HAPPINESS is the true end and aim of life. It is the task of
intelligence to ascertain the conditions of happiness, and when found
the truly wise will live in accordance with them. By happiness is meant
not simply the joy of eating and drinking--the gratification of the
appetite--but good, wellbeing, in the highest and noblest forms. The joy
that springs from obligation discharged, from duty done, from generous
acts, from being true to the ideal, from a perception of the beautiful
in nature, art and conduct. The happiness that is born of and gives
birth to poetry and music, that follows the gratification of the highest
wants.
Happiness is the result of all that is really right and sane.
But there are many people who regard the desire to be happy as a very
low and degrading ambition. These people call themselves spiritual. They
pretend to care nothing for the pleasures of "sense." They hold this
world, this life, in contempt. They do not want happiness in this
world--but in another. Here, happiness degrades--there, it purifies and
ennobles.
These spiritual people have been known as prophets, apostles, augurs,
hermits, monks, priests, popes, bishops and parsons. They are devout and
useless. They do not cultivate the soil. They produce nothing. They
live on the labor of others. They are pious and parasitic. They pray
for others, if the others will work for them. They claim to have been
selected by the Infinite to instruct and govern mankind. They are "meek"
and arrogant, "long-suffering" and revengeful.
They ever have been, now are, and always will be the enemies of liberty,
of investigation and science. They are believers in the supernatural,
the miraculous and the absurd. They have filled the world with hatred,
bigotry and fear. In defence of their creeds they have committed every
crime and practiced every cruelty.
They denounce as worldly and sensual those who are gross enough to love
wives and children, to build homes, to fell the forests, to navigate the
seas, to cultivate the earth, to chisel statues, to paint pictures and
fill the world with love and art.
They have denounced and maligned the thinkers, the poets, the
dramatists, the composers, the actors, the orators, the workers--those
who have conquered the world for man.
According to them this world is only the vestibule of the next, a kind
of school, an ordeal, a place of probation. They have always insisted
that this life should be spent in preparing for the next; that those
who supported and obeyed the "spiritual guides"--the shepherds, would
be rewarded with an eternity of joy, and that all others would suffer
eternal pain.
These spiritual people have always hated labor. They have added nothing
to the wealth of the world. They have always lived on alms--on the labor
of others. They have always been the enemies of innocent pleasure, and
of human love.
These spiritual people have produced a literature. The books they have
written are called sacred. Our sacred books are called the Bible.
The Hindoos have the Vedas and many others, the Persians the Zend
Avesta--the Egyptians had the Book of the Dead--the Aztecs the Popol
Vuh, and the Mohammedans have the Koran.
These books, for the most part, treat of the unknowable. They describe
gods and winged phantoms of the air. They give accounts of the origin
of the universe, the creation of man and the worlds beyond this. They
contain nothing of value. Millions and millions of people have wasted
their lives studying these absurd and ignorant books.
The "spiritual people" in each country claimed that their books had been
written by inspired men--that God was the real author, and that all men
and women who denied this would be, after death, tormented forever.
And yet, the worldly people, the uninspired, the wicked, have produced a
far greater literature than the spiritual and the inspired.
Not all the sacred books of the world equal Shakespeare's "volume of
the brain." A purer philosophy, grander, nobler, fell from the lips of
Shakespeare's clowns than the Old Testament, or the New, contains.
The Declaration of Independence is nobler far than all the utterances
from Sinai's cloud and flame. "A Man's a Man for a' That," by Robert
Burns, is better than anything the sacred books contain. For my part, I
would rather hear Beethoven's Sixth Symphony than to read the five books
of Moses. Give me the Sixth Symphony--this sound-wrought picture of
the fields and woods, of flowering hedge and happy home, where thrushes
build and swallows fly, and mothers sing to babes; this echo of the
babbled lullaby of brooks that, dallying, wind and fall where meadows
bare their daisied bosoms to the sun; this joyous mimicry of summer
rain, the laugh of children, and the rhythmic rustle of the whispering
leaves; this strophe of peasant life; this perfect poem of content and
love.
I would rather listen to Tristan and Isolde--that Mississippi of
melody--where the great notes, winged like eagles, lift the soul above
the cares and griefs of this weary world--than to all the orthodox
sermons ever preached. I would rather look at the Venus de Milo than to
read the Presbyterian creed.
The spiritual have endeavored to civilize the world through fear and
faith--by the promise of reward and the threat of pain in other worlds.
They taught men to hate and persecute their fellow-men. In all ages they
have appealed to force. During all the years they have practiced fraud.
They have pretended to have influence with the gods--that their prayers
gave rain, sunshine and harvest--that their curses brought pestilence
and famine, and that their blessings filled the world with plenty. They
have subsisted on the fears their falsehoods created. Like poisonous
vines, they have lived on the oak of labor. They have praised charity,
but they never gave. They have denounced revenge, but they never
forgave.
Whenever the spiritual have had power, art has died, learning has
languished, science has been despised, liberty destroyed, the thinkers
have been imprisoned, the intelligent and honest have been outcasts, and
the brave have been murdered.
The "spiritual" have been, are, and always will be the enemies of the
human race.
For all the blessings that we now enjoy--for progress in every form, for
science and art--for all that has lengthened life, that has conquered
disease, that has lessened pain, for raiment, roof and food, for music
in its highest forms--for the poetry that has ennobled and enriched our
lives--for the marvellous machines now working for the world--for all
this we are indebted to the worldly--to those who turned their attention
to the affairs of this life. They have been the only benefactors of our
race.