Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury _120
On those who build their palaces, and bring
Their daily bread?—From vice, black loathsome vice;
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
From all that ‘genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust, _125
Revenge, and murder...And when Reason’s voice,
Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked
The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue
Is peace, and happiness and harmony; _130
When man’s maturer nature shall disdain
The playthings of its childhood;—kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority
Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, _135
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood’s trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth is now.
Where is the fame
Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound _140
From Time’s light footfall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! today
Stern is the tyrant’s mandate, red the gaze
That flashes desolation, strong the arm _145
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm
The worm has made his meal.
The virtuous man, _150
Who, great in his humility, as kings
Are little in their grandeur; he who leads
Invincibly a life of resolute good,
And stands amid the silent dungeon depths
More free and fearless than the trembling judge, _155
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove
To bind the impassive spirit;—when he falls,
His mild eye beams benevolence no more:
Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;
Sunk Reason’s simple eloquence, that rolled _160
But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave
Hath quenched that eye, and Death’s relentless frost
Withered that arm: but the unfading fame
Which Virtue hangs upon its votary’s tomb;
The deathless memory of that man, whom kings _165
Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance
With which the happy spirit contemplates
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,
Shall never pass away.
‘Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; _170
The subject, not the citizen: for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other’s hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. _175
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.
When Nero, _180
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy
Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear
The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld
The frightful desolation spread, and felt
A new-created sense within his soul _185
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound;
Think’st thou his grandeur had not overcome
The force of human kindness? and, when Rome,
With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down,
Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood _190
Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
Nature’s suggestions?
Look on yonder earth:
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,
Arise in due succession; all things speak _195
Peace, harmony, and love. The universe,
In Nature’s silent eloquence, declares
That all fulfil the works of love and joy,—
All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth _200
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up
The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe,
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,
Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch _205
Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth
A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn
Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;
A mother only to those puling babes
Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men _210
The playthings of their babyhood, and mar,
In self-important childishness, that peace
Which men alone appreciate?
‘Spirit of Nature! no.
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs _215
Alike in every human heart.
Thou, aye, erectest there
Thy throne of power unappealable:
Thou art the judge beneath whose nod
Man’s brief and frail authority _220
Is powerless as the wind
That passeth idly by.
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth
The show of human justice,
As God surpasses man. _225
‘Spirit of Nature! thou
Life of interminable multitudes;
Soul of those mighty spheres
Whose changeless paths through
Heaven’s deep silence lie;
Soul of that smallest being, _230
The dwelling of whose life
Is one faint April sun-gleam;—
Man, like these passive things,
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth:
Like theirs, his age of endless peace, _235
Which time is fast maturing,
Will swiftly, surely come;
And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest,
Will be without a flaw
Marring its perfect symmetry. _240
4.
‘How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven’s ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright, _5
Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love had spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, _10
So stainless, that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon’s pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o’er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace;—all form a scene _15
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still.
The orb of day,
In southern climes, o’er ocean’s waveless field _20
Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath
Steals o’er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve
Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;
And vesper’s image on the western main
Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: _25
Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,
Roll o’er the blackened waters; the deep roar
Of distant thunder mutters awfully;
Tempest unfolds its pinion o’er the gloom
That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, _30
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;
The torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave
Beneath its jagged gulf.
Ah! whence yon glare
That fires the arch of Heaven!—that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched _35
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf’ning peals
In countless echoes through the mountains ring,
Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne! _40
Now swells the intermingling din; the jar
Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage:—loud, and more loud _45
The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene,
And o’er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His cold and bloody shroud.—Of all the men
Whom day’s departing beam saw blooming there,
In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts _50
That beat with anxious life at sunset there;
How few survive, how few are beating now!
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
That slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause;
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love _55
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapped round its struggling powers.
The gray morn
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away, _60
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood
Even to the forest’s depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments _65
Death’s self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors: far behind,
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen—
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,
Waves o’er a warrior’s tomb.
I see thee shrink, _70
Surpassing Spirit!—wert thou human else?
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet
Across thy stainless features: yet fear not;
This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. _75
Man’s evil nature, that apology
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood
Which desolates the discord-wasted land.
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, _80
Whose safety is man’s deep unbettered woe,
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;
And where its venomed exhalations spread
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay _85
Quenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness
Surpassing fabled Eden.
Hath Nature’s soul,
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread _90
Earth’s lap with plenty, and life’s smallest chord
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, _95
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust
With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone,
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul
Blasted with withering curses; placed afar _100
The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp,
But serving on the frightful gulf to glare,
Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
Nature!—no!
Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts _105
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society. The child,
Ere he can lisp his mother’s sacred name,
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
His baby-sword even in a hero’s mood. _110
This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge
Of devastated earth; whilst specious names,
Learned in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour,
Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims
Bright Reason’s ray, and sanctifies the sword _115
Upraised to shed a brother’s innocent blood.
Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man
Inherits vice and misery, when Force
And Falsehood hang even o’er the cradled babe
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. _120
‘Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps
From its new tenement, and looks abroad
For happiness and sympathy, how stern
And desolate a tract is this wide world!
How withered all the buds of natural good! _125
No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms
Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame,
Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe
Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung
By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds _130
Of Heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,
May breathe not. The untainting light of day
May visit not its longings. It is bound
Ere it has life: yea, all the chains are forged
Long ere its being: all liberty and love _135
And peace is torn from its defencelessness;
Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed
To abjectness and bondage!
‘Throughout this varied and eternal world
Soul is the only element: the block _140
That for uncounted ages has remained
The moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight
Is active, living spirit. Every grain
Is sentient both in unity and part,
And the minutest atom comprehends _145
A world of loves and hatreds; these beget
Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring;
Hence will and thought and action, all the germs
Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,
That variegate the eternal universe. _150
Soul is not more polluted than the beams
Of Heaven’s pure orb, ere round their rapid lines
The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.
‘Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds
Of high resolve, on fancy’s boldest wing _155
To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste
The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.
Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,
To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, _160
To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame
Of natural love in sensualism, to know
That hour as blessed when on his worthless days
The frozen hand of Death shall set its seal,
Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. _165
The one is man that shall hereafter be;
The other, man as vice has made him now.
‘War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight,
The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade,
And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones _170
Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
Their palaces, participate the crimes
That force defends, and from a nation’s rage _175
Secure the crown, which all the curses reach
That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.
These are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant’s throne—the bullies of his fear:
These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, _180
The refuse of society, the dregs
Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend
Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,
All that is mean and villanous, with rage
Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, _185
Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,
Honour and power, then are sent abroad
To do their work. The pestilence that stalks
In gloomy triumph through some eastern land
Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, _190
And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth
Already crushed with servitude: he knows
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes
Repentance for his ruin, when his doom
Is sealed in gold and blood! _195
Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare
The feet of Justice in the toils of law,
Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still;
And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,
Sneering at public virtue, which beneath _200
Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where
Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.
‘Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,
Without a hope, a passion, or a love,
Who, through a life of luxury and lies, _205
Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,
Support the system whence their honours flow...
They have three words:—well tyrants know their use,
Well pay them for the loan, with usury
Torn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven. _210
A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,
Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage
Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.
Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,
Where poisonous and undying worms prolong _215
Eternal misery to those hapless slaves
Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.
And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie
Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe
Before the mockeries of earthly power. _220
‘These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,
Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,
Omnipotent in wickedness: the while
Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does
His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend _225
Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.
‘They rise, they fall; one generation comes
Yielding its harvest to destruction’s scythe.
It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!
Red glows the tyrant’s stamp-mark on its bloom, _230
Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.
He has invented lying words and modes,
Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;
Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,
To lure the heedless victim to the toils _235
Spread round the valley of its paradise.
‘Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!
Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts
Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,
With whom thy Master was:—or thou delight’st _240
In numbering o’er the myriads of thy slain,
All misery weighing nothing in the scale
Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load
With cowardice and crime the groaning land,
A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! _245
Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e’er
Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days
Days of unsatisfying listlessness?
Dost thou not cry, ere night’s long rack is o’er,
“When will the morning come?” Is not thy youth _250
A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?
Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?
Are not thy views of unregretted death
Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,
Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, _255
Incapable of judgement, hope, or love?
And dost thou wish the errors to survive
That bar thee from all sympathies of good,
After the miserable interest
Thou hold’st in their protraction? When the grave _260
Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,
Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth
To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,
Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,
That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die? _265
NOTE:
_176 Secures edition 1813.
5.
‘Thus do the generations of the earth
Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,
Surviving still the imperishable change
That renovates the world; even as the leaves
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year _5
Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped
For many seasons there—though long they choke,
Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,
All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees
From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, _10
Lie level with the earth to moulder there,
They fertilize the land they long deformed,
Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs
Of youth, integrity, and loveliness,
Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. _15
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights
The fairest feelings of the opening heart,
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,
And judgement cease to wage unnatural war _20
With passion’s unsubduable array.
Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, _25
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled, by its deformity, to screen,
With flimsy veil of justice and of right,
Its unattractive lineaments, that scare
All, save the brood of ignorance: at once _30
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness,
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; _35
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.
‘Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
Of all that human art or nature yield;
Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, _40
And natural kindness hasten to supply
From the full fountain of its boundless love,
For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.
Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade
No solitary virtue dares to spring, _45
But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand
Scatter their withering curses, and unfold
The doors of premature and violent death,
To pining famine and full-fed disease,
To all that shares the lot of human life, _50
Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain,
That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.
‘Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
The signet of its all-enslaving power
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: _55
Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,
And with blind feelings reverence the power
That grinds them to the dust of misery. _60
But in the temple of their hireling hearts
Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn
All earthly things but virtue.
‘Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame _65
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.
His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes
The despot numbers; from his cabinet _70
These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,
Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,
Beneath a vulgar master, to perform
A task of cold and brutal drudgery;—
Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, _75
Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!
‘The harmony and happiness of man
Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts _80
His nature to the heaven of its pride,
Is bartered for the poison of his soul;
The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,
Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,
Withering all passion but of slavish fear, _85
Extinguishing all free and generous love
Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse
That fancy kindles in the beating heart
To mingle with sensation, it destroys,—
Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, _90
The grovelling hope of interest and gold,
Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed
Even by hypocrisy.
And statesmen boast
Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild _95
The bitter poison of a nation’s woe,
Can turn the worship of the servile mob
To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame,
From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised _100
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,
With desolated dwellings smoking round.
The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,
To deeds of charitable intercourse,
And bare fulfilment of the common laws _105
Of decency and prejudice, confines
The struggling nature of his human heart,
Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds
A passing tear perchance upon the wreck
Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door _110
The frightful waves are driven,—when his son
Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion
Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man,
Whose life is misery, and fear, and care;
Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; _115
Who ever hears his famished offspring’s scream,
Whom their pale mother’s uncomplaining gaze
For ever meets, and the proud rich man’s eye
Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene
Of thousands like himself;—he little heeds _120
The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate
Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn
The vain and bitter mockery of words,
Feeling the horror of the tyrant’s deeds,
And unrestrained but by the arm of power, _125
That knows and dreads his enmity.
‘The iron rod of Penury still compels
Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,
And poison, with unprofitable toil,
A life too void of solace to confirm _130
The very chains that bind him to his doom.
Nature, impartial in munificence,
Has gifted man with all-subduing will.
Matter, with all its transitory shapes,
Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, _135
That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.
How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
In unremitting drudgery and care!
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled _140
His energies, no longer tameless then,
To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!
How many a Newton, to whose passive ken
Those mighty spheres that gem infinity
Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in Heaven _145
To light the midnights of his native town!
‘Yet every heart contains perfection’s germ:
The wisest of the sages of the earth,
That ever from the stores of reason drew
Science and truth, and virtue’s dreadless tone, _150
Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,
Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued
With pure desire and universal love,
Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,
Untainted passion, elevated will, _155
Which Death (who even would linger long in awe
Within his noble presence, and beneath
His changeless eyebeam) might alone subdue.
Him, every slave now dragging through the filth
Of some corrupted city his sad life, _160
Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,
Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense
With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,
Or madly rushing through all violent crime,
To move the deep stagnation of his soul,— _165
Might imitate and equal.
But mean lust
Has bound its chains so tight around the earth,
That all within it but the virtuous man
Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach
The price prefixed by selfishness, to all _170
But him of resolute and unchanging will;
Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,
Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,
Can bribe to yield his elevated soul
To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield _175
With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.
‘All things are sold: the very light of Heaven
Is venal; earth’s unsparing gifts of love,
The smallest and most despicable things
That lurk in the abysses of the deep, _180
All objects of our life, even life itself,
And the poor pittance which the laws allow
Of liberty, the fellowship of man,
Those duties which his heart of human love
Should urge him to perform instinctively, _185
Are bought and sold as in a public mart
Of undisguising selfishness, that sets
On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.
Even love is sold; the solace of all woe
Is turned to deadliest agony, old age _190
Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms,
And youth’s corrupted impulses prepare
A life of horror from the blighting bane
Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs
From unenjoying sensualism, has filled _195
All human life with hydra-headed woes.
‘Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs
Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest
Sets no great value on his hireling faith:
A little passing pomp, some servile souls, _200
Whom cowardice itself might safely chain,
Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe
To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,
Can make him minister to tyranny.
More daring crime requires a loftier meed: _205
Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends
His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,
When the dread eloquence of dying men,
Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,
Assails that nature, whose applause he sells _210
For the gross blessings of a patriot mob,
For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,
And for a cold world’s good word,—viler still!
‘There is a nobler glory, which survives
Until our being fades, and, solacing _215
All human care, accompanies its change;
Deserts not virtue in the dungeon’s gloom,
And, in the precincts of the palace, guides
Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;
Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, _220
Even when, from Power’s avenging hand, he takes
Its sweetest, last and noblest title—death;
—The consciousness of good, which neither gold,
Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss
Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,— _225
Unalterable will, quenchless desire
Of universal happiness, the heart
That beats with it in unison, the brain,
Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change
Reason’s rich stores for its eternal weal. _230
‘This commerce of sincerest virtue needs
No mediative signs of selfishness,
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
No balancings of prudence, cold and long;
In just and equal measure all is weighed, _235
One scale contains the sum of human weal,
And one, the good man’s heart.
How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,
Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, _240
Who covet power they know not how to use,
And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,—
Madly they frustrate still their own designs;
And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy
Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, _245
Pining regrets, and vain repentances,
Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade
Their valueless and miserable lives.
‘But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt
Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: _250
A brighter morn awaits the human day,
When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts
Shall be a commerce of good words and works;
When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
The fear of infamy, disease and woe, _255
War with its million horrors, and fierce hell
Shall live but in the memory of Time,
Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,
Look back, and shudder at his younger years.’
6.
All touch, all eye, all ear,
The Spirit felt the Fairy’s burning speech.
O’er the thin texture of its frame,
The varying periods painted changing glows,
As on a summer even, _5
When soul-enfolding music floats around,
The stainless mirror of the lake
Re-images the eastern gloom,
Mingling convulsively its purple hues
With sunset’s burnished gold. _10
Then thus the Spirit spoke:
‘It is a wild and miserable world!
Thorny, and full of care,
Which every fiend can make his prey at will.
O Fairy! in the lapse of years, _15
Is there no hope in store?
Will yon vast suns roll on
Interminably, still illuming
The night of so many wretched souls,
And see no hope for them? _20
Will not the universal Spirit e’er
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?’
The Fairy calmly smiled
In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope
Suffused the Spirit’s lineaments. _25
‘Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts,
Which ne’er could rack an everlasting soul,
That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.
Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,
Falsehood, mistake, and lust; _30
But the eternal world
Contains at once the evil and the cure.
Some eminent in virtue shall start up,
Even in perversest time:
The truths of their pure lips, that never die, _35
Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath
Of ever-living flame,
Until the monster sting itself to death.
‘How sweet a scene will earth become!
Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, _40
Symphonious with the planetary spheres;
When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,
Will undertake regeneration’s work,
When its ungenial poles no longer point
To the red and baleful sun _45
That faintly twinkles there.
‘Spirit! on yonder earth,
Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!
Madness and misery are there! _50
The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide,
Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy,
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.
Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn,
And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, _55
Which Nature soon, with re-creating hand,
Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.
How bold the flight of Passion’s wandering wing,
How swift the step of Reason’s firmer tread,
How calm and sweet the victories of life, _60
How terrorless the triumph of the grave!
How powerless were the mightiest monarch’s arm,
Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!
How ludicrous the priest’s dogmatic roar!
The weight of his exterminating curse _65
How light! and his affected charity,
To suit the pressure of the changing times,
What palpable deceit!—but for thy aid,
Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,
Who peoplest earth with demons, Hell with men, _70
And Heaven with slaves!
‘Thou taintest all thou look’st upon!—the stars,
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
Were gods to the distempered playfulness
Of thy untutored infancy: the trees, _75
The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea,
All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly,
Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon
Her worshipper. Then thou becam’st, a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies: every shape, _80
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
Which, from sensation’s relics, fancy culls
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
The genii of the elements, the powers
That give a shape to Nature’s varied works, _85
Had life and place in the corrupt belief
Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain;
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, _90
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride:
Their everlasting and unchanging laws
Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst
Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up
The elements of all that thou didst know; _95
The changing seasons, winter’s leafless reign,
The budding of the Heaven-breathing trees,
The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, _100
And all their causes, to an abstract point
Converging, thou didst bend and called it God!
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
The merciful, and the avenging God!
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits _105
High in Heaven’s realm, upon a golden throne,
Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,
Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves
Of fate, whom He created, in his sport,
To triumph in their torments when they fell! _110
Earth heard the name; Earth trembled, as the smoke
Of His revenge ascended up to Heaven,
Blotting the constellations; and the cries
Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence
And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds _115
Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths
Sworn in His dreadful name, rung through the land;
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
And thou didst laugh to hear the mother’s shriek
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel _120
Felt cold in her torn entrails!
‘Religion! thou wert then in manhood’s prime:
But age crept on: one God would not suffice
For senile puerility; thou framedst
A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut _125
Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,
That still consumed thy being, even when _130
Thou heardst the step of Fate;—that flames might light
Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks
Of parents dying on the pile that burned
To light their children to thy paths, the roar
Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries _135
Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,
Might sate thine hungry ear
Even on the bed of death!
‘But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave, _140
Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
That long has lowered above the ruined world. _145
‘Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, _150
Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And all is wonder to unpractised sense: _155
But, active, steadfast, and eternal, still
Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly _160
Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes
Its undecaying battlement, presides,
Apportioning with irresistible law
The place each spring of its machine shall fill;
So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap _165
Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
Heaven’s lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords,
Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner,
Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
All seems unlinked contingency and chance: _170
No atom of this turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
Even the minutest molecule of light,
That in an April sunbeam’s fleeting glow _175
Fulfils its destined, though invisible work,
The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,
That, blind, they there may dig each other’s graves, _180
And call the sad work glory, does it rule
All passions: not a thought, a will, an act,
No working of the tyrant’s moody mind,
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, _185
Nor the events enchaining every will,
That from the depths of unrecorded time
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,
Soul of the Universe! eternal spring _190
Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,
Whose chains and massy walls _195
We feel, but cannot see.
‘Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requir’st no prayers or praises; the caprice _200
Of man’s weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
Whose horrible lusts spread misery o’er the world,
And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, _205
His being, in the sight of happiness,
That springs from his own works; the poison-tree
Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
A temple where the vows of happy love _210
Are registered, are equal in thy sight:
No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame
Thou know’st not: all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou _215
Regard’st them all with an impartial eye,
Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
Because thou hast not human sense,
Because thou art not human mind.
‘Yes! when the sweeping storm of time _220
Has sung its death-dirge o’er the ruined fanes
And broken altars of the almighty Fiend
Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood
Through centuries clotted there, has floated down
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live _225
Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,
Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
Nor the interminable flood,
Over earth’s slight pageant rolling,
Availeth to destroy,—. _230
The sensitive extension of the world.
That wondrous and eternal fane,
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
To do the will of strong necessity,
And life, in multitudinous shapes, _235
Still pressing forward where no term can be,
Like hungry and unresting flame
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.’
7.
SPIRIT:
‘I was an infant when my mother went
To see an atheist burned. She took me there:
The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, _5
Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth:
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob _10
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
“Weep not, child!” cried my mother, “for that man
Has said, There is no God.”’
FAIRY:
‘There is no God!
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed:
Let heaven and earth, let man’s revolving race, _15
His ceaseless generations tell their tale;
Let every part depending on the chain
That links it to the whole, point to the hand
That grasps its term! let every seed that falls
In silent eloquence unfold its store _20
Of argument; infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation;
The exterminable spirit it contains
Is nature’s only God; but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names _25
To hide its ignorance.
The name of God
Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
Himself the creature of His worshippers,
Whose names and attributes and passions change,
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, _30
Even with the human dupes who build His shrines,
Still serving o’er the war-polluted world
For desolation’s watchword; whether hosts
Stain His death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise _35
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
Or countless partners of His power divide
His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, _40
Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven
In honour of His name; or, last and worst,
Earth groans beneath religion’s iron age,
And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, _45
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house!
‘O Spirit! through the sense
By which thy inner nature was apprised _50
Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
And varied reminiscences have waked
Tablets that never fade;
All things have been imprinted there,
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, _55
Even the unshapeliest lineaments
Of wild and fleeting visions
Have left a record there
To testify of earth.
‘These are my empire, for to me is given _60
The wonders of the human world to keep,
And Fancy’s thin creations to endow
With manner, being, and reality;
Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams
Of human error’s dense and purblind faith, _65
I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.
Ahasuerus, rise!’
A strange and woe-worn wight
Arose beside the battlement,
And stood unmoving there. _70
His inessential figure cast no shade
Upon the golden floor;
His port and mien bore mark of many years,
And chronicles of untold ancientness
Were legible within his beamless eye: _75
Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;
Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame;
The wisdom of old age was mingled there
With youth’s primaeval dauntlessness;
And inexpressible woe, _80
Chastened by fearless resignation, gave
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.
SPIRIT:
‘Is there a God?’
AHASUERUS:
‘Is there a God!—ay, an almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty! Once His voice _85
Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound;
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at His throne, _90
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived,—cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls
No honest indignation ever urged
To elevated daring, to one deed _95
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent Fiend,
Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked
With human blood, and hideous paeans rung
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard _100
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
Had raised him to his eminence in power,
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,
And confidant of the all-knowing one.
These were Jehovah’s words:— _105
‘From an eternity of idleness
I, God, awoke; in seven days’ toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man:
I placed him in a Paradise, and there
Planted the tree of evil, so that he _110
Might eat and perish, and My soul procure
Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,
Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
All misery to My fame. The race of men
Chosen to My honour, with impunity _115
May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops
Wade on the promised soil through woman’s blood,
And make My name be dreaded through the land. _120
Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,—even all
Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge _125
(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.’
The murderer’s brow
Quivered with horror.
‘God omnipotent,
Is there no mercy? must our punishment
Be endless? will long ages roll away, _130
And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast Thou made
In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
Mercy becomes the powerful—be but just:
O God! repent and save.’
‘One way remains:
I will beget a Son, and He shall bear _135
The sins of all the world; He shall arise
In an unnoticed corner of the earth,
And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
The universal crime; so that the few
On whom My grace descends, those who are marked _140
As vessels to the honour of their God,
May credit this strange sacrifice, and save
Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,
Who ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. _145
Thousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:
These in a gulf of anguish and of flame
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, _150
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,
My honour, and the justice of their doom.
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
Of purity, with radiant genius bright,
Or lit with human reason’s earthly ray? _155
Many are called, but few will I elect.
Do thou My bidding, Moses!’
Even the murderer’s cheek
Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips
Scarce faintly uttered—‘O almighty One,
I tremble and obey!’ _160
‘O Spirit! centuries have set their seal
On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,
Since the Incarnate came: humbly He came,
Veiling His horrible Godhead in the shape
Of man, scorned by the world, His name unheard, _165
Save by the rabble of His native town,
Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The crowd; He taught them justice, truth, and peace,
In semblance; but He lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword _170
He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
Of truth and freedom His malignant soul.
At length His mortal frame was led to death.
I stood beside Him: on the torturing cross
No pain assailed His unterrestrial sense; _175
And yet He groaned. Indignantly I summed
The massacres and miseries which His name
Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,
“Go! Go!” in mockery.
A smile of godlike malice reillumed _180
His fading lineaments.—“I go,” He cried,
“But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth
Eternally.”—The dampness of the grave
Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,
And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. _185
When I awoke Hell burned within my brain,
Which staggered on its seat; for all around
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,
Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,
And in their various attitudes of death _190
My murdered children’s mute and eyeless skulls
Glared ghastily upon me.
But my soul,
From sight and sense of the polluting woe
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer
Hell’s freedom to the servitude of Heaven. _195
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began
My lonely and unending pilgrimage,
Resolved to wage unweariable war
With my almighty Tyrant, and to hurl
Defiance at His impotence to harm _200
Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand
That barred my passage to the peaceful grave
Has crushed the earth to misery, and given
Its empire to the chosen of His slaves.
These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn _205
Of weak, unstable and precarious power,
Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;
So, when they turned but from the massacre
Of unoffending infidels, to quench
Their thirst for ruin in the very blood _210
That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal
Froze every human feeling, as the wife
Sheathed in her husband’s heart the sacred steel,
Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;
And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood _215
Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,
Scarce satiable by fate’s last death-draught, waged,
Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty’s wrath;
Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,
Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, _220
No remnant of the exterminated faith
Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,
With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,
That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.
‘Yes! I have seen God’s worshippers unsheathe _225
The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,
Confirming all unnatural impulses,
To sanctify their desolating deeds;
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross
O’er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun _230
On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
Of safe assassination, and all crime
Made stingless by the Spirits of the Lord,
And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.
‘Spirit, no year of my eventful being _235
Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
Which flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked His slaves
With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile
The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red
With murder, feign to stretch the other out _240
For brotherhood and peace; and that they now
Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds
Are marked with all the narrowness and crime
That Freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise,
Reason may claim our gratitude, who now _245
Establishing the imperishable throne
Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain
The unprevailing malice of my Foe,
Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,
Adds impotent eternities to pain, _250
Whilst keenest disappointment racks His breast
To see the smiles of peace around them play,
To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
‘Thus have I stood,—through a wild waste of years
Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, _255
Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,
Mocking my powerless Tyrant’s horrible curse
With stubborn and unalterable will,
Even as a giant oak, which Heaven’s fierce flame
Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand _260
A monument of fadeless ruin there;
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
As in the sunlight’s calm it spreads
Its worn and withered arms on high _265
To meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.’
The Fairy waved her wand:
Ahasuerus fled
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, _270
Flee from the morning beam:
The matter of which dreams are made
Not more endowed with actual life
Than this phantasmal portraiture
Of wandering human thought. _275
NOTE:
_180 reillumined edition 1813.
8.
THE FAIRY:
‘The Present and the Past thou hast beheld:
It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn
The secrets of the Future.—Time!
Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, _5
And from the cradles of eternity,
Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep
By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,
Tear thou that gloomy shroud.—Spirit, behold
Thy glorious destiny!’ _10
Joy to the Spirit came.
Through the wide rent in Time’s eternal veil,
Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:
Earth was no longer Hell;
Love, freedom, health, had given _15
Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,
And all its pulses beat
Symphonious to the planetary spheres:
Then dulcet music swelled
Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; _20
It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,
Catching new life from transitory death,—
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,
That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
And dies on the creation of its breath, _25
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:
Was the pure stream of feeling
That sprung from these sweet notes,
And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies
With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. _30
Joy to the Spirit came,—
Such joy as when a lover sees
The chosen of his soul in happiness,
And witnesses her peace
Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, _35
Sees her unfaded cheek
Glow mantling in first luxury of health,
Thrills with her lovely eyes,
Which like two stars amid the heaving main
Sparkle through liquid bliss. _40
Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:
‘I will not call the ghost of ages gone
To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;
The present now is past,
And those events that desolate the earth _45
Have faded from the memory of Time,
Who dares not give reality to that
Whose being I annul. To me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep,
Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity _50
Exposes now its treasure; let the sight
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.
O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal
Where virtue fixes universal peace,
And midst the ebb and flow of human things, _55
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,
A lighthouse o’er the wild of dreary waves.
‘The habitable earth is full of bliss;
Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled
By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, _60
Where matter dared not vegetate or live,
But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;
And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls _65
Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves
And melodize with man’s blest nature there.
‘Those deserts of immeasurable sand, _70
Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed
A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,
Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love
Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, _75
Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
And where the startled wilderness beheld
A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs
The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, _80
Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,
Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
To see a babe before his mother’s door,
Sharing his morning’s meal _85
With the green and golden basilisk
That comes to lick his feet.
‘Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
Has seen above the illimitable plain,
Morning on night, and night on morning rise, _90
Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
So long have mingled with the gusty wind
In melancholy loneliness, and swept _95
The desert of those ocean solitudes,
But vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek,
The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,
Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
Of kindliest human impulses respond. _100
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,
Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, _105
To meet the kisses of the flow’rets there.
‘All things are recreated, and the flame
Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, _110
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: _115
No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,
And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, _120
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
Reflects its tint, and blushes into love.
‘The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:
There might you see him sporting in the sun _125
Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,
His teeth are harmless, custom’s force has made
His nature as the nature of a lamb.
Like passion’s fruit, the nightshade’s tempting bane
Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows: _130
All bitterness is past; the cup of joy
Unmingled mantles to the goblet’s brim,
And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.
‘But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know
More misery, and dream more joy than all; _135
Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast
To mingle with a loftier instinct there,
Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,
Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;
Who stands amid the ever-varying world, _140
The burthen or the glory of the earth;
He chief perceives the change, his being notes
The gradual renovation, and defines
Each movement of its progress on his mind.
‘Man, where the gloom of the long polar night _145
Lowers o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost
Basks in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;
His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, _150
Insensible to courage, truth, or love,
His stunted stature and imbecile frame,
Marked him for some abortion of the earth,
Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around,
Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: _155
His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,
Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,
Apprised him ever of the joyless length
Which his short being’s wretchedness had reached;
His death a pang which famine, cold and toil _160
Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark
Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:
All was inflicted here that Earth’s revenge
Could wreak on the infringers of her law;
One curse alone was spared—the name of God. _165
‘Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the land _170
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
Was Man a nobler being; slavery
Had crushed him to his country’s bloodstained dust;
Or he was bartered for the fame of power,
Which all internal impulses destroying, _175
Makes human will an article of trade;
Or he was changed with Christians for their gold,
And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound
Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work
Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, _180
Which doubly visits on the tyrants’ heads
The long-protracted fulness of their woe;
Or he was led to legal butchery,
To turn to worms beneath that burning sun,
Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, _185
And priests first traded with the name of God.
‘Even where the milder zone afforded Man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,
Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late _190
Availed to arrest its progress, or create
That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:
There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery, _195
The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage,
The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal.
‘Here now the human being stands adorning
This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;
Blessed from his birth with all bland impulses, _200
Which gently in his noble bosom wake
All kindly passions and all pure desires.
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing
Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise _205
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
The unprevailing hoariness of age,
And man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene
Swift as an unremembered vision, stands _210
Immortal upon earth: no longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,
And horribly devours his mangled flesh,
Which, still avenging Nature’s broken law,
Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, _215
All evil passions, and all vain belief,
Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,
The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
No longer now the winged habitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,— _220
Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreadless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror: Man has lost _225
His terrible prerogative, and stands
An equal amidst equals: happiness
And science dawn though late upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, _230
Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst each unfettered o’er the earth extend
Their all-subduing energies, and wield
The sceptre of a vast dominion there;
Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends _235
Its force to the omnipotence of mind,
Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth
To decorate its Paradise of peace.’
NOTES:
_204 exhaustless store edition 1813.
_205 Draws edition 1813. See Editor’s Note.
9.
‘O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!
To which those restless souls that ceaselessly
Throng through the human universe, aspire;
Thou consummation of all mortal hope!
Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will! _5
Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,
Verge to one point and blend for ever there:
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come: _10
O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!
‘Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined
Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss _15
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.
Thou art the end of all desire and will,
The product of all action; and the souls
That by the paths of an aspiring change
Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, _20
There rest from the eternity of toil
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.
‘Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;
That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride,
So long had ruled the world, that nations fell _25
Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,
That for millenniums had withstood the tide
Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand
Across that desert where their stones survived
The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. _30
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
Was but the mushroom of a summer day,
That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust:
Time was the king of earth: all things gave way
Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, _35
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense,
That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.
‘Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;
Long lay the clouds of darkness o’er the scene,
Till from its native Heaven they rolled away: _40
First, Crime triumphant o’er all hope careered
Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong;
Whilst Falsehood, tricked in Virtue’s attributes,
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,
Till done by her own venomous sting to death, _45
She left the moral world without a law,
No longer fettering Passion’s fearless wing,—
Nor searing Reason with the brand of God.
Then steadily the happy ferment worked;
Reason was free; and wild though Passion went _50
Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,
Yet like the bee returning to her queen,
She bound the sweetest on her sister’s brow,
Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, _55
No longer trembling at the broken rod.
‘Mild was the slow necessity of death:
The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land, _60
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Died in the human frame, and Purity
Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.
How vigorous then the athletic form of age! _65
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth! _70
Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;—
Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,
And elevated will, that journeyed on
Through life’s phantasmal scene in fearlessness,
With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. _75
‘Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom’s self,
And rivets with sensation’s softest tie
The kindred sympathies of human souls,
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:
Those delicate and timid impulses _80
In Nature’s primal modesty arose,
And with undoubted confidence disclosed
The growing longings of its dawning love,
Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, _85
Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.
No longer prostitution’s venomed bane
Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;
Woman and man, in confidence and love,
Equal and free and pure together trod _90
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more
Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim’s feet.
‘Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride
The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked
Famine’s faint groan, and Penury’s silent tear, _95
A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw
Year after year their stones upon the field,
Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves
Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower
Usurped the royal ensign’s grandeur, shook _100
In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower
And whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind’s ear.
‘Low through the lone cathedral’s roofless aisles
The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:
It were a sight of awfulness to see _105
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal!
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above _110
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.
‘Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children played, _115
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
With the green ivy and the red wallflower,
That mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom;
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone _120
That mingled slowly with their native earth:
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean Captivity
With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness: _125
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse Despair
Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds
And merriment were resonant around.
‘These ruins soon left not a wreck behind: _130
Their elements, wide scattered o’er the globe,
To happier shapes were moulded, and became
Ministrant to all blissful impulses:
Thus human things were perfected, and earth,
Even as a child beneath its mother’s love, _135
Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew
Fairer and nobler with each passing year.
‘Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the scene
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past
Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done: _140
Thy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own,
With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
My spells are passed: the present now recurs.
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand. _145
‘Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue
The gradual paths of an aspiring change:
For birth and life and death, and that strange state
Before the naked soul has found its home, _150
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge
The restless wheels of being on their way,
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense _155
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
Life is its state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated there
That variegate the eternal universe; _160
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies
And happy regions of eternal hope.
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, _165
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,
Yet Spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,
To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. _170
‘Fear not then, Spirit, Death’s disrobing hand,
So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch burns;
’Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. _175
Death is no foe to Virtue: earth has seen
Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,
Mingling with Freedom’s fadeless laurels there,
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene _180
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,
When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, _185
Listening supinely to a bigot’s creed,
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant’s rod,
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?
Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will
Is destined an eternal war to wage _190
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot
The germs of misery from the human heart.
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, _195
Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease:
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, _200
Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control,
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
Earth’s pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon
Which thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep _205
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,
And many days of beaming hope shall bless
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch _210
Light, life and rapture from thy smile.’
The Fairy waves her wand of charm.
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,
That rolled beside the battlement,
Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. _215
Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,
Again the burning wheels inflame
The steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.
Fast and far the chariot flew:
The vast and fiery globes that rolled _220
Around the Fairy’s palace-gate
Lessened by slow degrees and soon appeared
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs
That there attendant on the solar power
With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. _225
Earth floated then below:
The chariot paused a moment there;
The Spirit then descended:
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, _230
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.
The Body and the Soul united then,
A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: _235
She looked around in wonder and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright beaming stars
That through the casement shone. _240
***
NOTES ON QUEEN MAB.
SHELLEY’S NOTES.
1. 242, 243:—
The sun’s unclouded orb
Rolled through the black concave.
Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the
midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is
owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their
reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations
propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles
repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly
exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted: observations
on the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites have demonstrated that light
takes up no more than 8 minutes 7 seconds in passing from the sun to the
earth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles.—Some idea may be gained of the
immense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years
would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of
them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a
distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.
1. 252, 253:—
Whilst round the chariot’s way
Innumerable systems rolled.
The plurality of worlds,—the indefinite immensity of the universe, is a
most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery
and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of
religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is
impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite
machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at
the consequences of that necessity, which is a synonym of itself. All
that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the
childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the
knowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness
against Him.
The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth,
and they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a
calculation of the velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be at least
54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth. (See Nicholson’s
“Encyclopedia”, article Light.) That which appears only like a thin and
silvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable
clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating
numbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of
suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm,
regular, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity.
4. 178, 179:—
These are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant’s throne.
To employ murder as a means of justice is an idea which a man of an
enlightened mind will not dwell upon with pleasure. To march forth in
rank and file, and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the
purpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark; to inflict upon them
all the variety of wound and anguish; to leave them weltering in their
blood; to wander over the field of desolation, and count the number of
the dying and the dead,—are employments which in thesis we may maintain
to be necessary, but which no good man will contemplate with gratulation
and delight. A battle we suppose is won:—thus truth is established,
thus the cause of justice is confirmed! It surely requires no common
sagacity to discern the connexion between this immense heap of
calamities and the assertion of truth or the maintenance of justice.
‘Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the calamity, sit
unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the
storm is directed are, for the most part, persons who have been
trepanned into the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their
peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a man whose
business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the
innocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. Whatever may become of the
abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible
that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.
To these more serious and momentous considerations it may be proper to
add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its
first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of
men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably
teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he
is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to
strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know
cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the
right or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor.’—Godwin’s
“Enquirer”, Essay 5.
I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of my
abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest it never again
may be depictured so vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one
that ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion.
FALSEHOOD AND VICE.
A DIALOGUE.
Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones
To hear a famished nation’s groans,
And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe
That makes its eyes and veins o’erflow,—
Those thrones, high built upon the heaps
Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,
Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron,
Red with mankind’s unheeded gore,
And War’s mad fiends the scene environ,
Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar,
There Vice and Falsehood took their stand,
High raised above the unhappy land.
FALSEHOOD:
Brother! arise from the dainty fare,
Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow;
A finer feast for thy hungry ear
Is the news that I bring of human woe.
VICE:
And, secret one, what hast thou done,
To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me?
I, whose career, through the blasted year,
Has been tracked by despair and agony.
FALSEHOOD:
What have I done!—I have torn the robe
From baby Truth’s unsheltered form,
And round the desolated globe
Borne safely the bewildering charm:
My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor
Have bound the fearless innocent,
And streams of fertilizing gore
Flow from her bosom’s hideous rent,
Which this unfailing dagger gave...
I dread that blood!—no more—this day
Is ours, though her eternal ray
Must shine upon our grave.
Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given
To thee the robe I stole from Heaven,
Thy shape of ugliness and fear
Had never gained admission here.
VICE:
And know, that had I disdained to toil,
But sate in my loathsome cave the while,
And ne’er to these hateful sons of Heaven,
GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given;
Hadst thou with all thine art essayed
One of thy games then to have played,
With all thine overweening boast,
Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost!—
Yet wherefore this dispute?—we tend,
Fraternal, to one common end;
In this cold grave beneath my feet,
Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours, meet.
FALSEHOOD:
I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth:
She smothered Reason’s babes in their birth;
But dreaded their mother’s eye severe,—
So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,
And loosed her bloodhounds from the den....
They started from dreams of slaughtered men,
And, by the light of her poison eye,
Did her work o’er the wide earth frightfully:
The dreadful stench of her torches’ flare,
Fed with human fat, polluted the air:
The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries
Of the many-mingling miseries,
As on she trod, ascended high
And trumpeted my victory!—
Brother, tell what thou hast done.
VICE:
I have extinguished the noonday sun,
In the carnage-smoke of battles won:
Famine, Murder, Hell and Power
Were glutted in that glorious hour
Which searchless fate had stamped for me
With the seal of her security...
For the bloated wretch on yonder throne
Commanded the bloody fray to rise.
Like me he joyed at the stifled moan
Wrung from a nation’s miseries;
While the snakes, whose slime even him DEFILED,
In ecstasies of malice smiled:
They thought ’twas theirs,—but mine the deed!
Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed—
Ten thousand victims madly bleed.
They dream that tyrants goad them there
With poisonous war to taint the air:
These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,
Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,
And with their gains to lift my name
Restless they plan from night to morn:
I—I do all; without my aid
Thy daughter, that relentless maid,
Could never o’er a death-bed urge
The fury of her venomed scourge.
FALSEHOOD:
Brother, well:—the world is ours;
And whether thou or I have won,
The pestilence expectant lowers
On all beneath yon blasted sun.
Our joys, our toils, our honours meet
In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:
A short-lived hope, unceasing care,
Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,
A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep
Ere gapes the grave’s unclosing deep,
A tyrant’s dream, a coward’s start,
The ice that clings to a priestly heart,
A judge’s frown, a courtier’s smile,
Make the great whole for which we toil;
And, brother, whether thou or I
Have done the work of misery,
It little boots: thy toil and pain,
Without my aid, were more than vain;
And but for thee I ne’er had sate
The guardian of Heaven’s palace gate.
5. 1, 2:—
Thus do the generations of the earth
Go to the grave, and issue from the womb.
‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the
earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down,
and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the
south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually,
and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers
run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence
the rivers come, thither they return again.’—Ecclesiastes, chapter 1
verses 4-7.
5. 4-6.
Even as the leaves
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year
Has scattered on the forest soil.
Oin per phullon genee, toiede kai andron.
Phulla ta men t’ anemos chamadis cheei, alla de th’ ule
Telethoosa phuei, earos d’ epigignetai ore.
Os andron genee, e men phuei, e d’ apolegei.
Iliad Z, line 146.
5. 58:—
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.
Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri
Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;
Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,
Despicere undo queas alios, passimque videre
Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae;
Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate;
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri.
O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!
Lucret. lib. 2.
5. 93, 94.
And statesmen boast
Of wealth!
There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of
gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn
the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In
consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is
enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of
his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of
disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of
opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter
of his country’s prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the
manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only
to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who
employs the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until
‘jam pauca aratro jugera regiae moles relinquunt,’ flatters himself that
he has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of
vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its
continuance; and many a fete has been given, many a woman has eclipsed
her beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage
trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it
palliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to
labour,—for what? Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets
for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable
hovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man
is far more miserable than the meanest savage; oppressed as he is by all
its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its
innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him:—no; for the
pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false
pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is
afforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than
this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in
the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to
their usefulness (See Rousseau, “De l’Inegalite parmi les Hommes”, note
7.): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the
exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the
earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through
contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his
unceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of mankind.
I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the
natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its
desirableness, but its practicability: so far as it is practicable, it
is desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an
equal partition of its benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be
preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human
labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass
of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members,
is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to
approximate to the redemption of the human race.
Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from
the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor,
by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are
precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be
subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health,
or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to
subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly
depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and
that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease,
lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable
burthen.
English reformers exclaim against sinecures,—but the true pension list
is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: wealth is a power usurped by
the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which
support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity
of its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against
the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by
the loss of all real comfort.
‘The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the
human species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a
slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and
sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the
labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among
the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each
man’s share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would
be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small
comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it
will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are
not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be
devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock
of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and
more exquisite sources of enjoyment.
...
‘It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and oppression
should subsist, before a period of cultivated equality could subsist.
Savages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth
and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period
affords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set
out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and
oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state
of barbarism.’—Godwin’s “Enquirer”, Essay 2. See also “Pol. Jus.”, book
8, chapter 2.
It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the conveniences
of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour
equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour
two hours during the day.
5. 112, 113:—
or religion
Drives his wife raving mad.
I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, and the
mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded to
incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience
of every physician.
Nam iam saepe homines patriam, carosquo parentes
Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes.—Lucretius.
5. 189:—
Even love is sold.
Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of
positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable
wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of
reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary
affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the
perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very
essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy,
nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its
votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.
How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to
specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A
husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each
other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment
after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny,
and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the
right of private judgement should that law be considered which should
make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the
inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human
mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more
unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and
capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of
imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of
the object.
The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness
and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the
Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even
until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end
of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the
fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been
discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour
of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling! (The first
Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death;
if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death;
if the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they were banished
and their estates were confiscated; the slaves who might be accessory
were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring
of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the
sentence.—Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”, etc., volume 2, page 210. See
also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love and even
marriage, page 269.)
But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and
disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the
quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the
connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the
comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are
greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation.
Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure
it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion
as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its
indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same
woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such
a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the
votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to
many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and
absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the
amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and
in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of
delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth
than its belief?
The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of
instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and
virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love,
spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to
appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their
partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less
generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger
out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state
of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their
children takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are
nursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence, and falsehood.
Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered
their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery:
they would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found
that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for
ever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been
separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were
miserable and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that
wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to
the perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the
little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is
without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each
would be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation,
and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity.
Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its
accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the
dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts
and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the
punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape
reproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the
prostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of
unerring nature;—society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal
war: she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is
the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life
of infamy: the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all
return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet SHE is in fault, SHE
is the criminal, SHE the froward and untamable child,—and society,
forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion
from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges herself on the criminals of
her own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day,
which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is formed
one-tenth of the population of London: meanwhile the evil is twofold.
Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society
of modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and
miserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate
sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied;
annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling
which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind
alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease
become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations
suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a
monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural
temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root
of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race
to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could
not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness
than marriage.
I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural
arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that
the intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary, it appears, from
the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long
duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.
But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That
which will result from the abolition of marriage will be natural and
right; because choice and change will be exempted from restraint.
In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical
code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear
every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the
inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays
and finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the
mirror of nature!—
6. 45, 46:—
To the red and baleful sun
That faintly twinkles there.
The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, in its present
state of obliquity, points. It is exceedingly probable, from many
considerations, that this obliquity will gradually diminish, until the
equator coincides with the ecliptic: the nights and days will then
become equal on the earth throughout the year, and probably the seasons
also. There is no great extravagance in presuming that the progress of
the perpendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the progress of
intellect; or that there should be a perfect identity between the moral
and physical improvement of the human species. It is certain that wisdom
is not compatible with disease, and that, in the present state of the
climates of the earth, health, in the true and comprehensive sense of
the word, is out of the reach of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us
that the earth is now in its progress, and that the poles are every year
becoming more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong
evidence afforded by the history of mythology, and geological
researches, that some event of this nature has taken place already,
affords a strong presumption that this progress is not merely an
oscillation, as has been surmised by some late astronomers. (Laplace,
“Systeme du Monde”.)
Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone have been found in the
north of Siberia, and on the banks of the river Ohio. Plants have been
found in the fossil state in the interior of Germany, which demand the
present climate of Hindostan for their production. (Cabanis, “Rapports
du Physique et du Moral de l’Homme”, volume 2 page 406.) The researches
of M. Bailly establish the existence of a people who inhabited a tract
in Tartary 49 degrees north latitude, of greater antiquity than either
the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations
derived their sciences and theology. (Bailly, “Lettres sur les Sciences,
a Voltaire”.) We find, from the testimony of ancient writers, that
Britain, Germany, and France were much colder than at present, and that
their great rivers were annually frozen over. Astronomy teaches us also
that since this period the obliquity of the earth’s position has been
considerably diminished.
6. 171-173:—
No atom of this turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
‘Deux examples serviront a nous rendre plus sensible le principe qui
vient d’etre pose; nous emprunterons l’un du physique at l’autre du
moral. Dans un tourbillon de poussiere qu’eleve un vent impetueux,
quelque confus qu’il paraisse a nos yeux; dans la plus affreuse tempete
excitee par des vents opposes qui soulevent les flots,—il n’y a pas une
seule molecule de poussiere ou d’eau qui soit placee au HASARD, qui
n’ait sa cause suffisante pour occuper le lieu ou elle se trouve, et qui
n’agisse rigoureusement de la maniere dont ella doit agir. Un geometre
qui connaitrait exactement les differentes forces qui agissent dans ces
deux cas, at las proprietes des molecules qui sent mues, demontrerait
que d’apres des causes donnees, chaque molecule agit precisement comme
ella doit agir, et ne peut agir autrement qu’elle ne fait.
‘Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelquefois les societes
politiques, et qui produisent souvent le renversement d’un empire, il
n’y a pas une seule action, une seule parole, une seule pensee, une
seule volonte, une seule passion dans las agens qui concourent a la
revolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, qui ne soit necessaire,
qui n’agissa comme ella doit agir, qui n’opere infailliblemont les
effets qu’eile doit operer, suivant la place qu’occupent ces agens dana
ce tourbillon moral. Cela paraitrait evident pour une intelligence qui
sera en etat de saisir et d’apprecier toutes las actions at reactions
des esprits at des corps de ceux qui contribuent a cette
revolution.’—“Systeme de la Nature”, volume 1, page 44.
6. 198:—
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the
events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an
immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which
could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other
place than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our
experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the
operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and
the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore
agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two
circumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary
action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material
universe. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word
chance as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the
certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents.
Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act precisely as he does
act: in the eternity which preceded his birth a chain of causes was
generated, which, operating under the name of motives, make it
impossible that any thought of his mind, or any action of his life,
should be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of Necessity false,
the human mind would no longer be a legitimate object of science; from
like causes it would be in vain that we should expect like effects; the
strongest motive would no longer be paramount over the conduct; all
knowledge would be vague and undeterminate; we could not predict with
any certainty that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow him with whom
we have parted in friendship to-night; the most probable inducements and
the clearest reasonings would lose the invariable influence they
possess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact. Similar
circumstances produce the same unvariable effects. The precise character
and motives of any man on any occasion being given, the moral
philosopher could predict his actions with as much certainty as the
natural philosopher could predict the effects of the mixture of any
particular chemical substances. Why is the aged husbandman more
experienced than the young beginner? Because there is a uniform,
undeniable necessity in the operations of the material universe. Why is
the old statesman more skilful than the raw politician) Because, relying
on the necessary conjunction of motive and action, he proceeds to
produce moral effects, by the application of those moral causes which
experience has shown to be effectual. Some actions may be found to which
we can attach no motives, but these are the effects of causes with which
we are unacquainted. Hence the relation which motive bears to voluntary
action is that of cause to effect; nor, placed in this point of view, is
it, or ever has it been, the subject of popular or philosophical
dispute. None but the few fanatics who are engaged in the herculean task
of reconciling the justice of their God with the misery of man, will
longer outrage common sense by the supposition of an event without a
cause, a voluntary action without a motive. History, politics, morals,
criticism, all grounds of reasonings, all principles of science, alike
assume the truth of the doctrine of Necessity. No farmer carrying his
corn to market doubts the sale of it at the market price. The master of
a manufactory no more doubts that he can purchase the human labour
necessary for his purposes than that his machinery will act as they have
been accustomed to act.
But, whilst none have scrupled to admit necessity as influencing matter,
many have disputed its dominion over mind. Independently of its
militating with the received ideas of the justice of God, it is by no
means obvious to a superficial inquiry. When the mind observes its own
operations, it feels no connection of motive and action: but as we know
‘nothing more of causation than the constant conjunction of objects and
the consequent inference of one from the other, as we find that these
two circumstances are universally allowed to have place in voluntary
action, we may be easily led to own that they are subjected to the
necessity common to all causes.’ The actions of the will have a regular
conjunction with circumstances and characters; motive is to voluntary
action what cause is to effect. But the only idea we can form of
causation is a constant conjunction of similar objects, and the
consequent inference of one from the other: wherever this is the case
necessity is clearly established.
The idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the will, has sprung from
a misconception of the meaning of the word power. What is power?—id
quod potest, that which can produce any given effect. To deny power is
to say that nothing can or has the power to be or act. In the only true
sense of the word power, it applies with equal force to the lodestone as
to the human will. Do you think these motives, which I shall present,
are powerful enough to rouse him? is a question just as common as, Do
you think this lever has the power of raising this weight? The advocates
of free-will assert that the will has the power of refusing to be
determined by the strongest motive; but the strongest motive is that
which, overcoming all others, ultimately prevails; this assertion
therefore amounts to a denial of the will being ultimately determined by
that motive which does determine it, which is absurd. But it is equally
certain that a man cannot resist the strongest motive as that he cannot
overcome a physical impossibility.
The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change into the
established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy religion. Reward
and punishment must be considered, by the Necessarian, merely as motives
which he would employ in order to procure the adoption or abandonment of
any given line of conduct. Desert, in the present sense of the word,
would no longer have any meaning; and he who should inflict pain upon
another for no better reason than that he deserved it, would only
gratify his revenge under pretence of satisfying justice? It is not
enough, says the advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be
prevented from a repetition of his crime: he should feel pain, and his
torments, when justly inflicted, ought precisely to be proportioned to
his fault. But utility is morality; that which is incapable of producing
happiness is useless; and though the crime of Damiens must be condemned,
yet the frightful torments which revenge, under the name of justice,
inflicted on this unhappy man cannot be supposed to have augmented, even
at the long run, the stock of pleasurable sensation in the world. At the
same time, the doctrine of Necessity does not in the least diminish our
disapprobation of vice. The conviction which all feel that a viper is a
poisonous animal, and that a tiger is constrained, by the inevitable
condition of his existence, to devour men, does not induce us to avoid
them less sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in destroying them: but
he would surely be of a hard heart who, meeting with a serpent on a
desert island, or in a situation where it was incapable of injury,
should wantonly deprive it of existence. A Necessarian is inconsequent
to his own principles if he indulges in hatred or contempt; the
compassion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of
injuring him: he looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon the
links of the universal chain as they pass before his eyes; whilst
cowardice, curiosity, and inconsistency only assail him in proportion to
the feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived and
rejected the delusions of free-will.
Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the
principle of the universe. But if the principle of the universe be not
an organic being, the model and prototype of man, the relation between
it and human beings is absolutely none. Without some insight into its
will respecting our actions religion is nugatory and vain. But will is
only a mode of animal mind; moral qualities also are such as only a
human being can possess; to attribute them to the principle of the
universe is to annex to it properties incompatible with any possible
definition of its nature. It is probable that the word God was
originally only an expression denoting the unknown cause of the known
events which men perceived in the universe. By the vulgar mistake of a
metaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, it became a man,
endowed with human qualities and governing the universe as an earthly
monarch governs his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being,
indeed, are much in the same style as those of subjects to a king. They
acknowledge his benevolence, deprecate his anger, and supplicate his
favour.
But the doctrine of Necessity teaches us that in no case could any event
have happened otherwise than it did happen, and that, if God is the
author of good, He is also the author of evil; that, if He is entitled
to our gratitude for the one, He is entitled to our hatred for the
other; that, admitting the existence of this hypothetic being, He is
also subjected to the dominion of an immutable necessity. It is plain
that the same arguments which prove that God is the author of food,
light, and life, prove Him also to be the author of poison, darkness,
and death. The wide-wasting earthquake, the storm, the battle, and the
tyranny, are attributable to this hypothetic being in the same degree as
the fairest forms of nature, sunshine, liberty, and peace.
But we are taught, by the doctrine of Necessity, that there is neither
good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the events to which we
apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being.
Still less than with the hypothesis of a God will the doctrine of
Necessity accord with the belief of a future state of punishment. God
made man such as he is, and than damned him for being so: for to say
that God was the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is
to say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one, and another
man made the incongruity.
A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, is recorded, wherein
Adam and Moses are introduced disputing before God in the following
manner. Thou, says Moses, art Adam, whom God created, and animated with
the breath of life, and caused to be worshipped by the angels, and
placed in Paradise, from whence mankind have been expelled for thy
fault. Whereto Adam answered, Thou art Moses, whom God chose for His
apostle, and entrusted with His word, by giving thee the tables of the
law, and whom He vouchsafed to admit to discourse with Himself. How many
years dost thou find the law was written before I was created? Says
Moses, Forty. And dost thou not find, replied Adam, these words therein,
And Adam rebelled against his Lord and transgressed? Which Moses
confessing, Dost thou therefore blame me, continued he, for doing that
which God wrote of me that I should do, forty years before I was
created, nay, for what was decreed concerning me fifty thousand years
before the creation of heaven and earth?—Sale’s “Prelim. Disc. to the
Koran”, page 164.
7. 13:—
There is no God.
This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The
hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains
unshaken.
A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any
proposition is the only secure way of attaining truth, on the advantages
of which it is unnecessary to descant: our knowledge of the existence of
a Deity is a subject of such importance that it cannot be too minutely
investigated; in consequence of this conviction we proceed briefly and
impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is
necessary first to consider the nature of belief.
When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their
agreement is termed BELIEF. Many obstacles frequently prevent this
perception from being immediate; these the mind attempts to remove in
order that the perception may be distinct. The mind is active in the
investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the
relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each,
which is passive: the investigation being confused with the perception
has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in
belief,—that belief is an act of volition,—in consequence of which it
may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they
have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its
nature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit.
Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other
passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement.
The degrees of excitement are three.
The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently
their evidence claims the strongest assent.
The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience, derived from
these sources, claims the next degree.
The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one,
occupies the lowest degree.
(A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of
propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just
barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.)
Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason;
reason is founded on the evidence of our senses.
Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions: it is to be
considered what arguments we receive from each of them, which should
convince us of the existence of a Deity.
1st, The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to us, if He
should convince our senses of His existence, this revelation would
necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared
have the strongest possible conviction of His existence. But the God of
Theologians is incapable of local visibility.
2d, Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have
had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity: he also knows that
whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is
applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created:
until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has
endured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a
designer. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from
the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one
from the other. In a case where two propositions are diametrically
opposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible;—it is
easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than
to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the
mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase
the intolerability of the burthen?
The other argument, which is founded on a man’s knowledge of his own
existence, stands thus. A man knows not only that he now is, but that
once he was not; consequently there must have been a cause. But our idea
of causation is alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects
and the consequent inference of one from the other; and, reasoning
experimentally, we can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate
to those effects. But there certainly is a generative power which is
effected by certain instruments: we cannot prove that it is inherent in
these instruments; nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of
demonstration: we admit that the generative power is incomprehensible;
but to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal,
omniscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but
renders it more incomprehensible.
3d, Testimony. It is required that testimony should not be contrary to
reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of His
existence can only be admitted by us if our mind considers it less
probable that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity
should have appeared to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony
of men, who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles,
but that the Deity was irrational; for He commanded that He should be
believed, He proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments
for disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an
act of volition; the mind is even passive, or involuntarily active; from
this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that
testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been
before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then,
who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses can believe it.
Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three
sources of conviction, the mind CANNOT believe the existence of a
creative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the
mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they
only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through
which their mind views any subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind
must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus
probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says: Hypotheses non
fingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur hypothesis vocanda
est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicae, vel qualitatum
occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia locum non habent. To all
proofs of the existence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. We
see a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers: we merely know
their effects; we are in a state of ignorance with respect to their
essences and causes. These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the
pride of philosophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes.
From the phenomena, which are the objects of our senses, we attempt to
infer a cause, which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all
negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent
this general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. The
being called God by no means answers with the conditions prescribed by
Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to
hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the
threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words
have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the occult
qualities of the peripatetics to the effluvium of Boyle and the
crinities or nebulae of Herschel. God is represented as infinite,
eternal, incomprehensible; He is contained under every predicate in non
that the logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even His worshippers allow
that it is impossible to form any idea of Him: they exclaim with the
French poet,
Pour dire ce qu’il est, il faut etre lui-meme.
Lord Bacon says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural
piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to
virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a
tyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the
government, but renders man more clear-sighted, since he sees nothing
beyond the boundaries of the present life.—Bacon’s “Moral Essays”.
La premiere theologie de l’homme lui fit d’abord craindre at adorer les
elements meme, des objets materiels at grossiers; il randit ensuite ses
hommages a des agents presidant aux elements, a des genies inferieurs, a
des heros, ou a des hommes doues de grandes qualites. A force de
reflechir il crut simplifier les choses en soumettant la nature entiere
a un seul agent, a un esprit, a una ame universelle, qui mettait cette
nature et ses parties en mouvement. En remontant de causes en causes,
les mortels ont fini par ne rien voir; at c’est dans cette obscurite
qu’ils ont place leur Dieu; c’est dans cat abime tenebreux que leur
imagination inquiete travaille toujours a se fabriquer des chimeres, qui
les affligeront jusqu’a ce que la connaissance da la nature les detrompe
des fantomes qu’ils ont toujours si vainement adores.
Si nous voulons nous rendre compte de nos idees sur la Divinite, nous
serons obliges de convanir que, par le mot “Dieu”, les hommes n’ont
jamais pu designer que la cause la plus cachee, la plus eloignee, la
plus inconnue des effets qu’ils voyaient: ils ne font usage de ce mot,
que lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles at connues cesse d’etre visible
pour eux; des qu’ils perdent le fil de ces causes, on des que leur
esprit ne peut plus en suivre la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficulte,
at terminent leurs recherches en appellant Dieu la derniere des causes,
c’est-a-dire celle qui est au-dela de toutes les causes qu’ils
connaissent; ainsi ils ne font qu’assigner une denomination vague a une
cause ignoree, a laquelle leur paresse ou les bornes de leurs
connaissances les forcent de s’arreter. Toutes les fois qu’on nous dit
que Dieu est l’auteur de quelque phenomene, cela signifie qu’on ignore
comment un tel phenomene a pu s’operer par le secours des forces ou des
causes que nous connaissons dans la nature. C’est ainsi que le commun
des hommes, dont l’ignorance est la partage, attribue a la Divinite non
seulement les effets inusites qui las frappent, mais encore les
evenemens les plus simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a
connaitre pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l’homme a toujours
respecte les causes inconnues des effets surprenans, que son ignorance
l’empechait de demeler. Ce fut sur les debris de la nature que les
hommes eleverent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite.
Si l’ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux dieux, la
connaissance de la nature est faite pour les detruire. A mesure que
l’homme s’instruit, ses forces at ses ressources augmentent avec ses
lumieres; les sciences, les arts conservateurs, l’industrie, lui
fournissent des secours; l’experience le rassure ou lui procure des
moyens de resister aux efforts de bien des causes
qui cessent de l’alarmer des qu’il les a connues. En un mot, ses
terreurs se dissipent dans la meme proportion que son esprit s’eclaire.
L’homnme instruit cesse d’etre superstitieux.
Ce n’est jamais que sur parole que des peuples entiers adorent le Dieu
de leurs peres at de leurs pretres: l’autorite, la confiance, la
soumission, et l’habitude leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de
preuves; ils se prosternent et prient, parce que leurs peres leur out
appris a se prosterner at prier: mais pourquoi ceux-ci se sont-ils mis a
genoux? C’est que dans les temps eloignes leurs legislateurs et leurs
guides leur en ont fait un devoir. ‘Adorez at croyez,’ ont-ils dit, ‘des
dieux que vous ne pouvez comprendre; rapportez-vous-en a notre sagesse
profonde; nous en savons plus que vous sur la divinite.’ Mais pourquoi
m’en rapporterais-je a vous? C’est que Dieu le veut ainsi, c’est que
Dieu vous punira si vous osez resister. Mais ce Dieu n’est-il donc pas
la chose en question? Cependant las hommes se sont toujours payes de ce
cercle vicieux; la paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver plus court de
s’en rapporter au jugament des autres. Toutes las notions religieuses
sent fondees uniquement sur l’autorite; toutes les religions du monde
defendent l’examen et ne veulent pas que l’on raisonne; c’est l’autorite
qui veut qu’on croie en Dieu; ce Dieu n’est lui-meme fonde que sur
l’autorite de quelques hommes qui pretendent le connaitre, et venir de
sa part pour l’annoncer a la terre. Un Dieu fait par les hommes a sans
doute bosom des hommes pour se faire connaitre aux hommes.
Ne serait-ce donc que pour des pretres, des inspires, des metaphysiciens
que serait reservee la conviction de l’existence d’un Dieu, que l’on dit
neanmoins si necessaire a tout le genre humain? Mais trouvons-nous de
l’harmonie entre les opinions theologiques des differens inspires, ou
des penseurs repandus sur la terre? Ceux meme qui font profession
d’adorer le meme Dieu, sent-ils d’accord sur son compte? Sont-ils
contents des preuves que leurs collegues apportent de son existence?
Souscrivent-ils unanimement aux idees qu’ils presentent sur sa nature,
sur sa conduite, sur la facon d’entendre ses pretandus oracles? Est-il
une centree sur la terre ou la science de Dieu se soit reellement
parfectionnee? A-t-elle pris quelqne part la consistance et l’uniformite
que nous voyons prendre aux connaissances humaines, aux arts les plus
futiles, aux metiers les plus meprises? Ces mots d’esprit,
d’immaterialite, de creation, de predestination, de grace; cette foule
de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s’est parteut remplie dans
quelques pays, ces inventions si ingenieuses, imaginees par des penseurs
qui se sont succedes depuis taut de siecles, n’ont fait, helas!
qu’embrouiller les choses, et jamais la science la plus necassaire aux
hommes n’a jusqu’ici pu acquerir la moindre fixite. Depuis des milliers
d’annees ces reveurs oisifs se sont perpetuellement relayes pour mediter
la Divinite, pour deviner ses voies cachees, pour inventer des
hypotheses propres a developper cette enigme importante. Leur peu de
succes n’a point decourage la vanite theologique; toujours on a parle de
Dieu: on s’est egorge pour lui, et cet etre sublime demeure toujours le
plus ignore et le plus discute.
Les hommes auraient ete trop heureux, si, se bornant aux objets visibles
qui les interessent, ils eussent employe a perfectionner leurs sciences
reelles, leurs lois, leur morale, leur education, la moitie des efforts
qu’ils ont mis dans leurs recherches sur la Divinite. Ils auraiant ete
bien plus sages encore, et plus fortunes, s’ils eussent pu consentir a
laisser leurs guides desoeuvres se quereller entre eux, et sonder des
profondeurs capables de les etourdir, sans se meler de leurs disputes
insensees. Mais il est de l’essence de l’ignorance d’attacher de
l’importance a ce qu’elle ne comprend pas. La vanite humaine fait que
l’esprit se roidit contra des difficultes. Plus un objet se derobe a nos
yeux, plus nous faisons d’efforts pour le saisir, parce que des-lors il
aiguillonne notre orgueil, il excite notre curiosite, il nous parait
interessant. En combattant pour son Dieu chacun ne combattit en effet
que pour les interets de sa propra vanite, qui de toutes les passions
produites par la mal-organisation de la societe est la plus prompte a
s’alarmer, et la plus propre a produire de tres grandes folies.
Si ecartant pour un moment les idees facheuses que la theologie nous
donne d’un Dieu capriciaux, dont les decrets partiaux et despotiques
decident du sort des humains, nous ne voulons fixer nos yeux que sur la
bonte pretendue, que tous les hommes, meme en tramblant devant ce Dieu,
s’accordent a lui donner; si nous lui supposons le projet qu’on lui
prete de n’avoir travaille que pour sa propre gloire, d’exiger les
hommages des etres intelligens; de ne chercher dans ses oeuvres que le
bien-etre du genre humain: comment concilier ces vues et ces
dispositions avec l’ignorance vraiment invincible dans laquelle ce Dieu,
si glorieux et si bon, laisse la plupart des hommes sur son compte? Si
Dieu veut etre connu, cheri, remercie, que ne se montre-t-il sous des
traits favorables a tous ces etres intelligens dont il veut etre aime et
adore? Pourquoi ne point se manifester a toute la terre dune facon non
equivoque, bien plus capable de nous convaincre que ces revelations
particulieres qui semblent accuser la Divinite d’une partialite facheuse
pour quelques-unes de ses creatures? La tout-puissant n’auroit-il donc
pas des moyens plus convainquans de se montrer aux hommas que ces
metamorphoses ridicules, cas incarnations pretendues, qui nous sont
attestees par des ecrivains si peu d’accord entre eux dans les recits
qu’ils en font? Au lieu de tant de miracles, inventes pour prouver la
mission divine de tant de legislateurs reveres par les differens peuples
du monde, le souverain des esprits ne pouvait-il pas convaincre tout
d’un coup l’esprit humain des choses qu’il a voulu lui faire connaitre?
Au lieu de suspendre un soleil dans la voute du firmament; au lieu de
repandre sans ordre les etoiles et les constellations qui remplissent
l’espace, n’eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux vues d’un Dieu si jaloux de
sa gloire et si bien-intentionne pour l’homme d’ecrire, d’une facon non
sujette a dispute, son nom, ses attributs, ses volontes permanentes en
caracteres ineffacables, et lisibles egalement pour tous les habitants
de la terre? Personne alors n’aurait pu douter de l’existence d’un Dieu,
de ses volontes claires, de ses intentions visibles. Sous les yeux de ce
Dieu si terrible, personne n’aurait eu l’audace de violer ses
ordonnances; nul mortel n’eut ose se mettre dans le cas d’attirer sa
colere: enfin nul homme n’eut eu le front d’en imposer en son nom, ou
d’interpreter ses volontes suivant ses propres fantaisies.
En effet, quand meme on admettrait l’existence du Dieu theologique et la
realite des attributs si discordans qu’on lui donne, l’on n’en peut rien
conclure, pour autoriser la conduite ou les cultes qu’on prescrit de lui
rendre. La theologie est vraiment “le tonneau des Danaides”. A force de
qualites contradictoires et d’assartions hasardees, ella a, pour ainsi
dire, tellement garrotte son Dieu qu’elle l’a mis dans l’impossibilite
d’agir. S’il est infiniment bon, quelle raison aurions-nous de le
craindre? S’il est infiniment sage, de quoi nous inquieter sur notre
sort? S’il sait tout, pourquoi l’avertir de nos besoins, et le fatiguer
de nos prieres? S’il est partout, pourquoi lui elever des temples? S’il
est maitre de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices et des offrandes?
S’il est juste, comment croire qu’il punisse des creatures qu’il a
rempli de faiblesses? Si la grace fait tout en elles, quelle raison
aurait-il de les recompenser? S’il est tout-puissant, comment
l’offenser, comment lui resister? S’il est raisonnable, comment se
mattrait-il en colere contre des aveugles, a qui il a laisse la liberte
de deraisonner? S’il est immuable, de quel droit pretendrions-nous faire
changer ses decrets? S’il est inconcevable, pourquoi nous en occuper?
S’IL A PARLE, POURQUOI L’UNIVERS N’EST-IL PAS CONVAINCU? Si la
connaissance d’un Dieu est la plus necessaire, pourquoi n’est-elle pas
la plus evidente et a plus claire?—“Systeme de la Nature”, London,
1781.
The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly professes himself an
atheist:—Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quaerere imbecillitatis
humanae reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in
parte, totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae,
totus animi, totus sui...Imperfectae vero in homine naturae praecipua
solatia ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nec sibi potest mortem
consciscere, si velit, quad homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis:
nec mortales aeternitata donare, aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut
qui vixit non vixerit, qui honores gessit non gessarit, nullumque habere
in praeteritum ius, praeterquam oblivionis, atque (ut facetis quoque
argumentis societas haec cum deo copuletur) ut bis dena viginti non
sint, et multa similiter efficere non posse.—Per quae declaratur haud
dubie naturae potentiam id quoque esse quad Deum vocamus.—Plin. “Nat.
Hist.” cap. de Deo.
The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W.
Drummond’s “Academical Questions”, chapter 3.—Sir W. seems to consider
the atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the
falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent
with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than
an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate with the
obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of
inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its
falsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the
sceptic and the toleration of the philosopher.
Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla
est nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non
intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad
eandem Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem,
sive est, ipsam Dei potantiam ignoramus.— Spinosa, “Tract.
Theologico-Pol.” chapter 1, page 14.
7. 67:—
Ahasuerus, rise!
‘Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near
two thousand years have elapsed since he was first goaded by
never-ending restlessness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our
Lord was wearied with the burthen of His ponderous cross, and wanted to
rest before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove Him away
with brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the
heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death appeared before
Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, “Barbarian! thou hast denied rest
to the Son of man: be it denied thee also, until He comes to judge the
world.”
‘A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from
country to country; he is denied the consolation which death affords,
and precluded from the rest of the peaceful grave.
‘Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel—he shook the
dust from his beard—and taking up one of the skulls heaped there,
hurled it down the eminence: it rebounded from the earth in shivered
atoms. “This was my father!” roared Ahasuerus. Seven more skulls rolled
down from rock to rock; while the infuriate Jew, following them with
ghastly looks, exclaimed—“And these were my wives!” He still continued
to hurl down skull after skull, roaring in dreadful accents—“And these,
and these, and these were my children! They COULD DIE; but I! reprobate
wretch! alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judgement
that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell—I crushed the sucking babe, and
precipitated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the
Romans—but, alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair,—and I
could not die!
‘“Rome the giantess fell—I placed myself before the falling statue—she
fell and did not crush me. Nations sprang up and disappeared before
me;—but I remained and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I
precipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming billows cast me upon
the shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart
again. I leaped into Etna’s flaming abyss, and roared with the giants
for ten long months, polluting with my groans the Mount’s sulphureous
mouth—ah! ten long months. The volcano fermented, and in a fiery stream
of lava cast me up. I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the
glowing cinders, and yet continued to exist.—A forest was on fire: I
darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood. Fire
dropped upon me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs;
alas! it could not consume them.—I now mixed with the butchers of
mankind, and plunged in the tempest of the raging battle. I roared
defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but
arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen’s
flaming sword broke upon my skull: balls in vain hissed upon me: the
lightnings of battle glared harmless around my loins: in vain did the
elephant trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The
mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled me high in
the air—I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The
giant’s steel club rebounded from my body; the executioner’s hand could
not strangle me, the tiger’s tooth could not pierce me, nor would the
hungry lion in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes,
and pinched the red crest of the dragon.—The serpent stung, but could
not destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not to devour me.—I now
provoked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, ‘Thou art a bloodhound!’ I
said to Christiern, ‘Thou art a bloodhound!, I said to Muley Ismail,
‘Thou art a bloodhound!’—The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did
not kill me. Ha! not to be able to die—not to be able to die—not to be
permitted to rest after the toils of life—to be doomed to be imprisoned
for ever in the clay-formed dungeon—to be for ever clogged with this
worthless body, its lead of diseases and infirmities—to be condemned to
[be]hold for millenniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, that
hungry hyaena, ever bearing children, and ever devouring again her
offspring!—Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful Avenger in Heaven,
hast Thou in Thine armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? then let
it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of
Carmel, that I there may lie extended; may pant, and writhe, and die.!”’
This fragment is the translation of part of some German work, whose
title I have vainly endeavoured to discover. I picked it up, dirty and
torn, some years ago, in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields.
7. 135, 136:—
I will beget a Son, and He shall bear
The sins of all the world.
A book is put into our hands when children, called the Bible, the
purport of whose history is briefly this: That God made the earth in six
days, and there planted a delightful garden, in which He placed the
first pair of human beings. In the midst of the garden He planted a
tree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they were forbidden to
touch. That the Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of
this fruit; in consequence of which God condemned both them and their
posterity yet unborn to satisfy His justice by their eternal misery.
That, four thousand years after these events (the human race in the
meanwhile having gone unredeemed to perdition), God engendered with the
betrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity was nevertheless
uninjured), and begat a son, whose name was Jesus Christ; and who was
crucified and died, in order that no more men might be devoted to
hell-fire, He bearing the burthen of His Father’s displeasure by proxy.
The book states, in addition, that the soul of whoever disbelieves this
sacrifice will be burned with everlasting fire.
During many ages of misery and darkness this story gained implicit
belief; but at length men arose who suspected that it was a fable and
imposture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a
man like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who derived and still
derive immense emoluments from this opinion, in the shape of a popular
belief, told the vulgar that if they did not believe in the Bible they
would be damned to all eternity; and burned, imprisoned, and poisoned
all the unbiassed and unconnected inquirers who occasionally arose. They
still oppress them, so far as the people, now become more enlightened,
will allow.
The belief in all that the Bible contains is called Christianity. A
Roman governor of Judea, at the instance of a priest-led mob, crucified
a man called Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure life,
who desired to rescue his countrymen from the tyranny of their barbarous
and degrading superstitions. The common fate of all who desire to
benefit mankind awaited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the
priests, demanded his death, although his very judge made public
acknowledgement of his innocence. Jesus was sacrificed to the honour of
that God with whom he was afterwards confounded. It is of importance,
therefore, to distinguish between the pretended character of this being
as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and his real character
as a man, who, for a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit
of his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so long
desolated the universe in his name. Whilst the one is a hypocritical
Daemon, who announces Himself as the God of compassion and peace, even
whilst He stretches forth His blood-red hand with the sword of discord
to waste the earth, having confessedly devised this scheme of desolation
from eternity; the other stands in the foremost list of those true
heroes who have died in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and have
braved torture, contempt, and poverty in the cause of suffering
humanity. (Since writing this note I have some reason to suspect that
Jesus was an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of Judea.
The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that the crucifixion of
Jesus was a supernatural event. Testimonies of miracles, so frequent in
unenlightened ages, were not wanting to prove that he was something
divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, met with the
reveries of Plato and the reasonings of Aristotle, and acquired force
and extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute
was death, which to doubt was infamy.
CHRISTIANITY is now the established religion: he who attempts to impugn
it must be contented to behold murderers and traitors take precedence of
him in public opinion; though, if his genius be equal to his courage,
and assisted by a peculiar coalition of circumstances, future ages may
exalt him to a divinity, and persecute others in his name, as he was
persecuted in the name of his predecessor in the homage of the world.
The same means that have supported every other popular belief have
supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood;
deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.
The blood shed by the votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the
establishment of His religion, would probably suffice to drown all other
sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our ancestors a
faith thus fostered and supported: we quarrel, persecute, and hate for
its maintenance. Even under a government which, whilst it infringes the
very right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of
the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he is a deist, and
no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity. But it
is ever a proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who
use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission; and a
dispassionate observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in
favour of a man who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply
stated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor
who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to answer them by
argument, proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of
their promulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose infliction he
could command.
Analogy seems to favour the opinion that as, like other systems,
Christianity has arisen and augmented, so like them it will decay and
perish; that as violence, darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and
persuasion, have procured its admission among mankind, so, when
enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible controverter of false
opinions, has involved its pretended evidences in the darkness of
antiquity, it will become obsolete; that Milton’s poem alone will give
permanency to the remembrance of its absurdities; and that men will
laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, and original sin, as they
now do at the metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints,
the efficacy of witchcraft, and the appearance of departed spirits.
Had the Christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of
reasoning and persuasion, the preceding analogy would be inadmissible.
We should never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system
perfectly conformable to nature and reason: it would endure so long as
they endured; it would be a truth as indisputable as the light of the
sun, the criminality of murder, and other facts, whose evidence,
depending on our organization and relative situations, must remain
acknowledged as satisfactory so long as man is man. It is an
incontrovertible fact, the consideration of which ought to repress the
hasty conclusions of credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining
them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical race of men, had even the
resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, the Christian
religion never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed: on
so feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the
human race! When will the vulgar learn humility? When will the pride of
ignorance blush at having believed before it could comprehend?
Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false: if true, it comes
from God, and its authenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further
than its omnipotent author is willing to allow. Either the power or the
goodness of God is called in question, if He leaves those doctrines most
essential to the well-being of man in doubt and dispute; the only ones
which, since their promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing
cavil, the cause of irreconcilable hatred. IF GOD HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE
UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?
There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures: ‘Those who obey not
God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with
everlasting destruction.’ This is the pivot upon which all religions
turn:—they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to
believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A
human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are
influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and
unconnected with volition: it is the apprehension of the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas that compose any preposition. Belief is a
passion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions,
its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement.
Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion
attaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that which
is worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar
faculty of the mind, whose presence is essential to their being.
Christianity was intended to reform the world: had an all-wise Being
planned it, nothing is more improbable than that it should have failed:
omniscience would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme
which experience demonstrates, to this age, to have been utterly
unsuccessful.
Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the Deity. Prayer
may be considered under two points of view;—as an endeavour to change
the intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But
the former case supposes that the caprices of a limited intelligence can
occasionally instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the
universe; and the latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the
loyalty demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is only the
pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something
better than reason.
Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon miracles, prophecies,
and martyrdoms. No religion ever existed which had not its prophets, its
attested miracles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would bear
patiently the most horrible tortures to prove its authenticity. It
should appear that in no case can a discriminating mind subscribe to the
genuineness of a miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature’s law, by
a supernatural cause; by a cause acting beyond that eternal circle
within which all things are included. God breaks through the law of
nature, that He may convince mankind of the truth of that revelation
which, in spite of His precautions, has been, since its introduction,
the subject of unceasing schism and cavil.
Miracles resolve themselves into the following question (See Hume’s
Essay, volume 2 page 121.):—Whether it is more probable the laws of
nature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have undergone
violation, or that a man should have told a lie? Whether it is more
probable that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event, or that
we know the supernatural one? That, in old times, when the powers of
nature were less known than at present, a certain set of men were
themselves deceived, or had some hidden motive for deceiving others; or
that God begat a Son, who, in His legislation, measuring merit by
belief, evidenced Himself to be totally ignorant of the powers of the
human mind—of what is voluntary, and what is the contrary?
We have many instances of men telling lies;—none of an infraction of
nature’s laws, those laws of whose government alone we have any
knowledge or experience. The records of all nations afford innumerable
instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or interest, or
themselves being deceived by the limitedness of their views and their
ignorance of natural causes: but where is the accredited case of God
having come upon earth, to give the lie to His own creations? There
would be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost; but the
assertion of a child that he saw one as he passed through the churchyard
is universally admitted to be less miraculous.
But even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to life before
our eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being considered the son of
God;—the Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because it makes
no mystery of the method it employs, its members are not mistaken for
the sons of God. All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance of
the cause of any event is that we do not know it: had the Mexicans
attended to this simple rule when they heard the cannon of the
Spaniards, they would not have considered them as gods: the experiments
of modern chemistry would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient
Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on natural principles. An
author of strong common sense has observed that ‘a miracle is no miracle
at second-hand’; he might have added that a miracle is no miracle in any
case; for until we are acquainted with all natural causes, we have no
reason to imagine others.
There remains to be considered another proof of Christianity—Prophecy.
A book is written before a certain event, in which this event is
foretold; how could the prophet have foreknown it without inspiration?
how could he have been inspired without God? The greatest stress is laid
on the prophecies of Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and
that of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The prophecy of
Moses is a collection of every possible cursing and blessing; and it is
so far from being marvellous that the one of dispersion should have been
fulfilled, that it would have been more surprising if, out of all these,
none should have taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 64,
where Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they
shall there serve gods of wood and stone: ‘And the Lord shall scatter
thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other;
AND THERE THOU SHALT SERVE OTHER GODS, WHICH NEITHER THOU NOR THY
FATHERS HAVE KNOWN, EVEN GODS OF WOOD AND STONE.’ The Jews are at this
day remarkably tenacious of their religion. Moses also declares that
they shall be subjected to these curses for disobedience to his ritual:
‘And it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of
the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and statutes
which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon
thee, and overtake thee.’ Is this the real reason? The third, fourth,
and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confession. The
indelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred things. The
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed
in clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses,
Isaiah, and Hosea did write when they are said to have written is far
from being clear and circumstantial.
But prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle; we have no
right to suppose that a man foreknew future events from God, until it is
demonstrated that he neither could know them by his own exertions, nor
that the writings which contain the prediction could possibly have been
fabricated after the event pretended to be foretold. It is more probable
that writings, pretending to divine inspiration, should have been
fabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction than that
they should have really been divinely inspired, when we consider that
the latter supposition makes God at once the creator of the human mind
and ignorant of its primary powers, particularly as we have numberless
instances of false religions, and forged prophecies of things long past,
and no accredited case of God having conversed with men directly or
indirectly. It is also possible that the description of an event might
have foregone its occurrence; but this is far from being a legitimate
proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the
character of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied.
Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop,
yet he uttered this remarkable prediction: ‘The despotic government of
France is screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast
approaching; that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and
sanguinary.’ This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the
accomplishment of this wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars
come to pass, or have they not? If they have, how could the Earl have
foreknown them without inspiration? If we admit the truth of the
Christian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same
strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to
belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief,
both of which have been demonstrated to be involuntary.
The last proof of the Christian religion depends on the influence of the
Holy Ghost. Theologians divide the influence of the Holy Ghost into its
ordinary and extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is supposed to
be that which inspired the Prophets and Apostles; and the former to be
the grace of God, which summarily makes known the truth of His
revelation to those whose mind is fitted for its reception by a
submissive perusal of His word. Persons convinced in this manner can do
anything but account for their conviction, describe the time at which it
happened, or the manner in which it came upon them. It is supposed to
enter the mind by other channels than those of the senses, and therefore
professes to be superior to reason founded on their experience.
Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of a divine
revelation, unless we demolish the foundations of all human knowledge,
it is requisite that our reason should previously demonstrate its
genuineness; for, before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and
common sense, it is fit that we should discover whether we cannot do
without their assistance, whether or no there be any other which may
suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life (See Locke’s “Essay on
the Human Understanding”, book 4 chapter 19, on Enthusiasm.): for, if a
man is to be inspired upon all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing
because he is sure, if the ordinary operations of the Spirit are not to
be considered very extraordinary modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm
is to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of sanity, all
reasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet,
the Indian immolates himself at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the
Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican
sacrifices human victims! Their degree of conviction must certainly be
very strong: it cannot arise from reasoning, it must from feelings, the
reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition
to the strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried internal
evidence, I fear their inspired brethren, the orthodox missionaries,
would be so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate.
Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, because
all human testimony has ever been insufficient to establish the
possibility of miracles. That which is incapable of proof itself is no
proof of anything else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the test of
reason. Those, then, who have been actually inspired are the only true
believers in the Christian religion.
Mox numine viso
Virgineei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater
Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu,
Auctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda
Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno
Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem.—Claudian, “Carmen Paschale”.
Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its own infamy
and refutation with itself?
8. 203-207:—
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing
Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, etc.
Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid
sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the
common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our
ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by
the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces
would actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed
one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, by any future
improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite
number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not
hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man
will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and
that the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is
indefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours;
another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by
these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour
has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his
agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in
his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than
that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of
dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has
rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize
amid the lethargy of every-day business;—the other can slumber over the
brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest
hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life
than the tortoise.
Dark flood of time!
Roll as it listeth thee—I measure not
By months or moments thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on the brink
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being: if I wake no more,
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran’s of the world’s cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll,
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed.—
See Godwin’s “Pol. Jus.” volume 1, page 411; and Condorcet, “Esquisse
d’un Tableau Historique des Progres de l’Esprit Humain”, epoque 9.
8. 211, 212:—
No longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face.
I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man
originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that
of the universe of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable
mystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The
weight of evidence in favour of each of these suppositions seems
tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument
which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of
nearly all religions seems to prove that at some distant period man
forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of
his being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have
also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with
which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve
eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath
of God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation
than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton
was so well aware of this that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the
consequence of his disobedience:—
Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark;
A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased—all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
And how many thousands more might not be added to this frightful catalogue!
The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally
admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained.
Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to
Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that
grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that, before the time of
Prometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a
vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like
sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general was this opinion
that Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes:—
Audax omnia perpeti,
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas;
Audax Iapeti genus
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit:
Post ignem aetheria domo
Subductum, macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit cohors,
Semotique prius tarda necessitas
Lethi corripuit gradum.