VOLUMES might be written on the follies and imbecilities of "great" men.
Only a few years ago the really great men were persecuted, imprisoned
or burned. In this way the church was enabled to keep the "great" men on
her side.
As a matter of fact it is impossible to tell what the "great" men really
thought. We only know what they said. These "great" men had families
to support, they had a prejudice against prisons and objected to being
burned, and it may be that they thought one way and talked another.
The priests said to these men: "Agree with the creed, talk on our side,
or you will be persecuted to the death." Then the priests turned to the
people and cried: "Hear what the great men say."
For a few years we have had something like liberty of speech and many
men have told their thoughts. Now the theologians are not quite so apt
to appeal to names as formerly. The really great are not on their side.
The leaders of modern thought are not Christians. Now the unbelievers
can repeat names--names that stand for intellectual triumphs. Humboldt,
Helmholtz, Haeckel and Huxley, Darwin, Spencer and Tyndall and many
others, stand for investigation, discovery, for vast achievements in the
world of thought. These men were and are thinkers and they had and have
the courage to express their thoughts. They were not and are not puppets
of priests, or the trembling worshipers of ghosts.
For many years, most of the presidents of American colleges have
been engaged in the pious work of trying to prevent the intellectual
advancement of the race. To such an extent have they succeeded that none
of their students have been or are great scientists.
For the purpose of bolstering their creed the orthodox do not now repeat
the names of the living, their witnesses are in the cemetery. All the
"great" Christians are dead.
To-day we want arguments, not names, reasons, not opinions. It is
degrading to blindly follow a man, or a church. Nothing is nobler than
to be governed by reason. To be vanquished by the truth is to be a
victor. The man who follows is a slave. The man who thinks is free.
We must remember that most men have been controlled by their
surroundings. Most of the intelligent men in Turkey are followers of
Mahomet. They were rocked in the cradle of the Koran, they received
their religious opinions as they did their features--from their parents.
Their opinion on the subject of religion is of no possible value. The
same may be said of the Christians of our country. Their belief is the
result, not of thought, of investigation, but of surroundings.
All religions have been the result of ignorance, and the seeds were sown
and planted in the long night of savagery.
In the decline of the Roman power, in the times when prosperity died,
when commerce almost ceased, when the sceptre of authority fell from
weak and nerveless hands, when arts were lost and the achievements of
the past forgotten or unknown, then Christians came, and holding in
contempt all earthly things, told their fellows of another world--of joy
eternal beyond the clouds.
If learning had not been lost, if the people had been educated, if they
had known the literature of Greece and Rome, if they had been familiar
with the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, with the
philosophy of Zeno and Epicurus, with the orations of Demosthenes; if
they had known the works of art, the miracles of genius, the passions in
marble, the dreams in stone; if they had known the history of Rome; if
they had understood Lucretius, Cicero and Cæsar; if they had studied the
laws, the decisions of the Prætors; if they had known the thoughts of
all the mighty dead, there would have been no soil on which the seeds of
Christian superstition could have taken root and grown.
But the early Christians hated art, and song, and joy. They slandered
and maligned the human race, insisted that the world had been blighted
by the curse of God, that this life should be used only in making
preparation for the next, that education filled the mind with doubt, and
science led the soul from God.