they generally succeeded in
making things so disagreeable that, if the ghost did not leave,
the patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of different
rank, power, and dignity. Now and then a man pretended
to have won the favour of some powerful ghost, and that
gave him power over the little ones. Such a man became
an eminent physician.
It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that
produced by burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a
serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were
exceedingly offensive to the nostrils of an ordinary ghost.
With this smoke the sick room would be filled until the ghost
had vanished or the patient died.
It was also believed that certain words—the names of the
most powerful ghosts—when properly pronounced, were very
effective weapons. It was for a long time thought that
Latin words were .the best, Latin being a dead language,
and known by the clergy. , Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before thé wicked ghost
would cause it instantly to flee in dread away.
For thousands of years ,the practice of medicine consisted
in driving these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.
In some instances bargains and compromises were made
with the ghosts. One case is given where a multitude of
devils traded a man for a herd of swine. In this transaction
the devils were the losers, as the swine immediately drowned
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.
The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings
of those afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams,
trances, and the numberless frightful phenomena produced
by diseases of the nerves, were all seized upon as so many
\
.
�14
THE GHOSTS
proofs that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and
malignant g*hosts.
Whoever endeavoured to account for these things by
natural causes, whoever attempted to cure diseases by
natural means, was denounced by the Church as an infidel.
To explain anything was a crime. It was to the interest of
the priest that all phenomena should be accounted for by the
will and power of gods and devils.
The moment it is
admitted that all phenomena are within the domain of the
natural, the necessity for a priest has disappeared. Religion
breathes the air of the supernatural. Take from the mind of
man the idea of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist.
For this reason, the Church has always despised the man who
explained the wonderful. Upon this principle, nothing was
left undone to stay the science of medicine. As long as
plagues and pestilences could be stopped by prayer, the priest
was useful. The moment the physician found a cure, the
priest became an extravagance. The moment it began to
be apparent that prayer could do nothing for the body, the
priest shifted his ground and began praying for the soul.
Long after the devil idea was substantially abandoned in
the practice of medicine, and when it was admitted that
God had nothing to do with ordinary coughs and colds, it
was still believed that all the frightful diseases were sent
by him as punishments for the wickedness of the people. It
was thought to be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any
natural means,.to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly,
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the arrogance
of the priest was boundless. He told the people that they
had slighted the clergy, that they had refused to pay tithes,
that they had doubted some of the doctrines of the Church,
and that God was now taking his revenge. The people,
for the most part, believed this infamous tissue of priest
craft. They hastened to fall upon their knees; they poured
out their wealth upon the altars of hypocrisy; they abased
and debased themselves; from their minds they banished all
doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very dust of humility.
The Church never wanted disease to be under the control
of man.
Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College,
preached a sermon against vaccination. His idea was that,
if God had decreed from all eternity that a certain man should
die with the small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and
annul that decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox
�THE GHOSTS
ij
being regarded as one of the heaviest guns in the arsenal of
heaven, to spike it was the height of presumption. Plagues
and pestilences were instrumentalities' in the hands of God
with which to gain the love arid worship of mankind. To
find a cure for disease was to take a weapon from the Church.
No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. Quinine has
been found altogether more reliable.
Just as soon as a
specific is found for a disease, that disease will be left out
of the list of prayer. The number of diseases with which
God from time to time afflicts mankind is continually decreas
ing. In a few years all of them will be under the control
of& man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the threats of
their priests will excite only a smile.
The science of medicine has had but one enemy—religion.
Man was afraid to save his body for fear he might lose his soul.
Is it any wonder that the people in those days believed in
and taught the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment—
a doctrine that makes God a heartless monster and man a
slimy hypocrite and slave?
The ghosts were historians, and their histories were the
grossest absurdities. “Tales told by idiots, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing.” In those days the histories
were written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as
superstitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though
they had been witnesses of every occurrence they related.
They wrote the history of every country of importance. They
told all the past, and predicted all the future with an impu
dence that amounted to sublimity. “ They traced the order of
St. Michael, in France, to the archangel himself, and alleged
that he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself.
They said that Tartars originally came from hell, and that
they were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the
names of perdition. They declared that Scotland was so
named after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in
Ireland, invaded Scotland, and took it by force of arms.
This statement was made in a letter addressed to the Pope
in the fourteenth century, and was alluded to as a well-known
fact. The letter was written by some of the highest digni
taries, and by the direction of the King himself.
These gentlemen accounted for the red on the breasts of
robins from the fact that these birds carried water to
unbaptised infants in hell.
�16
THE GHOSTS
Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the fourteenth
century, gaye the world the following piece of information :
It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and
became a heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected
Pope ; and that, haying drank to excess, he fell by the road
side, and in this condition was killed by swine. “And for that
reason his followers abhor pork even unto this day.”
Another eminent historian informs us that Nero was in
the habit of vomiting frogs. When I read this I said to
myself : Some of the croakers of the present day against
progress would be the better for such a vomit.
The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of
Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures us that the walls
of a city fell down in answer to prayer; that there were
giants in those days who could take fifty ordinary men under
their arms and walk away with them. “ With the greatest
of these, a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando, had a
theological discussion; and in the heat of the debate, when
the giant was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando
rushed forward and inflicted a fatal stab.”
The history of Britain, written by the archdeacons of
Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According
to them, Brutus conquered England and built the city of
London. During his time it rained pure blood for three days.
At another time a monster came from the sea, and, after
having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the
king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was
not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical
Contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that
he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating
some thirty men a day; that this giant had clothes woven
of the beards of the kings he had devoured. To cap the
climax, one of the authors of this book was promoted for
having written the only reliable history of his country.
In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single
truth.
Facts were considered unworthy of preservation.
Anything that really happened was not of sufficient interest
or importance to be recorded. The great religious historian,
Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully
omitted whatever tended to discredit the Church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to
by all the historians of that time.
�THE GHOSTS
• i7
They wrote, and the people believed, that .the tracks of
Pharaoh’s chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red
Sea, and that they had been miraculously preserved from the
winds and waves as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle
there performed.
It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those
times is the result of accident or mistake.
They accounted for everything as the work of good and
evil spirits. With cause and effect they had nothing to do.
Facts were in no way related to each other. God, governed
by infinite caprice, filled the world with miracles and dis
connected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence, and death.
The moment the idea is abandoned that all is natural, that
all phenomena are the necessary links in the endless chain
of being, the conception of history becomes impossible. With
the ghosts, the present is not the child of the past, nor the
mother of the future. In the domain of religion all is chance,
accident, and caprice.
Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written
by the contemporaries of these historians.
The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by
our intelligent ancestors that all law derived its sacredness
and its binding force from the fact that it had been com
municated to man by the ghosts.
Of course it was not
pretended that the ghosts told everybody the law; but they
told it to a few, and the few told it to the people, and the
people, as a rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble.
It was thousands of ages before the people commenced
making laws for themselves, and, strange as it may appear,
most of these laws were vastly superior to the ghost article.
Through the web and woof of human legislation began to
run and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.
During these years of darkness it was believed that rather
than see an act of injustice done, rather than see the
innocent suffer, rather than see the guilty triumph, some
ghost would interfere. This belief, as a rule, gave great
satisfaction to the victorious party, and, as the other man
was dead, no complaint was heard from him.
This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and
chance. They had trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by
lot. Persons were made to grasp hot iron, and if it burned
them their guilt was established. Others, with tied hands
�THE GHOSTS
and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they sank the verdict
of guilty was unanimous; if they did not sink, they were in
league with devils.
So, in England, persons charged with crime could appeal
to the corsned. The corsned was a piece of the sacramental
bread. If the defendant could swallow this piece, he went
acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the
Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow it,
and was choked to death.
. The ghosts and their followers always took delight in
torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infrac
tion of most of their laws death was the penalty—death
produced by stoning and by fire.
Sometimes, when man
committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city
of refuge. Murder was a 'crime against man. But for
saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines, or for
picking up sticks on certain days, or for worshipping the
wrong ghost, or for failing to pray to the right
one, or for laughing at a priest, or for saying that
wine was not blood, or that bread was not flesh, or for
failing to regard rams’ horns as artillery, or for insisting
that a dry bone was scarcely sufficient to take the place
of water works, or that a raven, as a rule, made a poor
landlord—death, produced by all the ways that the ingenuity
of hatred could devise, was the penalty.
Law is a growth—it is a science. Right and wrong exist
in the nature of things. Things are not right because they
are commanded, nor wrong because they are prohibited.
There are real crimes enough without creating artificial ones.
All progress in legislation has for centuries consisted in
repealing the laws of the ghosts.
The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s capacity
to enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not
inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor
inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have
entered his brain.
But for this, the word “conscience”
never would have passed the lips of man. *
There is one good—happiness. There is but one sin—
selfishness.
All law should be for the preservation of
the one and the destruction of the other.
Under the regime of the ghosts, laws were not supposed
to exist in the nature of things. They were supposed to be
simply the irresponsible command of a ghost. These com-
�THE GHOSTS
19
mands were not supposed to rest upon reason ; they were
the product of arbitrary will.
The penalties for the violation of these laws were as cruel as
the laws were senseless and absurd. Working on the Sabbath
and murder were both punished with death. The tendency of
such laws is to blot from the human heart the sense of justice.
To show you how perfectly every department of knowledge,
or ignorance rather, was saturated with superstition, I will
for a moment refer to the science of language.
It was thought by our fathers that Hebrew was the original
language ; that it was taught to Adam in the Garden of Eden
by the Almighty, and that consequently all languages came
from, and could be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact incon
sistent with that idea was discarded.
According to the
ghosts, the trouble at the tower of Babel accounted for the
fact that all people did not speak Hebrew.
The Babel
business settled all questions in the science of language.
After a time, so many facts were found to be inconsistent
with the Hebrew idea that it began to fall into disrepute, and
other languages began to compete for the honour of being
the original.
André Kempe, in 1569, published a work on the language
of Paradise, in which he maintained that God spoke to Adam
in Swedish ; that Adam answered in Danish ; and that the
serpent—which appears to me quite probable—spoke to Eve
in French. Erro, in a work published at Madrid, took the
ground that Basque was the language spoken in the Garden
of Eden; but in 1580 Goropius published his celebrated work
at Antwerp, in which he put the whole matter at rest by
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language spoken in
Paradise was neither more nor less than plain Holland Dutch.
The real founder of the science of language was Leibnitz,
, a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea
that all languages could be traced to one language.
He
maintained that language was a natural growth. Experience
teaches us that this must be so. Words are continually dying
and continually being born.
Words are naturally and
necessarily produced.. Words are the garments of thought,
the robes of ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and gold.
They have been born of hatred and revenge ; of love and
self-sacrifice ; of hope and fear ; of agony and joy. These
�20
THE GHOSTS
words are born of the terror and beauty of nature.
The
stars have fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness
and the dawn. From everything they have taken something.
Words are the crystallisations of human history, of all that
man has enjoyed and suffered—his victories and defeats—all
that he has lost and won. Words are the shadows of all
that has been—the mirrors of all that is.
The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in astronomy and
geology. According to them, the earth was made out of
nothing, and, a little more nothing having been taken than
was used in the construction of the world, the stars were
made out of what was left over.'- Cosmos, in the sixth
century, taught that the stars were impelled by angels, who
either carried them on their shoulders, rolled them in front
of them, or drew them after. He also taught that each angel
that pushed a star took great pains to observe what the other
angels were doing, so that the relative distances between the
stars might always remain the same. He also gave his idea
as to the form of the world.
He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram ; that
on the outside was a strip of land, like the frame of a common
slate; that then there was a strip of water, and in the middle
a great piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the
outer strip; that their descendants, with the exception of the
Noah family, were drowned by a flood on this outer strip;
that the ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where
we now are. He accounted for night and day by saying that
on the outside strip of land there was a high mountain around
which the sun and moon revolved, and that when the sun
was on the other side of the mountain it was night, and when
on this side it was day.
He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved
by many passages from the Bible.
Among other reasons
for believing the earth to be flat, he brought forward the
following : We are told in the New Testament that Christ
shall come again in glory and power, and all the world shall
see him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people
on the other side going to see Christ if he comes? That
settled the question, and the Church not only endorsed he
book, but declared that whoever believed less or more than
stated by Cosmos was a heretic.
In those blessed days Ignorance was a king and Science an
outcast.
�THE GHOSTS
21
They knew the moment this earth ceased to.be the centre
of the universe, and became a mere speck in the starry
heaven of existence, that their religion would become a child
ish fable of the past.
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts men enslaved
their fellow-men; they trampled upon the rights of women
and children. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts
they bought and sold and destroyed each other; they filled
heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the present with
despair and the future with horror. In the name and by the
authority of the ghosts they imprisoned the human, mind,
polluted the conscience, hardened the heart, subverted justice,
crowned robbery, sainted hypocrisy, and extinguished for a
thousand years the torch of reason.
I have endeavoured, in some faint degree, to show you
what has happened, and what always will happen when men
are governed by superstition and fear; when they desert the
sublime standard of reason; when they take the words of
others and do not investigate for themselves.
Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak
in this matter as the most ignorant.
Kepler, one of the
greatest men of the world, an astronomer second to none,
although he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe,
was an astrologer, and really believed that he could predict the
career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant at
his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the atmos
phere of his time. He believed in the music of the spheres,
and assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain stars.
Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose
disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down,
and then put them together in such manner as to make
prophecies, and waited patiently to see them fulfilled. . Luther
believed that he had actually seen the devil, and had discussed
points of theology with him. The human mind was in chains.
Every idea almost was a monster. Thought was deformed.
Facts were looked upon as worthless. Only the wonderful
was worth preserving. Things that actually happened were
not considered worth recording—real occurrences were too
common. Everybody expected the miraculous.
I'he ghosts were supposed to be busy ; devils were thought
to be the most industrious things in the universe, and with
these imps every occurrence of an unusual character was in
some way connected. There was no order, no serenity, no
/
�-
the ghosts
certainty in anything.
Everything depended upon ghosts
and phantoms. Man. was, for the most part, at the mercy
of maleyoient ^Pints. He protected himself as best he could
with holy water and tapers and wafers and cathedrals He
made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he
made music to charm them. He used smoke to choke them
and incense to please them. He wore beads and crosses.
He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted
when he was hungry, and feasted when he was not
He
believed everything that seemed unreasonable, just to appease
the ghosts. He humbled himself. He crawled in the dust.
He shut the doors and windows, and excluded every ray of
light from the temple of the soul. He debauched and polluted
his own mind, and toiled night and day to repair the walls
of his own prison. From the garden of his heart he plucked
and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity.
The priests reveiiea in horrible descriptions of hell
revelled
hell. Con
xue
cerning the wrath of God they grew eloquent. They
HPnniinf'Pri
x
J
denounced mor* oo 4-^4-nllr, depraved. mt
man as totally J;____________ 1
They made reason
blasphemy and pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as
painting the torments and sufferings of the. lost. Over the
,never dies they grew poetic; and the second
death filled them with a kind of holy delight. According to
them, the smoke and cries ascending from hell were the
perfume and music of heaven.
At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have
to show you the productions of the human mind, when
enslaved; the effects of widespread ignorance—the results
of fear. I want to convince you that every form of slavery
is a viper that, sooner or later, will strike its poison fang's
into the bosoms of men.
The first great step towards progress is for man to cease
to be the slave of man ; the second, to cease to be the slave of
the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and phantoms
of the air.
For ages the human race was imprisoned. Through the
bars and grates came a few struggling rays of light. Against
these grates and bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful
face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.
Men found that the real was the useful; that what a man
knows is better than what a ghost says; that an event is
more valuable than a prophecy.
They found that diseases
were not produced by spirits, and could not be cured by
�THE GHOSTS
23
frightening them away. They found that death was as natural
as life. They began to study the anatomy and chemistry of
the human body, and found that all was natural and within the
domain of law.
The conjurer and sorceror were discarded, and the physician
and surgeon employed. They found that the earth was not
flat; that the stars were not mere specks. They found that
being born under a particular planet had nothing to do with
the fortunes of men.
The astrologer was discharged, and the astronomer took
his place.
They found that the earth had swept through the constella
tions for millions of ages. They found that good and evil
were produced by natural causes, and not by ghosts; that
man could not be good or bad enough to stop or cause a rain ;
that diseases were produced as naturally as grass, and were
not sent as punishments upon man for failing to believe a
certain creed. They found that man, through intelligence,
could take advantage of the forces of Nature—that he could
make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the lightnings
of heaven do his bidding and minister to his wants. They
found that the ghosts knew nothing of benefit to man; that
they were utterly ignorant of geology, of astronomy, of geo
graphy ; that they knew nothing of history; that they were
poor doctors and worse surgeons; that they knew nothing of
’law and less of justice ; that they were without brains,, and
utterly destitute of hearts ; that they knew nothing of the rights
of men; that they were despisers of women, the haters of
progress, the enemies of science, and the destroyers of liberty.
The condition of the world during the Dark Ages shows
exactly the result of enslaving the bodies and souls of men.
In those days there was no freedom. Labour was despised,
and a labourer was considered but little above a beast.
Ignorance, like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world,
¿ind superstition ran riot with the imagination of man. The air
was filled with angels, with demons and monsters. Credulity
sat upon the throne of the soul, and Reason was an exiled
king. A man to be distinguished must be a soldier or a monk.
War and theology—that is to say, murder and hypocrisy—
were the principal employments of man. Industry was a slave,
theft was commerce ; murder was war, hypocrisy was religion.
Every Christian country maintained that it was no robbery
�24
THE GHOSTS
to take the property of Mohammedans by force, and no
murder to kill the owners. Lord Bacon was the first man
of note who maintained that a Christian country was bound
to keep its plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading
and writing were considered dangerous arts. Every layman
who could read and write was suspected of being a heretic.
All thought was discouraged. They forged chains of super
stition for the minds and manacles of iron for the bodies of
men. The earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the
mitre and sceptre, by the altar and throne, by Fear and Force,
by Ignorance and Faith, by ghouls and ghosts.
In the fifteenth century the following law was in force in
England :—
“ That whosoever reads the Scriptures in the mother tongue
shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their heirs for
ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to
the Crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”
During the first year this law was in force thirty-nine were
hanged for its violation and their bodies burned.
In the sixteenth century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks.
The slightest word uttered against the superstition of the
time was published with death.
Even the reformers, so-called, of those days had no idea
of intellectual liberty—no idea even of toleration. Luther,
Knox, Calvin, believed in religious liberty only when they*
were in the minority. The moment they were clothed with
power they began to exterminate with fire and sword.
Castellio was the first minister who advocated the liberty
of the soul. He was regarded by the reformers as a criminal,
and treated as though he had committed the crime of crimes.
Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same time, wrote a
few words in favour of the freedom of conscience, but public
opinion was overwhelmingly against him. The people were
ready, anxious, and willing with whip and chain and fire to
drive from the mind of man the heresy that he had a right,
to think.
Montaigne, a man blessed with so much common sense that
he was the most uncommon man of his time, was the first
to raise a voice against torture in France. But what was
the voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, superstitious, and malevolent millions? It was
the cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel sea.
�THE GHOSTS
25
In spite of the efforts of the brave few, the infamous war
against the freedom of the soul was waged until at least one
hundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers, brothers,
sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like ourselves,
were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant faith.
They perished in every way by which death can be produced.
Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched by the
believers in ghosts.
.
. ,
For my part, I glory in the fact that here in the new world —in the United States—liberty of conscience was first
guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United
States was the first great decree entered in the high court of
human equity forever divorcing Church and State—the first
injunction granted against the interference of the ghosts.
This was one of the grandest steps ever taken by the human
race in the direction of progress.
.
You will ask what has caused this wonderful change in
three hundred years. And I answer—the inventions and
discoveries of the few; the brave thoughts, the heroic utter
ances of the few; the acquisition of a few facts.
Besides, you must remember that every wrong in some
way tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a he stand
always. A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another
lie made for the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question
of time. Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and
kings quarrelled; the priests began to dispute; the ideas of
government began to change.
,
In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past
was a vast cemetery, with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of
men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them.
The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave
”• pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible
for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain,
the wealth of his soul. At first it was used to flood the world
with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has
been flooding the world with light.
When people read they begin to reason, and when they
reason they progress. This was another grand step in the
direction of progress.
The discovery of gunpowder, that put the peasant almos
upon a par with the prince; that put an end to the so-called
age of chivalry ; that released a vast number of men from the
armies ; that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute strength.
�26
THE GHOSTS
resdessdi«7ofradvLtori“ha7broe it“'68 T? ‘r°d by the
°f -> * • <tt
• iSr
o build a school-house is to construct a fort
livery library is an arsenal filled with the weanons and
~Z ix»
is a ™“b
niTui fndK^er“6 ^eIlan
^ank Gahleo^^
nicus, and Kepler, and Descartes, and Newton, and Lanlace
I thank Locke and Hume, and Bacon, and Shakespearfind
IndW^ts andVnknd
Goetbe' 1 thank Fu’lton’
wt>r>
a’ vt. °.ta’ an^ Galvani, and Franklin, and Morse
^ho made lightning- the messenger of man
r think
Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. I thank Crompton
and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped the looms find
spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther for protesting
S ' „ ‘ Je abuses of tht Church, and I denounce him becausf
he was the enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for wridnTa
book m favour of religious freedom, and I abhor him because
pLtecX XVh / XX
resistin“opal
persecution, and I hate him because he persecuted in his
is obed efcT M C 7’’f°r SaTying’ “ Resistance to tyrants
is obedience to God, and yet I am compelled to say that
they were tyrants themselves. I thank Thomas Paine because
he was a believer in liberty, and because he did as much to
vfuG.my c°untry free as any other human being. I thank
A oltaire, that great man who, for half a century, was the
�THE GHOSTS
intellectual emperor of Europe, and who, from his throne at
the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of scorn at every
hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin, • Haeckel, and
Buchner, Spencer, Tyndall, and Huxley, Draper, Lecky, and
Buckle.
I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the
scientists, the explorers. I thank the honest millions who
have toiled.
I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are
the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests
the grand fabric of civilisation. They are the men who have
broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superstition.
They are the Titans who carried Olympus by assault, and
who will soon stand victors upon’s Sinai’s crags.
We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake
for the truth—a superstition for a fact—to ascertain the
real—is to progress.
Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends
to the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that
tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives
us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures,
grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that makes
us better husbands and wives, better children, better citizens
—all these things combined produce what I call Progress.
Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of
Nature, and this can be done only by labour and by thought.
Labour is the foundation of all. Without labour, and without
great labour, progress is impossible. The progress of the
world depends upon the men who walk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn ; upon those who sow and reap ;
upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace
fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers in
shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous
billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon
the brave thinkers.
From the surplus produced by labour schools and
universities are built and fostered. From this surplus the
painter is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor
for chiselling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and
the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and
�28
•
THE GHOSTS
the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the
books in which we converse with the dead and living kings
of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty,
of elegance, and of refined happiness.
I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to
what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of
to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know
that there are many worshippers of the past. They venerate
the ancient because it is ancient. They see no beauty in
anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with
the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old;
no religion, no governments, like the ancient; no orators,
no poets, no statesmen, like those who have been dust for
two thousand years. Others love the modern simply because
it is modern.
We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the
obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity,
and independence enough not to believe what they said simply
because they said it.
With the idea that labour is the basis of progress goes the
truth that labour must be free. The labourer must be a free man.
The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head
and hands in partnership.
To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of
time is the problem of free labour.
Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.
Free labour will give us wealth. Free thought will give
us truth.
Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination of these
sexless phantoms, of these cruel ghosts. Slowly but surely
he is rising above the superstitions of the past. He is learning
to rely upon himself. He is beginning to find that labour
is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that hoping,
toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of more
importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered through
the fenceless fields of space.
The believers in ghosts claim still that they are the only
wise and virtuous people upon the earth ; claim still that there
is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast that they
will be infinitely rewarded and the others infinitely punished.
I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the
theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth century ?
Have the Churches the confidence of mankind?
�THE GHOSTS
29
Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs
to a Church?
Does the banker loan money to a man because he is
Methodist or Baptist?
Will a certificate of good standing in any Church be taken
as collateral security for one dollar?
Will you take the word of a Church member, or his note,
or his oath, simply because he is a Church member?
Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder, and more generous
to their families—to their fellow-men—than doctors, lawyers,
merchants, and farmers?
Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily
make people honest?
When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people
lose confidence in him?
Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance
L
in sin ?
Why send missionaries to other lands while every peniten
tiary in ours is filled with criminals?
Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a cross ?
Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destina
tion of nearly all of the children of men ?
Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin—when there
is so much copy?
Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity,
and predestination, and Apostolic succession, and the infalli|. bility of Churches, of Popes, and of books? Does all this
do any good?
Are the theologians welcomers of new truths? Are they
noted for their candour? Do they treat an opponent with
common fairness ?
Are they investigators ?
Do they pull
forward, or do they hold back? s
Is science indebted to the Church for a solitary fact?
'
What Church is an asylum for a persecuted truth?
What great reform has been inaugurated by the Church?
Did the Church abolish slavery?
Has the Church raised its voice against war?
I * I used to think that there was in religion no real restrainf ing force. Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion
I will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and offences.
■*
A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusive
i
that he confessed his guilt.
He was asked why he killed his fellow-man.
�3°
THE GHOSTS
He replied: “For money.”
“ Did you get any? ”
“Yes.”
“ How much? ”
“Fifteen cents.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“ Spent it.”
“What for?”
“ Liquor.”
“What else did you find upon the dead man? ”
“He had his dinner in a bucket—some meat and bread.”
“What did you do with that?”
“ I ate the bread.”
“What did you do with the meat? ”
“I threw it away.”
“Why? ”
“ It was Friday.”
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the
dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just to the extent that
he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation he
has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investigated
for himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge, obedience becomes intelligent acqui
escence—it is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the
understood—in the known-—is the act of a sovereign, not
of a slave. It ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order
to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a
slave; that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that
Governments should be founded and administered by man
and for man ; that the rights of all are equal; that the powers
that be are not ordained by God; that woman is at least
the equal of man; that men existed before books; that
religion is one of the phases of thought through which the
world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that
everything is natural; that a miracle is an impossibility;
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concern
ing the unknown we are all equally ignorant; that the pew
has the right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man
is responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that
all have a right to think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of the
�THE GHOSTS
3i
mind there can be no true religion. Without liberty the brain
is a dungeon—the mind a convict. The slave may bow and
cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart.
True religion is a subordination of the passions to the percep
tions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory—it is
a practice. It is not a creed—it is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a
place in the human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not
pretend to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on
outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought.
I simply plead for freedom.
I denounce the cruelties and
horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls
of men. I say, Take off those chains—break those manacles
—free those limbs—release that brain ! I plead for the right
to think—to reason—to investigate. I ask that the future
may be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore
every human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right
to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You
have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and
strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of
ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire;
have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your
liberty in your own way, but extend to all others the same right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they
accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous
—if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one
and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that
have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room—
room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one
we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves?
Why should we forge fetters for our own hands?
Why
should we be the slaves of phantoms? The darkness of
barbarism was the womb of these shadows. In the light
of science they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have
reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made
the cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.
�32
THE GHOSTS
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human
race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite
rewards for finite virtues, and threatening infinite punish
ment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with
the shining peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of
flame. For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe,
in want and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity.
I plead for
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labour
and of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the
ghosts go—justice remains. Let them disappear—men and
women and children are left. Let the monsters fade away—
the world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns; its spring of leaf and bud;
its summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream;
its autumn with the laden boughs, when the withered
banners of the corn are stilly and gathered fields are growing
strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that
colour what they touch, weaves in the autumn wood her
tapestries of gold and brown.
The world remains, with its winters and homes and fire
sides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All
these are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice,
and all there is of art and song and hope and love and
aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we
will worship them no more.
Man i's greater than these phantoms.
Humanity is
grander than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity
is the great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions
are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these
religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and
clouds changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and ignor
ance cannot endure. In the religion of the future there will
be men and women and children, all the aspirations of the
soul, and all the tender humanities of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let
them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands,
and fade forever from the imaginations of men.
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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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The ghosts
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. : ill. (front. port) ; 19 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the Millions
Series number: No. 10
Notes: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. RPA "Sixpenny books" listed inside and on back cover. No. 26h in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1912
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G1062
RA1765
N351
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Spiritualism
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Ghosts
Materialism
NSS
Supernatural
-
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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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Supernatural and rational morality
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Bradlaugh, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh,63, Fleet St., E. C. - 1886 (p. 8).
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Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh
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1886
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G903
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Free Thought
Morality
Rationalism
Religion
Supernatural
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SPIRITUALISM
By the Rev. R. H. Benson
It is becoming every day increasingly impossible
for any educated man to dismiss the subject of
Spiritualism with mere contempt. A matter which
is engaging the earnest attention of men like Professor
Barrett, Professor Oliver Lodge, and women like Mrs
Henry Sidgwick; a branch of inquiry which absorbs
Professor Richet, which has changed Professor Lombroso from a convinced materialist into a believer in
the spiritual world; a religion which numbers hun
dreds of thousands of adherents throughout the
civilized globe, including many professors at foreign
universities, and has produced societies in every
European country, which can trace back its spiritual
descent in every civilization practically as far as
ordinary theistic religion itself; which claims, unlike
other religions, to produce evidential phenomena
practically at will, and to bring spiritual existences
before the bar of the senses—all this can no longer be
ignored or simply laughed at. A generation or two
ago it was possible to take up such an attitude ; it
appeared then, at least to men of average education,
as if the matter had become finally discredited ; the
thing lurked about among ill-informed people in
slightly disreputable and dingy surroundings; its
professors, when they engaged public attention at all,
were frequently detected in fraud ; there was scarcely
one adherent to its philosophy—scarcely even one
who thought it worth investigation—whose name was
known beyond his own immediate circle. But all
this has changed. The affair has come out into the
light of day; its phenomena are in process of being
36
1
�2
The History of Religions
136
respectfully judged by scientists as well as by theo
logians ; and it must take its place at last among the
recognized religions of the world.
I 0)
Its history is, as has been said, as old as the history
of civilization, and even older, since, under the form
of Necromancy, it is said to be traceable among vari
ous nations in almost every part of the world, and it
survives to-day among peoples so far removed from
one another as the Esquimaux and the Hindus. It
is also one of its characteristics that it usually under
goes strong revivals at periods when established
creeds are beginning to lose their hold, and that it is
one of the most common signs of decadence in re-,
ligious thought. It is mentioned, with decided con
demnation, in book after book of the Old Testament.1Yet it is difficult to determine its creed, since this
appears to take its colouring to a large extent from
the religious thought of the respective countries in
which it flourishes.2 It is by its phenomena, and its
startling claims to bring the spiritual world within
the range of the senses, rather than by its dogmas,
that it may be identified as one religion rather than
many.
It would be impossible therefore to give a coherent
or exhaustive account of Spiritualism considered as a
world-religion. All that is possible is to describe it
as it appears in the world to-day, to state its claims,
and to examine its credentials. In its present form,
especially under the aspect of communication through
1 Lev. xx. 6. “The soul that shall go aside after magicians and
soothsayers ... I will set my face against that soul.’; xix. 31 ;
1 Kings xxviii. 3 • 4 Kings xxi. 6 ; etc.
2 Spiritistic practices have been traced amongst nations so far removed
from one another as the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Jews, the
North American Indians. (Cf. Lapponi, Hypnotism and Spiritism,
pp. 20 ff.)
�361
Spiritualism
3
rapping on tables, it first appeared in America in
the year 1848, whence it spread quickly all over
Europe.1
(ii)
Briefly speaking, the spiritualist claims that the
“ other world ” is directly accessible to this, not merely
by one revelation made once for all and preserved in
its integrity, not merely by sacraments or the recep
tion of supersensual grace, not merely by exceptional
and abnormal apparitions very occasionally granted
by direct Divine permission; but by constant com
munications from the spirits of the departed, through
which men can be assured of the survival of human
souls, and can receive a kind of progressive revelation
of the supreme laws of the universe.
These communications are made (it is said) in a
variety of ways; but for all of them there is required
what is known as the mediumistic faculty on the part
of at least.one of the inquirers. The medium in fact
is a person living in this world who, through his
peculiar constitution, is enabled to act as a channel
between'the two worlds, and to be so used by the
discarnate personalities who desire to communicate
with human beings. For those communications to
take place it is usually necessary for the medium to
pass into a state of trance, such as was that into
which the priests and priestesses of the old oracles
were accustomed to pass. The usual method of
procedure at spiritualistic meetings then, though not
the invariable method, is as follows:—
The inquirers themselves sit round a table and
endeavour to put themselves into a sympathetic
attitude of mind, placing their hands upon the table
in order to establish the “ circle ”—that is, a kind of
psychical ring, connected perhaps with some unknown
1 Its revival at the present day is no doubt largely due to the Pro
testant disregard of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.
�4
The History of Religions
[36
laws of magnetism—through which the communica
tions may be more easily made. The “spiritual
atmosphere” is often helped by the singing of hymns,
the playing of soft music, or the offering of prayer.
The medium, according to circumstances, sits either
with the inquirers or in a cabinet apart by himself.
Precautions are usually taken intended to guard against
possible fraud, conscious or unconscious.
After a certain period has passed it is claimed that
phenomena frequently take place that put it beyond
a doubt that discarnate and intelligent spirits are
present and are beginning to communicate. These are
generally of one or more of the following kinds :—
(a) Movements of inanimate objects.—The table at
which the inquirers are seated begins to tremble, to
move, to emit rapping sounds, to rise from the floor
in such a manner as cannot be explained by human
agency. Objects in the room are seen (in the twilight,
in which the seances are usually held) to move through
the air ; or, in darkness, are felt by the sitters to touch
therrf. Objects are brought through closed doors and
placed upon the table. Other objects are actually
“ materialized,” that is, are brought into existence in
a manner to be discussed later. Lights of a peculiar
nature are formed in the air and move about fast or
slowly. A pencil placed upon a sheet of paper or
within locked slates is heard to move upon the paper,
and messages are found later written upon the paper
or slates.1
1 Extract from “Report on a Series of Sittings with Eusapia Palla
dino,” reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, part lix,, vol. xxiii. pp. 404, 431, 498. By the Hon.
Everard Feilding, W. W. Baggally, and Hereward Carrington:—
(<z) “ 12.5 a.m. Complete levitation of the table.
C. I hold both her ankles with my two hands.
F. I was holding her right hand in the middle of the table.
Prof. G. I was holding her left hand on the rim of the table.
I1. Prof. G.’s left hand was on my right hand (across the table).
Note by M. Large movements of the table; I can just see the
table up in the air. ...”
(Extract from shorthand report taken at the time.)
�36]
Spiritualism
5
(jo) Messages delivered through the mouth of the
medium.—These consist in sentences spoken by the
medium, generally in a voice alien to himself, pur
porting to come from one or more discarnate spirits
present in the room, known either personally or by
repute while they lived in the body to one or more
of the inquirers. It is claimed that these messages
often concern private matters utterly unknown to the
medium, known only to the inquirer and to the
departed soul who is present. Sometimes these
messages are of a private nature, sometimes of public
interest, and concern spiritual and religious truths.
(c) Messages delivered through inanimate objects.—
These come sometimes, as has been said, by means of
a pencil placed on paper or within locked slates,
sometimes by means of raps upon the table or the
walls of a room, interpreted by a code agreed upon
by the sitters. Three raps usually are taken to stand
for “yes,” one rap for “ no.”1
“ 11.26 p.m. The small table is levitated right on to the seance
table, through the curtains between B. and the medium.
It rose to a height of two and a half feet from the floor,
and is now resting on the seance table. ...”
“ 12.5° a. m. F. She taps with her right hand on mine, and the
tambourine shakes synchronously within the cabinet.
C. The bell rings, and has been brought on the top of the
medium’s head from the cabinet, and remains there.
F. I was holding her right hand on the top of the table. I saw
the bell arrive on her head. ...”
(5) “F. A light flashed out about a foot behind and above the
medium’s head. It was of a brilliant bluish-green colour.
(It was a steady light, and lasted about two seconds.)
11.37 p.m. F. Now another light has come out, this time on
the medium’s lap.
B. Both C. and F, saw a brilliant light inside the cabinet,
about two and a half feet from the medium, inside the
right-hand curtain. ...”
It must be noted that these seances were conducted by trained
observers under stringent test-conditions. The extracts are given from
this report as containing, on the whole, descriptions of the most
accurate and scientific observations made in recent times.
1 “Report,’’etc., pp. 470, 475.
“ 11.1 p.m. Four nods of her head are followed by four thumps on
the table. She did not touch the table with her head.
II.54 p.m. Table tilts four times, meaning ‘ talk.’”
36
I*
�6
The History of Religions
[36
(d) Automatic handwriting.—For this two methods
are employed, (i) Some person, usually the medium,
holding a pencil passively in his fingers, begins after
a little preliminary scribbling to write, sometimes at
a superhuman speed, sometimes with a superhuman
minuteness, sometimes in a handwriting closely re
sembling that used by the person whose spirit is said
to be present, messages and sentences concerning
private matters known to none present except the
one to whom the message is directed. (2) The same
results are obtained by the use of an instrument
called planchette—that is, a little heart-shaped board
running on three castors, pierced by a pencil whose
point just touches a paper placed beneath. The
medium’s fingers are placed lightly upon the board,
and the pencil moves apparently without the medium’s
volition. It must be noted that both these methods
of communication are frequently employed by in
quirers quite apart from any seance, and results are
often equally well obtained.
(e) Materialization.—This is considered the triumph
of spiritualism, and consists in its full form in the
actual appearance, before the senses of sight, hearing,
and touch, of a discarnate soul that has clothed
itself with a body for the occasion. The phenomenon
takes place in a variety of ways. It will be enough
to describe the more usual.
The medium seats himself, generally partly in view
of the sitters, or, if not, tightly secured by cords,
within the cabinet, and passes into the state of trance.
After a certain period, often of apparent distress to
the medium, a certain disturbance makes itself felt:
sounds are heard, or movements perceived, or a
sensation of cold. There appear then, sometimes in
the full sight of the sitters, a luminous cloud that
gradually takes shape and existence, and is ultimately
recognized by some one present as possessing the
form and features of a dead friend. The degree of
“ materialization ” varies with the amount of “ power ”
�36”)
Spiritualism
7
that is present. Sometimes it is little more than a
faint vaporous intangible model, generally swathed
in drapery; sometimes, it is said, the power is great
enough to produce a figure that can be handled and
touched, and is, apparently, in all respects like a
human body, with powers of free speech and move
ment. Further claims are made with regard to the
effect of this appearance upon the photographic lens.
Photographs are shown, declared to be taken under
test-conditions, representing such figures which were
at the time invisible to the human eye; in such cases
it is said that the “ materialization ” took place, but
not with sufficient power to manifest itself to a less
delicate instrument than the camera. The disappear
ance of the apparition takes place in various manners.
Sometimes it passes back into the body of the medium
from which it has been seen to emerge ; sometimes
it retires behind a curtain; sometimes it disintegrates
visibly before the eyes of the sitters into a small in
coherent mist, which presently itself disappears.1
(iii)
The spiritualist theory as to the manner of these
phenomena is commonly as follows:—There is said
to be resident in the human body a certain force or
matter called “ astral ”; and a medium is a person
from whom this substance can be easily detached.
This “ astral ” substance is situated on the border line
between matter and spirit, and is the means by which
discarnate spirits can communicate.2
1 “ Report,” etc., pp. 448, 449, 453, 463
“ B, A hand comes out from behind the curtain and presses me tightly
on my shoulder. I feel the thumb and the four fingers, which are
now pressing downwards with very considerable force. ...”
* ‘At 11.38 there appeared one of these strange objects seen from
time to time at Eusapia’s seances, to which, for want of a better
name, the word ‘head’ is applied. ...”
“ C. I saw a head come out from the curtains slowly, and within
six inches from my head, and it stayed out about two seconds
and then went back.”
2 The word “astral” would seem to have been imported into
Spiritualism from the East through Theosophy.
�8
The History of Religions
[36
For example:—In the case of the sounds and
movements mentioned above, it is believed that it is
through this “astral force” that the relations with
matter are set up. In the case of “ materialization ”
it is this “ astral substance ” that is drawn off in great
quantities, not only from the medium but even from
the persons of the sitters, and moulded by the will
of the communicating soul into the aspect of that
body which it inhabited on earth. To the loss of
this “astral substance” is attributed the state of
nervous exhaustion in which mediums are so often
found after emerging from trance; and to its vital
relations with the medium is attributed the violent
shock caused to the medium if the “materialized”
figure is in any way interfered with. Opinions differ
as to the extent in which the substance is reabsorbed
by the person from whom it was taken after the close
of the phenomena.
With regard to the explanation of the phenomena
of automatic handwriting, it is held by spiritualists
that the communicating spirit, through means of the
astral power with which the writer is charged, controls
his hand and his brain; with regard to the com
munications made through the mouth of the medium,
it is his voice that is so used. It is freely conceded
by spiritualists that certain well-defined dangers to
the nervous centres of the medium usually accompany
all attempts (especially by means of “materializa
tion ”) to communicate with the spiritual world ; that
deceiving spirits occasionally seek to play tricks upon
the inquirers, and even to impersonate their dead
relatives; but it is claimed that those perils are
reduced to a minimum by the methods used, and
that the gain to spiritual knowledge is incalculably
greater than the loss to health or serenity.
(iv)
The Spiritualist Creed, as has been said, is exceed
ingly difficult of definition, since professed spiritual
�36]
Spiritualism
■-
9
teachings, when brought together, are frequently found
to be mutually exclusive. Yet, on the whole (at
least at the present day in European countries), spirit
ualist dogmas seem to be emerging into some kind
of coherent form.
The existence of God is usually acknowledged ;
indeed, Sunday schools and churches organized for
purposes of worship as well as of instruction, and for
the training of children as mediums, have been in
existence in England for many years. Beyond this
it is taught that the actions of life here have a
corresponding effect upon the state of existence
hereafter, though the doctrine of eternal punishment
is, practically always, explicitly denied. The con
dition of life in the next world is said to be one of
progressive purification, rising, it would seem, up to
some kind of absorption into the Supreme Spirit,
to whom the name of God is given. All distinctively
Christian doctrines are usually denied, although it
is said of Jesus Christ that as a spiritual teacher
He has had few equals and no superiors. It is
claimed that He Himself was an adept medium, and
that His appearances after the Resurrection were in
stances of “ materialization.” His Divinity is practi
cally always explicitly denied.
It is exceedingly difficult to say more than this
of the Spiritualistic creed, since, besides the diverg
ences in various countries already mentioned, there
is occasionally a further divergence even in teaching
given to the same inquirer as he advances in know
ledge. The disciple is at first told to practise his
religion; but later on is informed that Christian
worship and doctrine are only embryonic stages of
the truth, and that the initiate will find all that he
needs in the teaching given him by the spirits.
The dogmatic system of the Spiritualists, therefore,
is best described as a vague kind of Theism, at times
closely resembling Pantheism.
�IO
The History of Religions
[36
II
It will be seen plainly from the foregoing pages
that it will be impossible within the limits of a
pamphlet to do more than sketch very lightly the
criticisms that may be passed upon Spiritualism,
and the reasons why the Catholic Church (and in
deed all the historical religions of the world) has
condemned and rejected it, and forbidden it to her
children, both in its present form and under its old
presentment in Necromancy. The Jewish Church
herself always regarded it with horror, and inflicted
the severest penalties upon all her people who meddled
with it.
Very briefly, however, the reasons and criticisms
are as follows :—
(i)
First, it is necessary to remember the enormous
amount of fraud that has always accompanied the
practice of Spiritualism—fraud that is acknowledged
and deplored, to be frank, by Spiritualists themselves.
While, therefore, fraud on the part of the professors
of a religion is not enough to discredit entirely the
religion itself (for in that case hardly any creed would
be immune), it is yet, in this instance, of sufficient
gravity to cause us to doubt very seriously the reck
less assertions occasionally made by Spiritualists, and
to demand very searching tests indeed before any of
the more startling phenomena are accepted as facts.
In addition to the instances of this deliberate and
conscious fraud—instances known to all who have
studied the history of the movement (as, for example,
in the case of the famous William Eglinton)—there
must also be added unconscious fraud, exaggeration
and doubtful testimony, due on the one side to the
almost irresistible desire of the medium to produce evi
dence, and on the other to the very fierce state of
nervous excitment of most inquirers under the cir-
�36]
Spiritualism
11
cumstances described above.1 Large deductions,
therefore, must be made with regard to the whole
body of evidence that is circulated generally among
the public.
(ii)
There remains, however, when all such deductions
have been made, a residuum (and of a very startling
nature) which it is impossible to disregard ; evidence,
too, that fits in in a remarkable manner with much
that has always been believed by Catholics ; though
these, as will be shown presently, give a very different
explanation of it from that offered by Spiritualists.2
But even this, however, must be sifted further before
anything even resembling a Spiritualistic theory can
be deduced from it.
It is now an established fact among psychologists
that ideas, or sense-images, can be transmitted from
the brain of one living person to that of another, and
that the transmission takes place with increased ease
if the mind of the recipient or the agent is in a
1 The most recent opinion of competent judges in the case of Eusapia
Palladino is that the medium in question, while possessing und ubted
“ powers,” supplements them by fraud, both conscious and unconscious.
2 From “Report of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino,” etc., p. 463 :—
“ B., who is evidently passing through the same stages as I did in my
earlier seances, toys with the suggestion of an apparatus, by way of
easing his mind. It would be an interesting problem to set before a
manufacturer of conjuring machines to devise an apparatus capable of
producing alternatively a black, flat, profile face, a square face on
a long neck, and a ’cello-like face on a warty, wobbly body two feet
long ; also a white hand with movable fingers, a yellowish hand, and
a hand invisible altogether—all these for use outside the curtain.
Further, for use within, a hand with practicable living thumb and
fingers having nails. . . . Our manufacturer must so construct the
apparatus that it can be actuated unseen by a somewhat stout and
elderly lady, clad in a tight plain gown, who sits outside the curtain,
held visibly by hand and foot, in such a way as to escape the obser
vation of the practical conjurers clinging about her, and on the look-cut
for its operation. It must further be of such dimensions as to be con
cealed about the lady while parading herself for inspection upon a
chair, clad in her stays and a short flannel petticoat.—E. F., Dec. 6,
1908.”
�12
The History of Religions
[36
passive condition.1 We are bound, therefore, in
approaching the subject from the purely scientific
side, to allow that a great number at least of the
alleged messages from the dead, whether given by
the voice or the hand of the medium, may be nothing
more than the result of this transmission of thought,
or telepathy. It is of no evidential value to say that
the inquirer in this or that instance has been re
minded through such a message of a fact he had
forgotten : the very fact that he recognized it as true
shows that the thought somewhere resided in his
brain.
(iii)
There remain the physical phenomena—all such
things as sounds, lights, the movement of objects
and “materializations”—the physical phenomena that
remain, that is to say, after due deductions have been
made for fraud, conscious or unconscious. There
remains further to be discussed the Spiritualistic
philosophy concerning them.
First, then, it must be said in fairness that, at any
rate until recently, many eminent scientists who have
gravely examined the physical phenomena are dis
satisfied with the evidence presented in their favour.
They deny, in fact, the assertion that the things in
question prove the presence of discarnate spirits.
Fraud and imagination, they say, are sufficient to
account for all. To this, again in fairness, it must
be answered that, as a rule, these inquirers approach
the question in a state of convinced scepticism, and
1 It is impossible, in view of recent researches, to deny any longer
that Telepathy is an established conclusion of science. It need not be
concluded, however, that what St. Thomas appears to teach as to the
impossibility of purely mental communications is at all assailed by this
discovery. For, curiously enough, some of the characteristics of tele
pathy are markedly in accordance with the philosophy of St. Thomas.
For example, communications by telepathy are nearly always conveyed
by faint visualized pictures. The idea is not communicated direct.
This seems to correspond remarkably with what St. Thomas implies, at
least, with regard to sense-images.
�36]
Spiritualism
13
that convinced scepticism is exactly that condition of
mind that prevents the best manifestations. Certainly
it is an unfortunate dilemma, but a perfectly legitimate
one. It is the dilemma in which both Huxley and his
Christian adversaries were placed when the former
proposed testing the efficacy of prayer by the ex
pedient of praying for the recovery of the patients in
one selected ward of a hospital, and of comparing
results with those of the other wards. Faith, or at
least passivity of mind, it is claimed by Spiritualists,
is a condition necessary to manifestations.
To Catholics,however,and indeed to most Christians,
the evidence must naturally be of a very different value
from that which it has to those who are not satisfied
that a spiritual world exists at all. Catholics are
persuaded that it does exist, that it does manifest
itself (as in the lives of the saints) to the dwellers in
this. They are bound, therefore, to be predisposed to
accept good evidence to the effect that in this or that
instance it has manifested itself; and the only questions
that remain to be settled are, firstly, do these phe
nomena take place among spiritualists? secondly, how
are they to be interpreted ?
To this first question, no adequate answer can, of
course, be given. A Catholic is perfectly free to deny
that such things happen if he has examined the
evidence and found it insufficient. He is not free,
however—if he claims to be an intelligent man—to
deny its possibility. Allowing, then, that the evidence
has been found sufficient to show that at seances
phenomena take place—of the kind described above—
in sufficient number to be considerable, and of such
a nature that they cannot be attributed to human
agency1—what further criticisms can be passed upon
them, and what conclusions can be drawn ?
1 It would occupy too much space to discuss adequately the theory put
forward tentatively by some observers to the effect that the ‘ ‘ subconscious
self” {i.e. the range of these powers and faculties, such as the power of
thought-transference, unconscious cerebration, etc., lying beneath the
ordinary faculties of man) is capable of producing actual physical phe-
�14
The History of Religions
[36
These criticisms are of various kinds—founded
respectively upon observation, and on the principles
of theology.
A. Criticisms founded on observation.
(a) First it cannot but be remarked that the phe
nomena are extremely frequently of a very trifling
nature at the best. Foolish tricks are continually
played upon the sitters; mocking answers given, or
evasions, to their questions.1 These are explained by
spiritualists as being the work of low-caste or earthbound spirits who intrude themselves into the circle.
Yet the very possibility of this—and it is not denied
that this phenomenon is fairly common—throws a
very great doubt upon the genuineness of the other
communications. If it is found impossible for in
quirers, even with the best intentions, to protect
themselves against these annoyances, how can it be
possible for them to be sure that even the graver
nomena such as some of those described in these pages. It is, of course,
a possible explanation—(possible, at least, in the sense that such an
assertion cannot possibly be disproved, since it attributes to an almost
wholly unknown part of human nature forces completely unanalogous to
any others possessed by man)—but so also might it be attributed to
electricity or ether, or some completely unknown but natural agency.
To those, however, who believe at all in the existence of a spiritual world,
it will seem a far more tenable hypothesis to suppose that it is from this
spiritual world that the force is generated ; and therefore, so far as the
evidence goes, a more scientific hypothesis.
1 (a) “ I was suddenly startled by a noise like that of hammering, and
of occasional footsteps, clearly emanating from the bedroom occupied by
my friend. . . . The strange noises, which appeared to have ceased at
the moment of my entrance, recommenced almost immediately with the
utmost vigour, and I became the witness of a scene such as I have
never witnessed before. ... A hundred hands seemed to be hammering
away on walls and doors and table and bed, and every now and then
there was the sound of feet tramping along the floor. ... As morning
dawned the noises gradually ceased.”—{Dangers of Spiritualism, pp.
45> 46.)
.
.
, ,
(5) “The moment the door is opened, it may be by the presence of
persons of like inclinations, of ignorant or credulous mediums . . . or
men of immoral or intemperate habits, troops of so-called ‘dark’ spirits
rush in, and indulge these propensities to silly tricks, lying deception,
and temptation to evil.”—(Letter from a spiritualist of twenty years’
standing, quoted in Dangers oj Spiritualism, p. 125.)
�36]
Spiritualism
15 •
messages come from those personalities that profess
to send them ?
(p) This doubt is further enhanced by the extra
ordinary meagreness even of the most solemn
“spiritual teachings.” If the spiritualistic theory
were true, if it were a fact that some of the greatest
thinkers and scientists in the world’s history, con_ sumed by a desire to illuminate their brethren still living
on earth, returned to give them that teaching, how is
it that no historical mystery has ever yet been solved
by this means, no scientific problem answered, no
ascetical doctrine superior to that already given by
teachers on earth ever yet bestowed ? The collections
of “ spiritual teachings ” circulated from time to time
among the public seldom surpass in intelligence or
knowledge the average works of writers even still
incarnate; much less do they approximate in know
ledge or spirituality to the teachings of the greatest
spiritual Leaders of the past.
(f) It is a matter of regret among spiritualists them
selves that occasionally, after the most poignant
scenes, when the presence of some departed friend
has been recognized by one of the inquirers, further
investigation has shown that the communicating
personality has broken down in some perfectly simple
test of identity.1 This seems to lead to the inevitable
conclusion that in some cases at least the discarnate
spirit that has manifested itself has been deliberately
1 “The absolute futility of any attempt at identifying spirits is another
discouraging or unsatisfactory circumstance. It is no proof that the
spirit communicating is A. B. if he tells me of words or circumstances
(supposed to be) known only to A. B. and myself. . . . The alleged
‘ friend ’ of a few years ago (while he was writing through me, and
turning my ideas upside down through his extraordinary ‘ counsel ’ and
hypocrisy) certainly was possessed of knowledge of my present history
unknown to anybody else. . . . Now if one’s diary of thoughts and acts
is an open book for one spirit and another to read at his convenience,
nothing that he may resurrect to one’s mind is any proof that he is trust
worthy .... any more than would be the case if a shoeblack read over
one’s shoulder what one had written . . . . and claimed by virtue of his
knowledge that he was one’s father or mother.”—(Extract from a
letter quoted in Dangers of Spiritualism, pp. 115, 116.)
�16
The History of Religions
[36
impersonating another in a most heartless manner.
Grave suspicion then is bound to remain even in cases
where fraud of this kind has not been detected.
(<7) It is a matter of common knowledge among
spiritualists that the nervous exhaustion which so often
comes upon the medium during or after a seance has
led in many cases to a complete breakdown of the
mental and moral powers. This is not, of course, in
any sense a conclusive argument; religious mania is
known in every creed; but the fact becomes more
significant when it is remembered that, on the other
side, Spiritualism has not produced characters of any
extraordinary sanctity or eminence. Except in the
cases where materialists have been convinced through
means of Spiritualism of the existence of another
world, it is impossible to point to any spiritual or
mental gain to balance the extremely numerous losses
on the other side.
(e) Further, it is exceedingly easy to adduce testi
mony after testimony from those who, once spiritualists,
have relinquished the life because of the loss not only
of mental but also moral virtues. An extremely un
pleasant symptom in the case of inquirers too much
absorbed in such practices as those of planchette or
ordinary automatic handwriting is the appearance of
the obscene and blasphemous element in the communi
cations received. Of course such results as those, as
well as others less terrible (such as loss of will-power,
morbidity, etc.) may very well arise from the mere
passivity of mind necessary for success in such experi
ments, and from the consequent uprush of those
realms of human consciousness not directly controlled
by the will (as in the case of delirium). Yet, even
with all allowances made for such possibilities, there
would seem to remain a certain malignancy of delib
erate purpose, a certain design followed in the process,
certainly not intended by the inquirer, that would
argue strongly in favour of another personality being
at work. At any rate, in such cases, there is an inten-
�36]
Spiritualism
17
tion of communicating with the spiritual world; and if
this means of communication were according to the
Divine will—if even it were true that the communi
cating personalities were those which they professed
to be—it would be difficult to account for the per
sistence of this phenomenon.
The following extract from a letter to the author of
The Dangers of Spiritualism is given at length, as
containing an excellent analysis of the state of brain
and nerves—to say the least—brought on by the
continued practice of automatic handwriting.
“ But now comes the worst part of the whole story.
My whole being had manifestly undergone a change ;
I seemed to have received another nature—gross, vile,
sensual, originating the most vile and abominable
ideas, such as had never formerly entered into my
mental life. My old self was still there, thank God !
I have never quite lost that. But, although rebellious
and disgusted, it nevertheless seemed powerless against
the stronger, evil influence which was dominating it.
It was as if some unclean spirit had taken possession
of me, had driven out my old self, and was using my
mind and body for its own vile purposes. At first, I
fought and struggled against it, and tried to rouse
myself; but it was all to no purpose. All the day
long my body was tired, weighed down by a heavy,
languid, care-for-nothing feeling. I had no desire but
to lie down and to let my thoughts go wandering. I
lost interest in everything I used to delight in in
former times. I dropped my studies; my hobbies
had no longer any charm for me; everything seemed
an effort and a trouble. I have read of the mental
and physical condition of opium-smokers, and it
certainly seemed to me as if I was overpowered by
a kind of moral opium which simply rendered me
powerless to make any more effort. Only when
evening came I seemed capable of moving. I then
began to grow restless. If I went to bed I could not
sleep, but simply lay a.wake, my brain all activity,
�18
The History of Religions
[36
imagining, picturing the most wretched abominations.
Dreading, therefore, to go to bed, I used to go out.
Invariably I would find myself proceeding to some
low public-house, not to drink, but just to be in the
company of, and to hobnob with, any dirty, low
fellow I would find there. And, strange to say, such
would receive me just as one of themselves, while I
felt perfectly at home with them—I, who had never
been in the habit of frequenting the bar of even the
most respectable public-house. I had no desire what
ever to go among decent people of my own station
of life; on the contrary, I liked the company I met
with in these places; I liked the low, foul conversation;
I revelled in the filthy talk! I would treat my com
panions to drink, and positively enjoyed seeing them
drunk. The smell of the stale beer, of the rank
tobacco, their crude familiarities, were like tonics to
me. The weariness would go; I would sing and
laugh with the loudest of them, thinking it a fine
thing to be called a ‘jolly good chap.’ I could never
get drunk myself; a single pint of beer would make
me sick. When morning came I would get up,
haggard, tired, ashamed, disgusted, afraid to meet
any person of my acquaintance. I can’t describe all
the horrible things I went through, some of them
veritable orgies. Time passed, things gradually got
worse; I dropped my old friends, or they dropped
me. I became unsettled and miserable in my work;
I felt that I could not remain in my place, that I must
get away. With new scenes and new faces I might
get the better of this thing. So I sent in my resig
nation and left the town. ... At present I am
living an idle, aimless life, just existing on the
payment I obtain for a few hours’ private teaching
a week, and a few shillings picked up playing the
piano in public-houses. I am without hopes, pros
pects, or friends. What is there to live for ?
“ And now let me draw attention to one or two
curious points in my history. It is very difficult to
�36]
Spiritualism
19
explain exactly the relationship between the two
natures inhabiting my body. I shall make myself
better understood if I use the word ego to signify my
own mental identity, and alter that of the other. By
I and me I mean my physical self (common to both).
Both of them are I \ but the two are never ‘ in residence ’
at the same time. There is now no struggle for
mastery. The change is imperceptible. I may now
be ego, then I suddenly find myself alter. This latter,
without warning, comes and takes possession, drives
out ego, or paralyses him, does what he likes, and just
as suddenly goes. He just ignores, never remembers
or thinks of ego. Ego, on the contrary, has a vivid
recollection of alter, is disgusted with him, loathes
him, fears him, looks upon him as a vile, sensual thief,
who has robbed him (ego) of all that made life worth
living. When I am alter I am strong, active in mind
and body, full of devilry, daring anything, imagining
and enjoying all evil. When alter goes, poor, pitiful
ego just creeps back into a weak, exhausted body,
weary, tired of life, full of remorse, making good
resolutions, yet having no power to carry them out.
There is one other point. If I can manage to get off
into a good sleep, alter seems to be powerless. My
dreams are always pleasant, mostly of people and
places of the good old times, never of anything bad.
It is only when I am awake, and when my mind is
unemployed, that alter catches me. My worst time
is at night. If I go to bed without being able to
sleep, alter is in full possession, running riot with my
imagination till the morning.
“There may have been no connection between my
dabbling in telepathy and this other thing, but, rightly
or wrongly, I believe that on that night some unclean
spirit attached itself to me, gradually gaining influence
over my nature, and in the end making me his mere
slave. For very shame I have been obliged to keep
the whole matter to myself. People sometimes marvel
(and well they might) at the change which has come
�20
The History of Religions
[36
over me. My sense of fairness will not permit me to
put the whole blame upon telepathy ; there may have
been some unconscious error on my part, or some
circumstance unknown to me may have caused this
alteration in my life. The fact itself remains ; I know
what I was before that evening, and I know what I
have been since.
“ I have only succeeded in writing this by fits and
starts when I am ego; alter nearly threw it all into the
fire last evening, calling it a d----- d lot of rubbish.”
So much, then, for criticisms founded on observation.
We pass on to—
B. Criticisms founded on theology.
It must first be remarked that the following criti
cisms will have no weight with those who approach
the subject of Spiritualism as pure agnostics—beyond
the weight of the fact that historical religion has
always recognized the existence of Spiritualism or
Necromancy, and, up to a certain point at least, the
objectivity of its phenomena.
For it is not only the Catholic Church that has
condemned Spiritualism, the Protestant bodies have
usually done so as well, and the Jewish Church
punished the adherents of Necromancy with death.
Spiritualism, or Necromancy, or the dealing with
“familiar spirits,” has always been regarded by the
other great world-religions as a bastard, rather than
a competitor with a dignity comparable to their own.
This fact is at least significant.
(a) First, then, it is sufficient for the Catholic to
recognize that Spiritualism is, dogmatically, an ad
versary, and not an ally of his own creed. It is
claimed sometimes that Spiritualism and Christianity
are compatible, and, theoretically, it may be so; but,
practically, their dogmatic systems are mutually
exclusive, and Christians who practise Spiritualism
are bound in the long-run to choose between that
faith and their own. So far as Spiritualism has
produced a coherent creed at all, it directly traverses
�36]
Spiritualism
21
even such fundamental doctrines as that of the Incar
nation.
(p) Catholic theology teaches in detail that the
destiny of all men at death takes them elsewhere in the
spiritual world. It is entirely incompatible with
Catholic belief to believe that the souls of the departed
are allowed, except under very peculiar and unusual
circumstances, to revisit this earth with the intention
of communicating with those still living upon it. To
believe that those souls are so far at the mercy of
mediums as to be compelled, practically, in instance
after instance, to manifest themselves here—parti
cularly under such circumstances as usually accompany
spiritualistic seances—is utterly antagonistic both to
the letter and the spirit of Catholic teaching.
For these two main reasons, then, as well as for
others mentioned above, the Catholic Church con
demns Spiritualism without reserve. She acknowledges
the fact that the spiritual world is accessible to this,
and this to that; but she lays down most stringently
the only modes in which such communication may
be sought, and denounces the rest as methods contrary
to the Divine Will.
(r) What, then, is the view of Catholic theologians
as regards the phenomena claimed by Spiritualists?
First it must be noted that Catholics do not pledge
themselves, as a matter of faith, even to the objectivity
of the phenomena. This or that piece of evidence
must be judged, as all other evidence, even in support
of alleged Catholic miracles, simply on its own weight.
At the same time it is undoubtedly true that Catholic
theologians as a whole are disposed to accept much
of the evidence offered by Spiritualists as a sufficient
proof that phenomena do take place at stances and
elsewhere which cannot be accounted for on natural
grounds. The explanation given, then, is as follows :—
(1) Christians are aware from quite other reasons
than those given by Spiritualists that the spiritual
world is a fact, that it is inhabited by innumerable
�22
The History of Religions
[36
personalities, good and bad, and that to many of
these personalities—that is, to spirits that have never
been incarnate—this world is perfectly accessible.
On the one side are the unfallen angels of God, on
the other the fallen; and this earth is to a large
extent the battle-ground between these opposing
forces. The object of the angels of light is to draw
men nearer to God, to protect them from spiritual
and even bodily dangers, and to help them towards
heaven ;■ the object of the angels of darkness is ex
actly the opposite.
Now the precise range of powers permitted to the
evil angels has not been revealed to men; we know
only that they are considerable, though limited; and
we may at least conjecture that as it has been per
mitted in the past to the angels of light to assume
a human appearance, so it is at any rate quite possible
that the same power maybe allowed to their adversaries.
We know also as a positive fact that the evil angels
are permitted under certain circumstances to obtain
such a hold over men who yield to them as actually
to obsess or possess^ their powers and their will.
(2) Turning once more to the phenomena of Spirit
ualism, it is to be noticed that the Christian faith is
continually assailed by those professed “ benefactors ”
of man ; that the mental powers or the morality of
those who practise Spiritualism are extremely liable to
decay; and further, that the process employed is one
calculated to undermine almost imperceptibly the
faith and morals of even those who approach the
investigation with good intentions. In a word, it
would seem that—if the alleged experiences are
facts—they are designed with considerable skill to
the carrying out of that very object which Catholics
believe to be the aim of the spiritual enemies of man.
Inquirers are met on their most tender side, the
1 “ Obsession ” means the persecution of the human will or imagina-.
tion ; ‘ ‘ possession,” its more or less complete control by a discarnate
spirit.
�36]
Spiritualisin
23
appeal is made to their highest human affections;
they are led on by apparent proof after apparent
proof to believe that they are actually in communi
cation with those they once loved on earth. It would
appear almost inevitable, then, that such inquirers
should ultimately accept such teaching as they re
ceive—and we have seen of what character that teach
ing is—as undeniable truth. For every man that is
converted by Spiritualism to believe in the immortality
of his soul, there are probably a hundred who are
led by it to relinquish the beliefs and practices of
Clmstianity.
urther evidence in support of the Catholic theory
is found in the facts related above under the heading
Criticisms founded on observation. The large propor
tion of fraud, both on the part of mediums and of the
personalities that claim to communicate, the trifling
and often mischievous tricks and evasions with which
serious inquiry is so often met, the solemnity of the
claim to shed light from the spiritual world upon the
problems of this world, coupled with the extraordinary
futility of the “ revelations ” so made, as well as the
continual injuries inflicted upon the bodily and
mental health of the mediums and the inquirers—all
those considerations support very strongly the Cath
olic contention that the phenomena, if genuine, must
be the work of the avowed spiritual enemies of the
human race. Theologians emphasize this the more
from the fact that in extreme cases of nervous or
mental breakdown following upon the practices of
Spiritualism, symptoms make their appearance iden
tical with, or at least closely resembling, those which
accompany undoubted cases of “ possession ”; and
“ possession,” it must be remembered, has been familiar
to Catholics for many centuries; its treatment finds a
regular place in the Ritual and Exorcisms of the
Church, and the fact of it is vouched for explicitly in
the New Testament.
As regards the exact mode by which the genuine
�'24
The History of Religions
[36
phenomena—if they exist—are produced, Catholic
theology offers no definite opinion. All that can be
said is that an acceptance of the “ astral ” theory
is not condemned. It is conceivable that there may
be some such force or substance in the human con
stitution, but of this Catholic theology has no
cognizance. It is a matter of psychical, or even
physical science, rather than of theology or philosophy.
This, then, is the attitude of the Catholic Church
towards Spiritualism:—
(1) She does not in any way commit herself to
the acceptance of the phenomena. Yet she does not
deny them, and allows fully for their possibility.
Each claim stands or falls on its own proper evidence.
(2) So far as the alleged phenomena are genuine,
the Catholic Church accounts for them by the action
of evil discarnate spirits—called “ fallen angels.” She
utterly rejects, therefore, their testimony, and warns
her children against accepting it.
(3) She condemns in the gravest manner any
attempt to communicate in this manner with the
spiritual world, as contrary to the Divine Will.
(4) She leaves open—granted the genuineness of
the phenomena—the mode in which such phenomena
are accomplished.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED.
Modern Spiritism. By J. Godfrey Raupert. Kegan Paul, 1907.
The Dangers of Spiritualism. By J. Godfrey Raupert. Kegan
Paul, 1906.
Sermons on Modern Spiritualism.
By Rev. A. V. Miller.
Kegan Paul, 1908.
Hypnotism and spiritism. By Lapponi. Chapman & Hall,
1906.
The Unseen World. By Lepicier. Kegan Paul, 1906.
�
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Spiritualism
Supernatural
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NATURE
AND THE
SUPERNATURAL ;
OR,
BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
—BY—
CHARLES WATTS
Editor of “ Secular Thought.”
Author of ■“ Teachings of Secularism Compared with Orthodox Christianity, ”
Evolution and Special Creation,” “ Secularism: Constructive and De
structive,” “ Glory of Unbelief,” “ Saints and Sinners : Which ?”
“ Bible Morality,” ^Christianity: Its Origin, Nature amd
Influence,’ “ Agnosticism and Christian Theism: Which is
the More Reasonable ? ” “ Reply to Father Lambert,"
‘ ‘ The Superstition of the Christian Sunday: A
Plea for Liberty and Justice,' “ The Horrors
of the French Revolution,” Ac., Ac.
CONTENTS:
1. What do we Know of Nature ?
2. The Grandeur and Potency of Nature.
3. The Supernatural.
4. What is the Supernatural ?
5. Belief and Knowledge.
6. Religion: Natural and Supernatural.
TORONTO :
" SECULAR THOUGHT ” OFFICE,
31 Adelaide St. East.
PRICE
- 10 CENTS.
��Vju
J
T
•1-
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL;
OR,
BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
What do we know of Nature 1—What is nature ? Of course
most persons know what is meant by nature, in part at
all events; and the only difference in opinion or definition
that can arise will be as to its totality. There are a thou
sand facts lying all around us, and a thousand phenomena
of which we are every day eye-witnesses, that all will agree
to call nature. The question, however, does not concern
these, but others, real or imaginary, which differ somewhat
from them, arid which are supposed, therefore, to be incapable of
being classed under the same head. Those who desire to obtain
a clear and accurate idea of nature cannot do better than read
carefully Mr. John Stuart Mill’s excellent essay on the subject,
published after his death. He gives two definitions, or rather
two senses, in which we use the word in ordinary, every-day
language. The first is that in which we mean the totality of all.
existence, and the other that in which we use the term as contra
distinguished from art—nature improved by man. But it must
be borne in mind that this is still nature. Nature improved by
man is only one part of nature modified by another ; for man isas much a portion of nature as the earth on which he treads, or
the stars which glow in the midnight sky over his head. Nature,,
therefore, as we understand it, and as Mill defines it in his first
sense, is everything that exists, or that can possibly come into
existence in the hereafter—that is, all the possibilities of exis
tence, whether past, present or future. If it is asked on what
ground we include in this definition that which to-day does not
•11
■f
.1’
•■I-
�4
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL:
'exist, but may come into existence hereafter, we reply : Because
that which will be must be, potentially at least, even now. No
new entity can come into being; all that can occur is the
■commencement of some new form of existence, which has ever
Bad a being potentially anyhow. No new force can appear,
some new form of force may. But, then, that, when it comes,
will be as much a part of nature as the rest—is indeed even
now a part of nature, since it is latent somewhere in the universe.
Nature, in a word, is everything, besides which, to us, there is
and can be nothing.
We speak of human nature as though it were in some sort of
;sense superior to nature in general, which in fact it is. One part
■of nature may be higher than another according to human con
ception, for all nature is not the same in every particular. We
have inorganic nature, that is nature in which only certain
forms of force are seen in operation ; then we have vegetable,
animal, and the last, the highest of all, human nature, in which
forces are displayed not seen in any other part of nature. All
•these phenomena, however, are natural. The profound thought
•of Plato, Aristotle and Bacon, or the mighty flights of genius
manifested in the productions of Homer, Horace, Virgil, Dante,
Milton or Shakespeare, are as natural as the growth of a plant,
the rolling of a stone, the descent of the dew, or the evolution
of a world.
The question is frequently asked, What do we know of nature ?
Cur reply is that all we do know is of nature. The attempt,
therefore, that is often made to prove man ignorant of nature
is really an endeavour to prove him ignorant of everything, inas
much, as there is nothing else of which he can possibly have any
knowledge. That our knowledge of nature is at present small
we do not deny, but it is large compared with what it was, and
ano doubt it will be larger still in the future if we only devote
proper time to the manifold lessons which she is always pre
senting to earnest students. Instead of boasting of our super
abundance of knowledge, we rather lament our ignorance, but it
k is of that which can be known, not of that which is to us un
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
5
knowable, and about which it is useless to enquire and idle to
speculate. With us the natural is the field of the knowable and
in this field we are content to work. So far as we have gone
we are certain of the road that we are travelling, we walk on
solid ground, and we have no fear for the future. We may err
in our interpretations of some of the facts of the universe, but.
we feel assured from past experience that further investigation®
will rectify such errors, and even while they remain they are
slight and trivial and such as are common to fallible man. If
we leave this road of Nature it can but be to wander in quag
mires, surrounded by dense fogs, with no light to guide us except
a will-o’ the-wisp.
Dr. .McCosh has said, ‘In this world there is a set of object®
and agencies which constitute a system or cosmos, which may
have relations to regions beyond [beyond what?] but is all thewhile a self-contained sphere with a space around it............ This
system we call nature.” But this very system constitutes all we
know, not possessing faculties that can take us any further.
Such a system being nature, the laws in operation in it are
natural laws, and the forces by which everything is brought t$
pass are natural forces. Our knowledge is bounded by these,
f and from them receives its limitation. To talk, therefore,regarding that which lies beyond—if even it were possible to
conceive of a beyond—must be mere speculation, nothing more.
It is sometimes objected against the position here affirmed,
that upon the principle that nature is everything and that,
whatever is done must be accomplished by natural powers and
forces, no law of nature can be broken,for that would imply that
nature can act against herself. Now the error of this objection
is in supposing that because the totality of all things is nature
therefore there can be no conflict in the various parts. Nature
as a whole cannot of course be altered, but one portion may and
does come into conflict with another. A man may use his
physical powers, which are of course natural, to do that which
produces injury on his bodily organisation, which is also quite
natural, and we say he has broken a law of nature. We do mot,.
�6
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL:
however, mean that he has done anything which nature did not
give him the power to do, but that he has used his power to a
disadvantage to himself, and it may be to others. The expression,
therefore, is relative not absolute.
It is further objected that as there are certain ac(s which we
are in the habit of speaking of as being unnatural, how can any
thing be unnatural if nature includes everything ? For instance,
we say of a man who treats those of his own kith and kin
cruelly, that he acts unnaturally, and we designate certain crimes
as unnatural offences. But we do not mean by such phraseology
that these acts are super natural but infra natural, that is, they
are not higher, but lower than nature. Further, a moment’s
reflection will show that by the use of these terms we do not
intend to convey the idea, that anything has been done outside
of nature as a whole, for the very powers employed are natural
and the acts are no less so. What is meant is that a person who
so acts has pursued a course of conduct which is not in harmony
with our exalted conception of the sphere in nature to which he
Belongs. Measured by ordinary standards one part of nature is
higher than another. Man’s sphere is the highest of all that we
are acquainted with, he has intellect in a far superior degree
than any other animal, and he has evolved a moral law by which
he is supposed to regulate his conduct. Now, if instead of
conforming to the laws of his own being he descends to a
lower platform and acts in a way that is utterly out of
harmony with his exalted functions, we say that he is unnatu
ral, meaning thereby that he is descending to a lower sphere in
nature than that which we have a right to expect him to occupy.
The act that we call unnatural in him would probably be natu
ral enough in a lower animal, and therefore cannot, be outside
nature, but is only out of accord with the requirements of that
part of nature in which he plays his part. There is evidently a
legitimate function for every passion and desire of which man
finds himself possessed, and the proper use of these, according
to the purpose of nature, we call naturalwhile to divert them
from their proper object or end we say is unnatural. A man
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
7
has an appetite for food which is natural, but he can starve him
self to death, which, in a sense, is natural too, and yet in another
sense we should say it was unnatural, because it was a violation
of an instinct common to us all. Suppose a starving man to be
destitute of food, and his own child, who has plenty, refuses that
aid to his parent that would save life, we should regard such a
son as an unnatural monster, not meaning thereby that he had
done anything that nature did not furnish the means of doing,
but that he had not acted according to. the higher laws of his
nature which appertain to all beings moving in his sphere. All,
therefore, that can be done, said, or thought, is and must be
natural in the widest sense of that term. Man’s beginnings
were in nature; his every act is natural, his thoughts are natu
ral, and in the end the great universe will fold him in her em
brace, close his eyes in death, and furnish in her own bosom his
last and final resting-place. Beyond her he cannot go. She was
his cradle, and will be his grave; while between the two she
furnishes the stage on which he plays his every part. And more,
she has made him, the actor, to play the part. Nature is one
and indivisible. She had no beginning, and can have no end.
She is the All-in-all. Combined in her are the One and the
Many which so perplexed the philosophers of ancient times.
The Grandeur and Potency of Nature.—The grandeur of
Nature must be obvious to all who reflect on its many
beauties. The massive rocks, the golden sunset, the glowing
stars, the rolling waves, the rippling brook, the grassy mead,
the trees with their luxuriant foliage, and the flowers of
every variety of hue, which have entranced and charmed man
kind during all ages, are but the grand treasures and sights of
Nature. The poet who has revelled in these natural gems,
painting them in words which have stirred the emotions to their
lowest and made the objects themselves stand out in clear out
line conspicuous to the reader, fascinating and enrapturing his
mental vision, is the poet of Nature, who finds in the external
universe food for his highest powers. Where is there a topic
�8
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL:
more grand and ennobling ? Even that higher development of
the poetic genius, which deals, as Shakespeare did, with the
thoughts, feelings and passions of men, does but depict another
phase of Nature, profounder and more sublime, but Nature still
Milton, too, who was the poet of the supernatural so called, has
but transferred the passions and impulses of men into another
sphere, imaginary, it is true, but copied from the world of fact.
For Imagination herself cannot escape beyond the bounds of the
natural. It is said that the poet “ gives to airy nothings a local
habitation and a name but his airy nothings are simply copies
of real things, and the location he assigns to them is always a
natural one. Shakespeare’s supernatural characters are but men
—men, it may be, with some more exalted powers and some
higher attributes than men possess in the world of fact ; but
they are no less men for that, and the exaltation of their powers
is always in the direction of Nature. The philosopher whose
profound thought shall live while humanity remains on the earth,
making him who gave birth to such lofty ideas what is called
immortal, never goes beyond Nature in his deepest penetration
into the secret springs of the universe and of man.
Nature extends beyond all we can conceive of. Her glory is the
glory of the great Whole, her power the potency of the Infinite.
The highest attributes which we can imagine are hers, for from
her we borrowed our ideas of what she is, or what her possibili
ties are. Our thoughts are in Nature and of Nature. Our ideas
are pictures of her revelations to the mind of man, our sublimest
conceptions are but reproductions in mental visions of her doings
before our eyes. She is the great mother of us all; on her
breast we repose during life, and in her arms we are enfolded
in death.
Now, what is our chief business in relation to the
universe of things ? It is to learn all we can in regard to the
great laws and • mighty forces operating around us and in us
There must ever remain a field for the exercise of our faculties
in such inquiries, for Nature is unlimited in her resources, as
she is in her potency and extent.
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
9
“ No man, however keen his eye,
Can into Nature’s deepest secrets pry.”
So said an old poet, and no doubt he was right. Nature’s
deepest secrets defy all investigation, for they extend to the
depths and heights of the Infinite. But that does not alter
the fact that our sole business here is to learn all we can.
Nature’s secrets are not always easily obtained. They are not
to be had for the mere asking, as Christian mercies are said to
come. Energetic research alone can draw them from her
bosom—research often accompanied with toil, pain and sorrow.
The scientific discoveries of this age show what can be done
in the way of obtaining knowledge of the powers and forces of
the universe. Those who will cast their thoughts back to the
commencement of the present century, and then reflect what has
been accomplished since that time, cannot help being startled at
the contrast between things as they then were and as they now
exist. It is not necessary to enter into detail here regarding the
tremendous onward movement that discovery and investigation
have made within that period. In these days of cheap popular
literature almost every person is acquainted with the facts. The
wonder to us is, how our fathers progressed at all in the absence
of discoveries which we deem essential to every-day life. Rail
ways, gas, the telegraph, the telephone, photography, and many
other such advantages, have all come into use during the present
century. Had any man a hundred years ago predicted the state
of things existing to-day, he would have been considered a fit
subject for a lunatic asylum. Had such results been imagined
they would have been deemed supernatural. Nature has thus
far disclosed the great events which for ages had lain hidden in
her arcana. This she has done in obedience to patient and per
sistent investigation on the part of a noble and hard-working
band of men—the devotees of science.
The discoveries already made are an indication of what is yet
to come. From what has been we may judge of what may be.
Earnest men are still pursuing their patient investigations into
Nature. They study her laws, they question her phenomena,
�10
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL:
they interrogate her doings, and they never go unrewarded for
their toil and their pains. Almost every day something new is
brought to view which shall tend to lighten the load of human
woe and sorrow, and bring about harmony among mankind.
The laws of Nature are our guide in life, and the grandeur of '
Nature is our inspiration. The forces of the universe we know
only in their manifestations; but that is sufficient—more we
need not. It was a wise saying of the great German philoso
pher, Goethe : “ Man is not born to solve the problems of exist
ence ; but he must nevertheless attempt it in order that he may
know how to keep within the bounds of the knowable.” We
should aim, therefore, to be consistent students of Nature in all
her marvellous manifestations. We are, as Bacon says, ministers
and interpreters of Nature: farther than that we have no desire
to go. In trees and stars and suns and flowers, in the solid earth
and the expansive sea, in the growing plants and moving ani
mals, and, above all, in the great mind of man, we find our sole
delight, our simple care, and the basis of all our hopes for the
world and all it contains.
The Supernatural.—There has been a large number of books
written on this subject, some of them by men of eminence in
their respective departments of thought; and yet the matter is
still left in a state of obscurity. It has, of course, been dealt
with from very different standpoints, and therefore exceedingly
conflicting arguments have been brought to bear upon it. Two
able American writers, Dr. Bushnell and Dr. McCosh, have dismussed it with considerable learning and some thought, in books
which are widely read and often appealed to both in the pulpit
and through the press ; but one has always to put down these
volumes with a great degree of dissatisfaction, since nothing like
clear definition is to be found in their pages. In England the
subject has been made the theme of several large works, of hun
dreds of magazine articles, and of thousands of pulpit discourses :
and by this time, therefore, some clear idea ought to be obtained
as to the differentiation between these two spheres, if there are
�OR, relief and knowledge.
11
two ; but the whele subject is still enveloped in the densest dark
ness. There must be some cause for this, and the cause, probably,
is not far to seek. The natural we know : but the supernatural,
what is that ? Of course, as its name implies, it is something
higher than nature—something above nature. But, if there is a
sphere higher than nature, and yet often breaking through nature,
nature itself must be limited by something, and the question that
at once arises is, By what is such limitation fixed, and what is
the boundary line which marks it off and separates it from the
supernatural ? And this is just what no two writers seem to be
agreed upon. But’, further, supposing such a line to be discovered
and to be well known, so that no difficulty could arise in pointing
it out, a still more difficult problem presents itself for solution—
namely, how man, who is a part of nature, and able only to come
into contact with nature, can push his knowledge into that other
sphere Which, being non-natural, cannot be at all accessible to a
natural being ? If the supernatural region be synonymous with
the unknowable, it clearly cannot concern us, simply because we
have no faculties with which to cognise it, and no powers capable
of penetrating into its profound depths. In this case, as far as
we are concerned, there is practically no supernatural, for none
can operate on that sphere in which man lives and moves and
displays his varied and in some respects very marvellous powers.
Professor Huxley thinks that every new discovery in science
pushes the supernatural further away from us by enlarging the
boundary of human knowledge of nature.
According to many writers, the spiritual is the supernatural,
because it is not under the control of natural law. But why ?
If man be partly a spiritual being, why should not natural law
extend into the sphere of his spiritual nature ? Indeed, an able
writer on the Christian side, whose work has been enthusiasti
cally received by all religious denominations—Professor Drum
mond—has maintained this position, the very title of his book
stating the whole case : “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World.”
The great German philosopher, Kant, calls nature the realm of
sensible phenomena, conditioned by space, and speaks of an
�12
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL 1
other sphere as a world above space, depleted of sense, and
free from natural law, and therefore supersensible and super
natural. But this is to make the supernatural spaceless and
timeless—in fact, a mere negation of everything, and therefore
nothing. Now, the only light in which we can look at this sub
ject, with a view to obtain anything like clear and correct views,
is that of modern science. By her the boundary of our know
ledge has been greatly enlarged, and through her discoveries we
have been enabled to obtain more sound information regarding
the laws of the universe than it was possible for our fathers, with
the limited means at their disposal, to possess. Looking at the
universe by which we are surrounded, and of which we ourselves
form a part, we see law in operation everywhere, and this law
we call natural law.
If there be a sphere where the supernatural plays a part and
exercises any control, it must clearly be in some remote region,
of which we have, and can have, no positive knowledge; and
the forces in operation must be other than those with which we
are conversant upon this earth. Science cannot recognise the
supernatural, because she has no instruments which she can bring
to bear upon, and no means at her disposal for, its investigation
She leaves to the theologian all useless speculations regarding
such a region, contenting herself with reminding him that he is,
in all such discussions, travelling outside the domain of facts into
a province which should be left to poets and dreamers, and which
belongs solely to the imagination. All law is and must be natu
ral law, from a scientific standpoint, because we can have access
to nature, and to nature only. It is impossible to get beyond her
domain, even in imagination.
The supernatural, if it exists, mnst reveal itself through nature,
for in no other way can it reach us so as to produce any impres
sion upon the human mind. But, if it come through nature, then
how can it be distinguished from the phenomena of nature ? It
will be quite impossible to differentiate between them. We are
quite precluded from saying, Nature could not do this, and is
unable to do that. No man can fix a limit to the possibilities of
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
13
power in nature. She has already done a thousand things which
our forefathers would have declared impossible, and she will
doubtless in the future, under further discoveries and advances
in science, do much more which will look impossible to us. What
ever, therefore, comes through nature must be natural, for the
very reason that it comes to us in that way. And the business
of science is to interpret it in the light of natural law. Even if
she should prove herself incompetent to the task, it would only
show that some phenomena had been witnessed which had for a
time baffled explanations, not that anything supernatural had
occurred. And the business of science would be to at once di
rect itself to the new class of facts, with a view to finding the key
with which to open the lock and disclose the secret of the power
by which they were produced.
What is the Supernatural ?—According to Dr. Bushnell,
“That is supernatural, whatever it be, that is not in the
chain of natural cause and effect, or which acts on the chain
of cause and effect in nature without the chain.” But, it
may fairly be asked, is there any such cause, and if so,
where ? Is not every link in the chain that we see or can
conceive of natural ? Moreover, were there any other link
or chain, how could we recognise it or distinguish it from na
ture ? True, Dr. Bushnell attempts to explain his meaning, and in
so doing he practically gets rid of the supernatural altogether.
He says: “ If the processes, combinations, and results of our
system of nature are interrupted or varied by the action of God,
or angels, or men, so as to bring to pass that which would not
come to pass by its own internal action under the mere law of
cause and effect, such variations are in like manner supernatu
ral ” Now this reasoning is based upon the supposition that
things are brought about by some power higher than the ordinary
law of cause and effect. If this be meant to'be taken absolutely,
then we most emphatically deny it. But if, as it would seem, Dr.
Bushnell simply means cause and effect in external nature apart
from intelligent beings, that is to take far too limited a view of
�14
NATURE and the supernatural;
the law. For man himself is as much a creature of law as a
tree or a star, and all he does is accomplished by, not outside the
law of cause and effect. But were it otherwise, as this writer
appears to suppose, then man’s actions are all supernatural,which
is virtually giving up the supernatural altogether, in the sense
in which it is usually understood. Definitions of the superna
tural are given by the Duke of Argyle and Dr. McCosh that do
not differ greatly from that offered by Dr. Bushnell. Dr. McCosh
speaks of even miracles as not being against nature in any
other sense than that in which one natural agent may be used
against another, as water may be employed to counteract fire,
which is, in fact, to bring the supernatural into nature, and to
obliterate all distinction between them.
It is said that there are exceptional cases in which the super
natural has broken through the natural, and thus become objects
of sense in the same way as the rising and setting of the sun,
the ebb and flow of the tides, or any other natural phenomena,
and that these must be judged of by the ordinary laws of evi
dence. The reply to this, however, is that the alleged superna
tural, if it shows itself in its manifestations to man, must either
come through nature or in some other way. But there is no
other way known to us, for man cannot get on the outside of
nature even in thought. The most extravagant flights of ima
gination that we find, either in poetry or in the products of reli
gious ecstacy, are always shapen in natural moulds, either as a
whole or, what is more general, in their parts. No image formed
in the human mind can possibly be other than natural, if not in
its entirety, at least in the component parts of which it is made
up. We can conceive of a centaur, though no such thing ever
existed, or of a mermaid, though no person has ever seen one,
these being creatures purely of the imagination. They are
compound things, each part of which has been seen a hundred
times, and are formed by blending a portion of one animal with
a part of another, thus making an image which on the whole is
unnatural, but the parts of which are taken from nature. Men
speak of angels, but either they have no idea at all in their minds
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
15
as to what they are speaking of, and merely use a meaningless
word, or else they think of a human being with the addition of
wings or some other abnormal appendage. It is a noteworthy
fact that those much-talked-of angelic appearances recorded in
the Bible are really descriptions of men. Its God is pictured in
a human form, and the Holy Ghost assumes the shape of a dove.
Christianity itself is represented as being a supernatural revela
tion, yet every one of its doctrines came through a natural me
dium. The writers who penned the various books of the Bible
were men, and we have but their bare assertions that what they
taught had any other than a natural origin. Even if their
honesty be proved unimpeachable, there still arises the question
as to whether they might not have been deceived. At all events,
theie is no manifestation of the supernatural, all the revelations
coming through nature. And in that very transmission they
must have become so much blended with the purely natural that
it would be impossible to distinguish the one from the other.
All this shows that we have no faculties by which the supposed
supernatural can be as much as imagined in our minds. The
moment that we fancy we think of it, we borrow our ideas from
Nature, so that even in imagination we cannot and do not tran
scend her boundaries. The fact is, man cannot travel beyond
the natural, he having no experience of anything outside or
apart from its domain. To assert that the so-called supernatural
is the cause of the natural is to allege that which is the very
reverse of what we know to be fact. If we trace what is termed
the supernatural to its origin, we shall find it end in nature.
This may appear paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true.
Mr. Moncure D. Conway very aptly says in his “ Lessons for
the Day : ” “ Supernature is a disjointed dream of nature as seen
by science. It is the morning vision of Art; the artist realises
that more ideal world with which nature is in labour. Know
ledge, Art, Poetry, enter the ideal kingdom by the door; Super
stition tries to scramble over the walls, and gets maimed in the
attempt. The supernaturalist believes that one day an iron axe
swam on the river Jordan : but at the command of knowledge
millions of tons of iron are swimming to-day on many waters.
�16
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL ;
He says certain jars of water flushed to wine; but by culture
the rains of heaven falling on a thousand hills are turned to
wine. We want no supernature. That is mere calumny on na
ture, and caricature of the best in it. What we need is har
mony with nature,—harmony with its laws that we may have
health: sympathy with its beauty that we may be pure; obedi
ence to its conditions, that we may command its forces and in
spire them with human purpose. In nature is the constancy
which is our dependence and our development; in it the poten
tiality Reason, which is our only source of Wisdom; in it the
Love which attends the loving from the cradle to the grave.
Ignorance can see it only as chaos in one age, accursed in another ;
superstition can find but terror in its laws, and hope only in their
fancied overthrow by arbitrary thaumaturgy of omnipotence;
but wherever the mind of man flowers, nature flowers in re
sponse, filling every sense with beauty, giving mind and heart
their deeper satisfaction, steadily incarnating every pure ideal.”
“It is often said that mankind are fond of the marvellous;
but it is equally true that all men reverence the laws of nature.
Man’s faith in nature has always accompanied his faith in super
nature. They even whom nature daily slays still trust in her.
Their supernaturalism is never anti-natural. Miracles may have
been invented which outrage nature; but they have not taken
high place in human credence. I believe it would be found, on
investigation, that in all the miracles which have been accepted
as evidences of religion, certainly all that have been cherished
by any race, there is a mixture of the natural and supernatural.
Elijah restores the child to life by stretching his body upon it:
room was thereby left to the popular imagination to conceive of
some natural force generated by such contact. When Christ
cures a man’s blind eyes, or Vespasian heals a wounded arm,
both were said to have done it by means of spittle; so leave
was given the mind to imagine some unexplained medicinal vir
tue in that application. The means used are sometimes absurdly
inadequate ; effects the most astounding are attributed to a tone
of voice, a form of words, a touch. But these were believed to
be part r aluigl foicu.”
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
IT
Belief and Knowledge.—There is a marked distinction to be
observed between belief and knowledge. We may, and do, have
faith in that of which we have no real or actual knowledge, for
we are compelled to exercise such faith in everyday life upon nu
merous topics. The point to be remembered is that, if we are judi
cial or rational, we shall be careful that our belief is not opposed
to knowledge. We may, and do, believe in countries which we have
never seen ; in the existence of persons with whom we have never
come into contact, and of countless things of which we have had
no actual experience ; but if we are wise we shall always be on
our guard against taking for granted that which is highly improb
able, to say nothing of the impossible. If a man asserted that one
thing was in two places at the same time, we should not stop to
ask for the evidence that he had to produce, because no amount of
evidence could serve to substantiate as a truth that which we
knew by the very nature of things to be impossible. Testimony is
highly valuable of course, but there are many subjects which no
amount of evidence could prove, simply because the matter is of
such a nature as not to admit of proof. Suppose, for instance,
someone had said that he had visited a country where two and
two made five, we should at once draw the inference that either
the man stated what was not true, or else that he attached a
different meaning to the words employed than that which we
are in the habit of giving to them. A man tells us that he#ias
seen a miracle, and that, therefore, he knows from experience that
the Supernatural does exist, and he brings a dozen persons to
verify his statement. What are we to do in such a case ? A
moment’s reflection may show that the testimony is unimpeach
able, while the conclusion is perfectly erroneous. The event
which he describes may have happened, but how is it to be
proved to be a miracle ? The forces in operation in its produc
tion may be to him unknown, he may never have seen them in
operation before, indeed they may be new to all mankind, but
still his evidence could simply vouch for the fact; and the cause
must be a matter for enquiry. The thing no doubt happened
in nature, for no experience can extend beyond that, and the
�18
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL;
■assertion that the forces producing it were supernatural is a
gratuitous one, and not only not supported by the laws of evid
ence, but utterly opposed to everything that we know Belief
should have a rational basis or it is wild and chimerical. Faith
is good in its place, but it must always be confined within the
sphere of knowledge, A man can have faith in that which he
never saw and perhaps never will see : to this we do not object,
but the thing in which he has faith must be a possible one or his
faith is misplaced, and he himself deluded. Now, faith in the
■Supernatural is an unreasoning faith, pre-supposing a know edge
which we do not and cannot possess, since a knowledge of that
which lies beyond nature is an impossibility. The sphere of
faith is legitimate enough, but it is not a sphere distinct from
that of knowledge, but one which arises out of it and should
never go beyond it. We know certain things and believe others,
but the latter are always more or less connected with the former,
Faith in the order of nature is reasonable, because it is based on
experience ; faith in the supernatural is absurd because it is
opposed to all possible knowledge, not only to the knowledge
that we have, but to all that it is in any way possible for us to
have.
Of course there is a region in which speculation may be toler
ated, but it must be tolerated as speculation, nothing more. The
misfortune is that those, as a rule, who indulge in speculation
make their theories do duty as facts. They not only invest their
ideas with the importance of legitimate deductions from facts,
but give to them the value of the facts themselves. It is against
this that we protest. When men talk about matters of which
no one can know anything, they may be harmless enough as
dreamers, but when they endeavour to bend men of reason and
thought to their way of thinking, resorting sometimes even to
persecution to promulgate their idle whims, then they are dan
gerous and can no longer be regarded with impunity. Society
has to suffer for their errors; and it is the duty of every mem
ber of that society to lift up his or her voice against either their
wilful perversion of truth, or their innocent misapprehension of
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
19
facts. Such, as a rule, are the orthodox believers in the super
natural, and the popular advocates of speculative views on
religion.
We may ask, and it is a very legitimate question, What effect
has it had on the world to substitute reckless belief for know
ledge and to indulge in idle speculation regarding the Super
natural ? To say the least of it, men’s minds have thereby been
diverted from the real business of life, their attention has been
taken from the things we know, and the study of which would
prove serviceable to us, to occupy their mental powers upon
matters of which no knowledge is to be attained. To say such a
course is a waste of time would be to treat the matter far too
lightly. It is much more than that. It has led to incorrect
thinking, to loose reasoning, to the drawing of false conclusions,
and to the substitution of imagination for reality. Further, the
fostering of groundless and fanatical theological beliefs has not
only caused almost endless persecutions, but it has proved a pro
lific cause of insanity. In the Philadelphia Times and Register
of Sept. 14 of last year (1889), Dr. Joseph Jones, Professor of
Clinical Medicine in the Tulane University, wrote thus:—“ The
contemplation of certain hypotheses and dogmas, held and
vehemently urged from the pulpit, by some religious sects, have,
without doubt, produced great excitement and alarm in the
minds of persons of excitable and unstable nervous organisation.
The burning eloquence and moral pictures of the religious enthu
siast and fanatic, and the horrible revelations of the melancholy
and sinister imagination of Dante, have converted the souls of
the unwary and timid into the abodes of terror and alarm.
Certain dogmas, often represented and illustrated by this fiery
language, and by the subtle power of the painter’s brush, as the
fires and tortures of a burning hell, a veritable lake of fire, where
fiery billows eternally wrap the bodies and souls of the damned,
and whose shores forever resound with the piercing, truly hope
less shrieks of those inhabitants of this earth who have failed to
unter heaven on account of the commission of personal sins ; a
veritable living devil, ever on the alert to seduce and damn the
�20
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL ;
souls of men, women, and children, and drag the unwary down
to everlasting confusion and suffering in the bottomless pit—the
unpardonable sin—have for centuries terrified the weak and
timid devotees of certain phases of religious belief into hopeless
insanity. The violent exercises of certain religious sects, during
the performance of so-called religious exercises, such as shouting,
hopping, jumping, dancing, demoniacal ‘ holy ’ laughing, often
induce epileptic seizures, and inaugurate such conjestion and
exhaustion of the nervous structures as induce religious melan
choly and end in hopeless insanity. The hallucinations which,
in the experience of the Professor, exercise the greatest influence
on the victims of insanity are: 1. The firm belief by the victim
that he is the slave and the abject subject of the devil. To all
remonstrances the victim replies that he must obey his master,
the devil. I have observed and treated cases where the victim
of religious melancholy and hallucination has for days and
weeks refused all food because his master the devil commanded
him not to eat. In some cases, every agent and every effort to
induce the patient to take food have failed, and death has re
sulted from starvation. 2. The commission of the unpardonable
sin. 3. The eternal damnation of the human soul: lost, lost,
lost for ever.”
The lesson from experience is that theological beliefs, when
sincerely and fanatically entertained, are manifested more or less
in conduct. It is, therefore, our uuty to inculcate more reliance
upon practical knowledge and less dependence upon fanciful
beliefs. It is well known that “ knowledge is power,” to whose
magic influence the world is indebted for its progress, enabling
as it does those who possess and utilise it to fight the more ear
nestly, and with a better prospect of winning, the great battle
of life.
Religion: Natural and Supernatural.—Natural religion is ■
based on love, while so-called Supernatural religion is based
on fear. Many persons object to the use of the term religion,
and no doubt the objection would be a good one if that word
retained its old orthodox associations. There is, however, a
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
21
rapidly-growing tendency to employ the word in its etymologi
cal and ethical meaning rather than in its alleged super
natural sense. Accepting religion as ethical unity, established
to promote the welfare of mankind on earth, its proper’ basis is
enlightened benevolence. This great human instinct is not
dependent upon any form of supernaturalism for its manifesta
tion ; its activity is evoked by a desire to alleviate the sufferings
of the afflicted, and to enhance the happiness of the unfortunate.
The hope of securing a fair opportunity for the exercise of this
true benevolence prompts the lover of nature to aim at correct
ing every cherished error by the substitution of a true know
ledge of the natural for the old doubtful speculations as to the
Supernatural. “ The error,” remarks a popular writer, " of the
supernatural religions is apparent, inasmuch as they possess only
artificial life, and, deprived of this, they soon succumb and
perish. Their buttresses and supports have been the despotism
of princes and the fraud and chicanery of priests. The savage
Gauls, when they entered the Senate, were awe-struck at the
majesty which stood upon the brows of the venerable Senators
One of the barbarians, however, ventured quietly to stroke the
beard of one of the Fathers of his country. The aged representa
tive of Old Rome for an instant forgot his dignity, and he
pushed the intruder violently from him. The spell was broken,
and the swords of the savages drank the life-blood of the Con
script Fathers. So has it been with many of the religions, So
long as men were awe-stricken at their mysteries, so long were
they the victims of priestcraft. When, however, men dared to
examine for themselves, when they laid their hands on the veil
it was rent from top to bottom, and the inner chamber, the
sanctum sanctorum, was found to contain little else than a mere
anthropomorphic image.”
History plainly teaches that, when Supernatural religion has
been aught more than than a system of mere belief and pro
fession, it has conduced to wrong action. The records of man
kind furnish ample proof of this. Whether it be Pagans with
their deities, Jews with their Jehovah, or Christians with their
Trinity, all such theologisms have brought forth cruelty, oppres-
�22
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL :
sion and intolerance. Truth, virtue, and love are the three ele
ments which should go towards the foundation of Natural
religion. They formed a humanitarian religion in the case of
Buddhism ; they form the basis of the great religious humani
tarianism of Auguste Comte; they, with the great science of
man’s true education and enlightened benevolence, as promul
gated by that great philanthropist, Robert Owen, formed what
probably will be ultimately accepted as a practical religion of
daily life. The love insisted upon by Natural religion is, more
over, active love. It does not reach to the clouds, or attempt to
penetrate behind the veil of Nature into the region of the un
known and unknowable, but it aims only at instructing and
inspiring human nature, so that there may be perfect harmony
between that and external nature, and absolute peace, concord,
and kindliness between man and man. It is not anti-Christian,
in so far as the Christian believer remains true to the lessons of
love, of mercy, of justice, and of well-doing.
The Supernaturalist talks of Jesus as though he had more
than human .love for man, and a superhuman desire to effect his
welfare. The Naturalist, instead of this, maintains that the \
same high and lofty feeling of philanthropy, of brotherly love,
beats in every human bosom, and needs only wise and patient
cultivation to bring forth golden fruit. Natural religion declares
that there can be no grander impulse, no loftier, more animating
incentive, than an honest, steadfast desire to benefit the whole
human race. This is also the principle of Secularism—that of
active, practical love; of affection manifesting itself in benevo
lence, and earnest, kind efforts for the welfare of man, woman
and child.
Among the first indications we find in human history of the
supernatural feeling is fttichism—the worshipping of trees,
recks, animals, etc. If, however, fetichism were only such as is
here described, it would be Naturalism, not Supernaturalism,
inasmuch as a tree, a stone, an an.mal, a fish, or a bird, is each a
something pertaining to Nature. Such worship, however, was
given, primarily, not to the tree, etc., but to an imaginary some
thing supposed to be latent or hidden in the perceptible object
�OR, BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.
23
adored. In this manner there gradually grew up among
primaeval men the notion of a non-natural—that is, a Super
natural—world, a world of spirits, of beings which lay, as it
were, at the back of all phenomena.
Religion, to be acceptable to the intellects of the present age„
must be recognised in its truest sense—as a binding system
between man and man—as being based on Nature, from whose*
prolific source the highest thoughts, the purest conceptions, and
the loftiest inspiration are derived. Tell us not that the Natural
is impotent to kindle within us the warmest rapture of enthusi
asm. Contemplate, for instance, the setting of the sun, and may
we not exclaim : “ How glorious, how radiant with magnificence,
yon setting sun, pouring its floods of golden light o’er half the
world ! The solid earth’s proud mountain tops are crowned ! the
lowly vales, with cities, hamlets, lonely cots, rejoice in chastened
splendour. The ocean’s mighty mass is turned to liquid fire;
above, the sky is bathed in brightness, and the clouds are melting
into molten gold. Who has not hailed the vision and confessed
its glory until the burning of these sunset fires has kindled
flames of rapture within them ? ”
Oh! man, why dost thou wander seeking peace from some
far-off and unknown God. refusing Nature’s loving sympathy ?
Oh 1 listen, whoe’er thou art, to her voice, and hearken to her
language, ’tis fraught with holiest wisdom from the fount of
truth ; listen to the soft whispers from the vernal breeze, to the
gushing of the fountain, to the wind’s low sighing or the ocean’s
melody, and thou wilt know in thy mind’s depths a sweet, a
holy, deep communing far other than thou yet hast known,
with man or other Gods. Wouldst thou worship, turn thee oft at
morn, at noon, at stilly eve—at the sunset hour, to the spacious
temple of the universe, and in thy melting sadness or thy loving
gladness revel in the nature within thee and without. Art thou
stricken, and in thy bitterness art weeping ? All nature will
look on thee lovingly, and a smile shall chase away thy spirit’s
gloom, and thou shalt feel a sympathy that shall soothingly stay
the tide of thy agony. Art thou glad ? Thy spirits buoyant,
thou shalt feel a thrilling rapture blending with thy spirits’
�24
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
gladness, and from the hidden depths of Nature thou shalt hear
a sound of harmony exquisitely beautiful, attuned to thine own
melody.
Knowest thou not, oh man, that Nature seeks to win thy
affections by her charms, that she may feed thee with beauty and
with knowledge from the unfathomable stores of the Infinite,
that thou mayest read in thine own self the symbols of her won
drous mysteries ? As thou gazest on the mystery of the dread
and trackless depths of boundless space, thronged with its
myriad hosts of living wandering fires, oh ! readest thou not the
symbol—the boundless intellect of man—wherein thou art linked
in fellowship with the Infinite? As thou gazest on the earth.'encircling ocean as its bounding waves joyously ride foaming and
Hashing -with the rising breeze, or as thou gazest ’neath the deep
blue wave, where finny life, in playful mood, is sporting over
wealth untold of dazzling pearls, gems and gold, the spoils of
ages and the wrecks of thousand years, oh ! readest thou not the
symbol within thee again—the all-embracing bond of human
brotherhood, the high transcendent worth of pure affection, the
pricelessness of love ?
As thou gazest on the vast concave—the sky of richest azure,
shading sweetly down to softest sapphire—dost thou not/ee[
that there is purity ? And as the sapphire sky is o’erspread with
gold, and floods of sunset glory shed their living lustre o’er earth
and ocean, e’en where mortal tread hath marked no pathway,
but where life, loveliness and intelligence rejoice, oh ! hast thou
not felt in that vesper hour the pensive calm thrill through
all thy pulses, and thy spirit fill with a chastened holy stillness ?
Then, as a strength is given thee from the Mighty Infinite,
reciprocating in thy deep emotion, thou hast offered to Nature as
a grateful offering, the incense of thy spirit on the altar of thy
heart. In such a moment would not thy inmost nature all
revolt against the doctrine of our “ inborn sin ” that all within
thee is depraved ? All nature pleads the sacredness of human
nature, and all together cry, “ Holy, holy, holy is the tabernacle
•of a man.”
�
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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
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Nature and the supernatural or, Belief and Knowledge
Description
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Place of publication: Toronto
Collation: 24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from KVK.
Creator
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Charles Watts
Date
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[1880?-1900?]
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Secular Thought Office
Subject
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Superstition
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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 (Nature and the supernatural or, Belief and Knowledge), 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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RA1097
RA1849
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Nature
Supernatural