for existence, using its own weapons, which are reason and love.
Obviously it can use no others, without self-destruction; yet it has
to meet enemies who fight with the old weapons of force and fraud.
Whether it will prevail is more than any prophet can say. Perhaps it
is too much to ask that it should succeed--this insolent effort of the
pigmy man to leap upon the back of his master and fit a bridle into
his mouth. Perhaps it is nothing but a dream in the minds of a few,
the scientists and poets and inventors, the dreamers of the race.
Perhaps the nerve of the pigmy will fail him at the critical moment,
and he will fall from the back of his master, and under his master's
hoofs.
The hour of the decision is now; for this we can see plainly, and as
scientists we can proclaim it--the human race is in a swift current of
degeneration, which a new morality alone can check. The struggle is at
its height in our time; if it fails, if the fibre of the race
continues to deteriorate, the soul of the race to be eaten out by
poverty and luxury, by insanity and disease, by prostitution, crime
and war--then mankind will slip back into the abyss, the untamed
giants of Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, the
tempest and the lightning will sweep the earth clean again. I do not
believe that this calamity will befall us. I know that in the diseased
social body the forces of resistance are gathering--the Socialist
movement, in the broad sense--the activities of all who believe in the
possibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice
and love. To such people this book goes out: to the truly religious
people, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now,
who believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing to bear pain
and ridicule and privation for the sake of its ultimate achievement.
From discord and defeat,
From doubt and lame division,
We pluck the fruit and eat;
And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet....
O sorrowing hearts of slaves,
We heard you beat from far!
We bring the light that saves,
We bring the morning star;
Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are....
#Envoi#
I have come to the end of my task; but one question troubles me. I
think of the "young men and maidens meek" who will read this book, and
I wonder what they will make of it. We have had a lark together; we
have gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting every venerable
head that showed itself, beating the dust out of ancient delusions.
You would like all your life to be that kind of lark; but you may not
find it so, and perhaps you will suffer disillusionment and vexation.
I have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have nearly
all been gallant and honest, but they have not all been wise, and
therefore not so happy as they might have been. In the course of time
I have formulated to myself the peril to which young radicals are
exposed. We see so much that is wrong in ancient things, it gets to be
a habit with us to reject them. We have only to know that a thing is
old to feel an impulse of impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are
tempted to welcome anything which can prove itself to be
unprecedented. There is a common type of radical whose aim in life is
to be several jumps ahead of mankind; whose criterion of conduct is
that it shocks the bourgeois. If you do not know that type, you may
find him--and her--in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, drinking the
newest red chemicals, smoking the newest brand of cigarettes, and
discussing the newest form of #psycopathia sexualis#. After you have
watched them a while, you realize that these ultra-new people have
fallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy, the non sequitur,
and likewise to the oldest form of slavery, which is self-indulgence.
If it is true that much in the old moral codes is based upon
ignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is also true that much in the
old moral codes is based upon facts which will not change so long as
man is what he is--a creature of impulses, good and bad, wise and
foolish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make choice between
these impulses; so long as he is a material body and a personal
consciousness, obliged to live in society and adjust himself to the
rights of others. What I would like to say to young radicals--if there
is any way to say it without seeming a prig--is that in choosing their
own path through life, they will need not merely enthusiasm and
radical fervor, but wisdom and judgment and hard study.
It is our fundamental demand that society shall cease to repeat over
and over the blunders of the past, the blunders of tyranny and
slavery, of luxury and poverty, which wrecked the ancient societies;
and surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own persons
the most ancient blunders of the moral life. To light the fires of
lust in our hearts, and let them smoulder there, and imagine we are
trying new experiments in psychology! Who does not know the radical
woman who demonstrates her emancipation from convention by destroying
her nerves with nicotine? Who does not know the genius of revolt who
demonstrates his repudiation of private property by permitting his
lady loves to support him? Who does not know the man who finds in the
phrases of revolution the most effective devices for the seducing of
young girls?
You will have read this book to ill purpose if you draw the conclusion
that there is anything in it to spare you the duty of getting yourself
moral standards and holding yourself to them. On the contrary, because
your task is the highest and hardest that man has yet undertaken--for
this reason you will need standards the most exacting ever formulated.
Let me quote some words from a teacher you will not accuse of holding
to the slave-moralities:
Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I
hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.
Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke? Free from what?
What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me:
free to what?
Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang
thy will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own
judge, and avenger of thy law?
Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of
thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty space and into
the icy breath of isolation.
Out of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge into the sunlight of
knowledge, to take control of a world, and to make it over, not
according to the will of any gods, but according to the law in our own
hearts. For that task we have need of all the resources of our being;
of courage and high devotion, of faith in ourselves and our comrades,
of clean, straight thinking, of discipline both of body and mind. We
go to this task with a knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of
mankind--the knowledge that our actions determine the future of life,
not merely for ourselves but for all the race. For this is one of the
laws of the ancient Hebrews which modern science has not repealed, but
on the contrary has reinforced with a thousand confirmations--that the
sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and
fourth generations.
I get letters from the readers of my books; nearly always they are
young people, so I feel like the father of a large family. I gather
them now about my knee, and pronounce upon them a benediction in the
ancient patriarchal style. Children and grandchildren of my hopes, for
ages men suffered and fought, so that the world might be turned over
to you. Now the day is coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with
the shining of its wings; it is coming so swiftly that I am afraid of
it. I thought we should have more time to get ready for the taking
over of the world! But the old managers of it went insane, they took
to tearing each other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us. So,
whether we will or not, we have to take charge of the world; we have
to decide what to do with it, even while we are doing it. Let us not
fail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll of history that
mankind had to go through yet new generations of wars and tumults and
enslavements, because the youth of the international revolution could
not lift themselves above those ancient personal vices which wrecked
the fair hopes of their fathers--bigotry and intolerance,
vindictiveness and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all
uncharitableness!
* * * * *
INDEX
A
Abbott, Lyman 175-191
Abbott, L.F. 189
Adams 214
Adventists 237
Amberley 52
Anglican Church 47-88
Appeal to Reason 144
Archer 133
Assyria 32
Atkinson 267
Austria 155
Aztecs 32
B
Babists 254
Babylonia 26, 32, 50
Baxter 183
Beilhardt 254
Berkman 288
Besant 250
Bible-students 246
Bismarck 153
Black Magic 253
Blavatsky 23, 256
Blougram 109
Bonzano 121, 126
Booth 298
Bootstrap-lifting 11, 266
Brougher 209
Brown 268
Buchanan 68, 159
Buckle 41
Burns 75
C
Cæsar 161
Cannon 143
Carlyle 163
Carnegie 177
Catholic Church 27, 105-157, 295
Catholic Encyclopedia 67
Centrum 152
Charcot 258
Chatterton-Hill 220
Chinese 74
Christian Endeavor World 216
Christian Science 254-264
Churchman 101, 102
Clark 23
Clough 235
Columbus 115
Conway 127
Curates 71
D
Darwin 56
Day 205
Debs 289
Dixon 204, 205
Dowie 242
Durham 80
E
Eastman 140
Eddy 257, 261
Education 81
England 49, 73, 75
England, Church of 47-88
Episcopal Church 89-102
Eucharist 59
F
Ferrer 51, 133
Fish 65
Flint 78, 79
Fogazzaro 298
Foraker 143
Frederick 163
G
Galileo 51
Gallipoli 61
Garrison 167
Gladstone 57, 58, 81
Goldman 287
Goode 59, 61
Green 63
Gurney 254
H
Hagen 219
Hale 213
Hammurabi 85
Hampton 181
Ha'nish 250
Hanna 122, 142, 153, 213
Harris 72
Harrison 304
Haywood 288
Hebrew 36, 173, 284, 285
Henry the Eighth 66, 67
Hill, Joe 219
Hill, Rev. J.W. 204
Holmes 276
Holy Rollers 242, 243
Hubbard 190
Huss 38, 41
Huxley 56, 58
Hyndman 256
Hyslop 223
I
Inquisition 39, 51
Ireland 43
Isaiah 287
J
Janet 258
Jastrow 32
Jehovah 35, 36
Jesuits 148
Jesus 74, 100, 101, 161,
172, 174, 175, 176, 197, 221,
258, 281, 282, 290, 291, 292
Jews 284, 286
Job 25, 26, 55
Joshua 37
Jowett 54
Jungle 190, 194, 197
Junker 152
K
Kaiser 164-166
Kant 303
Kemp 19
King Coal 137
Kingsley 34
Knights of Columbus 123
Koreshanity 248
L
La Follette 260
Landor 34
Lankester 306
Lea 39
Leeky 136
Leo XIII 119, 123
Ligouri 174
Li Hung Chang 75
London 276
Los Angeles 149, 150, 208, 209, 217
L.A. Examiner 149
L.A. Times 44, 151
Lourdes 258
Luther 161, 163
M
MacGill 42
Machen 273
Mallock 77
Malthus 77
Manning 118
Manu 285
Markham 302
Marx 71, 173
Massey 55
Mazdaznan 250
McCabe 148
McDonald 139
Mellen 185
Menace 135
Milton 199
Morality 308
More 85
Morgan 99, 101
Mormon 239, 240
Moses 36, 37
N
Nazarite 29
New Haven 180, 181
New Thought 264
N.Y. Evening Post 223
N.Y. Sun 193
N.Y. Times 211
Nichols 270
Noel 83, 286
Northcliffe 72
Numerology 271
O
Oahspe 248
O'Connell 120
Opium 74
Outlook 175-198
P
Paine 87
Paley 87
Pasadena 150, 208, 276
Patent Medicine 214
Patterson 139
Paul 56, 161, 207
Peabody 99
Peters 204
Phelan 119
Pillsbury 167
Pius IX 116
Plowman 64
Pope 67, 121, 143
Positivists 304
Post 216
Potter 98
Prescott 32
Preston 127
Protestant 201
Prussia 153, 163
Q
Quakers 177
Quay 212
Quigley 129
R
Rauschenbusch 163, 283
Rawson 272
Reformation 163, 201
Religion 16, 17
Rig-Veda 30
Robinson 228
Rockefeller 138, 177, 190, 192, 211
Roosevelt 142
Russell, C.E. 95, 181
Russell, G. 82
Russell, Pastor 247
Ryan 105
S
Sacred Heart 113
Salpetriere 238
Salvation Army 298
Sanday 78
Segur 117
Shaftesbury 74, 82
Shakers 244, 245
Shelley 87, 183
Siam 34
Sinn Fein 295
Smith, Gipsy 217
Smith, Goldwin 223
Soap Box 290
Socialist Movement 311
Spain 131
Spiritualism 275
Stalker 78
Sterling 45
Sunday 207, 210
Swinburne 103
Syracuse 205
T
Tablet 157
Tacitus 170
Taft 142-144
Tammany 93, 143
Thackery 68, 212
Theosophists 254, 255
Thirty-nine Articles 54
Tingley 256
Torrey 203
Tractarian 55
Trinity 94
Trinity Corporation 95
Trowbridge 29
V
Vedder 76
Voltaire 53
W
Waddell 279
Wagner 219
Wall Street 181
Wanamaker 203
Ward 55
Wattles 268
Wesley 170
Westcott 79
White, A.D. 52
White, Bouck 192
Wilberforce 56, 88
William 63
Wilson 169, 186
Y
Yogi 255
York 76
* * * * *