Ladies and Gentlemen: What, after all, is the object of life? What is
the highest possible aim? The highest aim is to accomplish the only
good. Happiness is the only good of which man by any possibility can
conceive. The object of life is to increase human joy, and that means
intellectual and physical development. The question, then, is: Shall
we rely upon superstition or upon growth? Is intellectual development
the highway of progress or must we depend on the pit of credulity? Must
we rely on belief or credulity, or upon manly virtues, courageous
investigation, thought, and intellectual development? For thousands of
years men have been talking about religious freedom. I am now
contending for the freedom of religion, not religious freedom--for the
freedom which is the only real religion. Only a few years ago our poor
ancestors tried to account for what they saw. Noticing the running
river, the shining star, or the painted flower, they put a spirit in
the river, a spirit in the star, and another in the flower. Something
makes this river run, something makes this star shine, something paints
the blossom of that flower. They were all spirits. That was the first
religion of mankind--fetichism--and in everything that lived,
everything that produced an effect upon them, they said: "This is a
spirit that lives within." That is called the lowest phase of
religious thought, and yet it is quite the highest phase of religious
thought. One by one these little spirits died. One by one nonentities
took their places, and last of all we have one infinite fetich that
takes the place of all others. Now, what makes the river run? We say
the attraction of gravitation, and we know no more about that than we
do about this fetich. What makes the tree grow? The principle of
life--vital forces. These are simply phrases, simply names of
ignorance. Nobody knows what makes the river run, what makes the trees
grow, why the flowers burst and bloom--nobody knows why the stars
shine, and probably nobody ever will know.
There are two horizons that have never been passed by man--origin and
destiny. All human knowledge is confined to the diameter of that
circle. All religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circumference
of the absolutely known. What next? The next thing that came in the
world--the next man--was the mythmaker. He gave to these little spirits
human passions; he clothed ghosts in flesh; he warmed that flesh with
blood, and in that blood he put desire--motive. And the myths were
born, and were only produced through the fact of the impressions that
nature makes upon the brain of man. They were every one a natural
production, and let me say here, tonight, that what men call
monstrosities are only natural productions. Every religion has grown
just as naturally as the grass; every one, as I said before, and it
cannot be said too often, has been naturally produced. All the
Christs, all the gods and goddesses, all the furies and fairies, all
the mingling of the beastly and human, were all produced by the
impressions of nature upon the brain of man--by the rise of the sun,
the silver dawn, the golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the
change of seasons, the lightning, the storm, the beautiful bow--all
these produced within the brain of man all myths, and they are all
natural productions.
There have been certain myths universal among men. Gardens of Eden
have been absolutely universal--the golden age, which is absolutely the
same thing. And what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Boston
will tell you that fifty years ago all people were honest. Fifty years
ago all people were sociable--there was no stuck-up aristocracy then.
Neighbors were neighbors. Merchants gave full weight. Everything was
full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool. Now everybody
swindles everybody else, and calls it business. Go back fifty years
and you will find an old man who will tell you that there was a time
when all were honest. Go back another fifty years and you will find
another sage who will tell you the same story. Every man looks back to
his youth, to the golden age, and what is true of the individual is
true of the whole human race. It has its infancy, its manhood, and,
finally, will have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us.
There are more honest men, good women, and obedient children in the
world today than ever before.
The myth of the Elysian fields--universally born of sunsets. When the
golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the
poor savage thought it a vision of another land--a land without care or
grief--a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the setting of
the sun. A universal myth, all nations have believed in floods.
Savages found everywhere evidences of the sea having been above the
earth, and saw in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It had
left its cards on the tops of mountains. The savage knew nothing of
the slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth. He did not dream
of it. We now know that where the mountains lift their granite
foreheads to the sun, the billows once held sway, and that where the
waves dash into white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more.
Everywhere the land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is the
land will be. The Hindoos believed in the flood myth. Their hero, who
lived almost entirely on water, went to the Ganges to perform his
ablutions, and, taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small
fish that prayed him to save it from the monster of the river, and it
would save him in turn from his enemies. He did so, and put it into
different receptacles until it grew so large that he let it loose in
the sea; then it was large enough to take care of itself. The fish
told him that there was going to be an immense flood, and told him to
gather all kinds of seed and take two of each kind of animals of use to
man, and he would come along with an ark and take them all in. He told
him to pick out seven saints. And the fish towed the ark along tied to
its horns, and took them in and carried them to the top of a mountain,
where he hitched the ark to a tree. When the waters receded, they came
out and followed them down until they reached the plain. There were
the same number--eight--in this ark as there were with Noah.
I find that the myth of the virgin mother is universal. The virgin
mother is the earth. I find also in countries the idea of a trinity.
In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and Horus. This idea prevailed in
Central America among the Aztecs. We find the myth of the judgment
almost universal. I imagine men have seen so much injustice here that
they naturally expect that there must be some day of final judgment
somewhere. Nearly every theist is driven to the necessity of having
another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in
this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the
judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on
the left. The myth of the sun god was universal. Agni was the sun god
of the Hindoos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he
ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another sun god; he was a
sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was
a sun god, and was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a
wonderful thing is that they were swallowed in about the same place,
near Joppa. Where did the big fish go? When the sun went down under
the earth, it was thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to
swallow it, and carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus
came to be represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish,
and so the mermaid was born. Another strange thing is that all the sun
gods were born near Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known
among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres
and Bacchus. When the cakes made by the product of the field were
eaten, it was the body of Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the
blood of Bacchus. From this idea the eucharist was born. There is
nothing original in christianity. Holy water! Another myth. The
Hindoos imagined that the water had its source in the throne of God.
The Egyptians thought the Nile sacred. Greece was settled by Egyptian
colonies, and they carried with them the water of the Nile, and when
any one died the water was sprinkled on him. Finally Rome conquered
Greece physically, but Greece conquered Rome intellectually. This is
the myth of holy water, and with it grew up the idea of baptism, and I
presume that that is as old as water and dirt. The cross is another
universal symbol. There was once an ancient people in Italy before the
Romans, before the Etruscans. They faded from the world, and history
does not even know the name of that nation. We find where they buried
the ashes of their dead, and we find chiseled, hundreds of years before
Christ, the cross, a symbol of a hope of another life. We find the
cross in Egypt, in the cylinders from Babylon, and, more than that, we
find them in Central America. On the temples of the Aztecs we find the
cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. Our cross was built in the
middle ages.
When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son, to the garden of Eden.
He told him he would have no trouble in finding it; all he had to do
was to follow the tracks made by his mother and father when they left
it. He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he might not
die. Seth found there a cherub, with flaming sword, who would not let
him pass the door. He moved his wings so that he could see in, and he
saw the tree of life, with its roots running down to hell, and among
them Cain, the murderer. The angel gave Seth three seeds, and told him
to put them in his father's mouth when he was buried and to watch the
effect. The result was that these trees grew up--one pine, one cedar,
and on cypress. Solomon cut down one of these trees to put in the
temple, but it grew through the roof and he threw it into the pool of
Bethesda. When the soldiers went for a beam on which to crucify Christ
they took this tree and made a cross of it. Helen, the mother of
Constantine, went to Jerusalem to find this cross. She found the two
crosses, also, that the thieves were crucified on. They could not tell
which was which, so they called a sick woman who touched them, and when
she touched the right one she was immediately made whole.
Such is myth and fable. The history of one religion is substantially
the history of all religions. In embryo man lives all lives. The man
of genius knows within himself the history of the human race; he knows
the history of all religions. The man of imagination, genius, having
seen a leaf and a drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers,
and the seas. In his presence all the cataracts fall and foam, the
mists rise, and the clouds form and float. To really know one fact is
known its kindred and its neighbors. Shakespeare, looking at a coat of
mail, instantly imagined the society, the conditions that produced it,
and what it, in its turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat, the
drawbridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring over
the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer, the trampled
serfs, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life. The man of
imagination has lived the life of all people, of all races. He has
been a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles; listened to the eager
eloquence of the great orator, and has sat upon the cliff, and with the
tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He has seen
Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of
falsehood--was present when the great man drank hemlock and met the
night of death tranquil as a star meets morning. He has followed the
peripatetic philosophers, and has been puzzled by the sophists. He has
watched Phidias, as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and
awe. He has lived by the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He
knows the very thought that wrought the form and features of the
Sphinx. He has heard great Memnon's morning song, has laid him down
with the embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of
another life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts--the children
born of long delay. He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen
the great Caesar with his legions in the field, has stood with vast and
motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men,
followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of
ruthless war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless
walls when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell,
while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life. He has lived
the life of savage men--has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the
desperate name of life or death has matched his thought against the
instinct of the beast. He has sat beneath the bo tree's contemplative
shade, rapt in Buddha's mighty thought, and he has dreamed all dreams
that light, the alchemist, hath wrought from dust and dew and stored
within the slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. He has knelt with awe and
dread at every prayer; has felt the consolation and the shuddering
fear; has seen all the devils; has mocked and worshiped all the gods;
enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell. He has lived
all lives, and through his blood and brain have crept the shadow and
the chill of every death, and his soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed
naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate. The
imagination hath a stage within the brain, whereon he sets all scenes
that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where
his players body forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the
careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human life.
Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the wonder-worker. There
is this difference between the miracle and the myth--a myth is an
idealism of a fact, and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is
some difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the difference
that there is between fiction and falsehood and poetry and perjury.
Miracles are probably only in the far past or the very remote future.
The present is the property of the natural. You say to a man: "The
dead were raised 4,000 years ago." He says, "Well, that's reasonable."
You say to him, "In 4,000,000 years we shall all be raised." He says,
"That is what I believe." Say to him, "A man was raised from the dead
this morning," and he will say, "What are you giving us?" Miracles
never convince at the time they were said to have been performed.
John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. He was cast into
prison. When Christ heard of it He "departed from that country."
Afterward he returned and heard that John had been beheaded, and he
again departed from that country. There is no possible relation
between the miraculous and the moral. The miracles of the middle ages
are the children of superstition. In the middle ages men told
everything but the truth, and believed everything but the facts. The
middle ages--a trinity of ignorance, mendacity and insanity. There is
one thing about humanity. You see the faults of others, but not your
own. A Catholic in India sees a Hindoo bowing before an idol and
thinks it absurd. Why does he not get him a plaster of paris virgin
and some beads and holy water? Why does the protestant shut his eyes
when he prays? The idea is a souvenir of sun worship. It is the most
natural worship in the world. Religious dogmas have become absurd. The
doctrine of eternal torment today has become absurd, low, groveling,
ignorant, barbaric, savage, devilish and no gentleman would preach it.
Science, thou art the great magician! Thou alone performest the true
miracles. Thou alone workest the real wonders. Fire is thy servant,
lightning thy messenger. The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the
circuits of the wind. Thou art the great philanthropist. Thou hast
freed the slave and civilized the master. Thou hast taught man to
chain, not his fellow-man, but the forces of nature--forces that have
no backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat--forces
that never know fatigue, that shed no tears--forces that have no hearts
to break. Thou gavest man the plow, the reaper and the loom--thou hast
fed and clothed the world. Thou art the great physician. Thy touch
hath given sight. Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak,
and in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of health. "Thou
hast given thy beloved sleep"--a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the
throbbing nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of
man--preserver of life and love. Thou art the teacher of every virtue,
and the enemy of every vice. Thou has discovered the true basis of
morals--the origin and office of conscience--and hast revealed the
nature and measure of obligation. Thou hast taught that love is
justice in its highest form, and that even self-love, guided by wisdom,
embraces with loving arms the human race. Thou hast slain the monsters
of the past. Thou hast discovered the one inspired book. Thou hast
read the records of the rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and
flame--records that even priestcraft cannot change--and in thy wondrous
scales thou hast weighed the atoms and the stars. Thou art the founder
of the only true religion. Thou art the very Christ, the only savior
of mankind!
Theology has always been in the way of the advance of the human race.
There is this difference between science and theology--science is
modest and merciful, while theology is arrogant and cruel. The hope of
science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is
the salvation of a few and the damnation of almost everybody. As I
told you in the first place, I believe in the religion of freedom. O
liberty! thou art the god of my idolatry. Thou art the only deity that
hates the bended knee. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the
roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy worshipers stand
erect. They do not bow or cringe or crawl or bend their foreheads to
the earth. Thy dust hast never borne the impress of lips, upon thy
sacred altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes, nor men their
rights. Thou askest naught from man except the things that good men
hate, the whip, the chain, the dungeon key. Thou hast no kings, no
popes, no priests to stand between their fellow-men and thee. Thou
hast no monks, no nuns, who, in the name of duty, murder joy. Thou
carest not for forms nor mumbled prayers. At thy sacred shrine
hypocrisy does not bow, fear does not crouch, virtue does not tremble,
superstition's feeble tapers do not burn, but reason holds aloft her
inextinguishable torch, while on the ever-broadening brow of science
falls the ever coming morning of the ever better day.