I.

"THERE is no darkness but ignorance." Every human being is a necessary

product of conditions, and every one is born with defects for which

he cannot be held responsible. Nature seems to care nothing for the

individual, nothing for the species.

Life pursuing life and in its turn pursued by death, presses to the snow

line of the possible, and every form of life, of instinct, thought and

action is fixed and determined by conditions, by countless antecedent

and co-existing facts. The present is the child, and the necessary

child, of all the past, and the mother of all the future.

Every human being longs to be happy, to satisfy the wants of the body

with food, with roof and raiment, and to feed the hunger of the mind,

according to his capacity, with love, wisdom, philosophy, art and song.

The wants of the savage are few; but with civilization the wants of the

body increase, the intellectual horizon widens and the brain demands

more and more.

The savage feels, but scarcely thinks. The passion of the savage is

uninfluenced by his thought, while the thought of the philosopher is

uninfluenced by passion. Children have wants and passions before they

are capable of reasoning. So, in the infancy of the race, wants and

passions dominate.

The savage was controlled by appearances, by impressions; he was

mentally weak, mentally indolent, and his mind pursued the path of least

resistance. Things were to him as they appeared to be. He was a natural

believer in the supernatural, and, finding himself beset by dangers and

evils, he sought in many ways the aid of unseen powers. His children

followed his example, and for many ages, in many lands, millions and

millions of human beings, many of them the kindest and the best, asked

for supernatural help. Countless altars and temples have been built,

and the supernatural has been worshiped with sacrifice and song, with

self-denial, ceremony, thankfulness and prayer.

During all these ages, the brain of man was being slowly and painfully

developed. Gradually mind came to the assistance of muscle, and thought

became the friend of labor. Man has advanced just in the proportion that

he has mingled thought with his work, just in the proportion that he has

succeeded in getting his head and hands into partnership. All this was

the result of experience.

Nature, generous and heartless, extravagant and miserly as she is, is

our mother and our only teacher, and she is also the deceiver of men.

Above her we cannot rise, below her we cannot fall. In her we find

the seed and soil of all that is good, of all that is evil. Nature

originates, nourishes, preserves and destroys.

Good deeds bear fruit, and in the fruit are seeds that in their turn

bear fruit and seeds. Great thoughts are never lost, and words of

kindness do not perish from the earth.

Every brain is a field where nature sows the seeds of thought, and the

crop depends upon the soil.

Every flower that gives its fragrance to the wandering air leaves

its influence on the soul of man. The wheel and swoop of the winged

creatures of the air suggest the flowing lines of subtle art. The

roar and murmur of the restless sea, the cataract's solemn chant, the

thunder's voice, the happy babble of the brook, the whispering leaves,

the thrilling notes of mating birds, the sighing winds, taught man to

pour his heart in song and gave a voice to grief and hope, to love and

death.

In all that is, in mountain range and billowed plain, in winding stream

and desert sand, in cloud and star, in snow and rain, in calm and storm,

in night and day, in woods and vales, in all the colors of divided

light, in all there is of growth and life, decay and death, in all that

flies and floats and swims, in all that moves, in all the forms and

qualities of things, man found the seeds and symbols of his thoughts;

and all that man has wrought becomes a part of nature's self, forming

the lives of those to be. The marbles of the Greeks, like strains of

music, suggest the perfect, and teach the melody of life. The great

poems, paintings, inventions, theories and philosophies, enlarge

and mould the mind of man. All that is is natural. All is naturally

produced. Beyond the horizon of the natural man cannot go.

Yet, for many ages, man in all directions has relied upon, and sincerely

believed in, the existence of the supernatural. He did not believe in

the uniformity of nature; he had no conception of cause and effect, of

the indestructibility of force.

In medicine he believed in charms, magic, amulets, and incantations. It

never occurred to the savage that diseases were natural.

In chemistry he sought for the elixir of life, for the philosopher's

stone, and for some way of changing the baser metals into gold.

In mechanics he searched for perpetual motion, believing that he, by

some curious combinations of levers, could produce, could create a

force.

In government, he found the source of authority in the will of the

supernatural.

For many centuries his only conception of morality was the idea of

obedience, not to facts as they exist in nature, but to the supposed

command of some being superior to nature. During all these years

religion consisted in the praise and worship of the invisible and

infinite, of some vast and incomprehensible power, that is to say, of

the supernatural.

By experience, by experiment, possibly by accident, man found that some

diseases could be cured by natural means; that he could be relieved in

many instances of pain by certain kinds of leaves or bark.

This was the beginning. Gradually his confidence increased in the

direction of the natural, and began to decrease in charms and amulets,

The war was waged for many centuries, but the natural gained the

victory. Now we know that all diseases are naturally produced, and that

all remedies, all curatives, act in accordance with the facts in nature.

Now we know that charms, magic, amulets and incantations are just

as useless in the practice of medicine as they would be in solving

a problem in mathematics. We now know that there are no supernatural

remedies.

In chemistry the war was long and bitter; but we now no longer seek

for the elixir of life, and no one is trying to find the philosopher's

stone. We are satisfied that there is nothing supernatural in all the

realm of chemistry. We know that substances are always true to their

natures; we know that just so many atoms of one substance will

unite with just so many of another. The miraculous has departed from

chemistry; in that science there is no magic, no caprice and no possible

use for the supernatural. We are satisfied that there can be no change,

that we can absolutely rely on the uniformity of nature; that the

attraction of gravitation will always remain the same; and we feel

that we know this as certainly as we know that the relation between the

diameter and circumference of a circle can never change.

We now know that in mechanics the natural is supreme. We know that man

can by no possibility create a force; that by no possibility can he

destroy a force. No mechanic dreams of depending upon or asking for

any supernatural aid. He knows that he works in accordance with certain

facts that no power can change.

So we in the United States believe that the authority to govern, the

authority to make and execute laws, comes from the consent of the

governed and not from any supernatural source. We do not believe that

the king occupied his throne because of the will of the supernatural.

Neither do we believe that others are subjects or serfs or slaves by

reason of any supernatural will.

So, our ideas of morality have changed, and millions now believe that

whatever produces happiness and well-being is in the highest sense

moral. Unreasoning obedience is not the foundation or the essence of

morality. That is the result of mental slavery. To act in accordance

with obligation perceived is to be free and noble. To simply obey is to

practice what might be called a slave virtue; but real morality is the

flower and fruit of liberty and wisdom.

There are very many who have reached the conclusion that the

supernatural has nothing to do with real religion. Religion does not

consist in believing without evidence or against evidence. It does not

consist in worshiping the unknown or in trying to do something for the

Infinite. Ceremonies, prayers and inspired books, miracles, special

providence, and divine interference all belong to the supernatural and

form no part of real religion.

Every science rests on the natural, on demonstrated facts. So, morality

and religion must find their foundations in the necessary nature of

things.